Star Fleet Battles: Federation Police Cutter

[Sgt_G]

I started this project in Sketch-Up a couple days ago. I'm just learning how to use the program, so I'm not very good with it yet, but I'm fairly proud of what I've been able to accomplish.

If you know the game Star Fleet Battles, you should know the tiny ship called a Police Cutter. It's about the same size as the secondary hull of the original Enterprise. Not very big? Well, it's eight deck thick and the length of an NFL football field. I have drafted internal deck plans for the entire ship, but as they will probably be published some day, I can NOT post those online anywhere. This 3D model is based on those deck plans in exacting detail.

Questions? Comments? Criticisms? Just don't be too harsh. It is, after all, still a work in progress.

 

[Finn]

Nice. I'd put it in the late 21st century period

 

[Sgt_G]

Well, the game is based on TOS/TAS, and within the history framework of that universe, this ship based on an older, pre-saucer design, the Warp-refit Destroyer. The police force flew these for nearly a hundred years, and before the General War (aka the Great Galactic War) they had three to four times as many of these cutters than Star Fleet had warships.

 

[sojourner]

Ah, the good old "polcur" as we used to call them. I remember losing many of these in battles with D-5's. Nice little rendition.

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

Very nice work. I love seeing more of these Police Cutters.

 

[Sgt_G]

They have no business going up against a war-cruiser like a D-5. These match up to G-2 Imperial Security Gunboats and E-3 Convoy Escorts, and can stand up to E-4 Combat Escorts. And of course Orion pirate Light Raiders, which is what they were designed to fight. They're pop-corn to anything larger.

 

[Shawnster]

Ah, the good old "polcur" as we used to call them. I remember losing many of these in battles with D-5's. Nice little rendition.

I had a nice little battle using one of these against an Orion Pirate ship. One of the funnest battles I remember.

 

[Sgt_G]

I'm using this project as a way to learn how to use Sketch-Up. Here's an updated image now that I added a ton of windows on it.

In the parallel-projection mode, it looks "funny" in some angles. Here's the same view in normal perspective mode.

The forward hull section is actually a little longer than the aft cylinder (not counting the tail cone). The front façade on the cylinder gives it the illusion that it's much shorter. But trust me: it's three meters longer.

 

[Sgt_G]

Added a VASI landing light system for the shuttle craft. Yes, the shuttles launch / land out the front of the ship.

I created this really complex system with three rows of lights. It was great ... until I zoomed out and look at it. It was massive. Way too big. It had to go. This is much cleaner, and works just as well, if not better.

 

[Sgt_G]

To give a sense of scale, I found an "okay" model of the Enterprise in the Sketch-Up warehouse and imported it next to the cutter.

 

[Sgt_G]

Now that I put them on the ship, I'm not too sure about these aft maneuvering thrusters. None of ADB's official artwork showed them.

What do you think? Too big? Too small? Too many? Too 1960's? Too obtrusive? Does it even need them, or would a simple hole in the ship where the jet exhaust comes out suffice?

 

[FormerLurker]

It looks to my eye to be too many, but not by much. Maybe two less. To make them less obtrusive, you can sink them into the surface panel, so that only the ports of the thrusters are exposed.

 

[Albertese]

I like them as they are. To me the Police Cutter always seemed like an older design that was less cutting edge than the front-line Star Fleet hardware. I like your take on this thing..

--Alex

 

[publiusr]

Less windows in the side, maybe.

 

[Sgt_G]

Yeah, I'm with you. The thing is, I matched up every window to a room on the deck plans, so it kind of doesn't make sense to get rid of any of them (unless I got rid of ALL of them).

 

[Sgt_G]

After much thought, I have decided to ditch the retro-style thrusters and come up with something sleeker / less obtrusive that will mount along the side of the cylinder at eight points near each end. I haven't decided about keeping the windows or not.

But first, I plan to re-draw the entire ship from scratch using better techniques. I found that I had an 0.05-meter error in the placement of one end-point that resulted in several other points / faces being misplaced, tilting the top of the forward hull, and the entire cylinder façade is off-center. I tried to fix it, but each adjustment causes cascade failures in other parts of the model. It's going to be less frustrating to simply move it to the side and start over. {sigh}

On the plus side, my wife bought me a 3D-mouse, which should arrive tomorrow or Monday. Hopefully I'll be able to adapt to it quickly. Time will tell.

 

[horridperson]

That's a neat little ship. It looks as though it could have sat somewhere between the Constitutions and Daedalus classes so it looks great to me sitting convincingly in a "lost" era in the universe. If I saw your drawing and someone had told me it was an Einstein or Baton Rouge (or any other ship referenced from the period) I'd have believed them.

 

[sojourner]

After much thought, I have decided to ditch the retro-style thrusters and come up with something sleeker / less obtrusive that will mount along the side of the cylinder at eight points near each end. I haven't decided about keeping the windows or not.

But first, I plan to re-draw the entire ship from scratch using better techniques. I found that I had an 0.05-meter error in the placement of one end-point that resulted in several other points / faces being misplaced, tilting the top of the forward hull, and the entire cylinder façade is off-center. I tried to fix it, but each adjustment causes cascade failures in other parts of the model. It's going to be less frustrating to simply move it to the side and start over. {sigh}

On the plus side, my wife bought me a 3D-mouse, which should arrive tomorrow or Monday. Hopefully I'll be able to adapt to it quickly. Time will tell.

You'll find that building a model the second time in Sketchup always goes faster. Most of the time spent on modelling in Sketchup is trying to figure out how to get the shape you need with the tools provided. Especially when you get into more organic shapes. (god I hate doing neck to secondary hull modelling)

 

[Sgt_G]

Taking a break and working on a different project, but first here's a top/bottom/side/front/aft view:

And here's the other project I'm toying around with until I get "better" with Sketch-Up and my new 3D-mouse:

This is my design for a Multi-Role Cruiser. The bottom three decks form a "mission skid" that can quickly be swapped out (a couple-few days, at most) at a Star Base. The one shown in the peace-time patrol skid with labs and cargo, and just two pairs of phasers. The war-time skid would give up the labs/cargo for another pair of Photons and another phaser mount. There are several types of skids: command, carrier, missile, troop transport / ground assault, etc.

I have a ton of greebles to add yet. I don't even have the phaser ball-turrets drawn yet, just the mounting plates.

This design was born from my idea to draft deck plans for the USS Renner design found elsewhere on the 'Web. This thing is much larger; the main hull is 100 meters wide and 200 meters long, not counting engines / pylons.

EDIT: Changed links from Photo-Bucket to Imgur.

 

[Sgt_G]

And Photo-Bucket isn't playing nice anymore. Well, they haven't for a while but now it's just nasty.