So I decided to once again delve in the wonderful work of scratchbuilding. Well, that's how it originally started! I went out there looking for pieces of plastic card, metal bits and what not to put the prototype ship together.

I started making some concept art on Sketchup to get the feel of the design right. Then I found out a friend of mine has a CNC machine that is able to cut 3d shaped objects, meaning that this ship could be cut from a single piece of wood or plastic if wanted...

Note that this concept is still a work in progress. I'd love some more feedback on the design!



Ship moving through a city:

Here another tiny update:


I'm in a bit of a dilemma. So far the ship is only armed with torpedos and a wide array of launch bays for fighters, bombers, landers, dropships, and so on.

However, I would imagine it might need some other weapons. And this is where by predicament comes, I'm not too fond of having this whole thing covered in turrets. So what should I do to give it that extra bit of punch?

you do not have to expose the weapons array system. You can make hatch covers for the defense guns. You might make a couple with the hatches open or slid to the side and having the guns on a lift platform that would expose it to the outside. If you still do not want them exposed to the outside of the hull, the cover can open out or slide to the side and the weapons can be recessed inside the hull with maybe a bit of the barrels sticking out. Nice graphics by the way.

So it would then be a multipart thing then?

But if we look at the Star Destroyer from Star Wars, which packs some serious fire power, we don't see turrets either. Are they also hidden in the hull or something?

 Malika2 wrote:
So it would then be a multipart thing then?

But if we look at the Star Destroyer from Star Wars, which packs some serious fire power, we don't see turrets either. Are they also hidden in the hull or something?

The Star Destroyer is actually armed with turret-mounted turbolasers, that's what some of the "greebles" on the original models were supposed to represent.

I noticed that yeah. Been pondering if replacing the torpedo launchers (which are on top of the front part of the ship) with turrets. I've already moved two torpedo tubes to the back of the ship, so it should be possible.


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Kinda caved in with the turrets for now. Need to figure out how to alter the ship a bit since the turrets are a lot more detailed then the rest of the ship.

Here is the latest update on the ship by the way:


Also, I spoke to my friend with the CNC, he isn't sure if the machine will be able to cut the model since it's going to be very small. Which leaves me to ponder a bit. What can I do? I know there are 3d printing services out there, but most of the 3d printed stuff I've seen seems to lack in detail (even stuff that is meant to be detailed). Furthermore, it's going to be rather expensive to print without hollowing out the model (and even then it will most likely be expensive). Also, hollowing the model out might not be such a great idea for a prototype if I would want to cast it later on (pressure can break the model).

I remember in the past GW used to have these '3 times as bigger' versions of their models, I vaguely remember reading about it in a WD once that it was part of the production process. Anybody got more info or experiences regarding that?

Hey bud. im a cnc machinist by trade. How big is your model overall. looking at it it would be a massively complex cutting job, i definitely wouldnt try to cut it in one go. It would need 4th and possibly 5th axis to get a really good cut. That would bump up your machining costs a lot.

What i would do is complete your 3d drawing, then start to split it into a kit. Try to split it so your parts can be cut in one hit per part on a 3 axis macine. Avoid overhangs and try to make round parts from stock material. Possibly try to break it down so it can be assembled from styrene sheet, that stuff cuts great on a laser and laser is very fast and a lot cheaper in machining cost. It looks like your using google sketchup, good thing about that is you can import models into solidworks. that would make it a lot easier to split and nest the model for cutting.

Failing that 3d printing is your best bet.

The plan at the moment is that the model will be around 10cm long, 3cm wide and 1.5-2 cm high.

I really do love the idea of making a prototype that is bigger though, just to have it.

How would you split the ship? I was thinking of then separating each of the parts of the ship: separate front, separate docking bay, separate turrent mount (one with the two turrets), separate engine (round bits), separate turrent mount (4 turret one), and separate exhaust part.

What do you mean by stock material?

I like it the obvious alternative to turrets would be a broadside weapons deck like on the BFG cruisers or in David Weber's Harrington series.

Just as a note for warships in general, both real and imaginary, they are usually fielded in fleets. Carriers don't normally pack extra firepower because so much of their hull is dedicated to carrying extra fuel and munitions for their attack craft. Perhaps this thing doesn't have extra guns on it because of that reason.

In the case of the star destroyers, those things are not only gargantuan in scale, but in any real sense would be prohibitively expensive to manufacture. If you're shooting for realism, I'd steer away from the star destroyer concept. But then again, it's your design, not mine. I personally really like the sleek look of this thing. And the idea of recessed cannons, I think is a cool alternative to turrets. The recessed cannons would also force their use as defensive weapons as they could only be fired in a limited arc.

Ages ago, there was this online, user-created scifi roleplaying game concept forum, where artists of the community created all the artwork. It had some strange name like ROAN or NOEN or something like that. Anyway, on this site and I'm sure somewhere out there on the internet, some guy created a prototype model of one of the game's massive battleships. Man, I really wish I could remember what it was called. There was a whole forum about it and one day it was all gone. beautiful stuff. I think I'm starting to ramble.

Thanks for the replies everybody!

I've been thinking about the details, and well... I'm making the ship rather detailed, in some cases the final version will even have 0.001mm parts. Which is all very cool of course, but you wouldn't even be able to see it.

So I was thinking. I'll keep making this model super detailed, and once it's done just make a copy of the model (which will be the one that will be made BFG scale), and start removing too small parts.

How detailed should I go though? I was thinking of at most going at 0.1mm, or very maybe at 0.125mm.

@Warboss: I need to rethink the turrets yeah... Whilst the ship is a carrier, I'd imagine it to originally have been designed to be a kinda 'jack of all trades' kinda thing, so something that was used by early colonists, the military, traders, etc. with possible slight modifications for each role.


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Little update:

Even more so then I'd think that its armaments would be either tacked on in ways that didn't necessarily match the original design or would be extremely limited in scope. Retrofitting a ship of that scale only goes so far. There's mountains of cabling and essential systems that can't be moved or, if they are, turn the interior and possibly the exterior into a labyrinth of mismatching components. Just my 2 cents anyway.

Hmm, fair enough. Maybe less customizable, but still a jack of all trades sort of thing. It mainly carries pods, attack craft and torpedoes, but it does have some energy weapons to give that extra punch. We've been discussing the workings of ships, space travel and space warfare for SCIROR (setting we're working on) over here. It might give you a better picture of what I'm after.

You could always take a page out of the Honour-verse and have the carrier deploy pods full of missiles towed by tractor beams - then you might want to model on tractor assemblies and some kind of C&C module.

In the meanwhile...



Started working on the prow, meaning that the main design is almost finished. Just need to build the front plate of the prow, and add some additional details to the distortion engine and exhausts area...

Need to brainstorm a bit on the size of the model. On one hand I'd love to have it in BFG scale (max. length 10cm). However, the idea of making it bigger, as a sort of center piece and then design smaller fighters is also very tempting...





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Almost...

Link here, because the photo is too wide

By the way, somebody over at the Anargo forums posted this:


Really want to play with that now...

I'll hope to have the new turrets and a first version of a drop pod ready later this week.

In the meantime...

Here a small update on the ship:

Still haven't replaced the turrets. I've decided to the turrets to be sphere shaped, normally placed in the hull, but once activated they are moved more towards the surface. The only trouble I'm having at the moment is actually drawing them. I've got an almost clear idea of how they'll look like, it's just that I'm having a hard time playing with spheres in Sketchup...

Started working on a prow, still very WIP...





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Tweaked it slightly. In the meanwhile I found out that the head was a tiny bit too big to fit correctly to the rest of the ship (connection of the ship was 1.5 meters whilst the head was 1.5000004723 meters) Fixed it, and made it a bit longer:

Updated the ship a bit, moved a few of the components, changed the prow a bit, but it's still very much WIP.

In the meanwhile, I've taken updated the front, added some torpedo tubes there. The ones on the top of the ship have been removed and have been replaced for the turrets.

The design of the turret is growing on me, however...I'd still like to one day replace them for the more spherical ones...

In the meanwhile:





I've been playing a bit with the torpedo tubes, and parts of the prow armor.

Two things I'm toying with for these ships. I've been getting a lot of feedback regarding the eagle head prow, meaning I'm starting to doubt whether to keep the eagle head or not. I kinda like the eagle head, gives it this megalomaniacal feel, but it does limit its use for other factions/games/settings. That in itself shouldn't really matter since this is primarily aimed at SITA/Sciror/etc.

But then I'm thinking, would other factions use the same type of ship? If so, would they perhaps have a different prow instead of the eagle head? What if I'd make it multi-part, enabling players to pick their prow?

Second piece of doubt is scale. At first I was thinking of having a prototype printed which would fit the BFG scale, since the ship would be classified as a cruiser in 40k, it would be around 80mm long. This means that a lot of the details would go lost, meaning I'd either have to remove a lot of the detailing, making it look more like a caricature almost, or go for a larger scale. I am very tempted to have this ship be made in a larger scale, around 200mm to 250mm long. The amount of detailing could then be really crazy.

However, this might bring a few problems:

*Multipart: When doing the ships on this scale, I would assume they'd have to be multipart kits. I guess this could be done by making the turrets, prows and components (blocks of which the ship is built of) separate. I wonder if multiple prow options would then still be fitting when doing it on such a scale... But on such a scale I might even have to make all the tiny components separate, meaning it could end up being a kit consisting of hundreds of tiny bits...

*Scale: When making the ship this big, it will become a very cool display piece, but it might not be that useful in a game of BFG or whatever other space ship game on that scale. That in itself isn't so bad, but I would imagine that a lot of the sales would go to clients who'd wish to use this ship as a proxy for other miniature lines. Should I keep this in mind when designing/producing this ship?

*Costs: I can imagine that producing such a large model will take a lot of resources. Having it 3d printed will cost a lot, meaning I'd really need to hollow out the ship as much as possible. But even then, having it cast afterward would also require a lot of resources.

But there are also some awesome advantages:
*I can go quite crazy on the details, add an extra level to what I've got now.
*The ship would really be an amazing display piece.
*Fighter drones, torpedos and boarding/drop pods would be more in the same scale as the ship. The Star Wars game sort of seems to be doing the same, so it might not be that weird to go down this route...

Your thoughts?

Ok...I have caved in, for now! The eagle prow is gone (once again: for now), and went for something more generic. Now I still need to make the front stand out a bit more. It will need some torpedo tubes and such. I'd prefer to the keep the prow pretty blocky like this, there's something crude and almost hammer-like about it.



I think that for now I'll be going for a more conventional size, meaning that the model will be around 80-90mm long. First of all because it will fit in easier with games like BFG and such, especially since I want this ship to be able to have been around in during the DAoT and Great Crusade. I might make a larger (and more detailed) version of it at a later date, sort of as a collectors' item.

As for this model, I've got a feeling that it's almost done and ready for a few test prints to see what it will look like at this scale.

