[BFG] - Designing new ship types - 3d printing madness

[Malika]

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.

[Malika]

Not sure yet about the weapons...

[Malika]

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...

[marell le fou]

Why can't you print it ? It looks classical and quiet simple to my eyes ?

[Malika]

Apparently it's not watertight (welcome to the fun world of geometries), and when I try to get it watertight throug a program like netfabb it basically tears the model to shreds. In other words...nothing remains, making it even more unprintable.

[Malika]

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...

[marell le fou]

Nice global shape.

Why not dockyards clipped on the wings ? Extra cargo is always a good idea.

[Malika]

Hmm, maybe. I need to kinda think on how that'll work. At the moment I'm imagining this ship as a sort of blockade runner. It's main purpose to quickly bring something, or someone from one location to the other. Not really mass transport or a fighting craft.

[marell le fou]

OK, so... Big reactors !

[Malika]

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

[Islacrusez]

That's looking pretty sweet! I might actually be interested in a few to serve as stand-ins during development of my system! Overall shape is pretty fantastic, and the basic wing shape looks smooth and fits nicely. The previous version showed the SC heritage a bit too much I think.

[Malika]

I fixed the first escort to improve its castability:




Also continued working on the blockade runner:

[Malika]

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

[Malika]

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.

[Malika]

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...