Idea: Could you mount the ships either on a long threaded rod (steel or brass)
or on a long unthreaded chunk of brass tubing? Either drill out the centre of
the ship and glue a clamp to the bottom - the rod passes through and the
clamp locks the ship to the rod - or if using tubing, just whole the
tubing in a bunch of spots so a metal pin or needle or something could be
thrust through to support the ship. If you mount the ship on a clamp beside
the rod, you'd be wise to mount a black chunk of lead on the other side to
counter any offset weight. The bases would probably need to be 4" or more
across to be totally stable. An idea like this might give you quite a degree
of flexibility in terms of height levels(especially the threaded rod/nut
combination - just spin your ship to a higher level - lefty loosey,
righty tightey).
OTOH, this is just a suggestion. I'm far to lazy to do this. 3D SG2 is quite
enough of a challenge. If I need 3D in spaceships, I get the computer.
A Less Wyziwig way of doing this: Colour coded washers to put under the ships.
For example: White means level 1, Red means level 2, etc. etc. Lines of fire
and ranges aren't literal then, but one can still do limited 3d.
Tom.
> "Thomas.Barclay" wrote:
> A Less Wyziwig way of doing this: Colour coded washers to put under
We've done something similar using poker chips. (White=1, Red=5, Blue=10) You
just place the required amount of chips under each base and go from there.
With the standard 100 poker chips, you can handle a fleet of 6 ships fairly
easily. It works fine, but you still need a calculator with SQRT to handle
ranges and movement.
-Mike
Amongst the many ideas fiddled with but never actually fully tested was one
using the number of poker chips to indicate the height, but the colors of the
poker chips to help visualize the same. every 5th chip red, 10th blue. Making
a chip as the base of a fig, I found you could stack these pretty high, and
push them around a table fairly safely. If you need to actually lift the
stack, tho'...
I must say, I'm thrilled I'm not the only one crazy enough to have sat around
visualizing volumes filled with transparent marbles.
;->=
The_Beast
How about a mount designed along the lines of those rotating rings you are
strapped into that are attached at opposite points.
example:
http://members.toast.net/chanfaunce/graphic1.gif
This alows the ship to be 'rolled', the grey ring to be 'pitched', and the
black ring to be 'yawed'.
Don't know if this could be scratch-built, but if any one wants to
try...
> Channing Faunce <chanfaunce@toast.net> wrote:
Sure it could be scratch-built. The question I have is how to
do the pivot points and how to lock the ship into position once it has been
rotated to a new postion. Maybe have screw threads on the ends of the various
axis' where a nut would be attached. Loosen a nut to rotate the ships and then
tighten it again to keep it there.
Enjoy,