New Honorverse renders uploaded

Not saying your drawings are "wrong". They aren't. They are as depicted in the books to a very strong semblance. Kudos.

As a design engineer, I am perfectly aware of what is behind the surface of a machine. perfectly aware that there is far more complexity behind the facade than the facade itself entails. In this case a ship. I am also aware, from your previous posts and ship renders, that even when you had all of the magazines, PDLC's, Grasers, etc put in the fearless, you had the majority as an enormous empty volume that you did not know what was in it.

I was pointing out, assuming there ever will be new classes of ships in new books, something I highly doubt from the information we know, there are other ways to "design" a ship and "fix" a certain classes limitations. It comes from an engineers mindset of always wanting to "fix" or perfect either real or perceived "problems." Not saying current drawings are wrong. Talking overall design.

I am aware, that the design constraint is the surface and not the systems volume, especially for sensors. Systems can be moved anywhere for the most part. They are not an unchangeable box. This is especially true of systems like missile magazines. Starting with a box labeled, missile mag, is a good start. It is not the end.

From an engineering perspective, systems like PDLC/Grasers on the other hand truly do have a fixed volume as I can easily see the need for all of those capacitors to be perfectly aligned creating optimum power conduit paths. Same goes for major systems like the compensator, hyper generator, impeller, fusion rooms, sidewall generators, and boat bays. Everything else can be moved wherever one feels like within reason. I suppose Gravitic arrays may have only one or two positions they can reside as well.

Anyways, long way of saying, Lovely renders, keep up the good work. Didn't mean to hijack your render thread.

I love the renders. But the ones of the Nike in particular bring up some questions:

1) in HoS the image shows the KH much farther aft, and far less recessed into the hull. Which image is closer to official canon?

2) It always struck me as odd that even Joseph Byng could mistake a KH platform as "just a larger than average decoy" like Janes's mentions in HoS. The HoS image shows the decoy with array panels, but the render shows it with a Gravitic array. Now the render has the KH far more recessed into the hull which makes it stand out less, but still. Even Byng should have been able to figure out that *something* was special about such a large detachable platform with a freaking Gravitic Array on it.

I assumed the Keyhole was supposed to look detached from the ship in that drawing, as if "flying". Also those drawings do not show 3d depth. They are line drawings, not shaded 3d drawings.

ericth wrote:I love the renders. But the ones of the Nike in particular bring up some questions:

1) in HoS the image shows the KH much farther aft, and far less recessed into the hull. Which image is closer to official canon?

2) It always struck me as odd that even Joseph Byng could mistake a KH platform as "just a larger than average decoy" like Janes's mentions in HoS. The HoS image shows the decoy with array panels, but the render shows it with a Gravitic array. Now the render has the KH far more recessed into the hull which makes it stand out less, but still. Even Byng should have been able to figure out that *something* was special about such a large detachable platform with a freaking Gravitic Array on it.

wastedfly wrote:I assumed the Keyhole was supposed to look detached from the ship in that drawing, as if "flying". Also those drawings do not show 3d depth. They are line drawings, not shaded 3d drawings.

ericth wrote:I love the renders. But the ones of the Nike in particular bring up some questions:

1) in HoS the image shows the KH much farther aft, and far less recessed into the hull. Which image is closer to official canon?

2) It always struck me as odd that even Joseph Byng could mistake a KH platform as "just a larger than average decoy" like Janes's mentions in HoS. The HoS image shows the decoy with array panels, but the render shows it with a Gravitic array. Now the render has the KH far more recessed into the hull which makes it stand out less, but still. Even Byng should have been able to figure out that *something* was special about such a large detachable platform with a freaking Gravitic Array on it.

As the drunk fly says, the Keyhole you see in HoS is detached from its docking bay and is just shown aft in an area that doesn't block other details, such as they are, on the drawing. I have access to other lineart that shows a front/back view of both the KH and the Nike that was not included with HoS (but drawn by the same person/people). You can't see them in my renders, but the details drawn inside the Nike's KH bay in HoS are also in the bay on my renders.

To answer the second part of 1), you can consider HoS as canon, but that my models supercede HoS in some details. As my models are based on the art in HoS, as well as other art not included, you *could* consider them as more canon than HoS, but only because they've corrected errors due to going from 2D line art to 3D models that can be moved around and looked inside of (as mentioned in my earlier posts with the fly.

As for 2), who knows how blind arrogance and stupidity can make someone not see what's right in front of them? I suspect it was for plot purposes that he didn't realize that the grav arrays on the "drones" meant more than just an extra array. But then, you also have to remember that the Sollies have had no prior experience with the new tech coming out of the Haven sector, and when they *did* get reports, they were routinely dismissed as irrelevant or exaggerations by untrained freighter captains.

Byng had no reason to suspect that the "drones" were anything more than just that. Remeber other comments that the DDs he destroyed were built so big because the neobarbs' tech was so primitive compared to the ISLN's ultra-modern, Fleet 2000 ships.

