I've been using X-Wing Miniatures for a Star Wars "Edge of the Empire" RPG campaign, originally just for abstract markers for space combat ... but more recently I've been experimenting with a sort of "hybrid" where we use X-Wing Miniatures rules for the space combat, "converting" the PCs' Edge of Empire skills and talents over in the form of modified stats or "special abilities."

So far, the players seem to enjoy it, but I definitely have room for improvement.

Anyway, for RPG purposes, this means that I find I need a lot more in the way of "generic" starships such as Y-Wings and Headhunters ("Edge of Empire" doesn't even have stats for X-Wings, B-Wings, A-Wings, etc.), but also I have scenarios that call for freighters to escort or attack, and so forth. So, I've been digging through some of my other Star Wars and sci-fi toys (and even just some random junk) to see if anything can be put to good use with this scale.

I've tried digging through my collections of Micro Machines and Star Wars Starship Battles. Micro Machines doesn't really have a uniform "scale" as such, since X-Wings, Corellian Corvettes, escape pods, Star Destroyers, and even the DEATH STAR end up being comparable in size. However, with that much variance, maybe I'll just get LUCKY and get something that's close enough for horseshoes, hand-grenades, and RPGs.

First up, the obvious comparison seemed to be for X-Wings (even if I have no reason to use them until I get my hands on "Age of Rebellion"):



The size isn't really all that far off, but of course Micro Machines don't nearly approach the beauty of FFG's models. The Micro Machines models look squat, and the wing guns ridiculously chunky by comparison; however, I've considered using some of the "wings-closed" X-Wings as some sort of "Headhunter variant" for encounters with space pirates and such.

The Micro Machines X-Wings were (and still are) a lot easier to get in quantity than most other starfighters (including TIE fighters), since they come in "open-wing," "closed-wing" and "battle damaged" variants, and there is at least one pack ("XIII," I think) where you'd get nothing BUT X-Wings.

Micro Machines TIE fighters look pretty sad compared to FFG's models. Although the cockpit of the Micro Machines TIE fighter is about right, the wings are way too small, and they're invariably warped compared to the nice, crisp, thin, and STRAIGHT wings of the FFG TIE fighter. My only consideration here is that the Micro Machines might serve as a starting point for kit-bashing "TIE variants" (the cockpit being useful), or making "space wreckage" terrain/decoration.




With Y-Wings, the Micro Machines are noticeably smaller than the FFG Y-Wing, but they're still close enough that I figure I'll give them a try to bulk up my "space pirate" forces, after I "dirty" the Micro Machines a bit with some acrylic grey paint and further detailing.

With the A-Wings, I have the opposite problem, in that the Micro Machines A-Wings are noticeably too large compared to the FFG model. Still, I find myself wondering about the "canon" size for A-Wings: That is a HUGE cockpit: The A-Wing is supposed to be a one-seater, yet its canopy is larger than the two-seater-and-turret canopy of the Y-Wing. Somehow, I had the idea that an A-Wing was supposed to be tiny compared to the other fighters -- something like what you'd have if you took the cockpit "wedge" from a Y-Wing and strapped some boosters on the back and a couple of guns on the sides.

Not pictured, but the Star Wars Starship Battles version of the A-Wing is actually a bit SMALLER than the FFG A-Wing.




For atmospheric scenarios, I've found that the Micro Machines Twin Pod Cloud Car (lower left), while not strictly following canon measurement in scale, still looks *plausible* (at least in my inexpert opinion) next to the FFG YT-1300 and X-Wing.

Micro Machines starfighters with a pewter grey acrylic "grunge" treatment. These aren't nearly as pretty as the FFG ships, of course. I've been using these to represent "space pirate" ships -- which I reason aren't kept in as nice of shape as the Rebels (who have a bit more pride in their personal craft) or the Imperials (who have regulations to deal with).

Certain ships are grossly out of scale, such as the Skipray Blastboat and the Luxury Yacht. I just gave those a similar treatment because I need some "generic" ships for certain scenarios, and they just had enough of the "Star Wars" look that I could still put them into service.

(The scenery piece is an "asteroid" board I made a while back out of foam, with sand mixed with paint for the texture, and some "crater" pieces inserted. I occasionally use it for photos, but the surface is too irregular for it to be practical for miniatures gaming. Maybe if I put a big sheet of Plexiglas over the top....)




Here's an attempt I made at converting a hyperspace ring for a Micro Machines Headhunter. The "ring" is from a soda bottle top, with some "wings" added via epoxy putty, and then attached to a Micro Machines plastic base with a bit of wire (and holes via pinning drill). For actual play, I stick the Headhunter onto a regular base, though it fits loosely. (Of course the ACTUAL Headhunter model looks much nicer, but I'm not about to repaint it to fit the whims of the players in a campaign.)




