Ebon Hawk Renovation

[Darth GSJ]

Anyone ever tried to completely renovate the Ebon Hawk? Can such a thing be done? And more importantly anyone have any ideas on how it can be done, and what utilities would be needed? At the very least can we reskin the interior to have a more practical and realistic appearance?

 

Any ideas?

[Alkonium]

Well, Xarwarz did a complete retexture of the both the interior and the exterior, but that's about it.

[luc500]

I you mean to completely remodel the interior. Thats a no-no

[Darth GSJ]

So you mean the heroes of KOTOR are doomed to wander the galaxy in a ship that has no mess hall, lavatories or showers, and consists of empty purposeless chambers?

[N-5/Prudii]

Yes

[logan23]

you could put a bed placeable and create a toilet in gmax or 3dmax and then import it into the game, so the ebon hawk will have a bathroom

[Rtas Vadum]

So you mean the heroes of KOTOR are doomed to wander the galaxy in a ship that has no mess hall, lavatories or showers, and consists of empty purposeless chambers?

 

Well, not that there are certain things you couldn't add to make it more "furnished", in terms of facilities, but you have to think of it in the way the game is. Unlike real life, there isn't much of a reason to have a bathroom on a space ship, when it won't serve any purpose in playing the game(it isn't the Sims, after all). The same applies for eating and such, though it is possible to simply equate that to restoring heath. And as to showers, both KOTOR game can have characters wearing the same armor or clothing for a majority of the game, but not one NPC is going to go "You ever heard of a shower?".

 

The food=health item is a nice idea, and would probably be easy to add. Namely if someone could design a refrigerator or some such(as a new placeable, possibly in the cargo hold) that could store the food, and possibly spawn it on a certain basis.

[Forogorn]

That's a pretty good idea, and maybe have food that heals you.

[vanir]

I like the food station idea as mandatory, but in SW RPG terms (WEG/WotC), particularly in the Minos Cluster Sourcebook small transports and ship modification was dealt with in a pretty detailed manner.

 

Essentially among light transports you have tramp freighters and yachts. An example of a yacht is Amidala's gleaming small-transports in Ep2 and 3 (the larger ones in Ep1 and 2 would be civilian cruisers which are corvettes or frigates in military classification depending on armour/armament).

 

Yachts are basicall small transports equipped with ammenities like turboshowers, separate galley and may include luxury passenger or crew accommodations.

They're basically a modification of a light freighter's hull to comfortable passenger transport specifications.

 

Tramp freighters are a different kettle of fish, these are light commercial transports designed to house a crew of 2-4 typically in a workmanlike environment, with most interior hull space dedicated to cargo holds. The crew recreational area will typically be housed simply in a cargo hold which isn't being used, whilst the food preparation area will be mounted at a bench out of the way, like they are in the Ebon Hawk and Millenium Falcon. On high freight runs however any recreational facilities will be packed away and the hold filled with cargo, no passengers will be carried and a food preparation bench doesn't take up much space. Such runs will generally be short range anyway.

 

In terms of technical specifications, their performance is virtually identical. On paper they're almost the same thing, the biggest difference is the price. You might spend 25,000 Republic Daktari on a tramp freighter and 100,000 on a yacht with similar spec and consumables. Also cargo space, these two otherwise identical spacecraft will have a disparity of at least 50tons between them, often closer to a hundred.

 

For reasons of price what most independent operators usually do is modify a tramp freighter for cheap passenger service, or as a private vessel, or as a multirole vessel. Smugglers go further with military grade mods so their vessels are often the spec equivalent of an assault shuttle you might find on a Republic battleship.

 

Under the Core Rules for modification, a starship captain changes spec on his vessel by cutting into its base cargo capacity. So as it turns out the Millenium Falcon has very little actual cargo capacity, roughly half what it started with to mount those Corellian Gunports and rather large Hyperdrive mod. Part of this is because increasing the complexity of a starship raises the crew requirement, and housing additional mandatory crew requires more cargo space taken up by ammenities and consumables.

 

 

So all up placing too many passenger ammenities on a tramp freighter isn't necessarily very canonical, there are yacht and scout class transports for that with the same technical spec as a freighter. Putting things like turboshowers in a freighter is expensive and cuts into cargo capacity so that it would be cheaper in the long run to just go and buy a yacht.

 

Toilets are "off camera" activities and thus are assumed in some never explored area on all vessels, as with escape hatches and airlocks.

 

Also the floorplan of light transports can be deceiving as the main deck is not the only deck, it's just the only walkable deck. The servicing and maintenance accesways include crawlspace throughout the interior of the vessel, an inner and outer hull exists so to speak like on submarines.

[Rtas Vadum]

Toilets are "off camera" activities and thus are assumed in some never explored area on all vessels, as with escape hatches and airlocks.

 

Also the floorplan of light transports can be deceiving as the main deck is not the only deck, it's just the only walkable deck. The servicing and maintenance accesways include crawlspace throughout the interior of the vessel, an inner and outer hull exists so to speak like on submarines.

 

Along with various other things that tend to be left out in all forms of media, mostly because of the consensus that no one wants to watch someone else eat, drink, use the bathroom, etc. Though some movies might have it, and Video games might have locations that have bathrooms, but unless its a cut-scene(or again, the Sims), its likely unusable, and possibly breakable.

 

While it might be possible for the Ebon Hawk to have other decks, I doubt it. It seems small enough when comparing the scaling of the exterior itself to the character models, but believing it is possible to have more than one deck seems far-fetched. While it is all to believable on The Harbinger, or the Endar Spire, the Hawk just seems like it could fit these things(maybe not every thing, though at least standard amenities), on its main deck. Though it does seem to be a technique that BioWare used in many cases, simply mentioning certain things that you can't get at(Jolee mentioning a "Synthesizer" - If only they allowed you to ask where the thing was), or not really using the space effectively(the opposite of the loading ramp - why did they cut that out? Sure, looks fine, but could've been used for other purposes). Considering what they did for both ME games, it seems they left things hanging worse than Obsidian, at least when it comes to certain parts of what will just be scenery. After all, the most beds and refrigerators(or whatever name its given), aren't likely to be used very much. Unless there is the use=regain health aspect to it, or an item it adds to your inventory.

[vanir]

Agree with you about the decks and for light transports am really talking about crawlspace for the most part.

 

We see on the Millenium Falcon, maintenance access hatches and the like. In the Ebon Hawk there is an engine room, but on the Falcon the engines are below and above the main hold (remember when Han is climbing around them in ESB). The dorsal/ventral gunports are located in the upper and lower deck levels but aside from maintenance access are the only areas normally used of those decks, the rest of it is just crawlspace with avionics and ships systems. There is also an airlock and an escape hatch. None of these things are on the main deck. It would also be the logical place to put the ships head, because it needs an airlock function to eject waste and is better if away from the normal living areas.

 

But when viewing the external dimensions of the Falcon it is a bit of a Tardis effect going on there, the body of the vessel needs to be about 20% larger to really justify its supposed interior dimensions, features and description, for all intents and purposes it is almost like a small frigate inside with starfighter dimensions on the outside.

It's really obvious when you look at Sourcebook printed floorplans of the Falcon over a shadow outline of its external dimensions, you just wind up saying okay the people are a little bit too big for this if it's only 27 metres long and has all that, obviously Star Wars humans stand about 1.3 metres tall.