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Ok so here is a question I have been pondering like a moron...

It related to BFG - or the game board in general - How large SHOULD the planets be in relation to the BFG model ships. I look at some of these "planets," and if I am looking correctly... these damn ships are wayyyyyyy over 10km long. So... using the model of lets say a Space Marine Battlebarge, how big would a planet be - we talking basketball or even bigger...

I believe the way that most large-scale space naval game go, is that the actual location of the ship is the stem of the stand that it's on, or an even smaller spot. The ships themselves are just there as both a visual reference, and just to look good.

I know, but I just had a project in mind to build a gigantic space table... and I wanted to build replica sized planets... or moons... compared to the BFG ships...

Thats why I want to know what size a planet or moon would be compared to a BFG ship sold in GW.... a basketball, a beachball... that bouncy thing women work on and they think it works...

Let's see, I found this:



'The Imperial Retribution Class Battleship BloodHawk, from Battlefleet Gothic, 7.5km long.
Image created by John Reed '

http://www.merzo.net/index.html

So, that's 7.5km long.

Battleships are about 7-8 inches long in the game, so let's go with a (most likely completely incorrect, but this is just of the top of my head) 1-1 scale of inches to kilometers.

So, take a planet the size of Earth, which has a diameter of 12,756 kilometers. So, that's the same in inches, which would mean... 1,063 feet.

And thus why we never see large fleet actions 'in-scale' unless you want your capital ships to be a couple of centimeters long, at the maximum.

Most will look like this:

The actual models are just for the visual identification. The actual ship occupies the stem.

A To Scale planet would be insanely huge.





In general, Battleships are around 7-8 kilometers in length. Cruisers(Imperial ones) are around 4-5 kilometers. and Escorts are around 1.5 kilometers. These sizes are simply estimations from BL and Codex literature that FFG put together to estimate the size of the ships. GW has never said exactly how big their ships are(just that they are BIG)

a Battleship can have a crew in the high hundreds of thousands, Cruisers will be in the low hundred thousands, and Escorts will be many thousands.

You can get all sizes of styrofoam balls from a craft store, or a floral store. If you search onlone I have found balls up to 12" in diameter so thats a bit bigger than a basketball ball even. I am going to get a few of those myself to use on a gaming table.

I am actually going to get Half Balls, or cut some balls in half, and cover a table with black felt, then the "planets" pretty much stick to the felt like velcro and you don't have to worry about stands.

i got those foam balls too, but I used 3 toothpicks very close to the bottom in a tri-pod formation.

When they are all painted up and on a black surface you can barely see the toothpicks and it looks like the planet is just hovering in place.

Hahaha ok.... so all I can hope to do is maybe a small moon to size

Thanks for the help guys...

EDIT: oh gak... almost forgot about this

http://www.worldworksgames.com/store/index.php?view=product&product=91

Is that a good mat to play on... the planet is in the background and looks big... only problem I foresee is that its 40 inches by 60 inches... which is not 4 by 6 ft

Use the backside of a GW mat. It's black.

That mat is pretty cool!

Regardless of the actual size, if you had a print shop do that for you I am sure they could enlarge it to 4X6 without much trouble.

While I have not made any planets yet (looking at options that are a bit more sturdy than foam) I found an EVEN cheaper mat; Buy a black sheet at wal-mart (or anywhere) and paint some stars on it.

I made one this weekend, and will try to post up some pics later.