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Nice tones on the wings and face there! Space dragon pirate king sounds like bad news for your big ship

And grats on the 100! That's a lot of work!

Great looking Beastie, Grim. I'll have to echo everyone else in saying that it looks amazing. I didn't pick it for a conversion until you mentioned the parts, either - at which point I also remembered you mentioned doing that in the past. Seriously great work!


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Great looking Beastie, Grim. I'll have to echo everyone else in saying that it looks amazing. I didn't pick it for a conversion until you mentioned the parts, either - at which point I also remembered you mentioned doing that in the past. Seriously great work!

I'll have to echo myself and say thanks again

As a reward for all of your kind words, have a look at what I'm considering for my next project:




It's a frontier world still in the process of terraforming. At this point the place is vaguely habitable but they're still working on bulking up the atmosphere to desirable levels. To aid in that they've got super trees, bioengineered to produce crazy amounts of oxygen or what have you. The energy shields that form the domes allow for regulated release of the oxygen and select additional atmospheric components. Though largely automated, each Oxyplant will have an entry point on the support shaft, with diagnostic equipment contained within the shaft. A ladder leads up to the growing surface to which access may be gained by a sealable hatch. The super-plants are inedible and the conditions within the domes are relatively unpleasant (atmospheric mix not fun to breath, I reckon), so even though man-sized creatures can pass through the energy membranes fairly easily, few bother for any length of time.

I like the domes. I think that they'll make a great upper/lower table setting, with slums and shops built around them as breathability and other conditions are usually a bit better around the domes, and its fairly easy to tap their power sources to leach a bit of juice for various purposes.

Going to try to run one 2x2' deadzone-sized board through to completion, but I have plans to do at least 4 mini boards to combine into a 4x4' table. If I ever find myself needing a wider board, I'll probably make a couple of relatively flat, fairly desolate boards to add the space. I figure most systems that want that much room usually like empty space anyway.

I'm thinking of having one set up much like you see, most/all of the oxyplants will have the same tubular support as I figure it would be fairly mass-produced, but I may vary the height a bit by having some built on hills. I may introduce some after-market gantries and catwalks the locals have built around the plants to facilitate moving about the place. This will be a generic slums/market.

Another board will probably end up made of more computer components as I have several and would like to use them up. Kind of an gritty/grimier Akihabara 'electric city', this would be a place to get tech-- both legal and illicit--, find a capsule motel for a 'relatively' safe overnight, or perhaps find some seedier entertainment. (yeah there's liable to be a robobrothel). All of this finery is achieved by the fact that this area is a hub for the electricity that powers the oxyplants in the region. While the controlling interest would be in it's right (not that it would even need to be..) to wipe the location off the map, it hasn't happened in the many years running that the place has existed and grown. Less Oxyplants than the first area, but either two, or at least one of the biggest ones.

I'm thinking another sector could have to do with a large freight train depot, not really a terminus or changing station, but a place where cars get loaded with ..something.. possibly processed ore. This sector could have a fairly tall silo with loading chute, a (potentially) raised railway, and a few un/filled cars. This area probably would only have 0-1 Oxyplants.

Not concrete on anything, especially the final zone. Possibly a research facility or military base. Mayprobably a dilapidated and abandoned one. Maybe even have a permanently damaged Oxyplant where the plant life mutated and escaped, wrecking the Oxyplant and driving the researchers/military/both out of the region. Left to the harsh climate and expected to die, the fearsome flora has actually managed to thrive. While the loss of the facility is a shame, the plants still seem to be generating oxygen and are apparently self-sustaining even in the unideal soil.


SO yeah, lot of blabbering but it helps me to remember if I write this stuff down somewhere

Looks good. What are the domes from ?

Plastic storage bowls from Walmart. I knew what I wanted but I couldn't find it readily on the interwebs. Technically I wanted proper domes and not something that tapers off like the bowls, but I think the neat interior 'texture' makes up for it. I think it cost about 6 bucks for 3 of them. Planning to clear another couple of sets sooner than later just in case its a seasonal or temporary item.

The lids are actually going to be really handy. I've cut everything away but the rim, and I intend to hotglue the rims down to the platform section. I should be able to easily remove and replace the domes into a secure setting this way.

I'm planning to explore options for engineering something similar for the dome platforms and their support pillars, I intend the domes to be used most of the time, but for some games (and just for a change) it might be nice to remove the domes from the pillars and have a clearer airspace.

The domes look fantastic, love the background idea of super trees for terraforming.

I really like how they add "height" to the table. Far too many setups lack any real differences in height on a table top and I feel players miss out when that happens.

Keen to see the completed table section.

Interesting concept there for the domes

Reminds me of snow globes. Is it wrong that I want to pick it up and shake it? Being war-gaming terrain, I’d expect a lot of spent brass, broken weapons, and maybe a corpse or two to start floating about.

Ack, don't shake my terrain!

