The idea of building a Waldburg from scratch is neat. You'd even have the FT
design system to give you an idea of how much space to write off for drives,
weapons, controls, etc.
Assuming it is about 40mm long (Tony's number?), that makes it about 80m long
in RL. Inside probably about 75m. That's about 37.5" in FMA
Skirmish scale. A three foot long ship, with about 5-7.6" wide (10-15m).
It'd probably have about 4-5 decks at its largest part.
You could build the decks so they stack, but if you really wanted to play it,
you'd get two 8' x 4' tables, and you'd lay out all the decks side by side,
that would make moving and conceiving of things reasonably easy.
A complex, but very cool, idea.
Fight your boarding actions in FT the "hard way".
But Jon would have to come up with some (and he should!) Naval Boarding
Parties. Yes, marines would have PA probably, or combat armour, but it would
have to be zero G equipped (mag boots, thrusters, etc) and your normal
boarding parties should at least have a vacc suit. If Jon put out
a standard Vacc-Suited figure or three, he could just change say helmets
and firearms and he'd be able to (with the same body stems) do Naval Boarding
Party figures for all the nationalities!
They should probably use laser carbines, laser rifles, gyrojets, etc. Plasma
guns, AARs, SAWs, Shotguns, SMGs probably all make cruddy weapons for fighting
once a ship turns off artificial gravity (something which
the Marines would like - its like a plus for them - they know how to
fight in it, but their assailants (if normal troops or terrorists) might not).
And once you evacuate an area, that means that any suit hits that are not self
sealing (most military suits would be, but civilian ones might only be on more
pricey models) would be probably lethal or at least preoccupying. Plus in
pressurized chambers you have to watch for
blow-through on walls - explosive decompression is nasty.
Shades of Azhanti High Lightning.....
The really cool way to do this would be to coat the walls and ceilings of your
ship in magnetic sheeting, and put washers on the bottom of your figures
bases.
And have small detatchable 'flying stands', which will also stick to the
walls/ceilings.
Then when the artifical gravity goes, you can really have 3-d, 0g
combat.
It would be a heck of a lot of work, but it would be really, really cool...
any takers?:>
Excerpts from mail: 20-Oct-99 Re: Ship building.... the h.. by Brian
Burger@victoria.tc
> The really cool way to do this would be to coat the walls and ceilings
Unfortunately, from my experiences with using magnetic sheeting and
washer-based figs, the magnetic force isn't usually enough to support a
metal figure. Plastics might work, though.
Cool idea, though.
> The idea of building a Waldburg from scratch is neat. You'd even have
This shouldn't be too tough, though it would take alot of time!
I did a Zhodani Patrol Cruiser for Traveller in 25mm (2 decks, about 4 feet
long). Not just the decks; the whole ship, exterior and all. It came out very
nice.
FT ships should prove not too tough to do.
Could this be a GenCon project?
> On Wed, 20 Oct 1999, Steven M Goode wrote:
> Excerpts from mail: 20-Oct-99 Re: Ship building.... the h.. by Brian
Ah, but that's why you use the One True SG2 Scale: 15mm. Figures are smaller,
way way lighter, and should stick to a magnetic wall with fewer problems.
Plus, the ship doesn't have to be quite so big...or you can do really
really BIG areas to fight it... entire starbases, or hollowed-out
asteroids, say...
> Cool idea, though.
Very.
The Trav 25mm starship builder (I've erased the orginal email...): Do you
still have it? Any chance of some photos or anything?
Apostle of the One True SG2 Scale,
> Thomas Barclay of the Clan Barclay wrote:
Yep, and I know how many crew it has to fit and have at least a rough idea
about the accomadations as well.
Hmmm, I think I'll start working out the actual floor plan. Perhaps if nothign
else, we can get a decent floor plan made up (and bounced around the list)
then anybody who wants to tackle this insane project (including myself) has
the opportunity...
Tom (too many ideas, not enough time)
> > The really cool way to do this would be to coat the walls and
Well, from experience I know that 15mm can work (except that I used
magnetic bases and metal walls- rare earth magnets, so they held the
troops rather well). There are also assorted two-sided-tape type things
which can sometimes work (especially if you're willing, for one game, to
not use minatures and instead use (say) the little cardboard stand-up
troops.
Also, I recently posted some FMA variants for free fall (they don't handle
people in open flight, mostly because I wasn't sure how to represent velocity.
For people drifting in the middle of a hallway (or equivalent), I generally
put them on top of a stack of Lego (it allowed me to vary the height easily).
Did the FMA free fall variant make it on to the list?
Agreed, cool idea. I'll be forced to model a few scout ships (and I may
post the plans for my small-scale space-station assault when they're
complete).
One of the many projects gathering dust in 'the basement' is a set of plastic
shelves that was going to be, variously, Space Hulk, Ashanti High Lightening,
Necromundi, or an
extension of the 3-d board I made for the Aliens board game.
Each shelf would have been a deck (or hive level) with
out-of-scale separation, but rules for 'shooting down the
stairs' or hatchway. I was planning on using sci-fi walls
for around the decks, and armorcast for 'terrain' on each deck. Just a thought
for your ship building.
I actually have pierced decks to be either the engine room in Ashanti or
balconies in a Hive room tech treasury.
It'd please me to think someone finished what I barely started.
The_Beast
PS. Proper attribution would include the first time I saw a 3d version of
Aliens at Genghis Con in Denver, and a 3d Space Hulk using lighting panels
resting on a PVC pipe
frame at GenCon 3-4 years ago, but I never did get any
names.
> PS. Proper attribution would include the first time I saw
Oh, I know what that's like. There was a great wild African explorer game
called Africa Screams going at GenCon this year but it was mid-game by
the time I saw it and I had to run another game before it finished, so I never
found out the GM's name or contact info.
> In a message dated 10/21/99 3:37:36 AM, you wrote:
<<I did a Zhodani Patrol Cruiser for Traveller in 25mm (2 decks, about 4 feet
long). Not just the decks; the whole ship, exterior and all. It came out very
nice.>>
Can you give us any details on how you did this? Materials, size, how was it
to play on? Jed