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

[Malika]

Update on the plasma prow:

[Malika]

By the way, I did do a little bit of work on the Legion ship, namely replacing the old turrets for the new ones. Reason behind it is that the barrels of the old turret are too frail to print. I've also hollowed out the design greatly, but at the same time I've been pondering of making the ships slightly bigger than normal BFG models (cruiser being 15cm long for example), but I'm not 100% sure on that yet...

[Malika]

Remember the torpedoes I did a while back? They're available on Bits Blitz.

[Malika]

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

[marell le fou]

The great brother of the first one. What do you plan to do on this new one ?

[Malika]

As you can see the battleship is huge. The original idea of an all purpose ship has now become the battleship. Whilst the cruisers are constantly modified for each battle/campaign, the battleship is meant to function all on its own. Armed to the teeth (it carries 8 times as many torpedo prows as the cruiser!), a single battleship can pacify entire sectors!

[Islacrusez]

Not a huge fan of the squarey-wavey shape, just looks like a mess. Personally I'd go with a consistent shape as with the cruisers, or a more defined and deliberate shape. I also prefer the main engine thingy not being in the middle of the ship, largely for aesthetic reasons.

[Malika]

I know what you mean, it didn't feel 100% right at first, but after your comment it really started to bug me, so...



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.

[Islacrusez]

I like the missile launchers; reminds me a lot of the cruise and torpedo launchers of EVE. Perhaps some way of covering the exposed tubes might aid the appearance?

[Malika]

You mean like some sort of lid that can open and close?

[Islacrusez]

Not necessarily a functional lid, but like sliding bay doors perhaps. The RL justification is be that you don't want crap in your missile tubes, which might damage the missile, or worse, jam it in the tube at the most awkward moment. If you want I can take some screenshots from the EVE launchers next time I'm ingame (later tonight).

[Islacrusez]

Source: EVE Online
Credit: Crowd Control Productions (CCP)

Let's just say that CCP designs are amazing and nicely detailed. I don't think that GW puts as much time into a whole ship as CCP does into a single ships' weapons module.







The launcher that fires cruise missiles on-par with the torpedoes has a small gantry that comes up with the missile and is also really cool, but I figured it's not that relevant here. Basically just trying to give ideas as to what things might be found on a large missile launcher, which might help get your launcher from 6 holes in the side of a ship to the badass weaponry it really is.

[Malika]

Hmm, I think I'll go for the second option, on the model it would just count as 'being open'. The scale I'm working at makes it very difficult, if not impossible to add those tiny details since each torpedo tube would have a diameter of around 1.5mm.

[Malika]

[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.

[Islacrusez]

I imagine a higher quality print would bring out most of the finer details too. Obviously no harm in making the details more pronounced, especially if it means you can use a cheaper print and make the product cheaper. Of course the higher quality print would be advisable for making your master for casting.


Gotta say, looking fine; can't wait to see some paint on it!