Auronox Corp - Sador Heavy Fighter

[sturnclaw]

I'm splitting this topic from the ship sketch thread now, as I feel this ship has matured enough for its own thread.

Presenting the newest offering from Auronox Corp, the Sador Heavy Fighter! A multi-role, atmosphere-capable fighter craft designed for military and law-enforcement use, with a specific focus on anti-ship and anti-emplacement combat roles.

This ship will be used as one of the test-beds for implementing turrets and the new equipment system, and as such will likely not be coming to the master branch in the immediate future.

WIP Images:

Album: https://imgur.com/a/pvVDwRe

[Spiffor]

Yay!

[nozmajner]

@Spiffor: If you are interested in such things, you could try writing a description, backstory for this ship (or adding or touching up any existing for that matter). The aim is to have an in-game description text for them, not just on the wiki.

[impaktor]

@nozmajner: do we have directions as to how many words? Or any kind of theme or key-phrases/ideas from developer of ship? Like: "after the war in X, this fighter was developed to meet demand of agile...."

[nozmajner]

@impaktor: not yet. Shouldn't be War and Peace, but it depends on the ui a lot I guess.

[sturnclaw]

We have scrollbars, so it's not that big of a deal. I'd say a short description <= 300 words, and a longer description / backstory of ~800 words.

@impaktor Regarding specific theme, the ship was mostly developed for combination air-and-space policing / military work. It's a heavy fighter (2x S3 guns, 4 S2 missile mounts) with some significant performance due to that linear aerospike. The turbofan VTOL system lets it operate from just about any planetary pad large enough to hold it, even in jungle or mountainous terrain, and the landing gear allow it to make horizontal landings if the turbofan is ever damaged. It's pretty much the space-age equivalent of the F35B, except it does land and space as well as sea.

Spaceports likely maintain a squadron or two for their police force, and they see some significant use in both the SolFed and CIW military force.

[sturnclaw]

I was never quite a fan of the initial Sador design for numerous reasons, the chief of which was that it always felt like a flying saucer got stretched out and had wings slapped on.

Today, I got some free time and took a crack at redesigning the airframe. I may have erred a little too far on the side of Northrop Grumman and co., but it feels a lot more like a high-performance in-atmosphere fighter than it did before.




Correspondingly, the design ethos has shifted to focus on the heavy fighter / light bomber role intersection, with a larger missile loadout and aerodynamically shielded pods for two fixed weapons in place of the turrets. I've yet to evaluate and/or restore some features like the intake grille, heatsinks, landing gear, or braking thrusters, but the current design is stable enough that integrating them shouldn't pose a problem.

Full album here: https://imgur.com/a/SpdykdN

[impaktor]

Looks very nice. Except "whaddaya need wings for in space".

Idea: this is the police ship for ground stations on planets with atmosphere!

[Spiffor]

I really like that design, and I'd love to fly this baby in the atmosphere or in space :-)
Would definitely remind me of my child's play (a time when a spaceship obviously needed wings)