[Stellaris] Drow of Stellaris >;-)

[Princessity]

Awww! I love the Vulcan hairstyles! Do you just mean the original colour or your recolours of them as well?

[Princessity]

By the by! If you're still looking to base drow shipsies on Romulan designs, STO is a great source of inspiration! There's like bajillion prety ships. When I played it, I always played Romulan and just flew around the galaxy in my enormous Scimitar that I spent a fortune to get XD

 

http://sto.gamepedia.com/Romulan_playable_starship

[Nessa]

The white/blond one was getting on my nerves in the last game. So I was toying with the idea of ... demoting it somewhat. However it's easier to just leave it be for the moment anyway.

 

Ooo, yes I'll drop by there for some more ideas.

 

So far, corvette1 and 2 are ... oddly enough imperial. (Or sith in one case which is close enough.) However they're not like the Elven ships and would fit in with warbirds.   I'm currently considering putting the full on warbirds at the cruiser level. I have some supercapital ideas that are interesting but not necessarily romulan.  But we'll see how it goes. Might end up with a supercapital warbird anyway.

 

For this style, I'm going to try and for an "accent glow" approach rather than the cruise ship look the elves have. Might be really useful with the tints coming in the next update. Maybe.... not sure how well the tint is going to work on obsidian ships!

[Princessity]

I love accents! And well, we've seen screenshots of Avian ships, and colouring their hull is probably out of the question due to the high specularity, but they do seem to have customisable glow! Molluscoids, from what I could make out during the Thursday livestream, were more distinguishable by hull colouring. So it looks like there will be a lot of flexibility with the tints.

[idonotlikeusernames]

Appreciate all the hard work you're doing on this, will you eventually be considering unique elven/drow style ships for the fallens as well?

Also might custom spaceports, stations and habitats be in the future as well? Cause that avian spaceport is a bit odd for drow/elves.

[Nessa]

 Not to worry, the Drow will have a new ... Romulan/Star Wars inspired set coming up. I've already got the corvettes shaped but I'm playing around with textures still. Also, the Asari and Elves are about ready for NSC so I'm putting a lot of work into those at the moment.

 

I probably won't release any of the new Drow ships till after the update simply due to the fact that I don't know what I need to do for the new ship tint feature.

[fulih]

Question: Anybody mind if I toss the "Vulcan" hairstyles.... or at the very least remove them from the general selection for pops and leaders. (Rulers can still keep them.) The white Vulcan stuff in particular is just crimping my style too often.

 

And... I've been rather worried about the Drow not ever getting done so I decided to make a few ships.   Hopefully textures.... "soonish".

 

Depends which ones you have in mind.

Some, like drow_male_hair_style_04 are pretty awfull and don't fit them at all, but drow_female_hair_style_04 are okay, cool even.

TBH, only decent hairstyles for Drow males are drow_male_hair_style_02, and to lesser extent drow_male_hair_style_01

[Nessa]

Oh right.... I forgot to mention: the MALE Vulcan hairstyle. The girl one is fine.

 

In my last game my stupid heir (haha) had the sort of blond Vulcan hairstyle and my reaction was....  "OK, my queen can't ever die and let somebody with hair THAT bad take the throne!"

[Princessity]

Oh! Okay, I'm not attached to the male ones, I was worried you meant the female hair and I love all of them XD

[Nessa]

Yeah, I love the female one too. Why can't everyone read my mind when I type things ambiguously?

 

 

OK, when I get to it, no more guy vulcans. That can be for the vanilla (vanilla-ish if using my humanoid mod ) space elves.

[Nessa]

OK no, pics. (Yet! Haha! )

 

This is mainly a post so I don't forget my own decisions.

 

Drow ships are going to have 1 ship mesh per ship class (with the exception of corvettes) in order to facilitate... actually finishing. I found with the elves it massively simplifies the busy work with only having one model. Weapon locator placement is then a simple affair rather than an eons long tweaking session.  

