[Black Wolf]

So, these have been in progress for some time, but I finally got around to finalising the final variant the other day, so, in keeping with Frontlines' open development policy, I give you not one, not two, but three variants of the GTGs Titan.

The Titan Gunship is among the newest ships in the Terran arsenal, with the first batch having been deployed only twelve months before the commencement of hostilities with the Vasudans. Equipped with a pair of rotating light Fusion mortar turrets, its anti-ship damage output is comparable to that the main weapon of a Fenris cruiser, although its considerably smaller magazine means that, in ship to ship combat, its endurance may be an issue. However, though equipped to tackle Vasudan capital ships, the primary mission of the Titan is anti-fighter. Its port and starboard batteries of heat seeking missiles are optimised to engage small strikecraft, both in defence of larger vessels and in offensive roles.

Critical to the Titan's role as a fighter-killer is its subspace drive. At this time, the Titan is the smallest combat vessel that the GTA can equip with a subspace drive. This mobility allows fleet commanders to deploy Titans ahead of larger vessels to clear the way or, as is becoming more and more common, to use these vessels as reinforcements, deploying them to bolster the defences of a beleagured capital ship, or to assist a fighter group when facing a numerically superior opponent in deep space.

Though only in service a relatively short time, many fighter pilots already owe their lives to the timely intervention of a Titan and its crew.

The Assault Titan (or Heavy Titan) is a refit of the standard model Titan Gunship, optimised to eliminate Vasudan capital ships. Although the Assault Titan retains the paired, rotating light Fusion Mortar turrets, its offensive anti-ship are augmented by a magazine of forty Minotaur class torpedoes, and eight independent torpedo launchers. Although limited in endurance thanks to its relatively small magazine, and completely reliant on friendly fighters or escorting capital ships to provide anti-fighter cover, the Assault Titan is capable of delivering the most powerful broadside of any vessel in the Terran Armada.

Much like the standard Titan, the Assault Titan is equipped with the GTA's smallest and most modern subspace drive, giving it the tactical flexibilty to both be embedded as a support vessel for larger vessels, like the Fenris class cruiser, or to operate independent of other vessels, supporting fighter groups or opportunitically attacking vulnerable Vasudan assets.

The Recon Titan is the most modern and specialised refit of the standard model Titan Gunship currently in service. Designed as a subspace capable reconnaissance platform, the Titan-R has had much of its armament and armour removed, in favour of highly advanced, custom designed sensor systems. These modifications make the Recon Titan uniquely suited for intelligence gathering, both before and after battle.

With all of the missile weapons of the standard ship removed to make way for sensors and a more powerful reactor, the Titan-R is not a combat craft, despite being built on the frame of a warship. That said, the vessel is not completely defenceless, with its improved power output allowing it to mount 4 light plasma cannons. In addition, the removal of internal munitions, the majority of its weapons systems and its heavy armour have resulted in a significant boost to acceleration, speed and manoeuvrability. These are the vessels greatest assets, as a Titan-R will almost always be deployed in short bursts, with orders to jump in, scan an area and jump out as soon as its jump drive is charged. If at all possible, combat is to be avoided. Given its high cost, advanced technology and tactical value, the GTA considers this class of vessel to be of the highest defensive priority.

So, the Titan essentially fills a number of roles in Frontlines. The standard Titan is basically included in place of subspace capable fighters. When things are going bad, and you need reinforcements, command can send one of these in to help instead of a carrier with more fighters. It's also the "light cruiser" role that the Fenris will eventually fill when things get much bigger later in the war.

The Heavy Titan is more like a strike bomber. You call one in when you need to put some hurt on a hostile capship, since fighters aren't particularly good at that early in the war. They can do a lot of damage quickly, but their endurance is poor.

The recon Titan is essentially the best they could do during the early Terran-Vasudan war for rapid recon. They have Miss Muffet Probes, but they're meant for lob observability and their sensors are more about compactness than quality. The Recon Titan has top of the line sensors, and a quick charging subspace drive to make use of them - it's designed to get in, scan the area and get out, before fighters could do that job later on.

In terms of usage outside of FL, I'd imagine that the Terrans will end up refitting them later inthe war, but you will have to modify the tables for that. Enjoy!

DOWNLOAD: https://www.mediafire.com/?7pb712az6an4kjr

[Cyborg17]

Sweet!  Fits the role of pre-fenris really well!

[Nyctaeus]

I can't wait to check it out when I get back home. Looks sweet!

