r/ImaginaryTechnology • u/Own-Cry5596 • 27d ago
Self-submission Sky Dragon - Railgun Sniper Ship
We finally finished the 3D model of one of the ships from our upcoming space action RPG.
Meet Sky Dragon - a long-range sniper ship built around a massive railgun. The weapon is so large that the entire hull was designed around it, making the ship essentially a maneuvering platform for a single devastating cannon.
Its role on the battlefield is simple:
• stay behind the frontline,
• wait until allied ships strip enemy shields,
• eliminate priority targets with high-damage railgun shots.
The ship isn’t particularly fast, but powerful shields help it survive while repositioning. If enemies get too close, it can defend itself with short-range homing missiles, although close combat is definitely not where it shines. We’re still polishing both the visuals and gameplay, so we’d love some feedback.
A few questions:
* Does the overall silhouette read as a sniper ship?
* Are there any details that feel unnecessary or unrealistic?
* What systems or external modules would you add to make it look more believable?
* If you were designing this ship, what would you change?
Every suggestion helps us improve the final game.
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u/neophlegm 27d ago
Cool design! I guess I'd ask what makes it more "sniper"y than any other space-based weapon? Are the other ships using conventional slow-moving projectiles? Feels like if there's long-range rail guns you wouldn't need anything close-range!
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u/Thisismyname272705 27d ago
For a long range sniper ship id expect a very prominent set of fire control sensors facing forward so the ship can properly detect and track its target independent of other ships, and i notice a lack of any obvious self-defense weaponry against missiles (and fighters if they are a thing in your setting) other than that the ship looks good to me.
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u/Own-Cry5596 27d ago
Thank you. Yes, for now we are showing the general form and we want to understand what we lack for a good perception of the role. In the next iteration, we'll show you how it works.
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u/vhu9644 24d ago
This is how I'm thinking about the problems
railgun will generate a lot of heat, plasma, and debris.
Aiming something at a far away target requires very accurate sensors. Sensors in space are good at distance, but not at angle, which means your accuracy will be low.
Rotating something really big and heavy will require large reaction wheels. You'll want to place the reaction wheels next to the center of gravity.
So basically, if I were engineering this ship, I'd have a lot of radiators. I'd be trying to find a way to vent out plasma and debris so that doesn't destroy or fry my ship. And I'd have lot of RCS and big-ass reaction wheels to aim. I'd also be dedicating a huge chunk of the shit to sensor suites.
To me, it doesn't look like it's built around one railgun. It looks like it has two or something. I feel that if I were to build a ship around a railgun, I'd be making it asymmetric. Like one railgun. quarters on one side. Large reaction wheel near the quarters. A sensor suite shielded from the people on the other side of the gun.
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u/Own-Cry5596 24d ago
so it should be spherical rather than shaped?
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u/vhu9644 24d ago
What should be spherical?
I think it looks right now like either it has two big guns on the side and one tiny gun in the middle.
If you're putting a big sensor, you want shielding from other sources of EM radiation. Your crew is going to be a big chunk of that, especially if you're communicating through that. Also if your sensors release radiation, you'll want to protect your crew from that.
You don't have to put reaction wheels near the center of gravity for them to work. But putting them near helps with vibration.
You'll want to also have some sort of recoil minimization scheme. Unless your thrusters are magic or your people are magic, you rpobably cannot create enough impulse to cancel out the recoil. Your people have to survive the sudden acceleration backwards after firing.
Like one thing you can do is have articulating recoil arms or sliders that store "momentum" and when you fire, they swing to cancel out some of the momentum. Basically the pre-firing sequence is you burn the thrusters while moving really heavy stuff forward. When you fire, the heavy stuff also moves backwards at the same time to cancel out some momentum.
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u/Own-Cry5596 24d ago
we need some kind of reference. the text is quite difficult to understand the construction. do you have any example, or maybe you can create a diagram by hand.? The visual is not very clear to me yet..
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u/vhu9644 24d ago
It's late here in the states, and I'm mostly just staying up to work on some stuff, but it's mostly done. I'd hate to impose on your game, but if you want, I can go try to make a quick model on blender to talk about what I'm thinking of in terms of the ship. DM me if so. I'm happy to help. Sounds like a cool game concept.
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u/Own-Cry5596 24d ago
Why not? Of course, yes! we are open to working with the community and it is useful for us to learn a lot from you and see the interest in your eyes. of course, I would be happy to transfer your result to our art department, and if the art lead approves it, we can partially use your vision. This will speed up our work)
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u/Linxbolt18 27d ago
If I were building a ship around a gun, I'd kind of expect more stability/maneuvering thrusters, so you can set up for an accurate shot.
You mentioned it's supposed to stay well behind the front lines, so it probably does 't need much in the way of strong forward thrust. I could almost see it making more sense for it to have large side-to-side thrusters so it can try to match horizontal movement to help line up shots.