OOOO I love your work Norsehound!!! I hope you go beyond the Galaxy-class and Sovereign-class in kitbrush and non-canon designs/concepts. I like the Vulcan ring ship you did. Half ring design may look good on some designs if you are open to suggestions. Keep up the great work man!
Thank you! If I do move up to the TNG period in not likely to venture much further than... DS9? I'm much more interested in the rare and hardly seen Wolf 359 and FASA officers manual vessels. Especially when the subject of the game in trying to make places you as one of the many starship captains on routine assignments. Like Picard, you'll have to earn the galaxy posting.
It's coming along, in fits and starts Things keep changing before they are done :T The latest attempt is folding in the ability for missions to "chain", so by completing one it shuffles new missions and encounters into their respective decks that have consequences later. Thing is, it's a lot of grunt work, and I can get easily distracted when I run into snags. While I try to think of a way around that I'm re-writing the master rules. I'm in a bit of a conundrum of what to do with this, ultimately. The problems I had a few years ago are still there on the legal side because it's licensed. There are free to play Star Trek Tabletop games out there, and the example I mentioned even was approached for publication but the company that tried ghosted on him. On one hand, I could package this up and pitch this to a company- I'm thinking modiphius entertainment, since I have a connection there. Sometime soon I want to put together a sales sheet for this and pitch it. On the other, and if Modiphius is not interested, I may just up and release it. The reason why is because this game is set explicitly in the 23rd century and contains a healthy dose of characters (and some references) to the obscure 80s canon which may or may not complicate matters for a release. And while I have designs for the TNG era, it's not my first choice, and if the "marketable" decision is to push the ship selection into more popular craft (or, -Shudder- cross-era play), I'm not interested. But if I don't try the official avenue of trying to publish it will I get landed with a C&D when I release it for free? Ughf! This effort is as much a love letter to the abandoned 23rd century TMP era as it is my own escapist desires to have that ship-crew-mission experience no other game delivers. I want to share that with others, as much as to let all of you play it as well as it to serve as my flagship portfolio piece.
I love this thread... I love the gaming aspect, but also the Ships. Comic book ships are great to see
I really love diving into unusual and interesting designs, certainly. Everybody's seen, and played, all the akiras and sovergins and defiants... But what about Springfields and Niagras? Or the FASA Decker class? The Chandley and others were super popular way back when in the 80s but have since been forgotten. If this were to be published as I hope, it would be a nice resurgence of all those forgotten ships for newer audiences.
Eh, why not? Any more ships beyond 2290 though and I'll need to open up another thread for that. I decided to give them nacelles off the New Orelans class. My Take: In spite of the failures of the Excelsior's transwarp project, the gamble behind making the ship an effective dreadnought paid off. The class was in effective service long after its expected lifespan (into and beyond whatever conflict with the Klingons), and went on to affect several generations of starship design into the future. Approaching the midpoint of the century, Starfleet initiated a program to replace many tired 2290s designs with cutting-edge vessels. One of their first directives were medium patrol ships, and one of the first vessels produced was the Decker-class destroyer. Borrowing from the up-and-coming technologies that would culminate in the Galaxy-class family, the Decker is an evolution of the Excelsior space frame but reduced for the sake of costs. The first Deckers began seeing service in the 2350s, first serving in the Cardassian conflicts. They were well regarded by their crews, serving further into the dominion crisis (and being one of the few classes of the "Golden age" Galaxy-derived period to continue service into that time).
All right, finished up another Comic ship! Just another one of the hangar background ships from SFS. My take: The modest one-nacelle Mohawa-class Survey ship may not look like much, but they were fairly well regarded in the late 2270s and into the 2280s. Built during the rush of starship designs following the 2260s, the Mohawas were championed by the Zaranites who desired a more capable exploration craft than the up-coming Oberths. While generally slower, the Mohawas have expanded scientific and lab facilities, allowing them to conduct long-term high-risk and special purpose experiments. While hardly visible in the public eye of Starfleet, they served in starfleet well into the 2350s. The platforms served for another thirty years after the Zaranites purchased all six remaining spaceframes and outfitted them to their own specifications.
Haven't had the bite to model anything recently but I did find this. A good resource for all the ships in Gold Key when I didn't want to comb through the entire archive looking for craft. http://curtdanhauser.com/Ships.html There are a few ships I may model. The first is Romulan patrol ship for the TOS era, as a kind of patrol ship counterpart to the Bird of Prey. Probably a late Romulan War holdover that may be appropriated by Romulan Intelligence forces (Romulans do get a BoP with a lower-grade cloaking device alternative, at least projected in the game). The second is the *snerk* Windjammer pirate ship, and that's only because a class like it, or similar, was in the Nogura Regatta and destroyed the Rim Explorer (Which I relearned is a Cutter-class starship). The third is the experimental Starfleet Hyperwarp ship. I might even call this the first Transwarp prototype, but I'd need to look more into the story to see if it fits. May not be a playable ship (Unless I really wanted to be strange), but it might be interesting to model.