 

And some other news for future updates:

 

• Drow trait for killing off any non-Drow on the same planet. (If not enslaved.) I know how to do it but mechanics still need to be decided on. 
• No more male Vulcan hair. It's stupid. So it's gone. (I will add my existing colored hair to the RealHumanoidSlaves mod when I have a moment. Vanilla elves are free to be ugly. )
• Drow "primitives". "Uplift" at your own peril.
• I'll be splitting up the "without apparel" outfits into a separate patch. (It's easy so that's why I'm finally doing it. )
• If Banks comes out before my vanilla Drow ships are done (very very likely), I'll release an update for compatibility. (Not for NSC though! That will have to wait till all non-vanilla ships are finished.)

The Drow NSC patch may take some time to wrap up. It's going to depend a lot on how much work Banks is going to require.

[Nessa]

OK, I need some opinions. I know I was originally doing Romulans for the Drow but... I don't know, birds of prey are for Romulans. 

 

I've got a corvette shape here that's a mixture of:

• Goa'uld
• Centauri
• Eventship 06 (The golden one.)

 

 

 

Some chief differences from the elven style. There are "decks" both above and below. The decks are more angular in nature (Goa'uld) and have insets where I will likely have glowy lines. (Similar to the new Asari ships.)

 

My question is this:

 

Is this ship different enough from the elves?

 

I think I can continue along with this style all the way up to the NSC ships. But I'm a little worried I'm in a sort of modeller's rut. So... what do you think?

 

EDIT: I forgot, the final version would be swept, like this:

 

 

 

 

[Nessa]

I was thinking this particular ship would be corvette2. The torpedo boat. Corvette one would look more interceptor like.

[Nessa]

Oh yes and for textures... of course obsidian colored as expected, but I'm going to do some tests with gold (initially) decoration on the wings. Kind of... on the order of some of the Centauri, Goa'uld and... even Roluman ships. (There are some older Romulan ship designs with ornamentation.)

 

Banks may let us tint the accents as well. This would mean you could could have an obisidian shiny ship with your choice of glow color -and- accent color.

 

Maybe.

[Porev]

Well, I'm a software engineer and my modeling and texturing skills are complete, utter trash. Still, my wife is quite good at thinking up and drawing things. A-and she is a great fan of R.A. Salvatore's The Forgotten Realms novel. Sometimes I think that she's a little bit drow on the inside (and I wonder how am I still alive).

Anyway, she has some ideas and would like to draw some sketches for you (if you don't mind, of course). Like... more sharp transitions and blade-like hulls. Something deadly, but still elegant. Drow style.

 

And colors matter a lot. I've retextured your elven ships to be black/purple for our own use (I wanted to play drow+NSC and roleplay a galactic chaotic dick right now) and gosh they look SO much more sinister.

[Porev]

Here's a sketch that has been done in 10 minutes just now (so yeah, it is kinda ugly).

 

 

 

The top-left design could be a fighter/bomber and the other sketches are... I dunno. A frigate? It's the general design that matters. Some serious drawings may be done tomorrow. You're the boss, so you decide if it looks like something you'd like to implement.

By the way, if you need any assistance from a software engineer like me, just ask (I don't think you will, 'cause modding Stellaris is easy  ). It's the least I could do to repay you for your awesome mods. And I'm sorry for my bad English.

[Princessity]

OOOOOOH! I love the new direction!

 

And the sketches look amazing, definitely fitting in with the rest of the aesthetics! <3

[Nessa]

Well, I'm a software engineer and my modeling and texturing skills are complete, utter trash. Still, my wife is quite good at thinking up and drawing things. A-and she is a great fan of R.A. Salvatore's The Forgotten Realms novel. Sometimes I think that she's a little bit drow on the inside (and I wonder how am I still alive).

