ships Exorcist class Grand cruiser WIP

[xarab]

Hello all!

 

I wanted to share my current project I work on. It is an Exorcist class grand cruiser I named Basket of Thorns.

Since all ship models in 40k are taken from epic miniatures and small figurines they are never portrayed as proper works of arts, namely Gothic style cathedrals in space. In addition, they all have wonky proportions, never truly describing their giant size. They do not make sense when taken a closer look, like a macrocannon shell in diameter of 100m or a gold cornice 100m wide. Not happening in real world, baby. Not even with Imperium's grand waste of resources.

 

So I made one. 

It is still WiP as finishing it off will take some time, but for time being, I can at least present some progress as It is almost 90-95% complete and all that remains is to add engines. And revise detail to be more precise.

 

It DOES have 7.8 km length, 3.4 height and every meter has been accounted for. Maybe not EVERY as there are still blank places, but still. Coming in hot.

 

For now, some overview. :)

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Since I perceive all WH40k proportions of ships as ridiculously bloated and out of realism (more about that later) here is some my depiction of what could be an orbital laser chamber. Located in underbelly of the beast. It has diameter of 190 meters, a little bit over 620 feet.

And my version of Nova Cannon. this one is as according to current lore, with 50m diameter bore for its shell, not the puny nonsense SM2 tries to portray.

And top view of the crown

That's it for now. More renders later

 

 

Edited January 11 by xarab
adjusting ship size data

[Firedrake Cordova]

Wow, that's impressive work!  

 

21 minutes ago, xarab said:

a macrocannon shell in diameter of 100m or a gold cornice 100m wide. Not even with Imperium's grand waste of resources.

I like my "silly" silly, damnit!

[ZeroWolf]

13 hours ago, Firedrake Cordova said:

Wow, that's impressive work!  

 

I like my "silly" silly, damnit!

Same 

 

That being said, this is seriously good work. This a hobby or full time job?

[xarab]

I like 40k for the ridiculous over the top, boombastic depictions as well, BUT!!!! we all like when something can have a meaningful existence :)

 

It's just a hobby, but our community takes our hobby very seriously :D. It was actually done just as an illustration to my book project. At first it was just a poor prop, but then it kinda started to become a thing of its own.

 

That being said, another portion of my "sane silliness".

Also, there is link to the whole album i post of Flickr :

https://flic.kr/s/aHBqjBWSf9

FOR THE!!! . . . Emperor!! , I suppose . . .

 

Today I present my version of Super-Heavy Lance turret. Something that is not depicted in games or even lore. Just an up-sized Lance battery with greebles.

it has length of 350 meters or something like 1050 feet. Warlord titan props for scale

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- Just a shooty laser thingy.

I have to do it (!!!!!!!!!) : Ima firing me lazor!!

Also, I make animation of it's firing sequence. Once I have this and Macrocannon finished, I will post both. It only needs few touches.

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- more to come.

EDIT:

macrocannon firing sequence. Sped up of course.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/202066467@N04/54243371661/in/dateposted-public/

 

Laser shooting sequence. Not sped up

https://www.flickr.com/photos/202066467@N04/54242460417/in/dateposted-public/

 

Edited January 7 by xarab

[Firedrake Cordova]

They look great - especially the second image of the lance firing

[ZeroWolf]

Those awesome! Nice work 

[W.A.Rorie]

Awesome job!

[xarab]

Now for some rudimentary things. Like turrets. Laser turrets. This time small turrets.

Since this is a big ship, it has a lot of those. :)

 

For starters , light, Anti Aircraft quad Lascannon turret. More like a quad volcano cannon, but in 'spehs' you have bigger targets and thicker armor. There are over 186 of those all over the ship.

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- A medium sized lance battery. Do what you will with it. It is big and designed to shoot down large attack craft. Still too small to be of real use against capital void ships, but when you consider that ELDAR (never Aeldari for me) ships are made of space cardboard, it can even make a dent in a corvette. there is almost 60 of those

-And now for some heavy weight thingys. Heavy lance battery turret. You know, i understand that in Battlefleet Gothic game they didn't have to had turrets which have vertical shooting range, but really . . . they at least COULD make it believable. Instead we have weapon which needs WHOLE SHIP to roll to have any real effectiveness. It has absolutely no elevation capability. Yes, if anyone hasn't noticed yet, I cringe at lack of foresight in game models.Doesn't matter if it's just a game.

