Hello folks,

actually I'm also a HLP-Refugee, but now since I discovered this forum here I think I have now 2 forums to invade each evening

While playing freespace and encountering the sentry guns, I always had to think "WTF..." when seeing those sentryguns.. They were IMO totally
useless and unbalanced. Let me show you my thoughts here :

Normal gunbases in Freespace are extremly weak und under-armed. They are wiped out instantly and had no real defense (good weapons, armor
or even shields, this also includes the 4-gunned shivan one (forgot it's name right now)

Why should a goverment invest money in such useless installations (you know how expensive even small military stuff is already nowadays), so I
thought these things should be changed to something more logical and effective, but shouldn't be to overpowered too..

And this "overpowered" brings me to the second point I don't like about freespace's sentryguns, the Mjolnir RBC. We all see it's incredible fire-
power, and it's rather tiny hull. If that wouldn't be bad enough, it has also rotating parts, which certainly use up some room for the mechanical
equipment. So I must really ask, where should this thing house a power-plant strong enough to power such a beam. Now, I think those beams can
be only carried and powered by capital ships reactor cores. Because of this, at least in "my" freespace-world I completly ignore anti-cap-, and
even anti-fighter beams on sentry guns (maybe I will make an ancient one with two AA-Beams, but less other weaponry, we will see about that).

So, this is enough about my thoughts into the following models, I just wanted to explain myself. Now I want to show themt to the public to get
some feedback (but I hope the critic will not be too hard, because I like those things like they are now )

One more thing, I'm not sure if the names are already used, so they might be subject to change. Also, I think the Shortage "SG" doesn't fit to
them anymore, rather make it "ASG = Advanced Sentry Gun" or "GB = Gunbase".

When I write about laser-turrets, I also think about giving them some "terran-turret"-variants, and the vasudan pulse laser should be a "small
bolt"-variant of the vasudan turret, using the swarm flag to fire two bolts at once (I like that feature ) Besides their armament, they are all
shielded, which gives them enough offensive and defensive-capabilities. Note that the armament is a little race-specific, but I also
tried to balance them out between each other in their summary firepower.
If you wonder about their size, I made this because of the thoughts mentioned above. If there are that many turrets to supply, you will need
room for power-plants and other technical stuff.

BTW, please excuse this very long first post, I sometimes don't know where to stop

1) The Terran Variant 2) The Vasudan-One (my personal favorite, even if it was the hardest to build an texture). 3) Finally, the shivan one (maybe some Shivan-Megafunk-turrets on the centerpods ? )

wow heavy sentries, i like them. The Cerebus though is already a terran sentry isn't it?

I really like the vasudan flak turrets and whats with the red on the Vasudan one(thats all ive got)

neat

While I'm not a fan of the sentries themselves, i do like the turret models very much. Kudos.

Welcome to SG. If i had a welcome banner, i would post one. And if i had an approval seal, i would post one too! I like it.
The models are ok, only the textures need work, maybe their own UV map. Think about it.

I like the Shivan one in particular, the Vasudan one leaves me a bit cold though, I think it's because it looks a little like the Terran one with one less arm.

Still, damn fine models though

Edit : Oh, and remember, while a Sentry gun has several turrets, it doesn't need to supply energy to engines, subspace drives etc, so you could probably get away with making them smaller if you wanted to, however, the size isn't really a problem

bigger target, more surface area to shoot at

More turrets shooting back, higher hull points

*looks closely at turrets*

Very, very nice.

*winks*

Flipside wrote:...it doesn't need to supply energy to engines, subspace drives etc...

or life support! or crew! both those prolly take up HUGE amounts of space

Oh my god, those are great. I've yet to see someone come up with a decent FS Sentry design, and here you come and just pop those suckers up...

A+++++ work

The shivan one is my favorite. The turrets are great, not excessively detailed, not underdetailed.

The Terran version could use a little texture work. That Plain grey texture is a bit boring.

Ehhh...probably still outranged by a Prom-S or Maxim cannon, though. That's the real problem.

I stand by my belief that anything that size should be UVmapped and textured - but for tiles, they aren't bad at all.

Maxim cannons outrange everything but beams and certain missiles. It's not really surprising that they'd outrange this station, too.

You're making the rather dubious assumption that every unit in the GTVA (or at least a lot of them) has Maxims and/or Prom-S's.

Remember that with Capella and the Shivan Nebula out of reach, the GTVA no longer has a viable source of argon, and cannot make Prom-S'es anymore. While a number were probably produced, I'd be very surprised if they had enough to be super-widespread.

As for the Maxim, I doubt the GTVA would give Maxims to any unit or squadron that they didn't trust. Just one pilot going crazy or defecting, with Maxims, could wreak a lot of havoc. So I would imagine they kept the Maxim's production limited for that purpose.

The same is likely true of the Kayser, tho I got the impression that Kaysers were also god-awful expensive.


So to the vast majority of pilots these platforms would be a serious threat...