It seems like that one set of engines didn't light up...I hate that glitch.
It occurs a lot, that glitch. But then, that's not the only graphical glitch this game suffers from a nearly-constant basis.
Recently I've noticed random ship graphics appearing at the bottom left corner of the map, irrespective of zoom level, and despite the fact that there is actually no ship over there.
The Ophois is a very impressive vessel constantine, is it based on a medium or large hull? I'm going to guess at large given the Shogun references (thanks, I didn't know the Shogun was good enough for comparisons with others work)! I really like the way the engine's at the back have been made to come out from the body in a flowing way, not breaking any of the sleek, deadly lines that the Ophois possess. The wolf head at the bow of the Ophois is incredibly realistic and very fitting with the name and role of her, how the blue neon light lines line up where the eyes should be is a huge level of detail!
The diminished profile from every angle that the Seccessionist States Ophois class Super Heavy Cruiser boasts will dramatically aid it in battle situations, aiding maneuverability greatly and making her harder to hit especially by mass driver weapons. Her tonnage will also help in the fight for survivability in the modern conflict zone, being dramatically bigger then a Cruiser and even a Heavy Cruiser she can throw her weight around unopposed and unclassed until confronted by a significantly larger vessel arrives on the scene, at which point she can just recall her fighters to their under slung mounts and fly away quickly thanks to the Hollander "Honeycomb" Drive System employed on it.
It's amazing how all the analysis and stories in this thread contrast with the actual game mechanics. A Ronin chassis with Supreme Miniaturization and Black Hole Eruptors will beat a particle-beam armed Haybraska any day.
But realism spoils the fun.
Nevertheless, 3 requests for screenshots of the Haybraska:
1. In a fleet with a Terror Star(in Starship Intel Report).
2. In a battle with an Economy Starbase(in Combat Viewer).
3. In a fleet with the Ronin and Shogun(again in Starship Intel Report).
Just to see it's size in comparison with other stuff.
Anyway, now for a design that has no 'story', but some actual combat in the game.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
I was recently playing a casual Dread Lords Campaign mission, "Exploitation", at Painful difficulty. It had gone amazingly well, with all the 5 planets I colonized being paradises, one of them having a Precursor Mine and one of them having a Precursor Library. My 4 free Constructors had found a pair of Economic Resources and set to extracting them, and I had upgraded my Scout, after the colonization had been completed, into a Surveyor to go around hunting anomalies.
But my starting military force of 3 free Battle Axes didn't fare so well. I flew them straight to the nearest Drengin/Yor stronghold, where they destroyed all the defenders present but sustained heavy damage. Eventually the Drengin launched a counter-attack on the poor obsolescent core-designed ships with a fleet of their newest, strongest heavy fighters, which would inevitably be sufficient to kill them. But I had Warp Drive. Using this, my Battle Axes were able to tie up a considerable number of slower Drengin ships and still blockade Yor expansion/scouting operations, in what turned out to be a hilarious and very long goose-chase with the stupid Battle Axes running circles around the star system or Iversonia while the even stupider Drengin forces chased behind them.
Eventually, after about a year of slider micromanagement and spreadsheet checking, my economy, industry and technology had skyrocketed far beyond that of the AIs, possibly ~3x higher, when I realized why the Drengin and Yor hadn't bugged me much apart from the stupid running-around-in-circles routine - they had launched their full-force attack at the besieged Arceans in the center of the map. One Arcean planet had fallen. At this point I decided to get into the action. I headed over to the shipyard for something to replace those frikkin' Axes that had proven themselves so worthless.
At first I didn't know what to design. I remembered the Shogun, the Percheron, and then visualized my comp exploding with the graphical overload. So for a while I dawdled around with stick pieces and decided to take a screenshot of that for the time being.
As if by accident, I eventually built something crude on those sticks. A very ugly design which I called the Excalibur because of the ship's very distant resemblance to a sword, and also because of the core ship of the same name(whose visual design I frequently copy for making dreadnoughts).
A few seconds later, I decided that this design was amazingly ugly, and chopped off much of the excess scrap metal to result in the Karion Class, which is only slightly better. It's namesake is the planet Karion, which [*spoiler*] houses the gateway to the pocket universe formerly inhabited by the Dread Lords [*spoiler*].
So I went back to the drawing board with the Karion being a rough sketch to build upon. After resizing, repositioning, adding things, subtracting things and trying out some new parts, I came up with the Newton Drone Cruiser. The namesake is obvious, and I decided to name all the ships of this class after famous scientists.
It's called a Drone Cruiser because, according a rudimentary 'story' I had though out for it, it was to make heavy use of robotics and nanotechnology to minimize the crew required(this is also the reason why the ship uses all-Yor parts). The story never got completed since I continued with the game instead. Soon, I got my Hyperion Shrinker up and running, and after adding a Warp Drive Mk.4, 2 Photonic Torpedo Mk.2s, a Basic Support and 9 layers of Superior Duranthium armor, I sent it out to battle the Drengin and their robot allies.
It turned out to look as good on the map as it did in the shipyard. What's better, due to the amazingly low number of parts used, the graphics were liquid smooth(although the screenshots are still a bit blurry as they always are).
The lead ship was not named TAS Newton, but was instead TAS Bohr. Newton got the class name to himself and is ultrafamous enough already. That's enough respect. Other ships were to be named Rutherford, Heisenburg, Einstein, Dirac, Pauli, Bose, Chadwick, Fermi, Yukawa, Hawking and Alcubierre. But only 2 new ships of this class were ever built, and this proved to be overkill.
They spearheaded the assault against the Drengin and Yor, and have thus far taken 5 planets in their name. I haven't tried the Combat Viewer, but they still look great in zoomed-in battles. The only losses they've taken are 2 hitpoints, with the game still going on. However their only weakness is a big one, and it shows tremendously... they don't have enough targets.
Note: As for the styling inspiration, it hails back to the Illuminator Vessel(from SoaSE), the ship in which Frogboy claims to have done the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs. It must be a good ship.
