Way back in 2010 I entered a contest that CCP and Deviant Art held asking for us to design new spaceships for Eve Online. Out of that contest the T3 Destroyers were introduced, the Tornado was one of the designs someone entered with. My apologies, I don't have the details because the links have vanished over the years. But back then, I also entered the contest and I believe I ended up winning a t-shirt or something. My entry was for a T3 Frigate called the "Shrike".
That's the 2010 version and it is, to me now, a tad low effort. In my defense I didn't spend a lot of time on the concept or the design. I entered the contest and essentially forgot about it for 16 years. That is until a few weeks ago when the folks over at Just asked us to create a T3 Frigate design. As I always do in these situations I immediately wrote down some ideas in my notebook, making a quick sketch, marking the reward deadline, and even giving the new ship a name - Shrike. Which is funny in a weird way as I would soon discover.
When I sat down to start thinking about this concept seriously and asking around the campfire for other opinions from my Corp-mates and friends - I also searched my computer. And that is when I bumped into that now 16 year old design contest entry. Also named "Shrike". I guess some ideas just will not die. So it did end up helping me confirm some of my original design decisions - but this time I'd take more time and fully develop the idea even further. We still don't have any T3 Frigates in the game and that is a real shame. So what should they be? How do they work? What roles could they fill?
I decided to focus on the Caldari version and, since Caldari love birds, name it after that older concept. I thought about a different approach to modular design, unlike in the T3 Strategic Cruisers - the Frigate versions would have a singular hull module that the ship would be designed around. Each module would have its own design and be attached to the ship on the same connector. And each module would have its own ship bonus that wouldn't effect the high/mid/low slots of the ship. Essentially each racial version would come in three flavors.
To engineer these so that they fit nicely in-between Assault Frigates and Interceptors each of these T3 Hull Modules would be unique and one use only with a long reload time. The range of effect would also be limited, so that the results would be in keeping with the ship's size. You can see those on the spec sheet above. I think each race might have slightly different modules with different effects, but for this project I stuck with the Caldari version.
I spent a lot more time on this version than I did the 2010 version, but I still wanted it to look like a piece of concept art and not a final ship from the game. So I kept things simple and clean. The image above is even more updated than the one in the video, simply because I couldn't stop tinkering with it.
Even while writing this post I can see more things I'd like to change. But sometimes you just have to stop yourself and let it go. I'm really pleased with this design for the most part, I'd be very interested in what the Minmatar, Gal, and Amarr versions might look like. Maybe I'll develop those as well at some point down the road. As always I tend to rely on the community response to shape what I invest my time into doing, so let's see what the response is to this concept.
I didn't put any size information on the spec sheet for a reason. But I believe this ship fits right into the Assault Frigate size area, obviously the Shrike would be wider given the design. But these are intended to be small, precision, speed-oriented ships with unique abilities that would aid fleets and small gangs across New Eden.
The Caldari T3 Frigate - The Shrike.
What are your thoughts?
Comments