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Great-5 β Big-ass ship
by-nc-nd
Published: 2011-11-17 10:29:58 +0000 UTC; Views: 1549; Favourites: 22; Downloads: 0
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Description
My first major mechanical design in months, and I gotta say it's a somewhat halfassed one. I plan on drawing a much cleaner version of this same ship eventually, but for now, enjoy this rough sketch.What is it, exactly? It's a 1.58 kilometer-long monstrosity of an aircraft carrier, currently bearing no name except for "the big-ass ship," or BAS, because I really can't be arsed to come up with a decent name just yet. But the BAS is much more than an aircraft carrier, it's essentially a mobile fortress, complete with a command center, as well as a compliment of not just hundreds of state-of-the-art fighter aircraft, but also a large handful of transport planes capable of ferrying troops, heavy armor and support vehicles anywhere in the world. In short, the BAS is a force to be reckoned with, a virtual city at sea.
It is armed with hundreds of directed-energy CIWS units, namely a shipwide ALDeN (Automated Laser Defense Network) array comprising FIRNaS (Ferrous InfraRed Sodium Semiconductor) solid-state lasers that can track and shoot down incoming missiles and fighter aircraft automatically. It is also armed with a wide variety of cruise missiles for targeting other ships and larger aircraft. Finally, any troops who manage to infiltrate the BAS's outer defenses will quickly find that the interior of the immense ship is every bit as deadly as its exterior, with lethal electrical and mechanical traps of every kind, capable of slicing boarding parties into mincemeat, or cooking them alive.
The BAS is powered by twin high-yield fusion reactors, though the exact data on these military-grade reactors is confidential. It is currently thought to be unstoppable, but current research is being conducted by military forces around the world in order to find a weak spot on the BAS. But until they find that out, the Big-Ass Ship remains the greatest and most terrifying marvel of military engineering.
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Do not steal. Art theft is illegal, you know
This drawing 2011Β Chris Adren
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Comments: 44
Carrier? More like massive, seaborne fortress! Yeah and it's such a massive ship that it can't even dock at most ports, since it's 1.6 kilometers long! I still need to refine this design though, since I'm not happy with some of the flaws in its design.
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That sounds awesome. 
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Well for one thing Protoss carriers are spacecraft, and the Big-Ass Ship can't fly or go into space, it's just a regular ol' sea battleship. But if I'm remembering correctly Protoss carriers are only armed with a single energy beam and a complement of interceptor fighters. The Big-Ass Ship, however, is MUCH more heavily-armed with anti-aircraft lasers, missiles (some of them nuclear,) main guns (which I failed to draw yet, but are coming in the final version) and the ability to launch an entire landing force of dropships, helicopters, landing craft and many troopers as well as an even bigger complement of fighter aircraft that can be launched from the decks, but are stored in interior hangars. Yeah, the Big-Ass Ship is a force to be reckoned with!
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So essentially, it's limited mobility-wise, but armament-wise it's leaps and bounds beyond the Protoss carriers.
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Pretty much, though the Protoss seem to be more advanced in general than humans, so their ships are probably also more advanced in general. Though the BAS comes from a universe (my fictional universe) where space travel is not all that important to the plot, and most battles take place on Earth or other worlds like Earth. So space battleships aren't really needed.
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Very nice looking ship! It definately has a sturdy and unmovable look to it, like a dreadnaught you wouldn't want to find yourself up against.
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Yes I wanted to create the largest warship ever, while still making it somewhat plausible, at least for something that might be made in the next century or two. I was inspired by the fact that a lot of starships in sci-fi franchises like Star Wars or Halo are often MASSIVE compared to real-world naval warships. For instance, an Imperial Star Destroyer is about 1,600 meters long, the Pillar of Autumn from the original Halo was 1,170 meters long, but in real life the largest ships are only between 250 and 400 meters in length. I wanted to make a truly massive naval ship, as in my fictional universe space travel is not central to the plot, as most of the battles take place on Earth or other places like Earth.
Also as much as I hate to admit it, the design for this ship was based on the Final Fortress from Sonic Heroes, one of Eggman's flying battleships that is at least twice the size of the original Egg Carrier. I really disliked that game, but I thought that ship was impressive and terrifying, probably the only level in that game I enjoyed. Well, BARELY, because even though the ship was cool, the level itself was way too long, frustrating and subject to the same gameplay flaws that the entire game suffered from.
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Cool, Astral Fantasy has ships with similar sizes as well, namely the Jovian Warstars and Versian Indra class destroyers.
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Are they sea, air or space battleships? Space I presume.
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Yeah, they're spaceships. There's some other types of crafts as well though, for instance the Jovians attack Kaede in the game with an enormous mobile fortress on treads, essentially a giant tank/fort.
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So the Jovian traded vehicle is essentially a land battleship like the ones in Gundam?
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Basically yeah. Jovian's have a ground force almost as large as it's space force, the reason being is that they often try to capture planets and strategic areas as bases of operation rather than simply decimating them from space, and often a ground assault can be more effective.
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Cool, but how would a giant land battleship like that one fit in a civilized area? Wouldn't it just run over buildings and roads?
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Exactly, that's pretty much what it does. When I say they're built for taking strategic areas, I mean entire planets, not cities. Jovian landcruisers basically just bulldoze everything in their path and blast everything else with plasma canons, they're fortresses on treads and are essentially weapons of mass destruction. They were inspired partially by this video from the anime Robot Carnival [link]
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Holy crap that sounds terrifying. I sure wouldn't want MY planet getting invaded by giant city-bulldozing land battleships! Funny how in Gundam (the series that to the best of my knowledge invented the land battleship) they show land battleships moving around in the desert (at least ZAFT's land battleships in Gundam SEED, I haven't seen them in action in any other Gundam series,) but they never show them running over people or random small villages that may be in the way. That's bound to happen, even in an area as wide and expansive as a desert.
