> Roger Books wrote:
Even more of a problem than the relative scale differences between HH and FT,
there is a large difference in scales between the HH ships themselves.
For my own reference, I made a sample size chart based on (mostly) canonical
class sizes:
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~tpope/miniatures/sculpting/harrington.jpg
The Minotaur (ship illustrated in the last book) would be just slightly bigger
than the Battleship. From memory, the Superdreadmought was 4000m, the
Dreadnought 3000m, Battleship 2000m, Battlecruiser 1500m,
etc...
Anythign smaller than a Cruiser is just speculation, but very well researched
speculations from the author of the Nefarious List.
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~tpope/misc/harrington/nefarious-list.html
At 1/30000 the largest ship would be just over 13cm long. That's a bit
big for a game piece, espectially since you're going to have a lot more 'bulk'
than may of the FT ships. (making the miniature very heavy)
With that scale, you're looking at a 8cm (roughly) Minotaur. In those 8cm,
you've got less than 4cm of main body to somehow sculpt two rows of 25 hatches
for the Shrikes. The smaller the ship gets, the worse it will be to get any
detail at all...
I was going to machine the production masters from brass rod, then add bits on
as necessary (didn't think I could get that even a taper by hand). After that,
I would send them away to be cast in pewter. After a bit of further thought, I
decided that it would probably be best
(cheapest/lightest) to make them hollow. Of course, that bring up all
sorts of other design problems...
It's mostly a moot point, since only one (three if you count the rough drafts
I've nabbed from the illustrator's page) design is done so far. Still, it
would be darn cool to see them on the table.
Tom
> On 23-Sep-99 at 15:47, Thomas Pope (tpope@cs.cmu.edu) wrote:
I don't see this as being any worse than the scale difference between the FSE
SDN and the FSE frigate. Maybe I'm missing something?
It may be beyond my abilities to sculpt, but isn't as bad as I initially
thought.
where is an example of the HH ship picture mentioned?
> Tim Jones wrote:
Sorry, I knew I was leaving something out.
The 'official' artwork is located here:
http://www.home.earthlink.net/~captruss/RMN.html
For readers of the books, the "small tease" on the main page is the HMS Nike
(Battlecruiser, 1200m in length)
Here are a few fan related pages also of interest: (though not 'canon')
http://www.netrover.com/~jcresswl/filkpg/scales.html
http://www.ameritech.net/users/jmrobert/vaubon.html
The Vaubon is probably much too short for a Cruiser, the other page is using
mostly if not all canonical data for the sizes.
Tom
> Roger Books wrote:
I gues my main worry is things like the HMS Nike:
http://www.home.earthlink.net/~captruss/Images/tease.gif
If I'm remembering correctly that it is 1200m long, we're looking at a 4cm
miniature, with just over 1cm to put in all that hull detail.
I guess my main problem is that, with the ships that are... well... boring in
basic hull design I'd really like to have a good amount of detail to make them
a little less boring. Since I'm not willing to put detail on that isn't there
already, it's getting kind of limited for the smaller ships.
By no means impossible to do, just difficult.
Just an aside, the artist has a bit of freedom in ship design as long as they
follow the same basic rules. One of the things he mentioned on a newsgroup
post is that he would be playing around with different style hammerheads to
help distinguish the different classes. Something that's very apparent between
the Nike and the Minotaur.
That will be very helpful for miniatures, since it would be just about
impossible to tell them apart any other way. (aside from size)
> It may be beyond my abilities to sculpt, but isn't as bad as I
I guess it's worse than I initually thought, but not insurmountable.
Even if we dont' work together or anything, do you want to settle on a common
scale for the miniautres we're both working on? It would be nice
(presuming either of us ever manages to get them semi-mass produced) if
they would at least be in scale with each other.
Thoughts?
Tom
Thomas thanks
The other great mystery is why the kilt is narrower than the throat on a
wedge, when a kilt (clothing) is wider at its aft end (the leg end) than its
fore end (waistband). Has anyone ever asked Weber about this?
In a message dated 09/24/1999 1:44:41 PM Central European Daylight T,
> Tim.Jones@Smallworld.co.uk writes:
> Thomas thanks
The reason the back, or "kilt", end of the wedge is narrower is that the ship
is riding the bow-wave of the pressure generated by the two grav bands.
Described (by David Weber himself I believe) like squeezing a watermelon seed
between your fingers. As far as clothing analogies goes, it's more a case
that the shot is going into her/his ass-end then it is a comparison to
relative end-widths of Scottish fashion.
> Tim Jones wrote:
I don't think they have. My guess is that, regardless of the specific aspect
of the wedge, "down the throat" and "up the kilt" are very strong metaphores.
The funny thing is, the ships don't really even need to have a bow or a stern.
They don't physically flip the ship when they make turnover, they just flip
the impellor ratios. The ships themselves look identical on the bow and stern,
the only exception being the lettering (which I believe is only near the stern
impellor ring)
Of course, you need to have a designated bow and stern for damage control if
nothing else. It would kind of suck to travel 2 kilometers
through a ship to find yourself at the wrong missile bay. :-)
Tom
> The reason the back, or "kilt", end of the wedge is narrower
Thanks Chris for the reference, IMO its a bad metaphor he could have said up
the a** but that would have been a a bit *too* offensive (though swearing in
most military SF is pretty much standard along with detailed descriptions and
metaphors
for disembowelling :-/) but a better match to the throat metaphor.
The seed metaphor is excellent however.
> The funny thing is, the ships don't really even need to have a bow or a
Good point, but its more in relation to direction of travel I was interested
in.
> On Fri, Sep 24, 1999 at 09:03:27AM -0400, Thomas Pope wrote:
I was under the impression that the alpha and beta nodes
are in part responsible for the fore/aft distinction, so that the
ship itself has to flip in order for the wedge to flip.
Or is the cold medicine getting to me?
> Thomas Pope wrote:
Correction. I was quoting the length for a Star Knight class heavy cruiser.
The Nike is a Reliant class Battlecruiser at 1605m in length.
Just for the record...
Tom
> "Robert A. Crawford" wrote:
Both impellor rings contain both Alpha and beta nodes. The alpha nodes (8 of
them if I remember correctly) are larger, arranged on the 8 cardinal points
(does that make any sense?) the Beta nodes are smaller and however many are
arranged evenly between the alpha nodes.
> Or is the cold medicine getting to me?
That I cannot answer, though I spent the last three days in a
Niquil-induced haze myself. :-)
Tom
> "Robert A. Crawford" wrote:
As a follow-up I was just perusing through Deja News to find DW's
original post about the exact dimensitons of the HMS Nike. In that same post
is this information:
> The impeller rings of any military starship mount a total of 24
Tom