The inspiration for todays ships comes from our own natural world of insects. Galactic Civilization II already has an insectoid species of course, that of the futuristic Thalan, but that races ships always seemed a little too future and not enough insect for my tastes. What would ships of an alien insectoid race look like if they too evolved into space fairing beings? That was my goal.

The vessels of the Insectoid Nation are sleek and beetle like. Most contain wings, either swept back or forward, depending on function. The largest of the navies ships are designed as fighter carriers, with their insectoid bodies extending out to hold the vast array of smaller ships they house. I had some fun naming these models too.
As usual you’ll need Galactic Civilizations II 2.0 with the Twilight of the Arnor expansion to use these templates in your games.

Download the GalCivII Insectoid Nation Fleet now!

Combat ships

Dart Fighter

Hive Massive Carrier

Javelin Carrier

Seeker Scout

Super Dart Heavy Fighter

Swarm Transport

Wraith Cruiser

Wyvern Battleship

 

Support ships

Aphid Colony ship

Ant Constructor

Cockroach Mining Ship

Millipede Freighter

Sometime ago I uploaded a set of ship templates based on the Imperial Battle Fleet of the awesome tabletop game Battle Fleet Gothic. While searching through the other custom ships I’ve committed to templates I found a related sister set, that of the Space Marines. The ships of the Emperors elite troops are large foreboding vessels, floating cities with thick armour and large forward guns.

This is a smaller set, containing only one ship from each size class, but the larger sized vessels have a substantial amount of parts. As usual you’ll need Galactic Civilizations II 2.0 with the Twilight of the Arnor expansion to use these templates in your games.

Download the GalGivII Space Marine Battle Fleet now!

Combat ships

Thunder Hawk Gunship

Nova Class Frigate

Hunter Destroyer

Strike Cruiser

Battle Barge Super Capital

More look-a-likes
Again I’ve gone for designing a close to full fleet of ships, from the small fighter class all the way up to planet killing dreadnoughts.  While I admit some of these designs look nothing like Star Wars – again probably a good idea to avoid lawyergeddon – some of the larger variants do have a familiar style I’m sure you’ll enjoy.  Again I’ve tired not to accurately recreate anything, but instead put my own twist on a style of ship design I love.

Download right away
This time around I’ve decided not to make anyone ask – and wait an age – for the ability to download the ship designs. I’ve only included the template files again for speedier download, it also allows you the fun of specing the ships out as you see fit. The ships were designed while playing Twilight of the Arnor, so you’ll need that expansion to be able to use them. I’ve also included a readme.txt in case you either don’t know how to, or are having trouble installing the files.

Download the Reileian Exchange ships now

Combat ships
RS Superfin (fighter)

KDS Firetail (fighter)

RS Prowler (frigate)

FI Hunter (assault frigate)

FI Griffin (troop transport cruiser)

KDS Spiker (battlecruiser)

FI Interdictor (battleship)

FI Commandship (dreadnought)

Non-combat ships
All these non-combat ships share the same base hull design. I decided to have the non-combat vessels share a hull to simulate variants coming of the same production line. Some of the hulls differ greatly from their siblings, others have only minor variations.

KDS Colony DSP

KDS Mining DSP

KDS Construct DSP

KDS Trade DSP

Other random screenshots
Heavy-weight group shot (battlecruiser, battleship and dreadnought)

Using the Krynn tech tree helps influence things some what…

Look-a-Like
This new set of ship designs is a veritable fleet of ships based on the much loved, but little supported, Games Workshop [GW] table top game Battle Fleet Gothic [BFG].  I’ve created the fleet using the Imperial ships as a source for inspiration. What I’ve not tried to do is accurately recreate the BFG ship designs, not just because GW likes to protect its IPR with lawyergeddon, but because straight copying something just isn’t fun.  I’ve tried to make my own designs, while using BFG as a base and I hope you’ll be able to recognize them at least somewhat.

UPDATE: Now for download
I’ve now put these ship designs up for your free downloading pleasure. I decided to keep the file size down by only including the template files, it’s more fun to fit them out yourself anyway. The ships were designed while playing Twilight of the Arnor, so you’ll need that expansion to be able to use them. I’ve also included a readme.txt in case you either don’t know how to, or are having trouble installing the files.

Download the Battle Fleet Gothic style ships now.

Combat Ships
Imperial Frigate

Imperial Cruiser

Imperial Battleship

Imperial Dreadnought

Non-Combat
Imperial Transport

Imperial Tanker

Ok so one final Battle Fleet Gothic ship design here – one I’d forgotten I’d done – which is based on one of the larger Space Marine ships.  I’ve been using this 4000 troop capacity monster to one-ship-invade planets in the later game.

Imperial Heavy

Lets get the ‘really happy’ comment out of the way first shall we. Galactic Civilizations II is one of my favorite strategy games, only a few get close to beating it – Master of Orion 2 anyone – but for the past couple of years I’ve been unable to play it. Why? Simple, I switched to Mac. Which meant using Bootcamp to run XP for all my gaming. That in itself isn’t a problem as all other games run fine under Bootcamp. However GCII refused to run for more than 5 minutes without crashing the computer to restart.  I’d almost lost all hope of playing my beloved game again. Then came GCII 2.0 and I dared to hope.  I’m glad to report that yes 2.0 fixes most of my problems – I still get the odd crash mind – so thank you Stardock. It only took a complete rewrite…

Anyway on to the standalone ship designer. Which some would say should have been there from the start. But I’m not one to moan I loved it without and I love it the same with.  One thing I will note though: if you have a game started and then create ships in the standalone creator you’ll be unable to use them in that game. So either create the ships first or build them in your game as you go.

RP mode on!

Kaizhing Drive Systems (KDS) are a relatively new ship builder but that hasn’t stopped them from being one of the most profitable construction yards within the allied systems. Their strengths are in robust hull design and advanced technology development.

KDS Mining Barge

KDS Firetail Class Homeworld Defense Interceptor

KDS Stalker Class Patrol Cruiser

Fhidai Shipyards (FI) is an aging shipyard based on the edge of allied space. For a long time they were thought bankrupt but on the eve of the insectoid wars their CEO came to allied commanders with impressive ship designs.  Where they obtained the new technology is still unknown.

FI Griffin Class Troop Transport

FI Interdictor Class Battleship

RP over!

As you can see I had great fun with the ship builder and I’m sure they’ll perform excellent on the field when I play a game. I’ll leave the Huge size ships until later. Got to have something to look forward to.