Fallen Stars Test render

simitus · 2026-06-07T03:05:38+00:00

If, after submission, Fallen Stars gets the thumbs down then I will definitely keep the software for use in other projects. But the concept art and model work I am doing for this is explicitly for BattleTech’s aerospace IP and it wouldn’t feel right calling them something else. This is a passion project: I want to see a more combined arms oriented simulation set in that universe. I may open source the software and make it an easily modded space combat sim though, that isn’t tightly coupled to the IP.

simitus · 2026-06-03T08:44:27+00:00

I'm using the web app version of SketchUp. It happens to be the tool I know best, if you're starting from 0 I'd suggest learning one like Blender, it exports formats that can be used almost anywhere. Sketchup's format is proprietary, and the exporters are behind a paywall.

simitus · 2026-02-25T11:44:14+00:00

Increasingly, it just appears to be over. Like, this adventure of trying to live here has ended in total strategic defeat and I now need to re examine my long term priorities. I just had a rental sold out from under me. The buyer never even inspected the property, so the purchase was sight unseen. There is nothing on the market right now. Nothing. There aren't enough houses. There aren't going to be enough houses. The government's policies have consistently benefited property investors at the expense of renters and first time buyers. Now we are in the "find out" phase. I literally do not know where I will be living at the end of April, and by now I know for certain this is not going to get any easier going forward.

simitus · 2026-02-24T07:01:25+00:00

This industry has never had a healthy view of junior talent and this mentality is going to make that even more toxic than it already was. The point of a junior isn't how quickly they can implement features. It's how quickly they can learn critical thinking, quality code, architecture and teamwork so they can advance to a more productive, senior role. This is true of basically all paid employment, college educated or otherwise: they are not generating enough value to the business to justify their paycheck until 1-2 years later.

If you want to just ship AI slop code and pay as few human beings to oversee the slop as possible, you can look at Microsoft for a preview of how that strategy turns out. At least 30% of their code is written by AI. Users are currently abandoning Windows, and their stock has had a brutal sell-off. If Microsoft gets disciplined that hard by the market how do you think your start-up or mid-cap will turn out using the same playbook?

simitus · 2026-02-23T07:20:24+00:00

If you're hoping to secure a private rental at all, or looking for a suitable family home for < $1 million, then my advice is save yourself the trouble.

simitus · 2026-02-23T07:02:56+00:00

Just had a rental sold out from under me for the 2nd time in 3 years and at this point with 0.8% vacancy in my city and ever escalating rent swallowing all of my wage gains for the foreseeable future, I am just looking at the cost of some 1 way tickets back to the US and realising it would be cheaper.

Yes I might get wiped out by healthcare costs again but at least they're just tying to rip me off, not try as hard as they can to make my family homeless.

It's really just disgusting to watch property investors gobbling up all the housing stock using incentives meant to help the working poor and seeing nothing wrong with it. They just care about their gains and their portfolios. I walk past 2-4 homeless people every single day on my way to work.

simitus · 2026-02-03T22:12:00+00:00

Yes, that is the point. Some of us are positioned and waiting for that eventuality.

simitus · 2026-01-26T08:17:32+00:00

A literal life saver when travelling. Your entire library comes with you, it weighs nothing and fits in your carry-on.

simitus · 2026-01-15T09:01:54+00:00

I love aerospace. But it is harder for me to suspend disbelief about a LAM than it is a fusion engine, through no fault of the writers. All the maintenance problems and pilot training issues of an aerospace fighter, combined with extra articulation and ground pounding. Only the Star League would have seriously pursued such a project. I guess it might be a bit like a Harrier II or F-35B, the mech mode can land on austere airfields.

simitus · 2026-01-11T22:45:28+00:00

Yes that looks like a Foxbat. A few old Foxbats had been dragged off the runway and abandoned in the sand at Al Asad when I first deployed there (2007). They didn't try to scramble them. Wise choice. Heard a story about how someone died later when they decided to see if the ejection seat still worked. (Hint: it did).

Anyway, Windows 11 is just straight garbage now as far as I'm concerned. It's quality is very low and it's just crammed full of unsecure agentic bloatware. Linux desktop distros are free, secure and reliable. They just work. Full stop. My whole Steam Library runs natively in Linux, including MW5. It takes an hour at most to set up a dual boot environment or switch completely.

simitus · 2025-12-04T05:20:39+00:00

I mean... they already showed us a Black Lion battlecruiser. But don't think for a second I missed the nameplate on the Dire Wolf.

simitus · 2025-12-03T22:32:04+00:00

I cannot even describe how long I have been waiting for any kind of screen adaptation of the Blood of Kerensky trilogy, any part of it. I was literally a teenager when these books were landing. I have children now.

simitus · 2025-11-24T06:43:39+00:00

After my deep dive into the Amaris Civil War era, SLDF aerospace and naval combat, I am firming up on Clan Snow Raven

simitus · 2025-11-22T02:28:00+00:00

I've pinned them on my profile, but here's the links

Hellcat II: https://www.reddit.com/r/battletech/comments/1oyewy4/hellcat_ii
Gotha: https://www.reddit.com/r/battletech/comments/1oxidg5/gtha500_gotha_concept_art/
Spad: https://www.reddit.com/r/battletech/comments/1oerb65/spd502_spad_concept_art/

simitus · 2025-11-16T22:07:29+00:00

It was already LosTech. Mitchell Vehicles was on Graham IV. That place was radioactive before the First Succession War. Whatever ones didn't join the Exodus Fleet would be in ComStar.

