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

[Geep]

Looking good to me. Have you added holes for flight stands, or do people drill their own?

[Malika]

I've been wanting to add a hole on the bottom for a flight stand, but it would cause a serious undercut which would make the casting process a lot more difficult. For that reason I've only added a 0.5mm 'gap' which isn't that difficult to cast. Users could then easily drill the needed hole for the flight stand.

[Malika]

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.

[Malika]

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

[Geep]

I've pretty much run out of things to say, so... *insert words of encouragement here*

[Malika]

Thanks!

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.

[Zorcon]

Amazing work!!!

[Malika]

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.

[Geep]

I like the claw-pod thing. It can double as a larger scale weapon front.

[Malika]

Thanks! I could imagine it'd be used in different conversions as well!

In the meantime, 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.

[Malika]

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.

[Malika]

A little teaser...

[Geep]

Nicely done. How fragile is the finished product?

[Malika]

At the moment I've got no clue since this is a picture taken by the guys from the printing company. I only have direct contact with the guy who want to cast/distribute my models. He apparently won 400 pounds voucher to print stuff, so he immediately wanted to do my ships of course.

[Gun_wun]

Sweet