Raider Class Deck-Plan (Forum help appreciated!)

By OneKelvin, in X-Wing

idk i just pretend gabe doesn't post

helps a lot

[Disclaimer up front, only seen a raider in person once, saving up for one of my own, so this is based on pictures within this thread and elsewhere]

Much as I think the decks lining up along the top of the raider (so the bridge has a flat roof rather than sloping) makes sense, it does present issues regarding the way the ship presents itself to fire in combat.

The engines are relatively exposed on the belly, while the top is more heavily armoured, so it would seem odd to approach a target nose up allowing squishy parts to be targeted and leaving the armour relatively pointless.

Secondly the guns are all on the top, and thanks to their placement they would seem to get in the way of eachother if trying to focus fire at something directly lined up with the tip (aiming along the ridge as though it were a rifle), but if the nose is tilted down they appear more freely able to focus fire in the direction of travel.

Perhaps the way to decide between them is to establish the direction of thrust from the main engine? Or go with whichever gives the most disable space within the bounds of reason?

Edit: as an aside I don't suppose anyone has done this for the Gozanti? Was considering doing a Gozanti boarding action as a side game for a narritive campaign, bit the only plans I can find seem very artificial and don't match up with the interior scenes in Season 1 as all.

Edited by Arterial Spray

My cell-phone unfortunately is full, and cannot take new pictures, so I'd ask you to take my word for it; except you have your own! ;) It just makes less sense to me that the panels, deck, turrets, and engine all be off-kilter than that the bridge was sloped for aesthetic purposes. Heck, you can look at the deck pictures below. The only thing that matches the parallel lines is the bridge, even the turrets are pointing slightly "up".

Enforce Imperial Rule

With its hyperdrive and shields, the TIE Advanced makes an excellent starfighter to accompany the Raider-class corvette on its patrols of Outer Rim systems, and with its new pilots and upgrades, the Imperial Raider Expansion Pack greatly enhances the fighter's ability to enforce Imperial rule.

You can not reconcile these two images: The engines do not appear to be parallel with outer side edges. Is there any reason for the bridge to have such a high ceiling at the back when you can use the roof of the bridge as the level start of all the decks. Maybe I'm seeing it wrong and the engines shrink enough to form a cone that follows the bottom slant of the hull. But either way the deck plans should show that the engines are exposed and follow all along the bottom.

31175465351_89ec900d09_b.jpg

Is there any reason for the bridge ceiling to be so slanted? A flat one would throw off the cleanliness of the profile.

I however can't fathom why one would design a ship where everything but the bridge ceiling was tilted "up" relative to the viewer. The exposed compartments in the bottom of the ship are also flat, and parallel with the engines. If I use gravitics to "flatten" the upper decks, I just shunt the problem downstairs and end up all manner of things looking crooked. Or I have to add a gravimetric transitional floor so that everything is flat, and that's just not happening. One direction of gravity is enough for me thank you very much. :wacko:

There's enough overlap in my answers that I'm merging them...

[Disclaimer up front, only seen a raider in person once, saving up for one of my own, so this is based on pictures within this thread and elsewhere]

Much as I think the decks lining up along the top of the raider (so the bridge has a flat roof rather than sloping) makes sense, it does present issues regarding the way the ship presents itself to fire in combat.

The engines are relatively exposed on the belly, while the top is more heavily armoured, so it would seem odd to approach a target nose up allowing squishy parts to be targeted and leaving the armour relatively pointless.

Secondly the guns are all on the top, and thanks to their placement they would seem to get in the way of eachother if trying to focus fire at something directly lined up with the tip (aiming along the ridge as though it were a rifle), but if the nose is tilted down they appear more freely able to focus fire in the direction of travel.

Perhaps the way to decide between them is to establish the direction of thrust from the main engine? Or go with whichever gives the most disable space within the bounds of reason?

Edit: as an aside I don't suppose anyone has done this for the Gozanti? Was considering doing a Gozanti boarding action as a side game for a narritive campaign, bit the only plans I can find seem very artificial and don't match up with the interior scenes in Season 1 as all.

I doubt designer's first concern would be the aesthetic of the ship's bridge.

Cleanliness of the profile doesn't warrant wasting of space in a more functional layout.