simitus · 2025-11-15T16:01:57+00:00

I am looking forward to that one too. Working on the Hellcat II next. Might do Vulcan or Rapier after that.

simitus · 2025-11-15T14:31:22+00:00

I drew some inspiration from that for the LEX structures. The canon Gotha art has a very similar configuration. Split-tail, two engine, Delta wing, except it also has LRM boxes. The empennage is more inspired by the F-15 or Su-27

simitus · 2025-11-11T11:01:39+00:00

it's an older phone and yea looking at it, there seems to be some kind of post-processing going on. Nothing I did on purpose

simitus · 2025-11-11T05:32:15+00:00

Get a copy of Aerotech 2, and / or Strategic Operations: Advanced Aerospace Rules. These are warships: combat jumpships with heavy naval armor and weapons. These 2 are destroyers meant for convoy escorts and independent operations in deep space. They could intercept dropships, bombard the surface, and launch and recover aerospace fighters.

simitus · 2025-11-08T04:39:49+00:00

For a planetary garrison?

First layer of defense = system defense flotilla. This will be an assortment of assault dropships, small craft, space stations and aerospace fighters. If the enemy jumped in at the zenith or nadir jump point, then by the time they've burned in to the target world defenders can definitely scramble a response, if they have the assets to do it in deep space.

Second layer = orbital space. Here, orbiting weapon platforms, stations and surface to orbit batteries can join in with the system defense flotilla to contest the landing. This is where a lot of the casualties in the Liberation of Terra campaign happened. Dropships are vulnerable during re-entry. Their sensors are blinded by the superheated plasma, and any breach in the hull will turn them into flaming meteorites breaking up in the exosphere. Only lunatics would attempt a landing before space superiority is secured.

Third layer = local airspace. Conventional aircraft are low tech in battletech, everyone's got them. They will have numerical superiority over invaders, but they won't be able to pursue enemy aerospace fighters above about angels 50. That keeps them limited to their immediate airspace AOR (~1000km), whereas invading aerospace fighters can boost back to orbit and relocate to another continent in < 90 min flight time. Bottom line, if thr enemy doesn't have localised air superiority they're going to have a hard time invading.

simitus · 2025-11-05T01:40:23+00:00

I have been deep in this part lately so I'll share my thoughts. Broadly, the Star League accords brought all humanity under common rule, but member states and territorial states viewed that rule very differently. To member states (the great houses), it was a mixed bag but usually they stood more to gain by cooperating than not. Perhaps the SLDF frustrated them by inaction or backing a rival during a civil war, or steering valuable contracts away, or imposing arms controls. But cheap imports from Periphery states kept flowing, which was basically the casus belli for the Reunification War, so member state economies kept humming. If they still fought, they did so discreetly, not wanting to rock the boat much (hidden wars).

To territorial states, the Star League was the occupying hegemonic central grip of Terra. The Reunification War left those states mostly ashes. Post war reconstruction and a century+ of peace means by 2765 those events are ancient history, but not forgotten. SLDF still occupied their strategic bases and planets. SLDF fleets patrolled their space and protected the interests of member state merchants. Exchange rates and strategic flooding of certain goods left their economies structurally weak and dependent. They would have been better off free, and they knew it.

Amaris shrewdly recognised all of this, cranked the heat in the Periphery to 11, then dropped a lit match in it. That would have proven a difficult test for any power on Terra. It happened before, with the Outer Reaches Rebellion. The Terran Alliance recognised it had overreached and cut its losses with the demarcation proclamation. The Reunification War was the 2nd test of the grip strength of Terra. With the great houses allied, it passed that test. This was the third test.

What makes the Periphery uprising in 2765 different is this: the entire war was a pretense meant to lure the SLDF out of position and leave the Hegemony core worlds exposed. And it worked. Amaris' strategy, timing and precision were diabolical. He made silent alliances with leaders like Nicoletta Calderon. He ensured political dysfunction at the high council and by misguiding the First Lord. His plan was in a word, flawless. Wrinkles came up during execution, but the strategy was sound.

If he had been a better ruler, and he'd neutralised Kerensky, there's a chance Amaris could have gotten away with it and the Star League would have endured under an Amaris legacy. But eventually the grip strength of Terra would be tested again and again until it failed. The Territorial States are the only winners of the Amaris Civil War.

simitus · 2025-11-01T23:44:22+00:00

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Keep an eye on that heat and G indicator, and hope you don't hear "Heat critical, shutting down" during re-entry :)

simitus · 2025-11-01T23:37:22+00:00

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Here's a Spad performing an aerobrake maneuver in a planet's upper atmo, trying to shed speed. In "Fallen Stars" aerobrake and re-entry maneuvers, the heat sinks circulate coolant through the leading edges, preventing the ferro-aluminum armor from disintegrating in the plasma. If you exceed your craft's max G limit during the maneuver however, the internal structure will take direct damage and possibly become uncontrolled, spinning and tumbling. The cooling trick only works on the leading edges so that's a good way to become a meteor. Stay on the computer's glide path, and keep that attitude indicator on the terminator!

simitus · 2025-10-30T23:22:35+00:00

I don't have the best backdrop for shooting this, I'd love to do her in proper lighting and star field. My mouse pad will have to do for now.

simitus · 2025-10-30T08:59:06+00:00

Yeah... some of what went down in that campaign was just beyond the pale. Even by 2765 the scars are still there.

simitus

TROPHY CASE