Next up is a battleship. Since this stuff is originally meant for Sciror, I'll use Philip Sibbering's concept as a basis and sort of create my own interpretation of it:


I guess it will get some exhausts at the back and the front will be used as tordedo/pods launcher. The rectangles around the Distortion Engine (round thing in the middle of the ship) will function as launch bays. Hopefully more on that in the coming weeks...

On another note, I've been working on the ship again, and decided I really disliked the thrusters, so I removed them. However, this means I need new ones. Does anybody have suggestions? I'm very curious how the Chaos ships have their propulsion, but I haven't been able to find any decent pictures of the backs of those ships. But I also love the way the Dindrenzi ships from Firestorm Armada have their thrusters. Holy Emperor, those guys made some really beautiful ships! I hope to one day reach that quality as well!


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I reworked the Distortion Engine a bit:

In the meantime...

Okay, I'm probably being silly but google isn't all that helpful so here goes: what's SITA/sciror etc? I can't find anything that seems to be related to ship miniature games.

Reason is that it's still very much a work in progress. Some basic stuff on Sciror can be found here. But it's still very much in the brainstorm phase, we're discussing it here (with a subforum dedicated to Stare Into The Abyss).

In other words, nothing official is out yet, it's an ongoing brainstorm.

Thanks, will have a look. seems interesting enough

Join up, we can always use more discussants! Besides, the guy behind it is Philip Sibbering, who used to do some art for GW and has some of his own (maybe weird) ideas regarding the 40k universe.

As for the ship, currently the model's dimensions will be: 24mm wide, 11mm high (haven't counted the turrets in this) and 98mm long. The smallest details are 0.1mm, which is a bit of an exception, most details are either 0.4mm or 0.2mm. I'm gonna try and get them to 0.4, because otherwise it might be difficult to see them.

Tried a few things with the propulsion, none of them worked. So I 'procrastinated' by working on the turrets.




I made them slightly chunkier, made the barrels longer and changed the shape somewhat. Primary reason is to make them more 'workable' at the scale we're dealing with (major details on that thing are 0.4mm). If stuff becomes too small you won't be able to see it.


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A tiny update. I've hollowed out a lot of parts of the ship. I've kept the walls rather thick (at least 2.4mm) to keep the print throughout the entire model.

Also, I've cut the ship up in components. This will allow me to make variants of the prow and main weapon system:



Green = Distortion engine + back thrusters
Blue = Lance turrets
Red = Main weapon system (in this case launch bays)
Yellow = Prow

Been working on a variant of this ship. Since people were suggesting different prows, I thought I could take it to the next level. The ship is already divided into components, so the possibility of different weapons wasn't that far fetched.

So I started working on a lance turret component. It's still very WIP...




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Today I've mostly been figuring out how to make models watertight for printing. Man oh man...it was such an annoying task, finding the right software, learning that the different programs aren't compatible and tend to contradict each other, e.g. a model that's fully tight/fixed according to Netfabb is considered to be full of holes/etc according to CADspan. Very frustrating. However, Netfabb offers a free fixing service, so I'm sticking with them at the moment. Shapeways apparently also work with these guys, so I'll trust them.

In the meanwhile I started working on the thrusters a bit. They are still very WIP:


After that it's going to be the prow that will be tweaked so it has several torpedo launchers. That would mean the first model is done, and I can start working on some other components. I've got the following in mind:

Prows:
-Torpedo prow (one I have now);
-Eagle head;
-Prow mounted superweapon (comes with the middle hull part I think);
-Prow with fighter launch bays;
-Neutral (no weapons).

Middle:
-Launch bays (one I have now);
-Lance turrets (WIP);
-Superweapon (see above, comes with prow);
-Cargo.

'Turrets':
-Lance turrets (one I have now);
-Torpedo launchers;
-Neutral (armor plating);
-Bridge (unofficial) I know the demand is high for this one since it fits a certain aesthetic. I might end up making a bridge part you could put instead of one of the turrets. Personally I won't really use them, but I know there are many players who like to have such a thing on the ship.

The back part (Distortion Engine + back thrusters) will remain the same. Don't have any plans to make variants for that one. The idea is that the ships are constantly retrofitted with different weaponry/equipment. I can imagine the same ship constantly changing form by getting different component whenever needed for that fitting situation. So lets say the ship 'Lucius' (very original name) might at one moment have been a carrier craft, but during the other campaign it could have been armed with giant turrets and yet another time it was a transporter.

I liked the idea that these ships first have a live human who every now and then 'plugs' into the ship to control certain aspects of it. But this is quite demanding on the body, meaning that eventually, part be part he becomes 'fused' with the ship. Thus the ship truly becoming an extension of his body. Kind of reminds me of that Doctor Who episode The Girl in the Fireplace.

Here are three variants of the Legion Cruiser next to each other. The one on the left is armed with additional lance turrets, enabling it to take out enemy shields from a distance. The middle ship is a military transport ship. The size already enables it to transport entire regiments, including all sorts of support gear. I was first thinking of beefing the ship up some more, but didn't find it too fitting. I might at a later date make a battleship variant which is an even larger transport. But I would imagine normal transport ships (which are already larger) would be civilian ships, not military ones.

The ship on the right is the carrier I've been working on all this time. Not that much changed in it yet.

Note that all the components are still very WIP, the turret component still needs a lot of detailing. The transporter one needs something extra to make it stand out. The prow (single variant at the moment) will need further detailing and torpedo tubes. The engine and the rest of the components need a few thrusters and details before they're ready.

Tweaked the 'transport component' a bit, meaning it has become the assault barge component:



The launch bays are still quite big considering the scale, but instead of launching clouds and clouds of fighter craft and boarding pods, it unleashes dropships, drop pods, landing craft and so on.

The turrets it has can scare off raiders or some enemy ships, but it is rather vulnerable, meaning it would need other ships to support it, such as the carrier seen next to it.


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Little teaser...

Been watching the thread and just have to say I'm loving the designs and concepts presented here. Keep it up!

The Ship reminds me of some of the designs from Homeworld 2.

Thanks for the kind words!

@Boblogik: Definitely! Plan is to have a few more components ready and then start working on the battleship.

@Rhesusforbreakfast (cool username btw!): Homeworld 2 was my initial inspiration for this project, and more specifically the Lego models done by Pierre E Fieschi. Especially the Tempest Bombardment Platform (I'm planning on making a similar type of weapon for a component), Sobani Battleship (first one I saw, and main reason behind this whole project), Drone Carrier (just too cool not to mention specifically), Sobani Freighter (might need to look more into that one for the transport/barge component).


In the meantime, an update, a rather small one.

In the meantime I've started working on some ordnance:




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And some variants...

I've been away for a couple of days, so sadly no new updates yet. I have some ideas for a variant prow with large turrets on it. As for the current turret component, I need to rework the turret design a bit since they are perhaps too small to print, so I started to tweak the design a bit:



The one on the right is the old original turret, the barrels are too thin to print out without them bending. So I made the first variant (middle turret) which is the standard one mounted on the ships. However, I wanted the turret component to have something a bit different, so I started working on another variant (left turret). It still needs some beefing up, especially at the back.

I've also been pondering about the torpedos a bit. So far the original design is the strongest. The ones with the studs on them either look like something a frustrated housewife might keep in her bedroom drawer or something made for a David Tennant era Dalek episode of Doctor Who. Nothing against Doctor Who, I love that show, but I don't want a Dalek aesthetic for my stuff. So I need to kind of rethink the design for torpedo variants. I remember GW once had different types of torpedos for BFG, not models but markers, does anybody have that picture somewhere?

In the meantime (I love saying that) I started working on the anti armor turrets. At first I was planning on making a 'sniper turret', which would have been a single long barreled device. However, the sizes we are dealing with here are super small, meaning that such a barrel would become very frail. I tried making it thicker, but it ended up looking ridiculous. So I came up with something different: PLASMA TURRETS! They are quite detailed, and I really wonder if the print will be able to show that, or that people could even see it at such a scale.

Those turrets look quite nice. In my opinion though they would look better being maybe 50% longer keeping the details on it. Being short doesn't give me the impression of tackling capital ships but adding just a little length would help. Just my two cents.

Looking great. I'd take a fleet, that's for sure.
Really reminds me of the human fleet from the Fifth Element. That's a good thing by the way.

Also really glad the eagle prow is gone.

 Boblogik wrote:
Those turrets look quite nice. In my opinion though they would look better being maybe 50% longer keeping the details on it. Being short doesn't give me the impression of tackling capital ships but adding just a little length would help. Just my two cents.

Check these:


@Splod: Thanks!

 Malika2 wrote:

 Boblogik wrote:
Those turrets look quite nice. In my opinion though they would look better being maybe 50% longer keeping the details on it. Being short doesn't give me the impression of tackling capital ships but adding just a little length would help. Just my two cents.

Check these:


@Splod: Thanks!

Yep exactly what I meant. Looking sharp. Does it still fit the look and feel you're aiming for?

It still first more of less, but they are tiny bit too long at the moment. Shortened them with 20%, but I still need to see if all the turrets can turn normally without bumping into each other.

Been working on a prow variant. It's still very WIP, meaning that a lot of the details need to be added to it so it fits with the rest of the ship.

By the way, here's a comparison shot between the plasma prow and torpedo prow:



Note that the prow is still very WIP.

Update on the plasma prow:

So I found my really old photobucket account with all sorts of ships I designed in the past. I might look into them again, tweak them a bit and put them up on Shapeways. Let me know waht you think!

Imperial Warpike:







Dagger Class Corvette:





Harbinger battleship:






Broadside Carrier:

Sadly enough I've lost the original files of this project.

But...it enabled me to make new ones!

After a couple of hours I've got the front part of the ship ready. Now I need to do the engine, bridge and that sort of thing.



Plan is that this fellow will be a light cruiser, comparable to the Defiant Class Light Cruiser from BFG. But I'll tweak it slightly more to stay on the safe side. But I think the design so far is original enough. Expect it on Shapeways in the coming days/weeks. (unless somebody would be interested in casting it...)

Thanks dude! I hope the printing will be able to handle the details. That's why some of them seem slightly bigger (like those studs).

In the meantime I've updated the design slight to match the Imperial Warpike. Also to move it slightly away from being too clearly GW.

Teaser...

Almost done...

Finished!

I like it but where are the guns?...

It has flight decks instead of guns. On top of the prow there's a lance cannon. In the game it would count as a Defiant Light Cruiser.

Gotya I see it now!

Will you make the dauntless as well?

Next up will be the Endeavour.

Look who just became available...

Get enough up so I can get a fleet going and I'll start buying. Im a little OCD about aesthitcs and would want to have a unified forced.

Teaser:

ooohhhh i like.

As I said man, get some ships up and I'll start ordering them

Which will that proxy?

The Martinet Light Cruiser (Aquila Pattern) can double as a Defiant Light Cruiser. The other ship, the Absolutist Light Cruiser can function as an Endeavour Light Cruiser.

So they are both the same size?

Yup, it's just that the Absolutist is standing in the background.