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Yeah, it kind of eliminates the point of the fortress being mobile if it only drives around in the middle of nowhere. I guess you could also say that such weapons have a massively demoralizing effect on the enemy as well, seeing a near city-sized battleship trampling everything in it's path would be most certainly horrific.
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Whoa and they're the size of small cities now too? So they're bigger than, say, a present-day aircraft carrier?
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Well, they're not quite as big as I described, but they're certainly enormous in size and scale, perhaps a little bigger than the Technodrome from TMNT and can do stuff like knock down scyscrapers and crush small buildings.
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And how big is the Technodrome? In all my years of watching Ninja Turtles I never could figure out how big that damn thing was. But then again it's been ages since I've watched an episode of TMNT.
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It's about the size of a city block roughly, if I recall.
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Yeah that sounds about right. You make me want to watch TMNT again!
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Yeah, I've been wanting to get the series on DVD or Blueray, but alas I can't find it 
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They don't even have it on DVD? That really sucks, it seems like such an obvious thing to put on DVD since it was so popular!
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I think they do have it on DVD, but the HMV in my area doesn't seem to carry it. Maybe I can request it or something? I do know they can do that in the store I went to.
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if you look at it from a small screen, it looks right, upclose it doesnt quite look right. cant wait to see the finished and refined look.
and as far as making it look supermassive, put planes and things on its deck, and normal ships beside it.
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Funny you mention that, I noticed the exact same thing about how it looks significantly better as a thumbnail. I agree, up close its flaws really start to come out, namely the flaws I see are the thick, crude pencil lines and sloppy coloring. Can you please tell me any additional flaws you saw yourself? I'd like the most information possible on how to improve the final version and make it look best, if you know what I mean.
Hmmm...I suppose I could do that, but bear in mind it's not like a typical aircraft carrier in that the planes it launches are stored inside the hull, namely in the large, hollow middle part.
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well quite simply put, it needs to be refined to its small thumbnail state, you already have the idea there, you just need to sharpen it. and as far as size goes, frames of references is needed, put it beside a normal aircraft carrier, or near a city. and if your going to say its 1.6 km or whatever, make sure you look at existing things to get the scale right, it annoys the cheesus out of me when they go "ITS SOO BIG" and i note several flaws... butthurt occurs... exc... you get my point anyway.
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Refined to its small thumbnail state? I am not quite sure what you mean by that. I will try putting another ship next to it for reference, and you don't have to worry about be getting butthurt over constructive criticism, I can take it pretty well because I know I need to improve in a few areas, and am always eager to hear how.
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i mean, look at the thumbnail, then then make the full size picture as detailed or similarly so.
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Yep, it belongs to the bad guys in my game project, but it's too epic a ship to be sunk, so in the end the civilians end up capturing it, decommissioning it and turning it into a big museum for people to marvel at.
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doesn't look that big, but still....AWESOME!
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Oh man, why doesn't it look as big as it's supposed to be? It's supposed to be 1.58 kilometers long, what length does it look like it is instead? I'd like you to tell me, so I can improve upon it for the final sketch.
I'm guessing it's because of the dots I added in the back section that were supposed to be windows, but I admit I added them hastily and it may have visually screwed up the scale. Is that why?
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No it's because it looks like a hover craft, also if your gona do something of THAT SIZE!...you should make the water look calmer, giving the impression that the boat is further up and higher (thus somewhat bigger looking) than the water. Also, may I recommend more gun turrets?
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Hmmm...okay. Yes I know, it did end up looking like a hovercraft, but actually under the water there are two hulls that hold the ship up, like a giant catamaran. You just can't see them because they'd normally be submerged, and I wanted to show the ship in action rather than just having it be floating in nothingness. But for my updated picture I might draw it further out of the water so you can see the twin hulls.
Make the water look calmer? You mean like make the waves smaller so the ship looks to be at the proper size? Yeah that was one of the mistakes I made.
Also, you want more gun turrets? That was a difficult part to draw on such a big ship, as I really have no idea where I'd put the gun turrets, and also, making absolutely massive gun turrets is impractical so it'd be better to have lots of smaller or medium-sized turrets. But, this ship is massive, and I'm not sure modern warships even use gun turrets that much anymore, since most seem to use missiles and CIWS (close-in weapon system) automated machine gun turrets, like the Phalanx system used on modern aircraft carriers. Actually, those gray ovals you see on either side of the central part of the ship were originally meant to be gun turrets, but they turned into something I don't really know what. So in your opinion what kind of guns would you like to see on this ship?
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Oh! Like a giant stealth ship! That's righteous!
Huh, I guess your right, spare the gun turrets for little choppers and planes flying around...just kidding, just put something that shows that it's HUGE!.....
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Well, it's not exactly stealthy, but I suppose I could add stealth elements to its final design.
Like what? Another ship? A city?
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a smaller attack ship just floating by as escort...make it somewhat like a realistic one, showing that it's huge to make it comparissable to something else...and yes...comparissable is a word in MAH FKING DICTIONARY!
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Yes but then I'd have to design the smaller ship too 0_o
Ah well, I'm up for it, designin's what I love doing!
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Not bad at all and would like to see the refined version eventually.
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