This has taken me AGES to sort out, not least because GIMP died on me after an hour and a half's unsaved work >.< I think there's a bug with the rotate tool, it crashed GIMP a few times after that, though i learnt my lesson and kept saving...

What really took the time was making sure it was all symmetrical, all properly lined up etc etc etc. The final .xcf has HUNDREDS of guidelines all over it... A bit frustrating...

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Hopefully you all remember the written piece i submitted a few weeks ago - Colony Ships: a short history. In it, i mentioned the Subship Fleets. This is one of those ships, the Defender class. It's designed to ...well, defend... the colony ship from any large space objects it may encounter as it flies to its destination. It does this with 4 high-powered gamma lasers (gasers) and 16 assorted missile tubes mounted on the engine pods.

The engines are smaller versions of the main ship's EM radiation engines, working off small fusion drives near the back of the pods, the remainder of which are taken up by fuel.

The pilot module is something i've altered in the design as i've made this image. I'll edit this in later to the writing (there's a LOT of edits to come soon) but here it goes. The various subships are all based on fairly similar designs, with 4 engine pods mounted around the cockpit. The cockpit, however, is detatchable, self-propelled and steerable, though with a short range and interchangeable among all the subships, meaning that a large number of subships can be maintained with only a small number of the more resource-intensive cockpits. I'll go into more detail later on this, but i'll just add... You can just see the pilot IN the cockpit. You'll notice this makes it rater difficult for the pilot to get out... So the cockpit also disengages from the subship on arrival in the hangar bay, and lands separately... It also functions as an escape pod when necessary.

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The pilot's been included for scale purposes, and i've filled the background in (it got a touch confusing, even for me, and i designed the thing, when it was white-on-white) as well as reducing the opacity over areas which have multiple layers - the pilot module, and the central gaser. Unfortunately i forgot to do the same for the pilot's seat where there's some showing under the cockpit in the front view, but... meh, you get the idea...

Enjoy. As usual, crit is appreciated, though in this case, i don't specially need technique assistance or anything =D