 

Anyway, she has some ideas and would like to draw some sketches for you (if you don't mind, of course). Like... more sharp transitions and blade-like hulls. Something deadly, but still elegant. Drow style.

 

And colors matter a lot. I've retextured your elven ships to be black/purple for our own use (I wanted to play drow+NSC and roleplay a galactic chaotic dick right now) and gosh they look SO much more sinister.

 

I prefer the dark color myself even on the elfy ships.

 

Those sketches are fantastic! I'm going to try adapting that to the interceptor and maybe... try the web thing for the glowing part of the texture. I didn't want to make glowy vines for the Drow anyway.

 

If your wife has any more skteches or ideas, please post them!!

[Porev]

Here's a little update.

 

 

 

That could be a destroyer.

 

 

 

And that could be a cruiser/battleship with chelicerae in front. Personally I think it's a little bit too light to be a battleship.

 

Other sketches may be coming, namely another (heavier) cruiser/battleship, a carrier and a capital. I hope it helps 

[Nessa]

Love both of them! Keep them coming!! 

 

I need a lot of cruisers for NSC anyway, so some of these could fit in there.

[Nessa]

Just a minor update with some tweaks.

 

I have noticed the new anims from 1.4.1 are sort of screwing up several clothes for both men and women. I'll tweak them when I have a moment but ships come first for now.

[Nessa]

OK, finalized my texture scheme! This is corvette2! (Same ship as the test shots earlier.)

 

 

 

 

The hope is, that Banks will allow us to change the glowing texture color. (Supposedly based on flag color somehow.) We'll know more after next thursday. Hopefully.

 

Next ship is corvette1, which is based on one of the ships in the first sketch Porev posted!

Oh... right. And I forgot to sweep it. AGAIN. Haha. The final version will be swept darn it!

[Porev]

Wow, it looks great, especially the purple one. But... no web glowmaps? 
 
Some more sketches:

 

 

That could be a strike cruiser.

 

 

 

A battlecruiser/battleship/carrier.

[Nessa]

OK, can I just take a moment to say.....

 

Those are seriously fantastic!!!!

 

I originally had a web on corvette2 but it was a bit overpowering. You basically saw a web, and then noticed there was ship attached.   I may try again on another ship though. I'm liking the idea of having multiple different types of wing glows for ships instead of the same. (Well OK the elves are all different technically but the style is similar.)

In fact those are so awesome I'm still gushing about it. I absolutely adore the second one in particular.

 

I'll be absolutely doing both of these. (Well actually I'm doing every single one drawn in point of fact. These are THAT great! )

And... I just now got another idea. I was originally testing some gold trim on the wings. What if the web is gold instead of glowing? Worth a try and it might not be so glaring this time.

I keep coming up with more ideas. What if, the "web" is actually the ship panels on the wing? Subtle, yet still noticeable. OK, that's 2 new texture ideas to try out.

 

I'm especially liking the flow of these last two ships with the web included. So I guess corvette2 may be a bit different in it's final form as well.

[Porev]

I dunno, the drawings are quite rough and in some places not even symmetrical. A quick depiction of an idea. My wife's still trying to depict carriers as agile strike-cruiser-class hulls and I'm arguing with her about how they should look like. Mmm... like your elven light carrier — a massive colony ship refitted for drones, fighters and bombers instead of portable hydroponic farms and colony equipment.

 

I originally had a web on corvette2 but it was a bit overpowering. You basically saw a web, and then noticed there was ship attached.   I may try again on another ship though. I'm liking the idea of having multiple different types of wing glows for ships instead of the same. (Well OK the elves are all different technically but the style is similar.)

I keep coming up with more ideas. What if, the "web" is actually the ship panels on the wing? Subtle, yet still noticeable. OK, that's 2 new texture ideas to try out.

 

Well... yep. I haven't thought that a web glow map might be intrusive as hell. But a web normal map should look just great. I like that "ship panels" idea. Besides, drow should be subtle