I've also started working on some fighters, will be able to show them to you either later tonight or tomorrow.

Outstanding, you get some of the frigates up and I'll be your first customer.

Calyptra Fighters are ready!



You can get them here.

As for smaller ships, my first bunch will be Destroyers. After that probably some Frigates. In the meantime I'll also be trying to further develop more ordnance stuff, so different fighters, bombers, torpedos, pods, transporters/landers etc.

And this would be firestorm?

I can't remember the names but there's a lance boat, a gun boat and a torpedeo. I take it this would be the Gun Boat?

Or I am an idiot and they are the fighters from the launch bays hahaha

What would be the Firestorm? The upcoming frigate you mean? Maybe, not sure yet.

As for your last sentence, I'm not fully getting what you're trying to say here.

Are they the attack craft that would fly out of the lunch bays on your cruiser?

Oh, erm...that's a possibility. I'd imagine that the Imperium would produce many types of fighters and what not. Many designs would be very localized, others more widespread.

However, I prefer to leave the player free to pick his/her own fighters. I'm planning on making different designs for fighters as well. Just noticed that it's kinda hard to come with something cool for them, especially since you're quite limited at what you can do at this scale.

 Malika2 wrote:
Finished!

Looks great ,not trying to offend, but the first thing I thought was sam eagle from the muppet show.

I'd have to get one just to build a muppet marine army........runs off for source material

Man, that's awesome! I love the Muppets! Wasn't really thinking of Sam Eagle when designing these, but yeah...funny!

*crakcs whip* get back to work!

i kid i kid, but i can't wait to see what you design next man,, or for the next light cruiser to become avilable

Did this in like 30 minutes or so. Still very WIP...

Guess the Imperials will be getting something to shoot at...

Alright Brother! you got your first order, looks like it'll get to me on the 28th! I can't wait, i'll paint it up and post a picture on here man.

Get the sister ship up and i'l grab two of those to start my fleet!

You'd be my second order actually! Haven't seen it pop in yet, guess Shapeways is being a bit slow.

Please post pictures when you got it. And let me know how the model is in real life, I'm very curious what you'll think of it!

This weekend will be rather hectic, got some family over, so the next ship will be available next week.

In the meanwhile I continued working on the scrapyard cruiser:

And now who else is ready?

The Martinet and Absolutist are both available again. The antenna have been removed, and some parts have been thickened up.

Whilst strong & flexible plastics are available options, I would recommend Frosted Detail or Frosted Ultra Detail.

Order Placed! Can't wait to get them on the table!

Now with some teeth and more stuff on it. The left side (minus front head) is almost done. The right side will get a similar threatment, but it will also be where the forward pointing weapons are mounted on.

I've beefed the teeth up slightly, added some 'wounds' to the ship's hull, and removed some of the larger shacks. I need to rethink the shacks a bit, I like the concept too much to just drop it, but after putting the model next to the human ships I made, it seems a bit odd...

Any updates on the ships?

I will be re-placing my order once pay day hits (That whole having available funding thing..)

I noticed a few orders having come in, did you order them?

As for updates, sadly enough I've been wasting my time the last couple of days on the whole Zwarte Piet debate we've been having in the Netherlands. So useless, I just feel guilty of having wasted two valuable days debating the concept all over the internets whilst I could have been drawing more ships!

*Cracks Whip* get back to work! And one of them is mine

Would you consider bundling them? Pack of two maybe?

That was kinda the plan, same will happen with the human cruisers as well...

I've been working on the ship some more and I'm running into a major problem: costs.

I did a test run on Shapeways, not actually printing the model, just uploading it to see how much it would cost. At the moment I'm at $45, and that doesn't include the mark-up, furthermore, the model is far from finished.

For a ship the size of an Ork Kroozer, this is simply too expensive. I tried putting the model in a pack of two, or even three, but then it lowers to around $40 a model. I've been trying to hollow it out, but that's a rather complex task, considering the shape of the ship.

Does anybody have any suggestions on how I could lower the price?

From what I understand, it has to do with the number of cuts and angels. While it makes total sense for an ork ship to look like its beat to hell, it's more because it's soo busy in design :( its a stellar 3d mock up though. And if i had to venture youd have to print it at the higher end of the spectrum to get all the details - aka youre just too fething good at ship design for shapeways to hangle

Hmm, I assumed it would be too expensive due to the 'mass' of the model. Very annoying.

In the meanwhile, I did a test print of my original Legion ship. Hopefully it will arrive next week!

The Big guy from the 1st couple pages? can't wait to see it!

But hey if you bundle your ships I'll order more *nudge nudge*

I've tried bundling the scrapyard styled ship, the price hasn't really gone down. For the human ships it might be different. I know that for the bits (spiked gauntlets, circle blade weapons and missiles/torpedoes) it has worked amazingly. I guess that for the Ork ship it would only become interesting pricewise if I'd sell them in bundles at least 5 ships. But considering the size/class of the ship I doubt people would buy these in packs of 5.

Over at the Specialist Games forum they also advised me to cut the model in two symmetrical halves (the human ships), making it somewhat easier to print, and thus cheaper (I hope). I'll experiment with that in the coming days.

In the meantime, a little veeeeeery early WIP shot of the next Legion ship: My interpretation of the '001 Battleship'...

Tweaked the design a bit, and also added the torpedo launchers, next (both left and right) of each launcher there will be turrets the same size as on the cruisers.

Larger turrets will be mounted on the top/bottom/sides of the components (that means 12 big turrets pointing forward and 8 pointing backwards). The middle component of the front part will also be getting some launchbays from which vast hordes of fighters/bombers/assault boats descend upon the enemy.

Have you checked to see if these will print successfully at shapeways?

I've ordered a super cheap version of the cruiser, it will arrive at my house next week. In theory it should print all fine since all its parts are at least 1mm thick. There are details with are 0.5mm and 0.25mm, but I need to see if those are even visible and wouldn't get lost after a layer of paint.

[INCOMING!!!]





(apologies for the bad quality pictures, I'm not a great photographer)

I must say I'm quite happy with the result, considering this is the cheapest material Shapeways is offering. Most of the details came through, the 0.25mm stuff is almost impossible to see and would get lost after a layer of paint. I would need to update the design in such a way that most 0.25mm stuff is enlarged to 0.5mm, which shouldn't be too difficult (a few exceptions here and there).

Another major flaw in my design was that I didn't leave enough 'moving space' for the different components, meaning I had to file bits of the plastic to fit the model together. What this means is that the components are now stuck to each other, which means you don't need glue to put them together (!!!), but the major downside is that you can take them apart. I liked the idea that players could constantly replace components of their ships, kind of like how I imagined the Legion ships to work in the setting as well. So that's another thing I need to tweak in the next version.

I noticed that the details of the turrets didn't fully come through, whilst not a major problem, I'll try to tweak the design slightly to see if it's still possible to do that.

All in all, I'm satisfied with the result, knowing that my design was too far off. Some fixing will be needed, but then it should be good enough to be printed in a better material so it can be cast.

Impressive Brother!

In the meantime I've been updating the battleship a bit. Besides having 48 torpedo tubes it now has 36 turrets mounted on it as well. This still doesn't include the main turrets, launch bays, additional turrets and potential front weapon!

INCOMING!!!

I know why these guys look familiar now, they remind me of the 1999 movie Wing Commander - The Kilrathri and Earth Fleet Ships!

Hmm funny! I've never really gotten into Wing Commander, dunno why though...

The design was primarily influenced by Homeworld, and to a certain extent Star Wars and Dune.

The boarding pods are ready! It's a tiny bugger, about 6.5mm long, 4mm high, and 4mm wide.

Front view:


Back view:

nice pods dude!

And yes, homeworld i can totally see.

Looking awesome! I love those pods

Thanks a lot!

Next up is finishing the battleship and creating some more ordnance, which will include a redesign of the torpedo, a teleport enhancer pod (no idea on what that would look like) and some fighter craft (various types and I'm open to suggestions).

So yeah...any suggestions for the fighter craft?

Just caught up on this thread here. I like those light cruisers you made a big ago. They fit quite nicely into bfg. And seeing the return of the long ships, I always liked those. I'm glad to see their return and their upgrades. Keep up the good work!

Thanks dude!

The Legion ships have always been my main priority/focus. The more BFG oriented stuff is all sort of 'extra', me trying to improve my skills, figure out how 3d printing works, that sort of thing.

But at the same time it's more than that, I really love some of the projects on here and I always wished I could somehow help out. I hope that through some of my bits people would be inspired to create even cooler stuff.

Been doing some more work on the battleship, added the big turrets. Do note that the hull will still need a lot of work to make it all work. I've tried to stick to the original concept art as much as possible, but it can become a bit of a challenge, especially since I want both the ability to fire all turrets in the same direction (depending on which side of the hull you are of course), but not have the heights of the different segments differ too much. Hence, I moved the second components' turrets on the diagonal panels, and added some extra levels to heighten up the turrets on the components closest to the Distortion Engine so they won't hit the turrets on the front if firing forwards.

Good idea with the turret placement. I also like the 3 barrel cannons, they look the part. Keep it up!

Been pondering a bit about bombers, I wouldn't imagine it would 'drop' bombs, makes no sense in zero gravity. But then again, the whole concept of a dogfight in space makes no sense either...

Fighter craft, or rather drones, would be launched from the ship, either with some sort of railgun, or even teleport. Maybe some sort of total conversion field/engine to ensure it can keep on going in a dogfight? But even so, a fighter would make very little sense considering the vast distances it would have to travel. Perhaps their role should be different, purely to provide cover for the boarding pods as the soldiers board the enemy ship. Maybe something more akin to the Sentinels from the Matrix?

ok i must be missing somthing.. what would that battleship be in translation to BFG? or is that somthing else all together...im trying to get into BFG so im learning it all

The big one is a battleship, in BFG it would also be one. Only thing is that the model is slightly larger (around 20cm long), but that shouldn't be too much of a problem.

thats awesome dude keep it up!

i know this is out there but any chance you would be willing to release any of your sketchup files? Ive been a 3D modeler for along time, and love 40k! so shapeway is an awesome concept to me, and im thinking of making a zone mortalis type board (mostly walls, bulkheads and other gizmos) but lack a where to start with shapeway and how well their printing does. I just ordered a massive order of battlefleet gothic stuff from there excited to start my fleet!

How are your SketchUp skills or 3d modelling skills for that matter? Shapeways prints .stl files, so if you can convert your designs into .stl files, you can print them.

What I do with SketchUp is that I make my design in the actual size of the model, well...not actual size, 1 meter in SketchUp would be 1cm in real life. So a 75mm model in SketchUp is 7.5 meters. I think it's a glitch in my version of the program?

Then shrink it by 0.255 (don't know why, maybe it's an error in my SketchUp, but if I don't do that the printed model ends up being around 3.9 times bigger than how I designed it).

I use CADspan to convert the file into an .stl file. After I convert the file, I upload it on Netfabb's cloud service to have it checked for holes/etc and have it automatically fixed.

