I'm gradually getting round to something I've been planning for a long time - a sidequest for Horatio Hornblower based on events in the film "Captain Horatio Hornblower RN". A major part of the film is a battle against the Spanish ship Natividad - two battles, in fact. If Hornblower is going to fight the Natividad, first I need a Natividad!
The film depicts the ship as a 60 gun ship with two gun decks, so effectively a ship of the line. There being no such ship currently in the game, I messed around with a couple of existing models and came up with this:
If you think that looks rather similar to the "Poseidon" or "Fleuron" models, that's because it is. The original has 66 guns, so I nobbled some of the guns by removing their firing locators. The ship will be firing three fewer guns each side, which shouldn't be noticable unless someone takes the time to count all the guns, which probably won't be a good idea while those guns are firing at you and you're in a smaller ship! There's also one other difference:
The original "Fleuron" models have a lateen sail, which isn't appropriate for a Napoleonic era ship. So I brought "FR_Superbe_rey_b4.gm", "FR_Superbe_rey_b5.gm" and "FR_Superbe_Spanker.gm" into the new ship. They needed to be scaled down to stop them fouling the flagpole and lantern. But TOOL's scaling slider doesn't seem to have a numeric display, making it difficult to scale "FR_Superbe_rey_b5.gm" and "FR_Superbe_Spanker.gm" by the same amount. So I merged the two, creating a single file which contains both yards and sail locators, then scaled that. It works well enough without needing to separate it back into "rey" and "spanker", so I've left it like that. There was also quite a bit of work in getting the ropes on the new yards to fit in with the rest of the ship - some simply needed to be renamed to match those on the original "rey_a4" and "rey_b4", and a few new locators were needed on the mast and hull to fit in with the rigging for a spanker instead of a lateen.
It's not perfect but it works well enough and will do unless anyone feels generous enough to do a proper model of the Natividad. I considered changing the texture to the dark red which we use for other Spanish ships, but the Natividad appears yellow in the film, so this one can stay yellow as well.
The film depicts the ship as a 60 gun ship with two gun decks, so effectively a ship of the line. There being no such ship currently in the game, I messed around with a couple of existing models and came up with this:
If you think that looks rather similar to the "Poseidon" or "Fleuron" models, that's because it is. The original has 66 guns, so I nobbled some of the guns by removing their firing locators. The ship will be firing three fewer guns each side, which shouldn't be noticable unless someone takes the time to count all the guns, which probably won't be a good idea while those guns are firing at you and you're in a smaller ship! There's also one other difference:
The original "Fleuron" models have a lateen sail, which isn't appropriate for a Napoleonic era ship. So I brought "FR_Superbe_rey_b4.gm", "FR_Superbe_rey_b5.gm" and "FR_Superbe_Spanker.gm" into the new ship. They needed to be scaled down to stop them fouling the flagpole and lantern. But TOOL's scaling slider doesn't seem to have a numeric display, making it difficult to scale "FR_Superbe_rey_b5.gm" and "FR_Superbe_Spanker.gm" by the same amount. So I merged the two, creating a single file which contains both yards and sail locators, then scaled that. It works well enough without needing to separate it back into "rey" and "spanker", so I've left it like that. There was also quite a bit of work in getting the ropes on the new yards to fit in with the rest of the ship - some simply needed to be renamed to match those on the original "rey_a4" and "rey_b4", and a few new locators were needed on the mast and hull to fit in with the rigging for a spanker instead of a lateen.
It's not perfect but it works well enough and will do unless anyone feels generous enough to do a proper model of the Natividad. I considered changing the texture to the dark red which we use for other Spanish ships, but the Natividad appears yellow in the film, so this one can stay yellow as well.