Wastedfly... don't worry about hijacking my thread, as I expect this sort of discussion, and welcome it, as long as people are respectful, as you have been. I may not have satisfactory answers, but I will provide answers as best I can with what I know, and/or speculate, within reason, as I *am* under an NDA for a lot of things.

MaxxQ wrote:As for 2), who knows how blind arrogance and stupidity can make someone not see what's right in front of them? I suspect it was for plot purposes that he didn't realize that the grav arrays on the "drones" meant more than just an extra array. But then, you also have to remember that the Sollies have had no prior experience with the new tech coming out of the Haven sector, and when they *did* get reports, they were routinely dismissed as irrelevant or exaggerations by untrained freighter captains.

Chances are, they saw those things, and interpreted them as being a combination decoy/remote sensor platform designed to sit outside the wedge to provide a baseline for interferometric sensors and maybe a bit of extra fire control on top. Remember that although the SLN establishment had its doubts about the actual ranges MDMs could achieve, they were operating under the assumption that RMN effective missile range had been increased, just not to the degree people claimed.

ericth wrote: *snip*

2) It always struck me as odd that even Joseph Byng could mistake a KH platform as "just a larger than average decoy" like Janes's mentions in HoS. The HoS image shows the decoy with array panels, but the render shows it with a Gravitic array. Now the render has the KH far more recessed into the hull which makes it stand out less, but still. Even Byng should have been able to figure out that *something* was special about such a large detachable platform with a freaking Gravitic Array on it.

When would Byng have had a close look at a Keyhole platform? The Rolands he got a point-blank look at don't have them, and Mike's response force shot him out of the sky before he got anywhere near them.

When a BC squadron made a courtesy call on a system and there was the SLN force there.

I'm happy to see these beautiful renders continue to evolve, in accordance with the canon I'm aware of. But after playing the Secret Fleet series I wonder how this relates to the future of the visualized canon with respect to the upcoming movies. I understand that the games are not canonical, that was only my basis for scratching my head.

I resign myself to NDAs preventing a clear answer, and I apologize if this has already been covered elsewhere that I missed. I would love to see the movie(s) adhere to a more spartan and utilitarian external aesthetic, but I understand the breadth-of-audience issues involved. So I'm curious if there's a reason, beyond carrying the torch, for continuing this faithful evolution.

Dca wrote:I'm happy to see these beautiful renders continue to evolve, in accordance with the canon I'm aware of. But after playing the Secret Fleet series I wonder how this relates to the future of the visualized canon with respect to the upcoming movies. I understand that the games are not canonical, that was only my basis for scratching my head.

I resign myself to NDAs preventing a clear answer, and I apologize if this has already been covered elsewhere that I missed. I would love to see the movie(s) adhere to a more spartan and utilitarian external aesthetic, but I understand the breadth-of-audience issues involved. So I'm curious if there's a reason, beyond carrying the torch, for continuing this faithful evolution.

If you want a short, flippant answer, it would probably be: "Because I can."

Now, on to the serious answer (which basically boils down to the above answer).

No worries about NDA violations here. I've talked about this before and am perfectly willing to talk about it again.

The basic line is: There's book canon, and then there's movie canon.

What this means is that anything that doesn't come from myself, others in BuNine, or David is movie canon, and anything that *does*, is book canon.

The main reason for continuing it is to provide Honorverse fans with something as close to what is described in the books as possible, while also making it believable based on in-universe tech and physics (which not a few here think is a bit whack ).

As you've already noted, Evergreen's "canon" is mainly to draw in non-fans, or those who don't care one way or the other, so they opt for the "cool" look, as well as making the ships and tech from different navies look different from each other for easy identification by the non-fan audience they are targeting.

RFC has even said himself in interviews that if every Honorverse fan bought ten tickets to see the movie, it would still lose money, so Evergreen needs to get as big an audience as possible, and the flashiness of their designs reflect that philosophy.

At first, when I saw the concept art Evergreen showed at last year's Honorcon, I was disappointed and probably a little irritated by it (considering what I do for BuNine), but over time, I've basically accepted that this is how it's going to be, and I thank Tom Pope and the others at BuNine, as well as David Weber, for letting me continue to interpret the line art as I have been.

<shrug> In the end BuNine are just a bunch of fans who were serious enough to put in the time and effort to do a lot of research and other work, and doggedly point things out to David, and then apparently did it so well, they became formalized and recognized as "official" by RFC. Of course, all this happened before I was asked to join, but that's the gist of it.

It would seem a waste to chuck it all out the airlock just because a film production company's idea of how things should look differs from what we have spent years working on. So we continue as we have - making everything match the textev as closely as possible.

MaxxQ wrote:
If you want a short, flippant answer, it would probably be: "Because I can."

Now, on to the serious answer (which basically boils down to the above answer).

No worries about NDA violations here. I've talked about this before and am perfectly willing to talk about it again.

The basic line is: There's book canon, and then there's movie canon.

Thanks for the extended recap. I'm a little disappointed in Evergreen's style choice too, but can't argue with the justification! I appreciate your continued efforts to maintain the book canon style and visualizations.