I've always thought spaceships should have curves to them. The ships that really inspire me are those from the science fiction book cover illustrations of the 70s. Unfortunately most of the miniature ships I make are blocky, due to the limitations of the construction methods.
All of the bad weather has left a bunch of fallen branches in our yard, including some nice straight tulip poplar pieces. I've read poplar is good for carving so I figured, what the heck, I'll give it a try.
I've certainly not produced a work of art, but I'm strangely drawn to this ship design. It's spartan in detail, but as I've noted on this blog before, the panel lines my other ships display are totally inappropriate for the scales they supposedly represent.
The true measure of the design will be apparent after I mold the wooden master and cast replicas in pewter or resin. Obviously in order to make it look like a 300 meter long star-voyaging vessel and not a whittled toy, I'll need to get the surface extremely smooth. I've used 120 grit sandpaper and got the ship feeling buttery smooth, but the woodgrain is still very apparent, as the picture below shows. My previous experiments with wood revealed however that three coats of wood glue should make a shiny, plastic-like shell that I can sand down even smoother.
I'm ordering some Alumilite HSIII silicone in order to eventually make those molds. I've found 10:1 RTV silicone to be temperamental in the cold months however, so while I wait for Spring to come I'll have a little time to carve a squadron or two.
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| ~50mm long |
I always liked those 70s ships! I used to pour over the various Terran Trade Authority books by Stewart Cowley at the mall bookstores. I look forward to the completion of this ship.
ReplyDeleteThey're the best! I probably glance at the TTA at least weekly.
ReplyDeleteI have not read them in forever, but recently some animators have animated (I guess that is redundant) scenes from the book:
ReplyDeletehttps://vimeo.com/29549708
I don't usually like computer rendering of any kind, but I have to admit that video looks like a pure labor of love and a lot of effort. Very cool.
DeleteThat's a nice ship there. Looking forward to seeing others.
ReplyDeleteI took the carving route with branches from a willow beside where I work and other various wood scraps. They are the stars of the second post of my just-started blog: http://homemademini.blogspot.ca/2015/02/my-first-spaceships.html. It's been a few months since the last one though.
On a side note, I also tried out your Greater Space Battles rule set (solo of course). I recorded my session and thoughts on my first (and so far only) play and plan to eventually post it as well. Thanks for sharing what you do here.
Thanks for trying my rules Dave! I have to admit I wrote those a few years ago and there are a few things that still bug me about them that I'm trying to fix.
ReplyDelete- I no longer feel that a ship's size should contribute to its chances of getting Action Tokens. In my redesign of the game I'm including a random ship design rule where big ships have a reduced chance of getting "M" slots for movement.
- I've always disliked the movement rules as I have them written. The new rules coming soon still have an element of randomness, but with the ship design mentioned above should be a lot cleaner.
- Final change: in order to keep the pseudo-vector movement but keep it simple, I'm designing the new version of the game to use hexes.
Funny you should mention using hexes for movement. That was one of the two things I modified from your rules; I used a hex sheet. The other was the ability to repair critical damage, which I tossed out after the first half of the game because it seemed to be prolonging the action, and I still ended up wrapping the game because of time. Granted most of that time was spent getting used to the flow of the game.
ReplyDeleteI look forward to trying out your next version.
Ah, perfect; glad to hear you had the same issues I did with the repair rules. The next version will utilize "partial repairs", stretching repairs out over two turns (unless there are some great die rolls).
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