After that it's a simple matter of uploading it on Shapeways and pick the materials/etc

As for releasing the SketchUp files. I'm gonna wait with that one for a while. It doesn't feel right for me at the moment to give away the stuff Ive worked quite hard on without at least sort of trying to recuperate some of the work I've put into it. Besides, the stuff I've got on Bits Blitz now isn't super profitable either, I only make a tiny percentage, the rest being printing costs.

However, I am quite fond of the idea of putting some stuff out there for the 'public domain' so that others can expand on it. Probably put it on some sort of Creative Commons licence so that it all stays fair. In the meantime, have you looked at this?

i understand, i was more curious to see how a proper build looks for upload. I tried uploading a couple of items so far but they have come out to be silly prices, like 65 bucks for 3in long wall...so back to the drawing board for my zone mortalis board :-p Im not out to make a profit more so just want custom pieces, maybe a few other ships finish out my heresy era BFG.

Im ok with my 3d skills, a little rusty but here is somthing i did back in college when i was learning (only photo i could find)

Well, it's important to hollow out the design. Depending on which material you are using, the walls of the model can be very thin (I normally try to keep them at at least 1mm thick).

This project has been quite for too long!

The battleship is currently on hold, will look into it again when I have more time. The turret component of the cruiser (the one with 20 turrets on it) will need serious updating considering what I've learnt from the printed model.

I've tweaked the cruiser a tiny bit. And what's that in the background?



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Tweaked the design of the station a bit. It still needs some work to get the silhouette ready, then it's details.

One major challenge in the design is to keep the price of it rather normal. First test (hollowed out) left it at €160 for the cheapest material at Shapeways, which makes no sense. Meaning I've had to resize it a bit (as seen in the current pic).

Back to the Orky like ships! I've shortened the ship, replaced the engines, tweaked it like crazy!




The ship is 4cm long, making it an escort of a sorts. I'm testing a little bit with hollowing it out to see if that's even possible. A lot of the details are super small, I wonder if they'll be that visible, I guess this means I'll be doing a few more test prints soon.

Looking at the bigger picture, I can see these ships as raiders of a sorts, not sure yet how I would explain their shape and everything. They would make a nice thing for the Legion ships to fight against...

Glad to see you working on these again!

Thanks! I kinda missed these. The main challenge with these ships is now to go overkill with the details and see how to keep the costs as low as possible. However, casting might be a better solution...

Almost done!

Left side:


Right side:


Back thrusters:


Head on the front:


Bottom:


Top:


Some final details need to be added to the head and engines, then I need to keep on scraping tiny bits off it to make it look more wear and tear.

I would love to do some test prints soon to see how the details will look, a lot of it is very small, meaning it might be totally visible.

The more I look at this ship, the less I'm inclined to sell it through Shapeways. I might put it up there in the beginning, just to make it available, but in the end I just want to print this fellow property and see it cast. These make nice little buggers for the Legion ships to shoot at!

Oooo want. For Ork ships it might be nice to have a modular scheme rather than a single design. Prow, Engines, and weapons to add to a basic hull shape would be excellent. Even if not if you cast it up I'm buying some.

Hmm, modular would work for something larger, lets say a cruiser sized ship. This one is around 4cm, could try to make it modular...hmm...I'm tempted now...

Version 2.0 I guess!


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Placed the model next to a Legion ship to give it a sense of scale. Ideally the ship would have been 50% smaller, but as a model that simply wouldn't work. But for the artwork that might not pose such a problem. The picture posted here has the ships in 'model sizes', not 'artwork scale'.



I'll consider this ship done for now. I've tried hollowing it out, but it's impossible because the model is such a mess on the inside, trying to add multiple of them in a single .stl file has failed as well because the file would become too big.

At the moment it's too costly to sell them individually through Shapeways, printing costs alone are around €20 per ship, too expensive for a mere escort ship.

Plan now is to make a new version of the ship, make it hollow and multipart (separate head, main hull and a few weapon systems), and then see if I can get it printed at a better place after which I'll try to have it cast.

Just started on version 2.0. As you can see the design has changed somewhat. The head has been replaced for an array of weapons. To also link it a bit more to the rest of the setting I've also included some Legion ship styled guns in the mix.



It's still a very early WIP, most of the body still needs to be added, more weapons, etc. Not sure yet what will happen with the previous version of the ship, but the plan is to have 3-5 variants of this little fellow which could then be printed and cast. Since the models are quite small (3.5 - 4 cm long max) I'm tempted to keep them single piece. It wouldn't be too hard to cut them up and mix the components together.

But first I'd need to get this fellow finished...


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Another step closer...



I've added some extra guns (still not enough!), as well as a torpedo launcher on the top, kinda like how certain submarines have it I guess. Now it's adding more details and such to it. At the moment the ship lacks any 'damaged' parts like the previous one had. I might look into that a bit, would love to make some of its interiors more visible.

Still not enough guns...




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Don't they look cute together?



Note that they're both still WIP, the one in the background almost done, the other one need a bit more work.

The main challenge will be how to cast these things once they're printed, seems like quite a nightmare to do so. Any tips regarding that?

After some thinking I quickly put this together:



As you can see an early WIP of scrapyard ship, version 3.0. Already keeping in mind the casting process, there should be no undercuts or anything in this model.

Furthermore...


It's modular! The way I see it at the moment is that the ship will consist of three main component parts: prow, bulk, and thrusters. Then these main components are also split in smaller parts. As you can see the bulk has separate sides. I'm planning on making a few variants of those side components, thereby allowing you various types of weaponsystems aboard. Also keep in mind that each side component has a left and right version.

Ok, back to work!

Awesome work!

I'm tempted on finishing the two old Ork ships (two posts back) and put them on Shapeways or something...

But first things first, finishing scrapyard raider 3.0!

In the meanwhile, I've been continuing to work on the ship's hull. The more I look at it, the more I'm getting flashbacks to my old city designs I used to do, but perhaps that's not such an odd idea. At this scale I would imagine these ships to be gigantic shantytowns of a sorts.

Considering the castability of my models, I never even considered this for my original Legion ship, assuming if it could be printed, it could be cast, not considering all the undercuts.

So now I have this awesome ship design, but it might be a challenge to cast easily. Which means it's tweaking time! Since the first print I've slightly updated the design, and now this process will continue. Undercuts and such will be removed, whilst maintaining the model's original aesthetic. Let the challenge begin!

In the meantime I made a scale picture of the Legion ships I've got so far:


And yes, that little fellow is the latest addition to the Legion family...

I think the Legion are my favorite of your ship building projects. Though those Imperial light cruisers are good too.

I think it's also because of the whole reasoning/thinking process behind those ships. The Imperial ships were made relatively quickly, purely in mind to please the BFG market. The Legion ships are something more than that, kinda my personal baby.


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Ok...here a more detailed shot of the escort!



It's almost finished. Still need to tweak the prow a little bit and add some final details, then it's time for a Frosted Ultra Detail test print.

Legion battlegroup (will come up with a more corporate, less war sounding title)



As you can see the escort is finished (for now), which means I'll be making some test prints at Shapeways in the coming days.

Look what Malika just ordered to test print...

In the meantime I've continued working on the scrapyard ship:


The basic shape is ready I think, currently the model is around 43mm long. Still pondering if I should resize it to around 50-60mm. Now all I need to do is add the details to match the bulk and side panels, and fix those parts that Shapeways believes to be 'too thin to print'.


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With all the weapons and such the ship stands at around 49mm long, slightly bigger than an escort, not big enough to be a cruiser. I tried stretching the model a bit to make it about 75mm long, which gives it this amazing battleship look, would make a great cruiser (after a lot of modifications), so that might be in the pipelines as well.

The idea behind these ships is that they're made of scrap, but are constantly morphing, evolving, and assimilating, it's also why I want the Legion turret on the front, it's basically a part the ship incorporated into itself after destroying a Legion cruiser.

Background is slowly starting to sort of flesh itself out. I imagine this Terramorph faction to have carved its own little empire. The Terramorphs have assimilated all mater around them, incorporating it onto their own bodies, ships, etc. But they're running out of new matter and technologies, which is why they've started attacking Legion outposts, assimilating new technologies onto their existing bodies.

It's basically Transformers meets the Borg, meets Orky technology, meets Tetsuo the Iron Man, and a bit of undead in there...

A game could easily be set up, a few Legion cruisers and escorts against a group of these raiders and perhaps some variants.

I've been adding more details to the prow, I think it's almost finished, just a few tiny tweaks and then its ready. After that it's adding detail to the back of the ship, and finishing up the details on the rest of the hull. Shouldn't be too hard I think.

Look what arrived at my doorstep...





First of all, apologies for the bad quality photos. I'm not that great a photographer, and I should perhaps have the models primed/painted to do them true just since this see-through stuff makes the lighting very annoying.

I must say that the quality of the FUD print isn't as bad as I expected! I really thought it was going to be a lot worse. However, this doesn't mean that it's suitable for casting, there are still visible print lines and there are some tiny inaccuracies in the prints here and there (which weren't on the model).

Looking at the model I'm quite happy how it turned out, some of the smallest details on the ship are around 0.15mm and even they are pretty visible. I wonder how they would look lie with a layer of paint...

That must be so satisfying.

For the Legion from what you were saying you want a corporate vibe. Venture with it's East India Company vibe makes sense.

It is pretty cool to see my designs in the flesh, I got so excited when my package arrived, kinda like a little kid waiting for his/her Christmas presents!

As for the East India Company, that's a real good idea! I totally forgot about those. And then combine it with some hyper capitalism and 'abstracted language', been kinda pondering about it over here.

For extreme hyper capitalism something from the Opium Wars might be appropriate as well. I'd also consider looking at the early explorers which were generally merchant ventures as well. People like Sir Francis Drake, Sir Walter Raleigh and Vasca de Gama were all merchants in the main. Another interesting idea to play around with would be the conflict in West Africa between the Slavers and the British in the 1830's and 40's after the trade was banned but before American abolition. Also if you want to look at hyper capitalism the period of the Industrial Revolution is well worth a look. The conflict between Reformers and Exploitionists over things like the introduction of anti child labour bills would also provide a fun level of conflict. As a writer David Weber has explored a lot of these issues with a far more grey eye as has Eric Flint. Also for conflict their should be a middle ground between state control and absolute laissez faire industrialism something like 19th century liberalism would give a nice twist. By Liberalism I mean the idea that both state and individual have responsibilities to each other rather than the PC stuff that gets attached to it now a days.

Thing with these old theories is that there's still a separation between the state and companies/capital. If we loo at neoliberalism today we see that whilst it preaches for 'less government', it's at the same time turning the state as a tool of service to the market/economy. For some that's good, for others bad (which is a political discussion that we might not want to have on this forum).

I imagine that the Legion has pulled this to the next level, there is no separation between state and corporate life, it's one and the same, giving it an almost feudal character.