I don't see the problem with turrets pointed up, the ship doesn't move that way:

The mistake I keep reading is people thinking the decks alignment dictates the ship facing,

or the deck alignment dictates the way the ship moves. The ship moves they way it has to

to be most efficient, consider whether the turrets are able to focus fire or not, and the anti-gravity

takes care of the angle/alignment of the decks,

31196394561_41f3e8f813_b.jpg

So there is nothing pointed up relative to the viewer or exposed the wrong way considering what matters is that anti-gravity keeps people on the floor and the engines can move it forward properly. All the decks should be in one direction, as in my floor image, so there is one direction of gravity. At worst, engineering area has split levels and stairs along the engines. What I'm suggesting is efficient not aesthetic, but go with what you feel you need.

Edited by gabe69velasquez

Thanks all, for the input and help. :)

Arterial Spray has it with the use of the deck turrets. You might already know this, but there have been numerous sources that mention that the flatter Star Destroyers will in fact dip their bows at a head-opponent during combat in order to present all guns to the enemy. The aggressive slant of the Raider means that the best attack profile for the ship is actually to point directly at the target. The sloped armor will help to defect hits, and every missile and deck gun has a clear shot. Good eye Spray!

As for Gabe, I completely understand what you're getting at. I think.

It does make sense to have the deck gravity aligned in that manner for efficiency purposes, and it would make my dramatic spinal corridor continue unbroken (which would be nice.) If I were better at this, I might even change it, and I still may make a variant after it's done.

(Edit.) I just took a look at it and remembered the other reason. Because the decks slope to the sides as well as the front, if I re-aligned the gravity the main shaft could be straight, but all of the rooms to either side would be slanted. Or there would need to be three levels of smaller shafts and rooms cutting off as each level sloped into usability. Or the main shaft would be in the center of the level sandwich, but shorter; and there would be a series of turbo lifts going to each gun on the different decks, with some other rooms above it all? All of these alterations involve cutting the shaft, or replacing it with a series of rooms, and as long as I'm going to have split the ship, splitting it with a flat layout seems simplest, at least for right now.

But until then, and as long as it's just me making this whole thing I'm going to take it one step at a time. The next step is finding reference for and making a pixel art version of a star wars ship galley. The step after that is copying and installing the galleys around the ship. The step after that is creating some control stations for the solar collectors (which I'll probably base off of the Death Star laser monitor room.) This is all before I've even started plotting out machinery. I'm not a professional artist, I have to do this one bit at a time or else I'll never get done.

Heck, even the professional artist that tried to do a scale Corvette deck-plan quit halfway through!

http://deckplans.00sf.com/Marincic/Marincic.html

That said, you are free to help with the actual work if you like. The tiles and hallways in the ship only need MS paint to manipulate, and I say they are free to the entire forum to ship-build with as they like. (This means you Arterial Spray. :P ) If you'd like to be a real gem, you can start with the engineering areas - I may be a while in getting to them.

Edited by OneKelvin

Also, don't feel too bad about the space wastage.

Shipbuilders in the Star War universe spend tons of space on aesthetics all the time. Open-air corridors, cavernous bridges with walkways through the center, massive temple-esque chambers with bottomless pits dedicated to monitoring the reactors. It's an older age-of-sail type of shipbuilding, from a school that produced ships like the Vasa and the Spanish treasure galleons. Very aesthetically conscious, with thought given to the aesthetics of power, giving ample area to show off the grandiose nature of their creations.

vasa-museum-404.jpg

Indeed a lot of the Star Wars tropes with individual captains customizing ships, pirates and smugglers, pulling up into visible range for broadsides and boarding actions, old-school dogfights are all just he most interesting facets of different eras of naval warfare. The fantastic bit is that the properties of the galaxy, or the progress of technology has gone in such a way that these tropes are not only possible, but the norm. In Star Wars, when a thing has the option of being scientific, efficient, or cool, it will be cool, and scientific justifications will be made for it afterwards. (You probably already knew this, I'm just bringing it to mind.) ^_^

This is a very rough design marking space use that I don't intend to flesh out,
but I thought you might appreciate seeing an orthographic extrapolation technique.

31368079766_e5f0be29eb_k.jpg

Edited by gabe69velasquez

Did you ever finish this?

41 minutes ago, Ken at Sunrise said:

Did you ever finish this?

Which one of us are you asking. It's really not my project, I was just offering some help, so you must mean OneKelvin's version.

I just thought it was cool, so really whomever was doing them.