Getting OUT of the Micro Machines for a bit, one thing I was inspired to do was to try out an alternate paint job to represent the YT-1300 the players use in my Edge of Empire campaign (the /Krayt Fang/, though by this point and after going through the "Beyond the Rim" campaign, the players decided to rename it the "Bloody Nexu," and reupholster the cockpit chairs with nexu pelts).

Despite assurances I'd heard that the Snap-Tite Millennium Falcon is the same scale as the FFG ship ... it's not, really. The properly-scaled FFG YT-1300 is in the lower left corner. My Snap-Tite repaint is in the upper left -- and while it's in the same neighborhood, size-wise, it's still noticeably smaller. Still, when I put them both on the table and don't have them RIGHT NEXT to each other, they still look nice. For my extra Snap-Tite model, I'm thinking of doing a conversion into one of the various YT-1300 variants (e.g., moving the cockpit to the middle), as I think a bit of restructuring might distract from the size discrepancy. Plus, I'm hoping it'll just look cool.




And here's a shot of both YT-1300s in action in a game scenario, where we switched to the X-Wing rules (with a few tweaks) to handle an attack by space pirates. The Sith Infiltrator (AKA "Scimitar") was treated as a generic "Star Courier" ship, and I just gave it the same stats as a HWK-290. This was the small AMT/Ertl Snapfast "Sith Infiltrator," which measures in at about 3.1 inches long (when canon would require that it be closer to 3.8" -- but that's the best I could find). At least it was close enough that nobody raised a fuss about it. There is a small square panel on the bottom of the model that, if cut out with a hobby knife, makes JUST the right size of hole for the FFG flight base peg to fit through snugly.

In the upper right/back, that's a Space Tours "Starspeeder 1000" toy that I put in there as just a bit of decoration. (I had a few ships in the convoy that had no stats, but were just there to act as obstacles for the scenario.) It is GROSSLY out of scale, but I got it for 25 cents in a thrift store loose-item bin, and figured I'd include it anyway as a bit of an in-joke for the players (since we all live not far from Disney World and Hollywood Studios).

The other ship in the background is a resin ship I got as part of a grab bag deal, which I think is from Firestorm Armada from Spartan Games -- even more grossly out of scale, but I sculpted a Millennium-Falcon-inspired cockpit with putty and did some impression-texturing on it in the hopes that it could pass for some sort of small generic transport in the background of the scenario. Past a certain point, as long as it's not IMMEDIATELY recognizable (i.e., "That's no starfighter -- that's a tiny Battlestar Galactica!") I can get away with using it as a Star Wars space ship as long as it has something that might plausibly work as a to-scale cockpit (added on as necessary), some sort of thrusters, and miscellaneous greebles. The rest is just a matter of how I paint it.

However, my first big lesson was ... having a bunch of spaceships is all well and good, but if you have too many in too small of a space, it makes for a horrible TRAFFIC JAM when trying to use X-Wing Miniatures rules. Oops. Next time, if I'm going to have some ships on the board for "decoration," I'm going to stick them all the way to one side so they aren't clogging up the works. The bulk of the scenario involved the various ships just gingerly trying to weave their way through the intervening freighters and bumping into each other (why do I imagine car horns honking?) to REACH the opposing ships, and then once they actually met, there was a brief bit of gratuitous spaceship carnage and then it was all over with.

That big ugly grey ship is a "Lost in Space - Jupiter 2" model from Ertl, by the way. I got 4 of those on the cheap from a game store that was closing, years ago, thinking I could use the model kit parts to kitbash some sort of sci-fi scenery. I ended up FINALLY using one, giving it a very simple and hasty paint job and declaring it to be a "MonCal Medium Freighter." If it actually serves a role in a scenario other than as an obstacle/objective, I'll likely just treat it as a GR-75.

Starship Wreckage (without chopping up perfectly good FFG starship models):

Weekend Experiment: Starship Debris for my X-Wing Miniatures combat zone (or as a prop for my Star Wars RPG campaign). Made with "Apoxie Sculpt" 2-part epoxy (with black-dyed base) and a push-mold made with "Instant Sculpt" (plastic with low melting point, used to make quick-texture push-molds).

I just stuck a mug of water in the microwave for 2.5 minutes, dropped in a chunk of Instant Mold, then splatted some segments on the surface of the Millennium Falcon, trying to make for a seam break right along the edge. Once that cooled, I removed the two pieces, and mixed up some epoxy putty to squash (thinly) along the insides. So that the exposed insides would have SOME sort of texture, I took a "techno" base insert with an interesting texture on it, and mashed it into the exposed surface of the putty here and there, then inserted a few tiny pieces of scrap sprue plastic and foam-core board both to provide some interior structural support and to give the impression that this ship was more than just a hollow hull when it got blown up.