I really love the links to the whole explorers and colonialism. For a while I've been pondering about the possibility of a space ship game in which it's mainly 'Legion vs Legion', not that much a civil war like the Horus Heresy is, but more 'localized', I guess kinda akin to the wars of independence in the Americas. Note that in Latin America (and the US too I would imagine) the local elites weren't that much interested in 'national liberation' or anything, they just wished they no longer had to give up their profits to the crown in Europe (be it Spain, England or France), also certain slave abolishment laws didn't sit well with the leaders in the Americas. So, wars of independence.

To pull this back to the Legion, I could imagine colonies (here probably called 'subsidiaries') trying to form their own coalitions/conglomerates and seek to become independent from the mother company (the main Legion conglomerate).

By the way, here an update on the Orky like ships, check the prow weapon variant on the bottom ship. Note that it's still WIP:

Really liking these. The new prows great as one of the things which can be irritating with Gothic is easy recognition of ship types. Particularly with the Imperial and Chaos vessels. To my mind however that's obviously a torpedo/launch bay bow which will make life easier. Equally one of the ways Gothic is superior to Firestorm Armada is you have plenty of variants of the same size. I like having several different cruiser types with varying capabilities.

Your comments about a localised squabble between similar factions is definitely reminding me of the Renaissance conflict between the Dutch and the British as well. It's also got a bit of the Badab war background going on. Funnily enough it's also definitely the area the Honor Harrington series David Webers been writing is going on. What your saying definitely sounds like what he's talking about with the Solarian League conflict. I'm certainly getting a Mesan Alliance vibe about the Legion.

I've been reading into Firestorm Armada, but I noticed it doesn't have such an extensive background as 40k, and discussion about it isn't that encouraged, which kinda bums me out. Some of their models are really nice, but I miss the modularity that BFG has. I think it's one of the reason why it still stands on a higher level than most other space ship miniatures. That and BFG had some of the best models GW ever produced.

With the Badab War I feel it a bit of a shame they moved Huron into Chaos' arms, the whole idea of the struggle being a lot more economic in nature is so much more interesting from the usual cultist/heretic thing we see a lot in 40k.

Noticed you joined up on the TFM forums, looking forward to continue our Legion discussion there as well.

Thanks looking forward to it to. Background is a generational thing 40k has almost a quarter of a century behind it now and is fairly concrete. It's also primarily discussed by fans and in the black library not by GW. Spartan Games hasn't got to that stage yet and their still fleshing out that means for a while they have to be more rigid. I've always felt it's a bit much to expect anything to start with 40k's level of background. The only 2 game settings to come close are the Iron Kingdoms and Aarklash.

I know it's a generational thing, but even the original Rogue Trader book was filled with it. It's true that it takes time to develop further, so I'm quite curious to see where Spartan Games will be taking their universe.

In the meantime I've been playing a bit with the image of the ships. That, and I've been fixing some tiny thin wall parts here and there:




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Been playing a bit with SketchUp's colours...



For some reason I imagine the Legion's basic colour scheme to be grey, the blue is just a very...well, trendy futuristic colour I guess!

I'm imagining the basic game/battles to be some form of internal strife, it's the Legion fighting itself. The Legion originally started off as the Roman Empire, but eventually becoming the British Empire. I would imagine this strife, or at least the main campaign/storyline for the space ship game to be along the lines of either a colonial war or a war between equalized powers.

The colonial war would be very much like the wars of independence throughout the Americas. The colonies didn't really seek independence because they wanted everybody to live in freedom (Haiti probably being the big exception), their resistance has been very economic/political in nature, especially in Latin America, meaning they wanted to get more power and profit, not longer interested in sending it off to the distant throne in the old continent. In case of the Legion these would be more 'distant' colonies (subsidiary worlds) that seen great autonomy, forming their own alliances. Of course the Legion as whole isn't so happy about this idea and starts sending in their fleet to teach these secessionists a lesson.

The war between 'equal powers' would be akin to two colonial powers fighting amongst themselves for domination. Kinda like the British versus the French I guess. Perhaps some sort of 'small Psidemic' occurred, leaving vast parts of the Legion empire separated, it basically cut the empire in two factions, both believing themselves to be the true Legion. They try to establish new colonies and outdo the other one. It could also be more of a Cold War scenario in which both these factions try to fight a proxy war, akin to the Soviets and Americans. But then with elements of the French/British wars (got to love naval war).

All very possible scenarios of course. I would imagine that symbolically these factions be white (pearl) and black (obsidian), each a different aspect of the Legion, together being Legion grey. Oh well...food for thought!

I started with a little experiment:


Let me know what you think.

I'm also planning on making the 'gaps' between the blocks of the ship (between prow and launch bays, between launch bays and engine, etc) a bit deeper, thereby also lessening the singular block feel.

Its not a bad look, and I like the other concept you appear to be trying, making the "central" section more raised.

Here some other views of the ship:



The Distortion Engine will still need a lot of work, new detailing to be added, some of the old stuff having to be removed. That part also offers a nice possibility to create a 'gap' into the ship, thereby breaking the block shape when looking at it from the top or bottom.

Been tweaking the design some more, oh and quickly added some colours for this little picture:


Man...I need to learn some proper Photoshop/Illustrator/whatever...

Decided to give the ship some more firepower...



I'm not fully happy with them yet, they can't really turn or anything, and on some parts (especially on the carrier module) they seem rather forced, as if somebody had too many guns lying around and decided to glue them on his ship. Might remove them, or replace them for small turrets (like the side turrets of my escorts) to make them look more subtle...

They are still looking good from your comment about the Legion going from the Roman to the British Empire are you talking about in concept or in background. They were actually rather similar David Drake in particular notices that in his afterword to the Republic of Cinnabar novels.

I like the changes, particularly the towers in the "core" section.

They are still looking good from your comment about the Legion going from the Roman to the British Empire are you talking about in concept or in background. They were actually rather similar David Drake in particular notices that in his afterword to the Republic of Cinnabar novels.

I'm more talking conceptually, or at least in their workings. So whilst the Legion starts off in a very Roman form, it evolves the further it expands. The British Empire (but also the other European colonial empires) become more interesting once they move beyond their homeworld. Later on it might expand into different types of empires (more inspired by the Pax Americana). Which reminds me, if we go this route it would need an era to reflect the Pax Mongolica since the Pax Romana and Pax Britannica are already included.

For more brainstorming on that, check this discussion.

I like the changes, particularly the towers in the "core" section.

I've grown quite fond of them too, slightly inspired by the Relthoza for some reason. The side turrets kinda remind me a bit too much of the Terran battleships for my comfort so they'll need some serious altering...


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In the meantime I've started to remove the broadside weapons I've added yesterday and am replacing them for smaller turrets:


I checked it on printability and it should be all fine, which is great since I'm really digging the smaller turrets, they also make the bigger turrets look huge, which in effect makes the ship look bigger as well!

After that it's some more detailing, especially the gap parts between the components and see if I could perhaps beef up the torpedo prow. In the meantime the turret component will receive a serious overhaul, with the turrets being based on the prow cannons of the escort.

Wanted to give the ship a little bit more shape. However, I'm not too fond of wings and such on these ships. So I decided to beef up the torpedo prow a bit, thereby making it look more heavily armored, and making it more distinguishable from the stern:

Keep up the good work!

Personally, I'm not a fan of the beefed up prow in those pics. Though I agree with not using wings on that ship, it doesn't have a hull designed for wings

I've returned to the original prow since the beefier one meant the ship would shoot itself whilst trying to hit enemies that are straight in front of it. It needs some rethinking I guess. However, I did start working on some communication/navigation arrays, still early WIP though:

Been experimenting with other prow mounted weapons:


Not fully sold yet, but I did make the prow multipart, meaning that the torpedo bays and sensor/comms array are separate pieces. I'm not too fond yet of the new frontal weapons, I think I'll need to design some totally new weapons rather than try to regurgitate the existing energy weapons.

Oh yeah...notice that little change at the back?


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By the way, in the meantime I've updated the communication arrays a bit. The one on the front still needs a lot of work though.




Whilst I'm personally not so much into the idea of having a bridge on the ship, the communication arrays do give people the option to count that part of the ship as a bridge if they'd wanted to, they could even try to paint tiny windows on that part of the hull!

The lovely fellows over at Resin Addicts (check the place if you're interested in scratchbuilding/casting your models yourself) gave me some feedback, which kinda inspired me. Got the suggestion I should try to beef up the size of the engine itself, it didn't really work out. However, it did enable me to further chop up the ship:



This way the ship has become even more modular, allowing you to really go crazy with different designs. Really need to start rebuilding the heavy turret component and some turret variants...

Great design, reminds me of the Orca class ship in EVE.

By the way, just wanted to give you a quick picture of what is possible with the current components...



The bigger engine as suggested will be made, but will be another component, basically a variant on the engine I've got now. The current engine is for standard cruisers, the larger engine (which will be a redesign of the one I've got now, but a lot beefier) will be for heavy cruisers. Reason I'm going for this route is that simply resizing the engine component makes it look odd compared to the rest of the ship.

Besides that there will be some turret variants, prow weapons, and some new components (so you have more options than the launch bay component). It would allow you to really create your own ship designs, only limited by your imagination and ability to balance it (unless you use a way larger base, and pin it to that base on multiple spots).

Definitely cool. Keep up the good work my friend!

New version of the turret variant is slowly getting there. For the more perceptive ones of you, do you recognize the turrets?

Those turrets look really familiar actually. Though the only thing that comes to mind is the terran battleship turrets from FSA. Maybe someone else knows for sure

Hmm, I'll give you a hint.

I see, the noses on the escorts there are fore weapons and those turrets are based off those. Must be a beefy ship to be armed with essentially 8 frigates worth of weaponry.

I imagined the escorts to be smaller than frigates, more akin to Destroyers in BFG.

The cruiser is quite beefy, around 12cm long.

I see, I didn't realize how small the escorts were. That makes a lot more sense.

This is looking very cool

The amazing Icesword (check out 'Miniatures of the North') has painted up a copy of one of my escorts, check it out!

Been a while since you've posted anything, good to see you're still around. Have you worked on your ships lately?

Nope. :(

I was busy on some Space Hulk styled terrain, then some 6mm scaled stuff. But this has really motivated me to get back into re-working the cruisers, which I hopefully will be able to do in the coming weeks.


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One major problem I'm kinda running into with this ship is its castability due to the side guns. Might have to rethink the design a bit.

The launch bays in the middle of the hull (both left and right sides) look a bit odd, will probably remove them and try to make the middle of the ship a bit thinner. That way the front and back of the vessel will be a bit more accentuated.

I also noticed that the details in the front guns have more or less disappeared. Will have to enlarge them a bit.

I tweaked the design a bit, mainly to improve castability:

Nice!

Work on the cruisers is slightly delayed. I was working on starting from scrap again, but I ended up hating it as a cruiser sized ship, so I shrunk it, turning it into an escort.

It's still an early WIP, especially the engine part needs work.






