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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