I let the whole thing sit overnight, removed the mold chunks, then took a bit more putty and inserted it into what would become the bottom, and let it solidify with the tip of a Warhammer 40K "flight" base peg embedded. (No surer way to get a perfect fit, with my tools. ) Painting consists of just applying a bit of dry-brushing. I also chiseled/cut around the edges a bit to give a rougher edge and to break up the rounded edge that tended to result from just carelessly mashing putty onto the push-mold surfaces.

In the picture, the original Fantasy Flight Games "YT-1300" model is in the upper right. The wreckage piece is upper left. The Instant Mold temporary mold pieces are at the bottom/foreground. Another plug of putty is resting on the left mold, as I stuck a bit of leftover putty into the "docking ring" section, figuring that such a piece might be useful for kit-bashing. Apoxie Sculpt normally comes in a dark grey color, but Reynolds Materials had several 2-packs where the base was dyed in one of various colors, and I opted to try the black since it didn't cost any more. It works nicely for a number of quickie conversions/crafts (like this), but, boy, that dye really makes a mess on my fingers. :/

Note: Instant Mold works GREAT for stuff like getting small and shallow details for decorating miniatures bases (i.e., custom base inserts), but there tend to be lots of flaws (air bubbles, "wrinkles," warping) introduced to the process that get magnified the larger and smoother/flatter the surfaces involved. It normally would NOT be so useful for subject matter as large as this -- but in this case it still works well for my purposes simply because it's WRECKAGE, and therefore warping, tears, cracks, etc., are easily forgiven.

This is all very awesome.

Good work. I especially like the wreckage and think that will wave 5 inbound and apparent rules forthcoming for wreckage, this will be really useful.

Making a two-part temporary push-mold of the Lambda-class Shuttle cockpit:

For another piece of "space wreckage," I decided to try for the cockpit of the Lambda-class shuttle. For this, I attempted a two-part push-mold with the Instant Sculpt. The key here is to apply material to one side of the original piece, and then allow the Instant Mold plastic to cool before applying a freshly-heated blob of plastic for the OTHER side. While the hot plastic will stick to the colder plastic (just as it'll stick to just about anything), there's still a seam, and it can be pried apart later once both halves have sufficiently cooled.

Note: In the picture above, a fresh stick of Instant Mold is visible to the left -- pretty clear material. Although Instant Mold is very reusable, it tends to pick up particles with each use, so it gets grimier over time. I try to take care to take out flecks of putty, etc., because that could interfere with the molding, but there's only so much I've managed to do. So far, however, the amount of detail the material picks up is still sufficient for my purposes.

The resulting "casting" made with the putty has some pretty nasty flash, and lots of flaws around the "seam" area. Nobody's going to mistake this for the original.

I tried to get it as clean as I could, but the plastic cools fairly quickly once it gets into contact with anything (e.g., the previous Instant Mold plastic AND the nice cool plastic of the model). Actually trying to get a "casting" of the piece involves a bit of guesswork about exactly how much putty I want to put in there. I tend to apply a bit of putty to the inside surfaces of each half of the push-mold, put the two halves together, then "feed" in additional putty through the opening (the "neck" cut-off area) and compress with a tool in the hopes of forcing putty into any recesses. Of course, those recesses include the seams between the two molds -- and too much pressure will bow the mold outward (just as squeezing the two pieces together too much will cause the opposite problem). This is somewhat minimized by using more Instant Mold plastic than is strictly necessary to get the surface, so the outer plastic acts in lieu of a proper molding shroud -- but the consequence of that is that it's also harder to get the mold piece off of the master (and consequently to get any push-casts out).

I used the black-dye putty for the "casting," cleaned up some of the flash around the edges, then carved some "cracks" into the windshield. I did some dry-brushing with white acrylic, then went back to do some more detail work (including re-lining the scribed panel breaks where my "dry"-brushing got a bit too sloppy). I experimented with adding a dash of color to the windshield to call out the "cracks," but I can see -- thanks to the cold, hard glare of the blown-up photo -- that I need to go back and put some more effort into blending.

Since there's no texture, as such, on the "neck" area (since that's the big gap in the area that was molded) that's where the flight stand peg goes, so the wreckage piece will be floating pointing upward in the final version.

My next "Edge of Empire" RPG session this Saturday calls for the PCs to investigate the wreckage of an Imperial craft that was shipping cargo -- and, of course, get into a gratuitous firefight in the process, so I want to have my X-Wing Miniatures props handy. I was going to try to fix up something to pass for a YV-666 freighter with some plasticard and bitz, but my efforts in that area have been slow-going. This is my fall-back, as with a couple more "shuttle chunks" I can pass these off as the remains of some sort of Lambda variant customized for cargo rather than passengers.

