little late but" luve the designs, Jap. mechs style is noticeable
BUT is S.H.I. is random shurtcut ?
cuz i use that name in few games ;P
PS:can't w8 till i see some BIG size ships ^^
Glad you like the designs; yeah there is a bit of an anime vibe to them, particularly from the more organic styles you'd sometimes see in older anime.
As for the name, it's not exactly random but... Well, when the mod consisted purely of the Charybdis no thought had gone into who had built it beyond the vague notion that it was a smaller design bureau, in particular one struggling with the established industrial titans of the Domain. But as I neared completing the Morningstar (again) and worked on integrating the ships into the campaign I started to put more thought into who made them and, more importantly, why they would have ships flying around blasting people they particularly disliked.
Well, obviously they were industry focused, so Heavy Industries seemed a natural fit, especially given the vaguely anime-ish design, and I couldn't quite resist throwing my handle in there so it ended up as the Shadowyards. So that's why it's Shadowyards Heavy Industries (SHI). I'll probably do a more in depth coverage of their identity and such at a later point.
As for the BIG ships, it'll probably just be the Vanir, seen above, and maybe a fleet carrier vaguely similar to the Astral (given my love of naming conventions that would probably end up being the Norn class); Shadowyards by and large designs and flies smaller vessels, with most of their heavy firepower coming from the (as yet undesigned) Tartarus class Heavy Cruisers (and, to a much lesser extent the Charybdis class Carrier and Elysium class Light Cruiser [also undesigned, though I've an idea for this one]). Yeah, the cruisers are all basically going to be named after Greek fictive locations associated with the dead, much like the Frigates are classed after ancient Mesopotamian deities and the Destroyers are classed after nothing in particular.
And the fighters are classed after various minor spirits, nymphs, and demons. Speaking of which!
My wrist is a little out of shape, else there'd probably be more. The Kobold is named after mischievous spirits that supposedly haunted German mines, though I'm sure you're all thinking of certain dog-lizards from a certain tabletop game. The Kobold is likely to be armed with two Shrike missile racks and an unspecified beam weapon, which may or may not be a custom design.
The Raksasha is named after a type of unrighteous spirit or demon of Hindu mythology, and is sometimes used in place of the term Asura; it features a new type of torpedo that is unnamed but will carry rather a lot of bomblets and a large, nasty gun with a very limited ammo supply and no sense of humour. Also, the Raksahsa's design is a fairly direct homage to one of my favourite anime when I was a kid.
I'll try to finish transcribing the rest of the sketches from my notebook tomorrow.
My immediate plans for the mod is to release a compatibility and balance patch within a few days, both to bring it in line with the 0.53.1a release (I expect this will require little work) and to address some balance concerns brought up by Uomoz (I expect this will take rather a lot of work). After that, obviously, I'll be working on the ships and other weapons as I need them.