My young admirals have been talking about including space habitats in FT
games, and being the lads they are, this has led to discussions about building
suitable models. More power to them, but it brings up the question of scale
and suitable materials.
After all, at the 1:2400 GZG ship-mini scale, an Island-3 style
O'Neil Cylinder would be roughly 2.5m in diameter, and some 8m long!
Clearly impractical (though it does make you think...). An Island-1
type Bernal Sphere would be much more reasonable, at around 200mm diameter. A
Stanford Torus would be stretching it at roughly 750mm diameter.
We've made do with painting up 3l PET grapefruit-juice bottles with
suitable bits and pieces stuck on, but they do look a bit small next to our
ship minis. Has anyone on the list done any modelling of this sort of thing?
Probably the best thing is to put them in at a smaller scale than the ships,
after all the 'ground scale' is different to the 'model scale', so a smaller
representation of space habitat may be more appropriate.
I have done planets/moons using large (20cm radius) foam balls cut in
half, and painted up to represent the surface.
Robyn
[quoted original message omitted]
> Probably the best thing is to put them in at a smaller scale than the
Agreed - the mini scale isn't really relevant in FT, since if the
ships were to scale you'd need a microscope over the games table (and
my sculpting would need to get a lot finer).... ;-)
As it is, the 1/2400 scale is very, very rough - and the fighters are
several times larger than they really should be. So, I'd make colonies,
habitats etc. so that they look sufficiently impressive on the table, but as
long as they are larger than the biggest ship you have that should be visually
OK. The old plastic Bab5 station kit can look very good if you can find one,
but takes up a lot of table space at around 19" long. There is also a recent
(as in last few years) Revell (?) kit of the International Space Station which
yields all sorts of useful parts for building your own habitats.
Jon (GZG)
> ----- Original Message -----
http://vermouth.csua.berkeley.edu:1337/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gzg-l
> _______________________________________________
> On Fri, June 27, 2008 05:57, Robyn Stott wrote:
GZG did do a space station, I'm assuming they still do.
> I have done planets/moons using large (20cm radius) foam balls cut in
I've done something similar with polystyrene balls, though the largest I have
currently are 10cm diameter:
http://www.glendale.org.uk/ft/planets.html
I do need some larger ones for larger planets, and have actually found
somewhere which does them. The larger ones even come in two halves, which is
perfect.
http://www.grahamsweet.com/balls/polystyrene-balls.php
Doing anything around gas giants at the scales I use is probably impractical
unless I can find a really big floor.
My son is interested in space habitats, and we'd love to see your models.
andy
---- Original message ----
> Date: Fri, 27 Jun 2008 12:20:55 +1000
Two more good stations. The space station from DLD Productions is pretty nice.
I also sometimes use the explorer ship from B5Wars as a station rather than a
ship. It works well either way, and I'd imagine that many stations would
actually be mobile in the strategic (though
not tactical) sense. Since you need station-keeping drives, you might
as well unless you're tied to a particular location.
Also, a station need not be a logically laid out structure unless
you're rotating for gravity. A tightly-bound, thrown-together cluster
of habitats, some inflatable, is perfect for a boom town, pirate base, or
fringe enclave. I've found that electrical components from radio
shack are perfect-- capacitors for modules, with resistors as storage
tanks and wire for structure.
Rob
Robert Mayberry
(678) 984-5113
Robert.Mayberry@gmail.com
On Fri, Jun 27, 2008 at 3:34 AM, Samuel Penn <sam@glendale.org.uk> wrote:
> On Fri, June 27, 2008 05:57, Robyn Stott wrote:
Er... what size ARE those bottles?
Thirty-one litre to litre and a half would pretty much leave no room for
ships...
Even single serving would cover a lot of territory; I'd like to see them,
too!...
The_Beast
Andy wrote on 06/27/2008 06:33:58 AM:
> My son is interested in space habitats, and we'd love to see your
***snippage***
> >
I don't know where you got the 31 litre from... Unless it was my use
of a lower-case L for litre. :)
In fact I did screw up, and I apologise to the list. I should check these
things instead of relying on my failing memory. The large
cylindrical PET soft-drink bottles I had in mind are two litres in
capacity, not three.
Robert said:
> My young admirals have been talking about including space habitats in
I've built an ESU mining station from a plastic pudding container, a drawer
knob and various bits and pieces, and plated the 'hull' with paper
"plates" - undercoat in black and then dry brush with something like
Codex Grey or a muddy white, the black shows through the gaps between the
plates. Picture here:
http://billinghurst.spalding.gen.nz/Webstuff/hobbies/starshipgalleryship
s.html
Other things I've considered are the containers CDs/DVDs come in or even
some of the plastic packages door fittings and other hardware come in, as
you're only modelling half the station (the other half extends below the
table top). As for size, bigger than an battleship, but not much bigger,
otherwise it takes up too much room. If people worry about the relative size
then just say it's further away:)
I made a station that's integrated into an asteroid. It has a launch platform,
a docking bay, weapons ports, and other 'greeblies' added to the exterior.
> Robert said:
A company called Pegasus Systems makes (or made, it was a couple of years ago)
a "Chemical Plant Construction Set" which is a mass of plastic tanks, tubes,
and valves. Good source for the fuel & life support bits.
cheers,
Still available, though your search should probably be for 'Pegasus Hobbies'.
I believe they are actually made in Russia by a company that is something like
'Techno', and imported into the US by ICM. I think one of our store's
distributors could only get the Power Plant, the smaller version of the
Chemical plant.
They also did the Platformer and Hexagon construction kits, which I think
could be used with the Chemical/Power Plant kits to create smashing VSF
constructs, and a weird mecha/40K/wastelands game....
Actually, if he's using two litre bottles, he could probable more use the
Platformer and Hexagon type sets to 'plate' the outsides.
I'm going just the opposite direction: I've been trying for some time to work
up a ST DS9 scenario using micromachines, and am perfectly happy to use the
Space Dock, same size as the ships, as a station in the Dominion War.
The_Beast
PS Sorry to all about the 3l 31 confusion; new glasses and all that.
Hugh wrote on 06/28/2008 03:07:38 AM:
> Please respond to gzg-l