Ashes of Cardassia Mod

posted on April 3rd, 2014, 1:18 am

Nice work mate, love the thought and detail that has gone into this. I see you went in a different direction with the Tonga than the official design. Is there any reason for that like an upgrade or just purely because you could? :lol

I suppose I wanted a version of the Tonga and Norin that looked like they had been refitted since the Dominion War, sort of like the Excelsior Mark II.

That's a fair enough call doing clones all the time can be boring for us modelers. Hell my Klingon ships for Yesteryears are a but different in texturing than what the members of MSFC were expecting, doing clones of already modeled and textured ships can be boring.

I salute you for going in another direction when them.

posted on April 4th, 2014, 8:48 am

Very cool. I also like the fact that you stick to canon and, unlike every other game, don't equip the Galors with torpedoes . However, we saw their defense plaftorm fire plasma torps, so maybe that's an aspect that could also make an appearance.

Great look of the breen ships, derived from canon in a plausible way .
They once mentioned in the shows that breen would possess biotechnology on their ships, will you implement sth. like that, like faster regeneration or some kind of special weapon?

And btw., any plans to implement the Son'a?

posted on April 4th, 2014, 10:34 pm

And btw., any plans to implement the Son'a?

Oh yes, love the Son'a. I'd love to see an expansion to this one day with the Son'a added in.

I'll tell you if they weren't out of place in the 23rd century I would probably do them for my own mod.

posted on April 4th, 2014, 11:30 pm

Very cool. I also like the fact that you stick to canon and, unlike every other game, don't equip the Galors with torpedoes . However, we saw their defense plaftorm fire plasma torps, so maybe that's an aspect that could also make an appearance.

I'm trying to keep the armaments of ships as close to canon as possible, despite canon being inconsistent when it comes to ship weapons. Galors only ever used spiral wave disruptors on screen so I stuck with that for my Galor. The Cardassians do use Plasma warheads though, the Tonga up there has a pair of them.

They once mentioned in the shows that breen would possess biotechnology on their ships, will you implement sth. like that, like faster regeneration or some kind of special weapon?

Many Breen ships will probably have a passive ability that increases their subsystem repair rate or something of that nature.

And btw., any plans to implement the Son'a?

I'll most likely make my 3rd Dominion Avatar the Son'a. I'll probably model a few different Son'a ships and bases for an NPC map race. I love the Son'a ships; they are probably my favorite Trek designs next to the Breen.

posted on April 5th, 2014, 6:38 am

Hi,

This would be an interesting mod for FO. Just waiting to play with your Mod.

I liked your SIGMA mod too, but I don't play as much like FO :-)

If somebody is interested, here are some Cardassian Mods for FO:

Babylon 5 Mod with Cardassian race included:
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B1YJfll ... edit?pli=1

and your Cardassian fleet hull texture it's nice and I like the colors.

Attachments

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posted on April 5th, 2014, 9:11 am

Galors only ever used spiral wave disruptors on screen so I stuck with that for my Galor.

they actually fired fireworks in "DS9: Explorers". i'm guessing they didn't have dedicated fireworks launchers and were using torpedo tubes to do this. as for why they don't use torps more often, perhaps their torps are just weaker than their beam weapon. the jemhadar bugship definitely has torps (we see one from the inside of the defiant), but they usually use their polaron beam, probably because it's a better use of power in battle.

posted on April 5th, 2014, 10:03 am

Galors only ever used spiral wave disruptors on screen so I stuck with that for my Galor.

they actually fired fireworks in "DS9: Explorers". i'm guessing they didn't have dedicated fireworks launchers and were using torpedo tubes to do this. as for why they don't use torps more often, perhaps their torps are just weaker than their beam weapon. the jemhadar bugship definitely has torps (we see one from the inside of the defiant), but they usually use their polaron beam, probably because it's a better use of power in battle.

Maybe being a resource poor species (hence why they annexed Bajor and stripped mined it) the torpedoes are rather expensive and only used in certain circumstances. They are after all a mini controlled warp-core breach (due to the matter/antimatter mix) and antimatter might be rare for the Cardassians and so they only really use it for their power generation on board their ships.

posted on April 5th, 2014, 10:18 am

Maybe being a resource poor species (hence why they annexed Bajor and stripped mined it) the torpedoes are rather expensive and only used in certain circumstances. They are after all a mini controlled warp-core breach (due to the matter/antimatter mix) and antimatter might be rare for the Cardassians and so they only really use it for their power generation on board their ships.

that makes a lot of sense for why they didn't use photon torps. maybe they put a lot of their antimatter in those smart missiles (dreadnought).

also their orbital weapons platforms used plasma torps, not M/AM based torps. perhaps, like the romulans, their area of expertise isn't in photons, but plasma torps. even plasma torps would still require resources, so them being resource poor would limit torp usage.

posted on April 5th, 2014, 4:35 pm

Galors only ever used spiral wave disruptors on screen so I stuck with that for my Galor.

they actually fired fireworks in "DS9: Explorers". i'm guessing they didn't have dedicated fireworks launchers and were using torpedo tubes to do this. as for why they don't use torps more often, perhaps their torps are just weaker than their beam weapon. the jemhadar bugship definitely has torps (we see one from the inside of the defiant), but they usually use their polaron beam, probably because it's a better use of power in battle.

