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[HELMUT]

Too bad, i really liked the ships sprites. Even though the faction was a bit overpowered back in 0.54.

[Verrius]

Haha, at first glance, the art would be fine. Although the quality of other mods in general has gone way up and it was starting to eat at me.

Now, while the new "art" won't be as good as a lot of the mods you see now either, one of the things I want to fix some of the obvious "vanilla ship plastered on top of vanilla ship" instances that you tend to see with virtually every original Scrapper ship, for example:

The beast here. You can see the three different ships it's comprised of, and I do little to nothing to alter anything about it.


It looks okay, particularly in game, but it doesn't really cut if for me. I wanted to take a little more time and make it unique, so I remade the beast into this:


It's taken from a lot more pieces, ideally you shouldn't be able to easily pinpoint any two or three ships it's eaten from. And it looks nice 'n scrappy. Besides, that also brings us to another problem a few ships have. That some of them are too similar, in the case of the beast with the Menace, which was nixed along with the Bite which is too similar to the Vice.

There are more problems though, such as sizing.

This is the Refuge, a Frigate. I've heard some people tell me it needs to be a destroyer. It'd be a small destroyer like this though, and it still has some of the lazy design mentioned earlier. It's a mirrored piece of freighter strapped to a Brawler.


So it now looks like this:

It's larger, asymmetrical, and has more weapons options fit for a Destroyer. But I liked having a frigate carrier, I really did. With built-ins, having one that is worse at actually being a carrier with 1 flight deck should be possible, which is why I added a new ship to replace the Frigate version of the Refuge.

Meet the Wingman.

Very similar to the old Refuge, although will be much more fragile, and fighters would, in my mind, take twice as long to repair from it's dock. Graphically, much nicer than the old Refuge that's for sure.

While on the topic of Sizing, the Vice and Bite were way way too small for what they did. As I mentioned above, the Bite was nixed. But the Vice received an overhaul.

This is the new Vice. It's got only one Medium mount, but that's a balance thing. Two was stupid, it really was. It's still got a powerful front though, you can have a medium weapon next to a strong small one.

The list, of course, goes on and on. Some ships were removed, but a few were added in as well. I'd say it's pretty hard to believe that anyone was particularly attached to the ones that were nixed, perhaps the only dissapointment would be that as of right now, the Reaper is gone and has no replacement. I might bring it back, but Phase ships don't really fit well with the Scrappers. That being said, this little dinky fellow is still here, and it's not just a spliced off mid-line shuttle anymore.

Honestly, it looks super dumb. But it's suppose to, and it lost most of it's weapons because it was a little too good for what it was suppose to be: A ridiculously cheap Phase ship. This right here? This is bargain bin. That was my original intent.

On the topic of design, I always liked the idea behind the Striker. It was one of my favorite ships in fact, although at the end of the day, it was the bottom half of a vanilla ship with guns on it. Like seriously, look at it:


Let's make it meaner:


Ihe new art isn't perfect. Far from it, but at least the ships look more unique than they did originally, which in my opinion, is pretty important. Every ship that remains has gotten a new look. Now, I've also got this problem where I really can't focus enough to make really good larger ships. It takes a lot of effort, I don't know how people do it. I did my best for the last two though.



The Battleborn needed it's gun count reeled in. But it also needed to be more than just a Conquest slammed on top of another ship with an Eagle somewhere in the middle. I'll admit, it lost some of it's beefiness, but I'm happier with the new ship overall from a graphical and balance standpoint. Oh, and here's this guy. You know this guy.


It's still 4 Onslaughts married together with a station, but I made it blend better :p. I also made it more of a "bio-dome" ish structure. Those mounts will also all be forced built-ins, and it will have some new mechanics.

In closing, whether you like the direction of the new art or not, I hope people at least understand why I'm changing it. There were a lot of things that were bothering me, and I feel it's important to bring it up to speed so it feels more worthwhile next to other mods. Super high quality art isn't the most important thing, but I think identity and uniqueness has a huge impact that the mod formerly lacked, just by being too much of a garbagey kitbash.

EDIT: Oh, and yeah my Avatar is still a Platypus. That is the new Platypus.

[Remoirex]

Wooooooooooooow, good new unique spirits.
When will you release the update?
I like the new battleborn and the new battlestation!!!

[HELMUT]

The thing is that your previous sprites, even though they were obviously kitbashed, blended pretty well with the rest of the ships. The old refuge, even though the brawler was very obvious, was quite good. The new one however is confusing to look at, lot of greebling overlapping each parts making it fuzzy, the front part especially. It unfortunately happen a lot with low-tech ships, the new Vice suffer from this too. The new Beast and Striker however works very well, the greebling add a lot of complexity without seeming glitchy.

