WiP: UNSC Destroyer

Okay, so I've been working on my UNSC Destroyer for quite awhile now (I started thinking about it in June-ish, while I was still working on my (still unfinished) UNSC Carrier). Due to a really rubbish work habit, I tend to get sidetracked while focusing on one project, until I either finish it or run out of momentum.) Only recently have I started working on it again. Had some writers?-block on some of the hull detail, but its mostly resolved now.

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The UNSC Destroyer is basically a ship class from the Halo series. Not shown in any of the games, but the novelisations and expanded universe material gives plenty to work from. There have been other Destroyer classification vessels shown in some other official Halo sources (an animated retelling of "Midnight on the Heart of Midlothian" in Halo Evolutions and one from Halo Genesis). Not that I'm saying that they're bad designs (although the Heart of Midlothian has an ugly butt. @.@), I just wanted to try my own take on the design.

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My design principles were simple. I wanted the design to stay true to the descriptions in the books. The key design elements was that the UNSC Destroyer was basically a frigate sized ship (about seven meters longer), more heavily armoured and armed than its lighter counterparts. Also it doesn't carry single ships, so hangar bays (Frigate-style, at least), would be redundant.

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Conceptual


My first concept, which is the design I ran for and liked the most. Just took the run of the mill frigate and uparmoured and basically blocked it out. My justifications was that the Frigate's practical (and very, very sexy) shape showed its fragility and vulnerability (being the lightest capital ship classification in the UNSC Navy et al.) Fill out the space between the prongs with armour and mass and you've got a pretty nice design going out, which is what I envisioned, basically a very heavy looking ship the size of a frigate. Since destroyers carry twice the armour of Frigates, it's well justified.

Another thing to look at was the ship's role. Looking at the source material, I decided that Frigates are meant to be versatile and multifunctional, a jack of all trades, but the master of none. (That's why you see Frigates do everything from space combat, close-air-support, rapid troop deployment, scouting .etc). Destroyers, on the other hand, are more space-oriented craft, designed primarily to slug it out against Covenant capital ships. However, we still see Destroyers in a special operations role as well (Halo Legends: "The Babysitter", et.al). This means we have to intergrate HEV bays and a recovery method as well, into the design of the ship. Due to this being a secondary (or even tertiary) role, Destroyers should recieve less HEV bays than Frigates, and without that much ground units to support, a smaller area for recovery ships. For recovery, keeping with the "no single ships" description of the books (which probably referred to attack fighters like Longswords (which, by itself, is too big to fit in a Frigate hangar anyway), or other combat craft). Pelicans, on the other hand, should fit into the Destroyer's role quite snuggily, both to recover ODST/Marine divisions dropped via HEV, and as transport and shuttling services for the destroyer itself. Thus, at maximum, a Destroyer might only need two or three Pelicans at a given time, due to their multipurpose nature as well as their large cargo capacity, and giving them a Frigate-style hangar would be awkward and silly. I thought to modern navy ships, especially the modern frigate and destroyer, with that little helipad at the rear to carry one or two ASW helicopters in real life, and the concept stuck, hence a little helipad-style landing bay at the back. Of course, there are elevators to carry Pelicans internally for maintainance and safekeeping, but the Destroyer could accomodate additional craft when necessary, with little mass or space to waste (think special operations support). The extra Pelicans would have to ride piggyback too!



Second design. Not much to say about this one. I suppose I wanted to go for a semi-industrial look, with cladding and pipes haphazardly bolted together to give a "hillbilly armour" type of feel. Admittedly, I would have liked to do some more work on that style, but since I already preferred the first (and, I'm a very, very lazy person). I did take some design considerations from this one, and I'll probably go for some asymetrical details once I'm done with the main model.

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Early render of the Destroyer (circa October 2010). Blocked out the engine nacelles and most of the main stuff (excluding the helipad and MAC gun).