-Instead we have weapon which needs WHOLE SHIP to turn to have any real effectiveness. It has absolutely no elevation capability.

- this one is actually functional and has range of -5 to 35 degree elevation.

- Those are closeups of fixed super heavy lance cannons, as we are accustomed to see on side wings of super capital ships. It actually IS ginormous. Almost 400 m in length, without wing mount.

 

-And a closer view of what is a burt energy cannon, usually mounted on side of the front and on wings.

And that would be all for today. More to come in time. Cheers!

 

[ZeroWolf]

Will these get firing animations as well 

 

Amazing work though, your attention to detail is outstanding.

[xarab]

Details aren't THAT outstanding. For now, they are just primitive blocks, but I am in a process of making it a real Gothic facade. Here is a shot from process of remaking front of cathedral.

If i ever do animations, it will come After i finish sculpting hull. :)

 

But what I wanted to share today is my own view of Heavy Macrocannon Battery. When i saw how GW designed their macrocannon launcher which is an arm suspended under ceiling and moved by ropes by slaves, I just fell into delirium for just how incompetent is such depiction. ESPECIALLY when we had better functioning big guns in 20 century.

- I do not assume authority over how one should engineer their SUPERIOR (as for 30k and height of technology depicted in WH) at the time. I just tend to think it speaks poorly about intelligence of people in the setting. For comparison - my own imagination of big guns.

- Macrocannon is still huge. Barrel alone is of 358 m long and 50m long, chunky firing chamber. See my animation for better reference. https://www.flickr.com/photos/202066467@N04/54243371661/in/album-72177720322930145

-it's bore is 14 m wide

-In this battery, the very shell is in size of titan. Here is my SABOT shell, which i modeled after the famous macrocannon cutout.

- It's not 100% 1:1 reconstrcuction, but i did what I could.

- And how is this supposed to work? Well, here is my take on it. Sure, it's just a fan artwork, but i prefer to think those ordnances actually ARE effective, unlike anything we are fed by GW.

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That's it for now. More to come in future

 

Edited January 9 by xarab
change in size data

[Lord_Mephistopheles]

I utterly utterly love this.  I've similarly been one that has ben vexed by the failure of reality to match the lore.

 

This is the absolute best kind of insanity!

 

What are you modelling in if you don't mind me asking? you're chucking a LOT of polys around here....

[xarab]

Thank you brothers in hobby for your kind words of applause so far.

 

5 hours ago, Lord_Mephistopheles said:

What are you modelling in if you don't mind me asking? you're chucking a LOT of polys around here....

It's in Blender  :). Very very solid piece of hobby tool. Hull itself is composed of 1.6 MLN objects, which are mostly primitive blocks. with guns, its over 2.1 MLN objects, so yeah . . . might look cool, but its absolutely in-game unfriendly :D

 

Today I have new update over last remaining issue of such ship - wing carrying capacity.

- I was in process of adding hangar bay to my ship, but since SM2 came out, we already see how such space could look. Due to circumstances it will remain unfinished.

Greebling this interior would be a pain and even kinda loss of time. In my opinion SM2 really did justice to interior of the ship.

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Not much today, as almost all aspects of the ship have been covered.

I will update topic with my renovation process, although i can't say when that will happen.

 

If anyone has a request as to provide a specific cadre/angle of picture of what already is, PM me and I'll see what can be done. All pictures are also included on my flickr album.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/202066467@N04/albums/72177720322932636/with/54258646588

Anyway . . . For the BIG E!!!!

 

 

[xarab]

Hi again,

Here I come with the lastest aspect to show about the ship. So far :)

Namely the smaller macrocannon turrets.

 

 

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- Since I first time saw how things are made in Battlefleet Gothic I, I begun to cringe, how come that after 30 years of universe, we still make models which are cut with an axe over a knee. It's not a jab at the game devs, but at GW, because it still propagates early models of epic scale as reference. Because of this I am very disappointed. I understand in-game models have to be low poly to make game work smooth, but dammit GW! why after all those years it's still so bad. So I made one myself. :D

 

Fun fact : barrel of this game model is as big as my own Heavy Macrocannon model. How do they operate it? How do they change elevation? How do they reload? Of course, intelligent design be damned. I am very tired of being fed mindless poo from every game, which tries to portray any kind of universum just to fall flat on its face. They might look mighty and cool, but  they "jus don' make sense". That is why I have made my own.

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- And a long barrel version with shock absorb.