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Looking good. I like where you're going with this. I agree, the engine section needs a bit of detail but the shape is good.

Well...I might have to toss this one in the trash...the model's geometry is all messed up, meaning that when I prepare the model for printing huge chunks are cut out of the model to "fix" it.

Basically means I have to start all over again. [expletive] great...

Oooo that stinks. Sorry to see your work go to waste.

Ok, hung around the SketchUp forum, toyed a bit with cleaning up the model and before I knew it I basically remade the entire model, and not only that...I learnt how to get the thing watertight on SketchUp itself, no longer having to use stuff like Netfabb. Victory is mine!





A few small changes:
-Beefed up the backpart of the ship a bit, making it a tiny bit wider.
-Removed the wing mounted weapons. I never liked them, would have to come up with something else though...

Time for detailing...

The wings don't look right without something. If you don't like those weapons, maybe try some vertical end-wings?

Update time! Been starting on the detailing. At the moment the model stands at 42mm long:





@Boblogik: need to ponder a bit about that yeah.

Great work so far. Coming along nicely.

I fixed the first escort to improve its castability:




Also continued working on the blockade runner:





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By the way, here are the two ships next to one another:

Ok, I started playing with 'ordnance' again. This time a troop carrier shuttle. Well, not a troop carrier per se, but I imagined the Legion would use them in this role. They could be used to move troops between ships, but are primarily used to transport troops to the surface.




The model is about 6.5mm long, 2.8mm tall, and 4.8mm wide.

Here is the shuttle model next to the Blockade Runner:

Note that the scales of the actual models vary. I imagine the blockade runner to be 1:25000. The 40mm long model would in 'real life' be little over 1km. The shuttle model, being 6.5mm long is supposed to be little over 30m long in 'real life', making the scale about 1:5000. This explains why the shuttle model seems so big next to the blockade runner, but it's also the only way to have such a model.

Here are the two craft were we to use 'actual scaling':

In this case you'd probably need a magnifying glass and some tweezers to play the game since the shuttle would be about 1.25mm.


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The troop carrier shuttle is finished. Also designed a base for it:



The base's diameter is 20mm. The poles have varying lengths, their bottom diameter is 4mm and the top part is 1mm. The longest pole is 17.5mm, which made me think of the following. The ships are 'flying' pretty low compared to normal flight stands. However, in order to keep this thing castable in a 1 inch mold, the poles can't be too long if I want the entire base to remain a single piece. But isn't it then perhaps easier to mold the base in multiple parts, so the base itself and the poles? That way I can also make longer poles and such. Players could then put together their own base.

Not sure if this would become too fiddly and/or inefficient for production. I can imagine that casting the base as a single piece could mean a higher chance of miscasts and of course more "wear 'n tear" for the mold itself. Oh well, food for thought...


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Remember my old boarding pods? I've updated the design a bit...


The way I see it these are used to board enemy ships. Whilst the shuttles are also capable of doing this, the boarding pods emit some sort of 'counter field' that allow them to penetrate the enemy's Distortion Engine's field (since normally matter is turned into energy by these things).

Look what just became available...

These dropship are perfectly suited for largescale spaceship games (scales 1:10,000 and up). Kit includes 100 dropship models. Each model is about 6.5mm long, 4.7mm wide, and 2.9mm tall. Frosted Ultra Detail is recommended to get all the details through. These models will only be available for a limited period, until they will get cast. Bases and stems not included.

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Started on something of a distraction: transport ships. These lack the Distortion Engines the larger ships have, so they are dependent on stuff like cruisers. However, their main advantage is that they can enter a planet's atmosphere without completely disintegrating it due to the Distortion Engine's field, making the perfect craft to supply the vast Ecoria hive cities.





Plan is to have a few variants of these, primarily some different types of containers. Another wish is to make a bunch of smaller ones. Maybe this is just me unconsciously trying to postpone the redesigning of the modular cruiser kit...

Oh yeah, to give you an idea of scale:

The middle ship, which I had already printed is 37mm long. The blockade runner (on the right) is about 42mm long, whilst the transport ship, once complete will be around 52mm.

I continued working on the ship. Thing is that I'm in a bit of doubt at the moment. I also made a slightly shorter version of the transport ship, I'm kinda digging it since it looks sturdier. Which one do you guys think looks better?

Updated the design once again. Removed the turrets, added a bridge (!!!). I know...quite a thing coming from me. The reasoning is two-fold: (a) since these craft are meant to also travel to a planet's surface, they would need something more meant for '2d flight', meaning they work more as aquatic ships in a way. (b) this more 'conventional' thing might make the ships more compatible with other games, but also add a certain crudeness to it which I kinda like. These are supposed to be simply work horse kinda ships, not the sophisticated military gear such as the previous escorts and cruisers.



Need to add some more details to the tanks and then this one is good to go. I noticed that I could also add other stuff to be transported, the back of the ship is basically the 'ship', with the cargo just being a removeable attachment (at least in the background, not sure if I want this to be a multipart kit). I am pondering a bit about another type of transporter, more meant for colonisation, able to carry a few 300x300x300 meter cubes... (hint hint hint...)

Looks good bridge definitely works on the in-system craft. For the Blockade Runner you might need to lengthen the rear wingy bits so the gun can easily clear the front wingy bits. Would a distortion engine tug craft be an idea?

Looks good bridge definitely works on the in-system craft.

Thanks! I was really hesitant about it at first since I quite dislike the whole idea of a bridge on such ships. I mean, for trans-atmospheric flight ok, but in space itself?

For the Blockade Runner you might need to lengthen the rear wingy bits so the gun can easily clear the front wingy bits.

I know what you mean! However, the "latest" picture of the blockade runner (the one with the other escort and transport next to it for scale) is an older version of the model. This is the latest version of the blockade runner: no more big wing guns. I found them a bit off for the concept.

Would a distortion engine tug craft be an idea?

Too 'expensive', at least from a background perspective. Distortion Engines normally only work on rather large ships such as cruisers and battleships. Smaller craft such as escorts, transport ships, etc. get inside the 'field' generated by the Distortion Engine, meaning that these larger ships kinda become 'tug craft'.

The blockade runner is an exception, but it's very advanced tech compared to the rest of the ships. Normal transport ships and such would use relatively 'cheaper' tech, so they kinda use larger ships as a tug. However, ships with a Distortion Engine can't enter a planet's atmosphere. However, some larger civilian tug ships with Distortion Engines might be a cool idea. Need to ponder a bit on that.


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Got a feeling the ship is almost finished. I'm sticking to a single piece model for now due to easy castability. However, I've got two models now: one transport ship with two tanks, and another one with three.






All the ship needs now is some additional detailing here and there.

So I decided to try out modular...

Some pics:



Here are the four parts needed to make a three tank ship. Two of the tanks are identical, the front one is a unique piece. It looks too cool to ditch, at least in my humble opinion. In the meantime I could try to come up with other components that fit as 'carriages' in between the tanks.

The second pic shows how the tanks are connected to one another.

Sorry for just catching up now, very good work on the ships, especially his last container ship. Almost responded as I was reading, glad I didn't, that you should make it modular . I'm terrible with sizes so I wonder how viable it would be to make the ends of the containers able to hold the tiny magnets. That way in game you could remove sections of the ship for deployment.

I never got into battle fleet gothic, just started playing x-wing mini game and I'm enjoying that thoroughly. I would love to see something along the lines of the battlestar galactica fleet ships though.

The gaps have a diameter of 3mm, should be big enough to fit a magnet in right?

As for X-Wing and Battlestar Galactica, I have been pondering about doing some X-Wing inspired stuff and put it on my shop on Shapeways (check the Bits Blitz link in my sig). Lets see how that'll work out...

The thing I think that would sell really well right now for x-wing is gun turrets like on the Death Star. A few people have made them, but the ones I've liked haven't been made sellable by the makers (just for themselves), or just are too big in my opinion.

By the way, I've put my old escorts up on Shapeways for those interested in getting some ships: LINK.

I've been tweaking my existing escorts, let me know what you think!

Continued with the ships. The one in the back/left has been given some larger guns, enabling it to actually give out a punch in combat, making it akin to a corvette version of a Sword/Gladius Frigate I guess? The guns need a bit of extra work, and then it's just adding some final details here and there.

The ship on the right/front has been modified as well. Brought back the torpedo tubes, removed the guns at the back and put them at the front. The whole bridge/tower part still needs to be made. I'm also tempted to make some sort of turret/cannon on the top of the hull, not sure yet though..


In the meanwhile I also started working on a light cruiser. The "body" with the bridge and engines still need to be added, as are the weapon systems and the rest.


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Continuing with the Light Cruiser:

Been working on the ships some more. The escort with the removed big guns will be some sort of fast ship. Very lightly armed, but able to move really fast (maybe even with some sort of stealth thing). Mainly used for invasions and boarding actions, it is capable of transporting elite units fast and quietly.

The one with the missing bridge part (basically the other ship) is a heavier escort. A relatively slower ship, but able to give quite the punch due to its torpedos and plasma cannons (lances?).



I've also been busy updating the light cruiser. Some of the small gun turrets have been removed, it felt a bit too much. However, I did add something else to compensate that...

Good to see you back to work, interested to see what you do with the prows.

Thanks!

Revisited my transport ship. Altered the design of the "ship" component a bit (including adding a few tiny turrest), as well as created a variant cargo component. Idea is that the ship is a two part kit, allowing you to add different kinds of cargo to it.


Also continued working on the escort craft, I've started detailing the wings:

Another update on the escorts:





I've been tweaking the bridge components of the two ships, as well as some minor things here and there.

Shapeways just came out with some good news, seems we can now print out stuff in wax which, if I understand it correctly, will be pretty amazing. None of those nasty printlines, just a clean, smooth model that's ready to be cast! However, I've tried doing a test print, but for some reason Shapeways keeps telling me the model isn't suitable for printing in that material, which is odd since it follows all the parameters. Guess I'll have to contact Shapeways about it.

Luckily for me though, Shapeways is still testing the material, so it might improve in the coming months, enabling me to finish up the designs!

Little update, I've also added the dimensions:

Loving the work on the transport ship , but I was just thinking about it and thought. Why don't you make a small fore section that goes in front of any cargo pods, which can attach to the front of the larger vessel when its deadheading (moving without cargo containers), and can operate as a tug to grab the pods and maneuver them into position to/from the cargo ship. It could have a couple small engines that when attached to the ship actually face forward and could assist is slowing the ship down in emergencies, or be a escape/lifeboat in case of problems with the larger ship. Just a suggestion. Could also give it a light weapon to act as an escort craft of primary defense against raiders.

The big guns on the escorts have been bugging me for a while now, so I decided to make some variants!



The ship on the top/left (depending on which pic you're looking at) is a carrier craft, launching waves of fighters to intercept incoming ordnance, but are also capable of launching their own bomber waves to deal with larger targets. Its torpedo tubes are replaced for plasma batteries.