The quad engine layout is a nice addition I thought up during the modelling process. Initially, it was already decided (see the concept art) that the Destroyer should have additional engines (still roughly in the style of Frigate thrusters, mind you), to compensate for the additional mass the armour protection takes up on the frigate hull. The up-down configuration of the engines was a mini eureka moment in this design, using the engine mass as a shield for the rest of the ship (it's better to lose an engine than have plasma cutting through the primary hull). The up-down configuration allows maximum coverage, yet allows that only one engine is compromised by a single torpedo at one time, preventing critical loss of both nacelles to a single action. Inititally, the engine guard was Frigate style, but was way too small to cover both engines. I went for a custom design, but recently added a Halo-Reach Frigate style guard onto the existing guard. I really liked the sloping armour concept.



Recent update a month prior to this post. Most of the main detail blocked out (still except the helipad).



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Current progress.
Still have alot of places that need detailing. Clay renders for now, just to show off some geometry.

Aft quarter view. Note the "helipad" style Pelican deck. Also note the engine configuration mentioned earlier.


Bridge section. Personally, I like the idea of the VLS launch system, and its still practical when mounted on spacecraft, since guided missiles can easily reorient themselves whenever necessary. Still, I placed the Archer Pods on various launch vectors to ensure that the ship can launch its arsenal of warheads towards any direction, to minimize engagement time, and conserve missile fuel, allowing for longer ranged engagements. Also liked the idea of a CIWS battery in front of the bridge, since Halo ships in general have exposed bridges which are vulnerable to enemy action. Would add more antennae to the aft bridge section, which is basically a communications/sensor tower. I'm tempted to do a "potato masher" style radar aerial too. Note the lower bridge profile compared to Frigates, being a dedicated warship and all, also as a nod to the Heart of Midlothian design.


Escape pod bays running along the middle "trench" of the ship. Had a little fund with Depth-of-Field rendering for this one (true DoF, not the pseudo-DoF using a Depth mask). My brother owns a computer far more powerful than my own, thus, I get to play with it while I'm here. The bays are texture heavy, so I just reduced the geometry a fair bit.


Another view from the aft. If anyone's asking, that why I pick viewing from port, its just a factor of laziness (again). When I work in Sketchup, especially symmetrical spaceship designs, I tend to build half a ship and mirror the other half when I'm done, ensuring both halves are perfectly symmetrical, as well as saving time (and RAM to boot), thus stuff like words and logos tend to not mirror properly, and have to be done individually at the end. Since this is only a test render, I wasn't really bothered to correct those stuff on the starboard side. The details are quite vague in this render, because of a slight mishap in the lighting department.


Overall view of the Frigate. I have no idea what to do with the dorsal forward section right now. Note the incomplete primary MAC.



Ventral fore, showing off the secondary MAC. Since the interior textures for the MAC would be dark, I wasn't too bothered to add coils for the coilgun (I know it's not a railgun, btw). The MAC muzzle design is derived from the Halo-3 era frigate (hence the hexagonal shape). I actually like this design more than the circular MAC aperture on the Reach frigate, even if its somewhat misleading (the design practically screams railgun, whereas MACs are depicted as coilguns in the books) Note the forward hull guard under the MAC barrel, a design element I really like and have included in many other designs I'm working on. Some of the prongs have self-luminescent material on them (the pyramidical things), which are basically red warning lights. Pyramidical to reduce the total number of self-luminescent surfaces (which would drive the renderer mad). Also note the forward RCS thruster points.


Also note in the above images there are actually two turret models I'm using. One is the basic dual-gun 50mm Point defence autocannon (again, Halo 3 style, I'm not too fond of the Reach-frigate's turrets either). The other is a bigger 90mm single barrelled autocannon. The justification would lie in the final presentation's briefing, which I have already written, for some odd reason.

I like typing. Actually, I think I like narrating. Narrating is fun. Still trying to gather some good names for the ships of this class. I'm going for something like, the Valiant-class (not related to the Doctor Who ship of the same name, which was, admittedly, extremely cool). UNSC ships tend to be rather poetic in naming too.

Modelling in Sketchup, rendering in Kerkythea. The sketches are done is Photoshop, with the help of a tablet (which, admittedly, I'm still rubbish at).