Maybe being a resource poor species (hence why they annexed Bajor and stripped mined it) the torpedoes are rather expensive and only used in certain circumstances. They are after all a mini controlled warp-core breach (due to the matter/antimatter mix) and antimatter might be rare for the Cardassians and so they only really use it for their power generation on board their ships.

The 'controlled warp-core breach' bit gave me a thought. Maybe the Cardassian torpedoes can be used like batteries for extra power. They could fire them, but it would reduce the power they could put into the shields, engines, and disruptors.

posted on April 5th, 2014, 5:09 pm

The 'controlled warp-core breach' bit gave me a thought. Maybe the Cardassian torpedoes can be used like batteries for extra power. They could fire them, but it would reduce the power they could put into the shields, engines, and disruptors.

that's how any photon torpedo works. it uses antimatter as its energy source, just like the warp core. any antimatter used in a torpedo isn't available for the core. it's like siphoning petrol out of your car's tank to make a molotov. it's also what allows photon torps to have a variable yield (they directly showed this in enterprise), just adjust how much antimatter you put in the torp.

i doubt torp usage of antimatter would affect current engine status, the engines can only run so much antimatter per second, generating so much energy per second. but more torps would use fuel reserves.

also i'm guessing that as photon torps got more advanced over the centuries, the actual torp itself got more expensive, maybe needing more complicated engines or computers to help hit the target.

also we don't know that cardassians ever used photon torps. we've seen them use plasma torps on the orbital weapon platforms. maybe plasma torp plasma is drawn from the EPS system. that would reduce available power for other systems.

posted on April 5th, 2014, 6:48 pm

Good points regarding plasma and photon torps. Still, the core idea that firing the torps could be more trouble than it's worth still stands, especially since we know the Cards aren't big on backups and redundancy and therefor may not have extra plasma reserves.

posted on April 5th, 2014, 10:25 pm

More food for thought.

In TOS if memory serves the warp core only powered the warp engines, other systems worked off fusion reactors/batteries I can't remember which. Maybe if the Cardassians didn't have an ample supply of antimatter they used a similar set-up with the warp core only powering the engines. This could also explain why they are behind the other species in technology, as they don't have the resources to do otherwise. Also DS9 had a main fusion reactor that powered the station and so there is a little on-screen support for this. But again DS9 was what 40-50 years old by 2369? Plus it was a space station (an ore refinery one at that) and so may be powered differently to their warships.

I also remember reading the Galor was built as an equal to the Excelsior or Ambassador and by the time they were able to launch her in decent numbers the Federation and Klingons had already produced newer and more powerful designs, hence the Cardassians just did numerous upgrades to the Galor, they were called Galor type III in TNG. This again could support them being a resource poor species, as it would be more cost effective to refit their designs than make brand new shiney designs.

posted on April 5th, 2014, 11:53 pm

Also, and this is only conjecture, whilst DS9 had torpedo tubes, if memory serves on one episode they are "stolen" and the area they go missing from is a regular, ordinary cargo bay. Now, call me Mr Picky, but I wouldn't go storing sensitive antimatter warheads in a cargo bay any more than i'd store 155mm shells in a store cupboard. You should have a magazine, arsenal or whatever you want to term it, a secure armoured room so that people can't just wander in, and any explosion is contained as much as possible.

So, the point of me bringing this up? I would say it strongly implies that the torpedo tubes on DS9 were fitted by Starfleet after the take over, not originally built into the design by the Cardassians, otherwise such a magazine would exist.

posted on April 6th, 2014, 5:22 am

Telok Cruiser

One of the most heavily armed vessels in the Cardassian arsenal, Teloks were rarely produced and often served as command ships for high ranking Legates prior to the Dominion Wars. Many Teloks were lost in the resulting conflict, though these large cruisers are still in production today despite efforts to conserve resources.



Offense 23
Defense 24
System 12
Weapon Range: Long

Armaments:
2 Spiral Wave Disruptors (Broadsides)
2 Plasma Warhead Launchers (Shares 3 mounts, Forward Facing)

Special Ability:

Synchronize Warheads - The Telok synchronizes the launching systems of two nearby Cardassian ships armed with Plasma Warheads. Every time the Telok fires a Plasma Warhead, the effected vessels will also fire an additional torpedo regardless of their weapon cooldown. Does not stack with other Synchronized Warheads. Lasts fifteen seconds.


Sekron Cruiser

A rare but feared vessel of the Breen fleet, the Sekron Cruiser is designed to unleash a volley of torpedoes at long range behind engaging fleets. They are excellent battleship killers, though because of its slower movement speed they are vulnerable to small and medium sized ships at close range.

Offense 28
Defense 22
System 11
Weapon Range: Long

Armaments:
1 Breen Disruptor (Forward Facing)
3 Breen Torpedo Launchers (Shares 4 mounts, Forward Facing)
1 Hypervelocity Torpedo Launcher (Shares 4 mounts, Forward Facing)

Special Ability:

Hypervelocity Torpedos - The Sekron unleashes a volley of Hypervelocity Torpedoes at a single target, penetrating shields and doing direct hull damage. Small and medium ships are pushed back upon impact. If used on a station a random subsystem will be disabled for five seconds.

posted on April 6th, 2014, 7:19 am

TUN, your renders are beautiful! Forgive me if this was already asked, but what software are you using to make them?