So, Sacretis and I have been pm'ing and he had some great ideas so we're moving back to the thread.
1) here's the msg that led to the redesign:
I didn't mention this, but I do have a reason for the divergent design. Here goes:
The Royalists, after losing their key shipwrights during the civil war, managed to complete the plans for the Tempest class missile platform. The efficiency lost when their best minds (died? defected? whatever) brought about the more clunky design. In any case, the Tempest functions as a cheap alternative missile platform when a Hammerhead is unavailable or inadequate. It's intended to be a lightly armored standoff ship, firing missiles from the background (think 'space sniper'-hehehe).
On the other hand, the Separatists, in their expansion away from the Royalist-controlled area of space, have discovered an ancient ship, whose technology centers around a portable wormhole (this is the other project I mentioned). After their engineers managed to decipher some of the ship's systems, the Separatists are now able to move the ship and almost instantly hack any wormhole with the ship's onboard systems. this ship-generated wormhole is too small, however, to allow anything over squadron size to pass through.
*still working on the ancient ship model but I expect that somebody else can come up with a better name than I can... at this point I'm thinking 'Trebuchet.'
2) here's Sacretis' new look for the Tempest (we're going with the left side, I think):
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that face is supposed to have a sort of radial missile tube pattern. I have no idea how to tackle the rear hex face. Also, the lower side faces of the forward (bridge) section look stupid the way they are so I need something different for them. Thus, I grayed them out in the flat img.
