XWA Upgrade

With all the HD upgrades going on I reallized I'd somewhat neglected one of my older yet pretty much most important models, the one that had pretty much started it all:
Thinking back to like 2002 or so I posted a screenshot of a horribly crafted 3DM version with poor textures as my first attempt to apply for the XWAU Project. Guess I've come some way since then....

For this one I chose not just to flesh out the details but also reimagine the ship as a whole, taking different approaches on several aspects.
- For example the missile lauchers are no longer cramped into the main fuselage but instead are hosted in separate compartments to its the sides, allowing me to sleeken the fuselage.
- Since the Victory is mainly a space fighter I pretty much removed the main engines' intakes
- on the old VF2 the engine casings were somewhat closed tubes with only the nozzels protruding out, which I now felt made the whole ship feel too massive. With the new one the casing's more of a layer of armor "wrapped" around the machinery parts.

The model isn't finished yet so stay tuned for updates.

Looks AWSOME!

I like it!!!

Update time!

I've done some more reinvisioning on the Guns and the cockpit. FOr the latter I came to the conclusion that there would have to be some sort of way to open it and with a canopy going all the way to the back, that wasn't exactly logical. So I intersected it at one point to allow for an actual hatch mechanism. The new side fins are more or less a tryout, but I kinda like them. Also, I recalled the original Victory Mk1 and rethought it witht he new version. With the Mk1 being something of a light scout It was easy to remove the missile launchers and the additional pir of engines.

Looking very good!

Time for some thread necromancy

I've done some more thinking and gave the whole XT-series a background revamp and some more variations. Also, I reduced the designation numbers from 3 digits to 2, more of an aesthetic choce here. I'm currently working on redoing the TBP site which'll include these changes, but here's a little overview.

XT-10 Viper - Not much has changed here. The Viper's the classic early-era precursor to the victory series
XT-15 Interceptor - Moving away from the name Victory Mk1, this is the failed attempt on making a cheap mass-production interceptor, which almost ruined ShiCon Dynamics and provided the opening for Luhyien Qhalic to step up as new chief of R&D and develop the Victory line. I took this background away from the Victory Mk1, as I needed that one to serve as an actually successful base for future developments.
XT-20 Victory - This one is kinda the first generation Victory, on which all later iterations were based. It'd losely follow the original drawings I had for what would be the Victory Mk2.
XT-21L Scout - The weight-reduced version which I've posted shots of further up
XT-22 Stealth - I had this one in very early versions of the story, long before I ever joined this community. It also sort-of featured as an all black flightgroup color version of my Original release of the Victory-Mk2, though I intend to go back to its original design with this.
XT-25B Raptor ('Victory Mk2') - This is the one true Victory Mk2, as shown above. I decided to give this one an different codename and turn the term "Victory Mk2" into something of a nickname given to it by pilots.
XT-26C (Phantom, Assassin, etc.......) - This is what I used to call the Victory Mk3. As with the Raptor I decided to give it an name rather than going through another iteration of the Victory name. I'm still haggling with myself on how to call it though. I want it to be as much a nod to its cloaking capabilities as to its superior combatability, even if there were only a handful ever made.
XT-30 Piranha - No real change there either.

Apart from these I may go ahead and rethink a few other ships and their names. Pretty high on that list will be the Liberator Corvette for the reason that "Liberator" isn't really the kind of name you'd give to a corporate freighter which happens to have superior armoring to guard against pirate attacks, which is what this ship primary is. Suggestions welcome.

I hope to see them in xwa soon! Your spaceships are really funny to be played!
A good name for your escort corvette couold be "Shepherd"...

Shepherd's nice tho I don't think it fits too closely. With the ship being a freighter itself not a mere escort vessel.

I just had an idea this morning to call it Dolyak, a nod to the heavy packing animals in the Guild Wars franchise. Kinda like it, although it sort of neglects the ships defendability. Well the search goes on