Do you guys prefer the domes taller or shorter?





OR





??

Also note that the shorter variant would still have the catwalks and stuff, just didn't think to try some out when I was taking those photos.

Here's another photo for how they'll probably look while playing, it will likely just be easiest to remove the domes for the duration of the battle, or at least once there are models inside:



Thoughts?


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Bonus daylight dragon photos, though still need a proper light box!

Taller globes would be my vote. Space pirate king dragon looks great in the sun light.

The arcology domes are a brilliant idea, Grimdork.

Hope you don't mind Grim but holy gak that's an awesome idea!

Taller, the 3D battle space is always more interesting and fun to play on!

Thanks guys I was sitting there wanting to do a jungle board, then a desert board then... just brown/grey wasteland' with... something... domes came to mind. Now I love the domes so much I think I'm happy with the future of the board and settled into moving forward, i've got one dome progressed but I'll probably wait till its a bit further along to post more photos.

Will the domes have venting then?

I'm thinking to paint the domes as some kind of forcefield/energy membrane to facilitate the gas exchange with the plants and atmosphere. So the whole dome does the venting, programmed remotely and potentially adjusted locally within the support column (there will be a small implied room).

 GrimDork wrote:
I'm thinking to paint the domes as some kind of forcefield/energy membrane to facilitate the gas exchange with the plants and atmosphere. So the whole dome does the venting, programmed remotely and potentially adjusted locally within the support column (there will be a small implied room).

Ah, very high tech solution

Yeah maybe a bit Dr Who-ish, just call it sciency wiancy and move on... but it works for me

 GrimDork wrote:
Yeah maybe a bit Dr Who-ish, just call it sciency wiancy and move on... but it works for me

Well, with 40k tech they would have ducts and vents coming off the bottom edges and other such fiddly bits.

I may put some support structure and maybe some power cabling. Maybe. Would be just as easy to tuck all of that stuff into the support structure to keep it away from the elements and interlopers.

Looking forwrd to seeing how that ends up.

I vote taller tubes. And if you need more of them I have plenty to spare .

Feel free to use the Star Trek script cop out and just fill in "tech" which is then passed to real sciencey types who come up with how it works.

Those domes look great. Shades of Netherstorm for me. They'd look amazing filled with lush greenery and maybe even a dinosaur or two (ok, maybe not).

I'd actually add a dissenting opinion to the existing consensus and suggest that they be at a variety of heights rather than uniform.

@Azazel, yeah I think Netherstorm had something to do with it

I actually thought about trying to do them on the surface and have several more domes with structures inside but... ehh... I dunno where I'd find bowls big enough to really capture netherstorm properly. They are slotted to have greenery, probably jungle plants too, the train trees were just for temporary effect. But damnit now you've got me wanting to paint the ground purple with big glowy crystals sticking up at random angles.... gak... tempting as heck.

Variety of heights would be fine, I actually want to do that but making them uniform adds in the benefit of the boards being more stackable using the bottom support pillar as a support for the board sitting on top etc.

@Theophony, yeah those are the tubes from your supply drop, I was thinking biodomes/arcologies and then I saw those and knew it was covered. Where did they come from again? They look kind of like register tape tubes but a lot wider than those usually are.

Damnit... netherstorm... that was actually one of my favorite places.. forget shadowmoon or w/e it was called.

Crap Azazel.... crap.

Anyone have any good ideas for how I might create a larger dome covering more of a 2x2' area? Like most of it? Obviously you'd have to leave it off in game but y'know. Now I want to put those little field projector things that go up the sides like the netherstorm domes...


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I bet shipping would kill but thats almost the right size. Its a bit opaque but it implies what I need is out there...

A few thought, no idea if some of them would work:

Create the illusion of a dome. Line the ground with field generators, grubbins, etc. Include some bits of dome tapering off as they go up.

Build your own geodesic dome. Not the same style, but larger domes might use different technology.

Build a frame and stretch some plastic over it. Shrink wrap should scale up to the size you need.

Also in the build your own category, can you take a thin pane of frosted plastic and apply a little heat, form it over a mold, and end up with a dome?

All of those things are probably possible, but not sure if they're within my skill set though. I think I'm on to something with the salad bowl angle.

 GrimDork wrote:
All of those things are probably possible, but not sure if they're within my skill set though. I think I'm on to something with the salad bowl angle.

I can’t say I’ve ever looked into mega-bowls, but you might want to try punch bowls as well as salad. Might give you a few more hits. Heck, you might want to peruse skylights.

Skylights that size are around 100+ dollars on the low end. I checked, it was...disheartening.

Another option would be to step away from the pure dome and go for a half cylinder greenhouse look. Not as cool, but a lot easier.

First of all that dragon-thing is horrifying. The glistening gives it a very squamous quality. I like the agri-dome idea. I think if they are taller it gives them great irony as they would appear tree-like.