The other two ships are basically the same model, but with different weapons. Instead of launch bays, it is armed with additional turrets. Whilst not that effective against more armored targets, mass waves of fighters, bombers and torpedoes don't stand a chance against this configuration. Its prow weapon can either be the traditional torpedo tubes or plasma batteries.

All in all the models should be relatively easy to cast, the only potential challenge might be the launch bays and the plasma batteries, so I need to see whether this could be done as a single piece model, or if I might have to cut it up.

Whilst the escorts are as good as done (besides the potential challenges regarding their casting), I've been paying some attention to the light cruiser again:

Still haven't started on the back of the ship yet, but I did work on a variant carrying plasma batteries...

In the meantime I've also delved into something different...


It's still a very early WIP. A lot of the structure still needs to be thought out, the plasma batteries will need some serious tweaking. One thing I'd like is that the domes are meant to be see through, the four outer structures would contain vast forests in their domes, but I doubt that would be a real possibility, kinda tricky to do perhaps? I guess it will take some experimentation.

The station sounds cool. As always keep up the great work!

These are looking fantastic! I will be very interested once they are up for purchase.

By the way, remember my old Absolutist Light Cruiser? It got painted up by Icesword from Miniatures of the North!






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In the meantime I'm still working on the station. And yes, the see through parts are separate components. I'm wondering if they'll work in see-through resin, the domes are about 1mm thick.

I always liked that cruiser design of yours, looks great painted up. One of these days when I have more disposable income, I'll have to pick up a pair.

I am quite tempted to do a revision of that design, basically redo the Martinet and Absolutist. But lets see how that'll go, first I've got to finish up the station!

Definitely. Reworking those aren't a priority since they still look good. Keep up the good work with the station.

You have beautiful designs, Malika! Everything looks great. I love the brutish front end of that cruiser.

@Boblogik: the old designs could be better. Not so much that I'd change them fundamentally, but more that I could try to hollow it out a bit more, remove a lot of the internal geometry, so that I could sell them in a pack of 3-5 perhaps. Just to bring the price down.

@Warboss Waaazag: Thanks a lot! With the brutish front, do you mean the newer stuff or the printed and painted Absolutist?

In the meantime I wanted to share a little update.


I'm getting more and more tempted to make the central dome more akin to the external ones, so see-through. But I need to ponder a bit about it...




Quickly put together another escort variant. Needed a ship that can deliver a real punch against bigger targets, so...plasma batteries!

I quickly started on some fighter craft. Whilst I'm happy with their general shape, I don't really like the four barreled prow weapon. I'm thinking of replacing it for a prow similar to the larger ships, sort of to keep it uniform.

I tweaked the fighter design last night, but it still looked 'backwards'. Now I've added a tail to the aircraft. For some reason they kinda remind me of the old Epic-scaled Thunderbolt fighter and te Wraith Fighter from Star Craft, that...and WWII aircraft!

Oh yeah, for some reason I also started making variants...



Fighters (on the left) and interceptors (on the right). The interceptor is basically the two wings put together, with the body of the fighter removed. But considering the size, the thing ended up looking like an aircraft of its own.



Heavy fighters (left) and bombers (right). The bomber is basically a 'double bodied fighter', kinda borrowed that idea from the Star Wars TIE-Bomber. The heavy fighter is a beefier version of the fighter, maybe some sort of long range craft. I kinda imagined them to have stealth capabilities as well.




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Ok, little update on the fighters, that...and I've added the dimensions of the models!


Standard interceptor. A rather fast, but weak craft that's easily shot down. However, they are effective against enemy aircraft and are often used as cannon fodder against fire from enemy ships.


Advanced interceptor. Upgraded with extra armor without losing speed, the idea behind this design is that the pilots will survive the first attack. Often used by elite pilots and squadron leaders to hunt down enemy aircraft.


Standard fighter. The backbone of most aircraft fleets. Whilst not as fast and maneuverable as the interceptor, the fighter has superior armor and weaponry, making it formidable against enemy bombers.


Advanced fighter. Like the advanced interceptor, this craft is primarily used by elite pilots and squadron leaders. Besides additional armour and weaponry, this fighter also has extra engines. This enables the craft to be deployed for long range missions.


Scout craft. These are often deployed ahead of the fleet to explore uncharted territories. They are also used during battle to detect cloaked enemy craft.


Standard bomber. The main reason aircraft are still used in spacial warfare. Bombers are capable of destroying enemy escorts and seriously damaging larger ships. They are however slower, and thus more vulnerable. This means they often need to be protected by other aircraft.


Advanced bomber. This upgraded bomber has additional armour and engines. Like the advanced fighter it can be deployed for long range missions. However, they are often used when there is a lack of fighter craft to protect normal bomber craft.

I've got 14 different types of fighter craft so far. There are basically four categories (interceptor, fighter, bomber, scout), elite versions (only for the interceptor, fighter and bomber) and then there's the MkII version (with the bigger wings).

There's only one major problem at the moment. I'm a sucker for inverted wings, but not it looks as if they are flying backwards, which means that the tails will need some redesigning in order for them to work...



In the meantime I've also started working on a new version of the transport ship (and yes, it include removable containers). It's quite a lot bigger than the previous incarnation, it's more heavy cruiser sized rather than escort. In all the ship will probably be about 10cm long, twice as long as a escorts! The prow fits in the style of the escorts and light cruisers, but is slightly modified to set it apart as a civilian ship.



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Small update!

Tweaked the fighters a bit, ditched a lot of the variants, meaning that instead of 14 I (only!) have 7 now. The three basic craft are in the pic:


Also continued working on the transport barge, including a container variant:

I'm really digging this version of the transport since it maintains a sense of balance. I could if I wanted to also use the hull as a basis for military ships by simply replacing the containers with weapon systems. Might be a bit odd as full on military cruisers, perhaps more as civilian ships converted for a defensive purpose (Q-ships in BFG). A military ship would have a slightly different hull: prow more like the escorts and light cruiser, and lots more weapons!





In the meantime I've been tweaking the transportship some more, it feels like a really solid and sturdy craft, which kinda fits with the more industrial/worker feel I'm going for. The ship still needs some comm array/radars, which I'm planning on building underneath the prow and/or bridge. The back hull needs further detailing, and then a few container variants.

That transport ship is simply perfect! It has a good sense of weight and purpose to it. One converted to a military use wold be interesting to see as well.

Nice little fighters as well, you seem to have gotten a good amount of detail into such a small area.

Just wanted to give you a bit of an update. I've been contacted by a fellow who's testing out his new 3d printer. The guy wants me to design some terrain for him, no probs! However, I also asked him if he could do a test print of one of my escorts. I've got a feeling the machine is slightly inferior than what Shapeways and other can offer, but it does provide me with an opportunity to get a free test print to see whether the model will work.

In the meantime I've continued working on the escorts:



Modified the hulls a bit, and removed some of the guns. Problem was that the guns were blocking out some of the other details.

The transportship has also received a lot of work:





As you can see the container variants have some more detailing added to them. The ship itself is also receiving more and more detailing. There's still a lot to be done before it's ready though.

Mangozac's latest work has really got me motivated to do some ships again!

This time another escort, but a little bit bigger (5.55mm long). And oh yeah, it's from another faction!



As you may notice, I've been playing with more rounded shapes and returned to introducing the round Distortion Drive from my earlier designs. Another thing I've been playing with are the turrets, in my early designs I really wanted to include some small globe like turrets, kinda like as if the blobs on a Dalek were guns. Back then I wasn't really able yet to do them, now I've sort of got them. I'm happy the way they've turned out, considering the scale.




The ship still needs a lot of detailing, and also some sort of components to put on top/bottom of the Distortion Drive component, kind of what I did with my previous ship.

Ooh a new faction, exciting. Can't wait to see what direction you take these guys in.

I must have some of these ships though, you gotta find someone to cast them up pronto!

I'm curious to see how they'll develop too! One thing is that, despite it's different end design, I like the idea that the ships do all come from the same 'source', meaning that their designs all have the same starting point, perhaps some 'pre-fall' tech or something, but that afterwards different worlds started to develop that same technology into different directions, with at the end some very unique results.

As for the casting, I might have a fellow in the UK who is able and willing, but he's still gonna be busy to set up all his equipment and learn to do it. In the meantime I'm also in quite the financial pickle, meaning that high end prints aren't an option yet. And before you start with that I should run a Kickstarter, even for that you'd need some serious starting capital, just to have some stuff ready to show and all that does cost something. Luckily I might be getting some more freelance projects soon, which means $$$ (well, actually €€€).

I am also, getting very tempted to tie this ship project in with my other 3d project I've been working on...


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Kinda felt that the ship was a bit too much like a rectangle block. You can see that the 'vertical components' are kinda similar to the tail thing of my original escort, which is kinda funny since that original escort formed the basis of these warships. I'm toying with the idea that from a background perspective all these ships have the same 'origins' if you will, an empire or something that originally produced some specific designs (compare it to the STC in 40k I guess). This empire eventually collapsed, and new, and smaller, ones raised from its ashes. Now these smaller empires don't all maintain contact with one another, meaning that their technology might also develop in different directions. But despite of this there would still be some markers here and there that would make them seem somewhat similar.



In order to give the ship some more shape, I've also thinned out the front part (everything in front of the Distortion Drive) a bit. Some more detailing will have to be added, but that has to be done anyways!

Changed the front part of the ship a bit by thinning it out vertically:


(the top picture is the new version, for comparison I've added the previous version on the bottom)

Hmm, I've put the new design on hold for now, I need to ponder a bit more about it. The axe prow will come back at some other ship, most likely something Destroyer sized.

In the meantime, I've been working a bit on the Corvettes, and upgraded a design variant into a Frigate:

I've been experimenting a bit with some panel lines, they're 0.25mm wide and 0.5mm deep. The big gap on the port side of the ship is going to be where the sensor array will be placed. I'm a bit in doubt at the moment on how to design it, at the moment I'm pondering about a flipped sideways version of the Land Raider Prometheus' sensor array, or maybe something more akin to the one of the Land Speeder...

I tweaked the escorts slightly to improve their castability. The big change is that I've rotated the back thrusters. This will enable me to cast the ship as a single piece, rather than separating the back from the front. However, I've also had to remove the vent like elements on the side wings. I will have to see if I can come up with another cool detailing there, or perhaps keep it relatively simple.





I've also added some detailing to the prow, I guess it's some sort of scanner or something. It might make the casting process a bit trickier, so I might try to shrink it a bit. I don't want to be forced to have to cut up this small craft into multiple bits.

The ships are almost there I think...

As you can see I've added some new ships to the mix. The original two escorts have become Corvettes, and now they've got a Frigate (larger ship) and Destroyer (small fella) added to the mix.

I'm toying a bit with the background of this stuff as well. These ships are part of the Navis Mercantilis, in other words the mercantile fleet. Whilst suitable for military service, their primary purpose is to escort transport ships. It also explains why they don't deploy larger military craft such as Cruisers and Battleships.

