Romulan K4R Escort and K5R Frigate retextures

[S33K100]

Lately I've gotten a lot more interested in the Romulans, and since they are the most neglected of the canon 'big-three' I thought it was time they got some love shown in the form of filling out their meagre TMP era shiplist. The KRs are particularly lacking, the last non D7 conversion I saw was Atra's D5->KDR retexture which is a nice model but the dayglo orange isn't my thing.

So I've retextured Wicked Zombie's E4 escort model - one of my favourites, into the K4R the very first Kestrel series ship the Romulans got in the official SFB timeline when the Klingons refused to part with even the ancient D6s in their possession.

Pics:







As you can see I've gone for the older grey colour scheme and the TOS style emblem featured on WZ's site I also mimicked the colour scheme of his K7R (the Romulan D7 Klolode conversion) but have used a different shape for the abstract eagle on the underside and the orange areas on the top of the wings as obviously the completely different wingshape of the E4 prevented a direct use of the K7R shapes.

The colour scheme and emblem choice was because I wanted to show these were acquired very early on during the GW before the TMP era and the switch to green for Romulan ships, also this way I can make a green version with the more common TMP/TNG Romulan emblem (the bird grasping 2 planets, but not the hideously nauseating Nemesis version) and different ship names and have that version be the 'republican' version for a Romulan civil war re-enactment thingy. (AFAIK after the GW the RSE falls apart and has a civil war deposing the Emperor and emerging a 'republic' with the Praetor assuming the Imperial trappings for himself)

This ship is the R.I.S. Lucius, named after Lucius Vorenus one of the only 2 common soldiers mentioned in Julius Caesar's De Bello Gallico books, also he was used as the inspiration for one of the lead characters in that 'Rome' drama that was on recently. But just pretend Lucius is the name of a famous Romulan general or consul or something.

What does everyone think?

[Atolm]

Looks real cool!
Nice job!
I personally hate Rom's using Klingon ships(many others can attest to my anal hated of Roms using Klink ships...lol)
But its still very cool!

[S33K100]

That's good, cause I got another ready to post, this is the accompanying frigate - the F5 converted to become the K5R, these ships were initially delivered to the RSE in the 'official' SFB timeline at the same time as the D6s which became the R-KRs.

Different eagle motif and top wing colouring and named the R.I.S. Vorenus - the other half of Lucius Vorenus. Again imagine a Romulan history for the name...

Pics:







Same basic look as the K4R but obviously the motif had to be changed again because of the different wingshapes of the E4 and F5. I understand this was one of your designs that I'm destroying Atolm LOL.

Now to get started on the green 'Praetorian' versions and hope a D5 appears soon for the KDR conversion...

[Atolm]

LOL...not to worry the design is still good...but she and the other will never see the light of day in my Imperial Romulan fleet
Still a classic job or the retexture...just make sure you aquire permission (I assume you did already) for these fine retextures

[S33K100]

There's no download at the moment, these are currently just on my comp, mainly an exercise in seeing if it'd look any good.

I don't know that there'd be any call for these to be released, if anyone does want them then I'll obviously ask Wicked Zombie before any release is made.

[Atolm]

Cool beans

[Wicked Zombie]

It's fine by me if you want to post them. I hadn't even considered making KR versions of those two, mainly because I also prefer keeping the Romulan fleet 'pure'. Not that it matters, one of the few homebuilt Romulans I've managed to churn out was the Vhawk, and that took nearly a year

[S33K100]

Cool, thanks WZ.

P.S. I really loved the Vengeance Hawk, pretty much my favourite Romulan design. Is there any chance of you tackling either of the other 2 TMP Romulans Atolm posted to these forums way back? (They're in a thread all the way back on the oldest page I think).

[CaptainPierce]

Nice looking retextures... I don't really have a problem with the Roms using Klingon ships, since it follows "The Enterprise Incident," but I do have a problem with a lot of the bad paint jobs on the stock "KR" ships. These are some of the best I've seen.

[S33K100]

Thanks CaptainPierce. TBH I think a lot of the problem with KR retextures is that the people who make them try to achieve consistency by trying to force and squeeze existing Romulan textures onto a completely different hull shape.

The D2 pack with it's dayglo Romulan textures is quite a favourite amongst those who retexture Roms, the problem is those textures were made specifically to fit those ships and were never intended to fit onto a Klingon escort ship. I much prefer to achieve consistency of style by keeping the Klingon textures intact but working from them so the ship is still obviously a Klingon ship, just adapted for use by the Romulans.

Also the straight line tool. It's f*ckin' A man. I used it to outline all of the orange areas and it really hides the join to the grey because of the anti-aliasing on the straight lines produced.

My host has agreed to erm, host these. and I'll be in touch with him later this week.

[CaptainPierce]

s33k100 said:

Thanks CaptainPierce. TBH I think a lot of the problem with KR retextures is that the people who make them try to achieve consistency by trying to force and squeeze existing Romulan textures onto a completely different hull shape.

I agree entirely. I can't tell you how tired I am of seeing the warbird pattern from the TOS Warbird copy-and-pasted onto ships...