But for what i have seen, your new sprites are overall better than the previous ones. The Battleborn is particularly impressive.

For the homeworld class, the bio-dome seems a bit too clean, you could use this ship to improve the kitbash (from spiral-arms, so it's free to take).

[Doogie]

Hmm, even that bio-dome doesn't really seem to fit so well.
The best bio-dome I've seen was a BSF ship, Here.
SWS posted the sprite he used for it further in the thread.
Perhaps you could do something with that?

Ah well. I really like your new revisions, especially the striker.

The thing I never understood is why people have issues with kitbashes, as the concept fits into the Starsector universe quite well; as people would be recycling damaged ships and scrap metal to create new beasts. Of course they need to be done well, but my point still stands.

[Erick Doe]

The thing I never understood is why people have issues with kitbashes, as the concept fits into the Starsector universe quite well; as people would be recycling damaged ships and scrap metal to create new beasts. Of course they need to be done well, but my point still stands.

TuP is a testament to that philosophy  . Though it can be a challenge. The trick is to make the 'used parts' look good together.

[Verrius]

For the record, it's not really about what's been said about the mod. It's actually a pretty funny thing.

Most of the original ships were made in very rapid succession- maybe 5 to 10 minutes. I designed the Scrappers around the idea that it would at least make some sort of sense that they'd look very very obvious, because I really just wanted to make ships that are "mine."

The Platypus was literally one other fighter sitting on top of another and it looked "kinda neat." The other ships of course were a bit more involved, but in many cases not so much. And you know what? Nobody seemed to notice or care. Far more compliments than anything else.

But I look at my own work and think about how lazy it is. Everyone has been fine with my mods sub-par graphical quality- Heck, nobody even really cared about the lackluster hand-done art for Shadow Order. So I want the Scrappers to be a little more involved as well.

Here's a few more: (New on the Left, Old on the Right)

New Juggernaut


New Manta


New Halberd

[Toxcity]

I personally think they look pretty good. I think the only thing that may be "missing" is like a different color scheme or a rust color to seperate them more from the ships they were kitbashed from.

[theSONY]

Dayum
that's a nice piece of work Verrius  
but that would be better looking with Fleet control mod  

[HELMUT]

I think the only thing that may be "missing" is like a different color scheme or a rust color to seperate them more from the ships they were kitbashed from.

+1

Your faction would greatly benefit from an additional color. The rust effect is reasonably easy to do. Pick a picture of dripping rust on google, resize it, remove the "background" with the rubber, use the "Multiply" layer blender on Photoshop or equivalent, toy with the transparency and it works very well.

[Uomoz]

I like the new art direction a lot more.

[Verrius]

Dayum
that's a nice piece of work Verrius 
but that would be better looking with Fleet control mod 

Haha, I'd like to, but with Winter motivation is at an all time low. Not to mention I've been working like crazy lately. These sprites have been sitting around for a while.

I think the only thing that may be "missing" is like a different color scheme or a rust color to seperate them more from the ships they were kitbashed from.

+1

Your faction would greatly benefit from an additional color. The rust effect is reasonably easy to do. Pick a picture of dripping rust on google, resize it, remove the "background" with the rubber, use the "Multiply" layer blender on Photoshop or equivalent, toy with the transparency and it works very well.

Might consider it. Simply recoloring it to a consistent color wouldn't entirely make sense in terms of the Faction's concept, but the rust idea sounds kinda neat. Might look into it.

I like the new art direction a lot more.

Glad to hear it. Definitely still rough around the edges, but it's certainly more gratifying than what I had before.

I also made new weapons, but those are far less interesting by default.

Here are the good ol' signature fighters (Platypus is me right now):

Sparrow

Bat

Raptor

Blade

Fang

[Lopunny Zen]

is there going to be a dedicated or large carrier with 3 or more flight decks since it would make sense due to their high fighter count?

[HELMUT]

Lopunny, you have been asking the question on three threads already You should look for the Hidolfr from the Neutrino mod with SIX flight decks, you should like it.

Verrius, good job on the new wings, especially the Raptor.

[Erick Doe]

is there going to be a dedicated or large carrier with 3 or more flight decks since it would make sense due to their high fighter count?

Try the Cormorant. It is a carrier included in TuP.

Keep up the good work on this mod. The kitbashes look quite good. I like factions made up of ships like these. Might want to change colours around some, to prevent ships from looking too much alike.