[0rph3u5]

Yay, I can finally feature screenshots with it (the assault Titan is featured in Of Shivans and Men as GTC Ratatoskr)

Thanks for the release

[tomimaki]

Looks cool

[Black Wolf]

Yay, I can finally feature screenshots with it (the assault Titan is featured in Of Shivans and Men as GTC Ratatoskr)

Thanks for the release

You should grab the latest DL as well, you might find some changes - I honestly don't remember what may our may not have changed dive I sent that pof. Worth checking, might be some improvements.

[Makhpella]

Anyone else seeing a Kushan Heavy Cruiser? No? It's pretty nevertheless.

[Mammothtank]

Anyone else seeing a Kushan Heavy Cruiser? No? It's pretty nevertheless.

I hadn't until you brought it up. But yes I can certainly see the resemblance now. This honestly is pretty cool though.

[Nyctaeus]

Hmmm... I downloaded it and found pretty strange issue. If it is not your stuff BW, I would think that it was modelled by one of 3D newbies here. Mostly because many flat surfaces, and big amount of small, invisible details. Engines for example are covered by dozens of small ribs which are completly invisible behind thrusters.

[Black Wolf]

Believe it or not, but that engine design actually serves a plot purpose!

In the timeline, these ships are meant to be very modern - they're the smallest subspace capable ship in the fleet, after all.

There is another ship planned, somewhat bigger and a generation older, which will have different looking engines. As part of the progress of the war, these ships will be refitted with, among other things, newer engines, which will have the ribs you see here to indicate that they're using the same advanced engines (for the day) that these things are using.

Granted, it is kind of a lot of polies, but I came up with the idea during the modelling phase, so I wanted something distinctive in the geometry rather than waiting for textures.

As for the flat space and small detail, there's two factors contributing to that. One is that that's how I often do a lot of my models. I like small scale detail, so that there's geometry at all levels, without overdoing it (or spending years in a single mesh, I'm not that talented after all ).

The other big factor behind that is simpler - that's how the current HTL Fenris does it, and I wanted as much visual continuity between this ship and that ship as I could get (Hades new model notwithstanding, I will always love KARMA's model).

They're both legitimate criticisms, I'll grant you, but I do deal with them when I can (note that almost all of that small detail shifts to textures in LoD 1, for example), and they result from what I think are defensible decisions rather than thin air.

[niffiwan]

That's some pretty cool fluff you've got there    It does make me wonder why these were out of service by the time of the Great War though, or is just the lore that they weren't seen in Freespace1?

[Trivial Psychic]

I'm assuming that when you say "subspace capable" you are referring to inter-system jumps, correct?

[Black Wolf]

That's some pretty cool fluff you've got there    It does make me wonder why these were out of service by the time of the Great War though, or is just the lore that they weren't seen in Freespace1?

Well, yeah, the fact that they weren't seen in FS1 is a bit limiting. I'm taking the position that partly, Alpha 1 was just unlucky in FS1 and didn't get to fight with the full diversity of the Terran fleet,  partly that the Terrans eventually decided to standardize their fleet around a small number of ships to maximize the benefits of economies of scale, partly that the roles these ships were designed for were largely made obsolete by fighter subspace drives, and partly that logistics made plasma based weapons far, far more practical in the later war than missile based weapons like those mounted by the standard and heavy Titans.

Essentially, a bunch of factors each go some way to explaining why there were none of these kinds of ships around by the Great War.

I'm assuming that when you say "subspace capable" you are referring to inter-system jumps, correct?

Nope, any kind. These come from the very early TV War, before subspace drives of any kind could be equipped on Terran fighters (the Zods have the tech, but it's expensive, so they don't yet put it on every fighter as standard).

[Nyctaeus]

Copy that. I try to see models in terms of optimalization and effectiveness. When I make a ship, I'm trying to incrase visibility of details and stuff as much as possible. I love integrating details into ship structure to break some of the main lines. I found this better because it makes my models less regular and boring. If I may suggest something here, if I were You I would add some greebles and details to the front section to minimalize the disproportion between well detailed middle section with flat front. Or at least make add some armor plating or cables to the texture. Rear part of the ship also don't have many details, but texture is much varied here and it's enough.

Okay, that's enough of modeller to modeller ramblings . Great work . I think I have a place for one of them in my projects ^^

[Rheyah]

Can you recommend a nice beam turret texture that might go with this one?

[Black Wolf]

I've never really thought about it. The whole thing is UVed, including the turrets, so there's no simple way to replace the textures one by one to make them beam cannons. The only way would be to open up the textures and have a play around.

Not that that's particularly difficult or anything, just that, unless someone has mad them without telling me, then there's not really anything for me to recommend.