The Corvettes are the main escort ship, the workhorse of the fleet if you will. Whilst small they can still carry quite the punch. Standardly armed with torpedoes the Corvettes either carry lances or deploy fighter craft.

Frigates tend to function as command ships for the escort fleets, armed with both fighter craft and lances, Frigates can stand on their own when fighting against raiders. Deployed in squadrons they can even hunt larger targets.

Destroyers are the smallest of ships, lightly armed with conventional turrets, they're meant to defend larger targets from large numbers of small escorts and fighter craft. The model still needs some work. A bridge need to be added, and I'm tempted to redesign the turrets.

A little teaser of the ships I've got so far...

In the meantime, to give you an idea of scale:



The Transportship is about 100mm long, the Corvette about 42mm and the Destroyer stands at 33mm.

I got a little bit distracted last night...





A raider escort, armed with boarding pods and two frontal cannons. It's still a very early WIP and still needs a lot of work. I was a bit influenced by more conventional ships, combining it with elements of Ottoman architecture, hence the dome.

Besides the ship I've also started work on a boarding pod, kinda inspired by a familiar design. I'm not sure yet if the existing BFG rules allow for an escort to carry boarding pods, if such an option isn't possible, the 'boarding pod launchers' could just count as (missile) weapon batteries of a sorts.

First of all, the boarding pod is (as good as) finished:




The width/height of the pod is about 6.3mm and it's 6.2mm long. I tried making the design look a bit cruder than the ships, but at this scale that sort of thing can be a bit tricky.

The new ship in the meantime has gotten a lot of work done, including a bit of a resize.



The design philosophy of this ship is rather different than the previous escorts. Whilst more than capable to go on the offensive, the design of those ships was more oriented towards defense rather than offense. The escorts were meant to protect the larger transportships from attackers. This new ship however was created for the sole purpose of war, attacking rather than defending. Hopefully the shape of the ship has kinda managed to reflect that.




I'm not fully happy with the engines and the prow yet, so both will still need some tweaking. Beyond that it's checking out some of the details again and see if they still work now that the ship has been resized.



As you can see, the new ship (48mm long) is considerably larger than the destroyer on the bottom (36mm long). I'd love to expand on this range, add a few more escort sized ships and then a light cruiser or something.

Ordnance time!!!

Well, mainly boarding action oriented stuff...

The Trade Guilds (faction of which I've designed the Corvettes, Destroyers and giant transportships) use normally use shuttles to board ships for inspection. However, when attacked they can deploy their own security forces to board enemy craft. Soldiers of the Trade Guilds are carried in Assault Pods that can be launched from various Carrier craft.



It's basically the original assault pod I designed a long time ago. It's dimensions are 9.46mm long by 4.5mm wide by 2.25mm tall. I'll be making some small modifications to it in an attempt to fit more to the aesthetic of the faction.

You've already seen this Boarding Pod, a common tool used by the various military factions. The Boarding Pod is a rather crude vehicle. Upon impact with enemy ships the pod's claws dig their way into the prey's hull. The pod then burns a hole through the ship's armor, unleashing its deadly cargo...




As you can see I haven't really changed the design since last time. The only thing I did now was to include a variant of the pod, basically the same design but with its claws more opened up. Thought it to be a nice touch to have them both. The closed pod is 6.3mm wide/tall by 6.2mm long, the opened pod is 6.98mm wide/tall by 5.14mm long.

Whilst ships have their own sensor arrays to guide their weapons and detect enemy craft, military vessels often deploy Sensor Drones to detect hidden targets and scout ahead of the fleet.




Like the Boarding Pod, the Sensor Drone has an 'open' and 'closed' variant. Also, it's exhaust is the other way around compared to the pod, making the Sensor Drone almost look like a reversed Boarding Pod. The closed pod is 5.94mm tall/wide and 9.21mm long. The open pod is 8.52mm tall/wide and 8.13mm long.

Looking awesome man! I love seeing new BFG scaled ships that really capture the details like yours.

I might have missed it, but are you 3d printing these or otherwise making them available for purchase?

Thanks! By the way, did you also check Armand's stuff? The guys over at Resin Addict have also been doing some amazing stuff!

But yeah, regarding my own ships: the plan is to print them and have them cast. A fellow over in the UK will do a few test prints for me, that way I can see if the designs actually work in real life (I noticed it's very easy to make very tiny details on a computer, but they won't be visible in real life). After that it would be casting I guess. So lets see how that'll go, hopefully I'll be able to post some pictures in the coming weeks.

Wow, those are nice! I need to get RiTides to CAD up some cool ships for him to print and me to cast. Though we might be the majority of the target audience on this side of the pond

A little teaser...

A little box arrived at the post yesterday...


(not all the boarding pods are in the picture)


Compared to FUD by Shapeways (front ship) this stuff is (a) a lot more detailed and (b) a lot smoother, which is all very nice!








However, there have been some issues with the bottom parts of the ships:



Hopefully this can be fixed with some (liquid) greenstuff and some filing/sanding...

Oh, and I really love how the boarding pods came out!

 Malika2 wrote:
A little box arrived at the post yesterday...

Fantastic work!

It is a bummer about the repairs needed on the bottom of the ships - I have the same issue with my printer, and it's a tough thing to get right. I simply cannot wait for someone to figure out dissolvable supports for liquid resin printers... or some other method, if that's not possible using this particular technology.

Are you connected to the company that recently started selling ships that are somewhat like this, or are you guys just friends/allies but not connected?

Are you connected to the company that recently started selling ships that are somewhat like this, or are you guys just friends/allies but not connected?

You mean Battlegroup Helios? That's a totally different company, really love their work though. Vaaish (the designer of their cruisers) is really amazing and Mangozac has really built a reputation as a model maker, so I can't be anything but in awe of their work.

Mangozac's feedback has been really influential in the development of my ships, the guy knows his stuff!

I also just sent my last batch of ship related goodies to be printed!

Got it . Cool that you're making two factions! Very much looking forward to seeing these cast.

Decided to put two of my old transportships on my shop on Shapeways:

Alpha

http://shpws.me/BiyF

Beta

http://shpws.me/BiL8

Looking for some Destroyer sized escorts?
.

Kit includes 5 ships, each one of them is 9mm wide, 10mm tall and 34mm long.

Early teaser... (and yes it's a miscast)

More pics of the cast Destroyers:

(gunship on the left, carrier on the right)



Here are pics of the original prints.

Carrier:


Gunship:

Wow! They look great, Malika! Just phenomenal work.

With casts of my escorts ever closer I started working on some new transportships.




A blockade runner of a sorts, heavily armed for a transport its size. The engines might make casting a bit tricky, or maybe not, we'll see!


A light transportship, about the size of the Destroyers. The design is pretty straight forward, nothing too crazy.


Another light transport, also about the size of the Destroyers but more elongated.


A slightly larger transport, originally based on the Corvette hull, now modified to function as a fuel transport. Might tweak the fuel tanks a bit, the bits on the tops and bottoms are a bit overkill...


Another one of the Corvette sized transports. Kind of the 'black sheep' of the family. Its bridge is mounted on the front of the ship, and it's also armed with a twin linked turret. The sides of the prow still need some detailing.


Whilst based on the Corvette sized hulls, this one is the largest of the bunch, almost 6cm long it's closer to a Frigate or even a Light Cruiser.

I might want to give it a shot at some fighter craft again. Something based on the 'Grifter' from Dreadnought, but then a lot blockier/clunkier:
[MEDIA=youtube]Dm0g7mDKFq0[/MEDIA]
http://www.patrickhecht.com/?portfolio=yager-dreadnought

90% of your photos aren't working for some reason, but fantastic work on what I can see

True, most of my old pics aren't working anymore, it's due to a restructuring of my Photobucket. So to help you out:

Ship designs I did for Bits Blitz (my Shapeways shop)

Legion (count as pre-Imperial humans) ship designs

Ship designs I'm currently doing for Fox Box

Cast by Fox Box, donated for Gothicomp 2015.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
To give you a bit of context regarding the status of the transportships:

I started working on an enemy faction. Sort of like Orks, but then human I guess. I like the idea of raiders and pirates being enemy for these transport ships. Since they're human, it means that their technology is not different from the other faction. I don't have any names or anything for them yet...

These ships are frigate sized and heavily armed. They are standard armed with heavy cannons and two twin-linked turrets. The teeth on the ships' prows are not only for decoration. These ships are able to ram and tear through enemy ships and even 'devour' debris (which is then used to either repair the ship or recycled for raw materials).



'Turret ship', its secondary weapon system is basically six smaller twin-linked turrets designed to take out weaker targets such as escorts and fighters/bombers.




'Ordnance ship', its secondary system consists of six torpedo tubes. These can either be armed with a wide array of different torpedoes, or with boarding pods. The boarding pods have some nasty claws which allow them to latch on to an enemy ship whilst unleashing their deadly cargo.



'Lance ship', its secondary weapon systems are Lance Cannons, nasty energy weapons designed to tear through shielding and thick armor.




'Carrier ship', this one is slightly different from the other three ships. What it sacrifices in heavy cannons, it makes up in launch bays. The carrier can unleash swarms of deadly craft that can easily tear through enemy ordnance. Not only that, but these craft can also carry troops, either to drop them on a planet's surface, or by ramming enemy craft.


To give you a sense of scale I've put the raiders and the transports against each other. Note that the raider ships are about 51mm long.

They could be called the judicators, don't know why just sounds like a cool name

Test printed some BFG scaled ordnance:

Update!!!

Corvette Carrier:




Corvette Gunship:

He lives! Looking great brother.

Continued tweaking the existing ship designs, and revived a really old design.

About two years ago I worked on this:


Today it has evolved into something that could match the rest of the designs I've made:


The ships still need a whole lot of work, but the idea is basically they are a more heavily armed, but less armoured versions of my 'normal' corvettes.

All ships are the same size (40mm long):


And now there are three weapon configurations instead of two:

Lances:


Weapon batteries:


Carriers:


The original ships (ones in the back) are as good as done, little tweaking here and there. The sleeker (front) ships need some more work though, (A) to match the aesthetic of the other ships better and (B) to make each a bit more unique.

They Look fantastic!

this thread is so cool

Been working on the frigate sized craft some more. It's becoming more 'techy' than 'ornate' looking, combining my two favourite ship designs (BFG and Homeworld). Kinda curious to see where this'll go...

I like it brother!

Frigates:




Destroyers:



Stations:





Fighter:

Test print came in, apologies for the horrible quality of the photos. Keep in mind that since this print was ordered the design has been updated slightly (see previous posts).

I like the look of those stations!

These are very nifty. Hopefully Rules or production soon?

The stations have some issues when converting the models to stl (printable) files, will have to look into that.

The frigate and destroyer ships are as good as ready and will hopefully be shipped off to Vanguard Miniatures soon. Same goes for the fighter craft.

So with, or without those side guns?

I like the side guns, but both designs are solid

Boarding pods!