Well I'm at it again. The model and textures are far from done but here is what I have so far. I've been parting out bits here and there from the Red Gratha from the Japanese box art. I chose to go with the simpler gun barrels along with the open panels and intake ducting on the underside of the ship. I also added the feathery detail on the cockpit and painted it red, but I can't be too sure the design is correct because of the low quality of the image reference.
I'm probably going to scrap the current engine setup and add acceleration absorbers like the Scimitar has. I'll place them close to where the pods are on the red gratha, then reroute the engines to the center. The result would make the engines look more like tail feathers, giving the overall ship a more bird like appearance, complimenting the beak and feathery paint detail of the cockpit. Here is a rough layout
Hehe, that's a prety cool interpretation of the Gratha, especially the beak. Together with that dread inspiring, tank-like cockpit it makes the ship look every bit as dangerous as I remember it being. Nice work!
Thanks guys Looking at the Red Grathas design you can already see some elements from the games model, just placed differently. If I break apart the mid section, remove the wings but leave the tips, and combine the tail fins it looks pretty close. Well at least I think it does. That gets me to wonder if I should make this model in segments, so the ship itself is modular and can be reconfigured for different uses.
Nothing wrong with that! I like what you've done so far, especially with the non-standard choice of source material. I don't recall having much of a problem with them in WC1, but my recent Standoff experience doesn't give me much reason to fear them. Compared with the other Kilrathi fighters featured there, they were far too slow and nice big targets to be much of a threat.
They could soak up insane amounts of damage and had fairly powerful guns. I honestly can't remember if they killed me a lot or not, but I distinctly remember them doing in stuff I was supposed to protect rather frequently, including the Tiger's Claw. But yeah, they aren't that great in Standoff, though they can still hurt you quite badly if they catch you unaware. A fighter that's surprisingly useless in Standoff in my experience is the Jalthi, though. They hardly ever seem to get a shot of even when you try to get yourself in trouble, and when they do, they only seem to fire their neutrons, which don't seem able to hit anything at all.
Yeah, That's what I remember, too. One of the most-read sentences in defend XY -missions: Gratha: "A proper fate for a coward" ...followed by the death of a Drayman, the Tiger's Claw or something else. For me the Grathas were like.... the russian IL-2 Sturmovik in WW2, which the german pilots called "Betonflugzeug" (concrete plane). Hard to kill. Especially when flying a Hornet. @ Michelle D: Good work, this is a nice approach to the good old Gratha.
In WC 1 they were tough unless you stayed to their sides in which case they became easy targets to down... harder to do when there's more than two of them though.
Going strictly by the numbers, the Grathra is pretty close in strength to a Raptor, though slower (320 k/s instead of 400 k/s).
Small update. The body is split apart for now but I don't know if I'll keep it that way. I split it to help me figure out where to place the center fin that I added in favor of the two smaller tail fins. I'm still roughing out the engines.
Don't know if you'll keep it that way? I do hope the Kilrathi fly ships that can hold together, else they would die before they even left the carrier. I can definitely see the progression towards the new design. It's difficult to see much detail in the engines with such a small picture, but what I see so far seems to be consistent with what details I can see on the cover art.
I like it, but I have to ask if you are clear on just what you want out of this model... If it's a combination of the WC1 and the Japanese Boxart then It's perhaps too much on the boxart side. If you are heading more in the direction of the boxart then by all means go all out! drop the guns below the wings and add the rocket pods besid the main hull and increase the height that the cockpit section is offset from the rest of the ship... All in all it's looking pretty cool, and I like the red paint.
Oh my, the blood red makes a huge difference. The tail section is looking great, but AD is right, the wings don't quite seem to match the box art just yet. Understand that you're still working on it, but you did ask for feedback.
I'm experimenting mostly, combining the original and the box art but heavily inspired by the bird motif I see in the details of the box art... so I'm going for a bird like appearance, which is why it might look a bit on the light side. I'm also roughing out a story as usual so I have something to do 3D animation of. (Possibly Humorous intro) A Terran fighter pilot is sent on a covert mission to destroy the only red gratha prototype, codenamed "Phoenix" or something along those lines. This Gratha Variant has extremely heavy defenses but the pilot ends up winning because the ammo for one of his guns was swapped with his CO's cigars that used a similar shell like casing. Well the cigars ignite using what air is left in the tubes and the impact on the Grathas shields creating plumes of smoke that becomes ionicly attracted to the shields and begins covering the Gratha giving the human pilot the advantage and he goes for the kill. Any who the pilot wakes up and it's just a dream. (End) (Story) The actual Red Gratha is piloted by my Female Kilrathi model... I dunno if the Kilrathi have a police or military police but I think I want to make her and the red gratha a home based fighter to deal with internal issues. (end) I'm also wondering if birds or large ones may be something that Kilrathi fear or make up scary stories about to scare their young, if so then a home based fighter that looks like a large bird is well suited to hunt down other Kilrathi.