This is a sweet resource! Thank you. That Romulan ship that you are referring to is intriguing as it also shares a superficial resemblance to the "future" Vulcan ship as seen in ENT. And that Experimental Hyper-Warp ship, is also damn interesting as it is so simple, a shape that it does look like an advanced prototype of some sort. Almost like something that would be sitting on someone's desk as a chromed model. Also, it shares a strong resemblance to the Exploration Ship found earlier on the page (btw have you noticed that both in TOS and this page has shown small advanced ships as 'Saucer vessels"? I am referring to Lazarus' ship.
A small update, but someone on boardgamegeek asked how missions were supposed to work and it... opened the flood gates on me discussing the game aspect of this project. If you're curious, check out the development thread here: https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2116621/article/35622939#35622939 Right now I'm thinking this will have a release for free. I'm more interested in displaying what I can do in terms of game design and a self-directed project than earning a profit from this. It was coming along in fits and starts... not sure when I'll return to it, but when I do I intend on making it available for anyone to enjoy.
Thread revival! So a bit of an announcement, I suppose. Encouraged by the free to read work of Edge of Midnight and the Wolf 359 project seemingly go on without concern for legality as free releases... I am moving forward to push the game for a free web release. If it does become an actual product in the future it will need to be rethemed anyway, but I'll cross that bridge when I get to it. The game currently sits still as a 1-4 adventure but it's now more of a rolling campaign game. Each play will be about a year in your career as you try to survive it and ascend in prestige to being an admiral. So each game is more about experiencing the adventure instead of playing to any decisive win. That's fine by me in what I wanted to do with this. But, coinciding with this revival I've also picked up and started to model more ships and vessels. Though I've printed a few through extracting them out of Starfleet Command files and fixing them for print, I've also made a few. We'll start with the Baker. In this image I couldn't decide whether to use stunted nacelles off the connie or units from the Akula. In the end I went with the former. My take: Baker-class destroyers slid into that space between the stop-gap Renners and what would eventually become the Akulas. Equipped with a spartan photon complement and basic phaser handling, once the Okinawas were launched the Bakers slid into the role of inner-system patrol and defense duties. They performed this task well, continuing well into the 2350s after being replaced by other classes. The last working Bakers were destroyed by raiders during the Dominion War. My take: Originally a heavy cruiser design, more and more space handed over to the saucer helped re-designate the Brenton into a command ship, with greater administrative and storage space over other designated Command ship designs like the Lexington and various dreadnoughts. Brentons were intended during wartime to serve as sector command and fleet administrative centers. In peacetime they were expected to serve as colonial administrative ships and supply vessels. About half the class was laid up after the Khitomer treaty, but they were eventually brought back into service as the Federation internal areas began to stabilize. They carried into the role of colonial support, and many were on extended deployment into the 2380s. The newer Galaxy-class ships were expected to replace them on the colonial support front, before the Dominion War upset these plans. The Brentons are continuing to serve as best as they could, though they are starting to suffer breakdowns. My Take: The One-Wing is one of the most distinct, unusual designs to come out of the Klingon Empire. It's origins are unclear to both the Federation and, remarkably, even inside the Empire. What is known is that the cruiser began being fielded in the mid 60s, just after the incident at Organia. Records of the designer and construction particulars were believed classified and lost during the strife surrounding the Return of Heroes. Two theories persist about the origins of the notorious One-Wing. The first was that it was a structural experiment test designed to utilize the off-center mass for some kind of tactical advantage which worked in simulations. This theory never panned out, as the off-center boom never seemed to give the One-Wing an advantage in combat. The other is that some rare artisinal Klingon managed to put this design forward and get it constructed as evolution of ship designs for the Empire. In any case the One-Wing was most active between the mid 2260s and 70s. Fewer and fewer of these ships were spotted by Federation sources as the decades went on and they were virtually extinct by the Khitomer treaty.
Wait, missed one! My take: The Northampton class frigates were designed in competition against the Chanley for a vessel made to the needs of the Starfleet Marines. Unlike the Chandley, the Northampton was the first to feature a variable pylon array which could switch the engine modes between cruising and combat forms. It is among the first such arrangements, and variable pylons would continue to be experimented with for a century. Though the Chandleys remained the popular of the two, the Northamptons were fondly remembered by their crews and enthusiasts for being the underdogs. Though they performed the same marine assault responsibilities, the Northamptons' variable pylon arrangement made their service needs too unique to continue far beyond the 2290s decade. With the exception of three ships in museums, all of them were scrapped with only a handful of losses.
Noting that .obj files also can be used in Clip Studio Paint for comics design purposes... https://www.clip-studio.com/site/gd...uide/720_3d_material/720_3d_material_open.htm https://tips.clip-studio.com/en-us/articles/1743 And so we come back 'round to some of the source materials that inspired this thread...?