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- On the side note why i didn't fashion my ship's bow after the original sketch : I don't like it. Devs had to follow franchise license, I do not. Or i can just say, we have found another STC. There is always an excuse.

 

But back to the topic. I have also changed half of hangar bays to broadside points because LOOK, just how many attack craft can my hangar hold compared to this 1 km tall hangar. Once again, we have no description of how this could work in the first place, but just from external features alone, this carrier could fit 1 000 units.

It's not a place to go off on a tangent, but it is my point of view that wonky proportions do not make a good argument.

 

If anyone wishes to add/argue this point of view you are very welcome to discuss it with me.

- Notice 1.3 km tall super big tower in the middle of the ship.

-I know that my ship does not remotely resemble Grand Cruiser class of any kind, but I took inspiration from Armageddon class ship as I like it more. It is misleading to label my ship Exorcist class, however in my mind it is about functionality not classification as Exorcist class tends to be flagship due to its multirole capability. And a piece of story I have written.

 

This is all for today.

Next stop - the void shields

 

 

 

[space wolf]

Yup, that looks proper 40k to me! well done!

[Lord_Mephistopheles]

On 1/9/2025 at 7:53 PM, xarab said:

-In this battery, the very shell is in size of titan. Here is my SABOT shell, which i modeled after the famous macrocannon cutout.

 

 

 

Personally, I object to the size of your Titans... not because of anything you did, but because Titans themselves suffer badly from a scale creep issue!

 

My own meagre work in this arena is buried away somewhere on this Forum.  I don't wanna threadsteal or anything so i won't link!

 

I wish i was able to use Blender to this sort of level (or indeed at all!), but I love your work!

[xarab]

It's ok with me, if you do link. This is supposed to be our hobby site, not just grandeour display of one thing. I welcome discourse about all 40K .
I do know that titans are ridiculous concept of machinery, but all things in 40k are. Bloated and unnecessarily overcomplicated. Yet, if I wanted to choose setting which makes logical sense, not be cool, I wouldn't come to 40k in the first place :D. Or any GW creation on that matter.

 

Just to keep on the thread going in its zombie state, I post some pics over what i have been working lately - new luxurious materials from which ship could have been built.

 

For starters something fanciful and pretty. Those crystals are something you wouldn't be able to find on our planet, but perhaps it could have been artificially created in age of expansion.

All lit from behind on top for this lucid effect.

The figure in the pictures is NOT my model, but has been downloaded from free 3D models. It was from cults3D.com but i cannot find it anymore and I don't remember the author. Except for that, all else is my work. For reference - Statue is 1.5m tall (round 5 foot) and whole pedestal in 2.5m tall. I tried to replicate real size light scatter.

 

- amethyst

-sapphire

-emerald

-ruby

- And here we have something much more luxurious.

 

LADIES AND'o GENTELMAN'u, step right up and see what Luxuries our company has to offer!

 

- Have you ever reached point in your life that you run out of will to live, because nothing is ever enough? Mountains of jewels not lighting up your passion enough? Peepee not working properly anymore? Throwing your weight around in Terran senate and screaming "Bitch, I have the power" not satisfying enough? Golden statues not shiny enough? Ever wanted to have something screaming "mile long dick, beware of an orbital spire"?

Then search no more!

 

Here I present you the most extravagant substance in existence so rare than even forefathers of archeotech couldn't achieve it!! And so exceedingly rare, nobody else could have it! And so valuable, even the Custodes want to get their hands on it! The crystaline lattice gold structure!

The one and only room temperature superconductor! A holy grail for any Mechanicus Archmagos! The one thing capable of making resistant-less power conductors for unfathomable power transfer in form most wasteful and inappropriate for it's function! Available ONLY to you in form of fancy art, floor tiles and tableware.

 

 

 

Have you ever wanted to flounder your wealth around and stick it to the poor beggars which call themselves a "nobility", thinking that for some unknown reason they became rich after taking position of planetary governor? Look no more! for I have just what you need!

 

-A gold infused noctilith! We managed to replicate ancient technology of xonos, because xenos would make us  heretics, and fill it with real, shiny, and expensive, GOLD! so you can not only look at it, but walk on it! and create structures out of it!

-Not enough, I hear you say Then how about a Terran marble infused with gold? It's shiny, it's sturdy, it's expensive and most of all. Helluva scarce, so you can be rich while being rich!

 

So that is what I have been working on so far. Since materials are comewhat diverse, it is time to return to architectural development. :D

See you in our distribution points!