Please don't do it, if you want to play X-Wing, at least buy the ships of the game, greettings.

Lol, no don't have fun and make things!

Please don't do it, if you want to play X-Wing, at least buy the ships of the game, greettings.

GRETTINGS

Does the Instant Mold leave any kind of residue on the models you capture with it?

I want to make some ship debris scenery, and I have some Instant Mold. But I've never used it, and all my ships are in various states of repaint/bare primer, and I don't want to prematurely apply anything to them that could effect the paint job.

Please don't do it, if you want to play X-Wing, at least buy the ships of the game, greettings.

You do realize that in order for me to take those comparison pictures, I had to use real Fantasy Flight Games ship models, too, right? And I'm using these to handle the combat for an "Edge of Empire" RPG (another FFG product) campaign, complete with all those packs of FFG's special custom Star Wars dice (and I even sewed up custom Star Wars dice bags for them, too).

Tada!

(It's surprising just how many Star Wars themed "novelty fabrics" there are at the local JoAnn Fabric store.)

So I assure you that in addition to any crafting projects on the side, my gaming group is collectively spending UNREASONABLE amounts of money on Fantasy Flight Games products right now, and we're happy to do our part to support the hobby. But if I'm going to have battle-wreckage or goofy paint jobs, there's no way I'm hacking up pricey FFG spaceships to do it. I have too much respect for those pretty models to do that.

Does the Instant Mold leave any kind of residue on the models you capture with it?

I want to make some ship debris scenery, and I have some Instant Mold. But I've never used it, and all my ships are in various states of repaint/bare primer, and I don't want to prematurely apply anything to them that could effect the paint job.

The Instant Mold doesn't leave any residue that I can tell, though it's possible that after lots of uses, individual particles could be picked up in the plastic from putty, etc., that "dirty" the plastic, and THAT could be left behind. It's basically just a plastic with a low melting point. I just stick a mug of water in the microwave for about 2.5 minutes (it varies depending upon the microwave, how full of water the mug is, etc.), then pull it out and dunk a chunk of Instant Mold in there, and use some needle-nose pliers to pull it out -- being careful that if the water is TOO hot, I could hurt my fingers from contact with the hot water. (If you open up the microwave and the mug is bubbling over, it's too hot, and you should let it cool for a bit.)

Rather than being concerned about what the Instant Mold might LEAVE on a model, my real fear is about what it might pull away or break , since it becomes more rigid when it cools, and it tends to grab onto surfaces. The Imperial Shuttle and YT-1300 worked well enough so long as I steered clear of the guns and the dish, respectively; I was a little concerned that some of the paint might be pulled out of the seams, but that didn't turn out to be the case. (And if it had, it would be an easy fix.) Doing anything about a broken gun or dish, however, would've been far more challenging.

However, I had to be especially careful of some of the finer details, such as the guns on the Imperial Shuttle; encasing THOSE in Instant Mold would present a very real chance of breakage when removing the "mold," and there's no way I would be able to make copies of details that fine and delicate anyway with the putty. (Or even if I somehow managed it, the cured putty would be far too fragile if it was that thin.) There's just no WAY I'd get Instant Mold anywhere near the X-Wings and their delicate, spindly wing cannons, for instance.

The YT-1300, Firespray/Slave I, Imperial Shuttle and Corellian Corvette strike me as the best prospects for coming up with some wreckage using this method. They're solidly built, and there are large, relatively flat (but heavily "greebled") surfaces where the Instant Mold could be applied to get an impression, resulting in some impressive-looking detail with fairly little work -- just as long as you stay away from anything delicate.

For making wreckage of smaller craft such as TIE fighters or X-Wings, however, my plan is to work with the Micro Machines as "masters" instead. While I could theoretically just cut the things up, my intent is to instead just use them as "masters" for some Instant Mold and putty mods for more wreckage; they're made of a more pliable plastic, and I'd trust them to hold up better to the abuse of some Instant Mold than I would with the very fine and rigid plastic used for the FFG models.

That, and if things go awry, I wouldn't be so nearly distraught as I would over damage to an FFG model.

For instance, I'll probably attempt to replicate the bulb of a Micro Machines TIE fighter (as it's about the right size), and then replicate just some PORTION of a wing. The Micro Machines TIE fighter wings are much smaller than the FFG TIE fighter wings, but if I'm just replicating some portion of it, that fact won't be immediately evident. Plus, if a TIE fighter suffered such catastrophic damage that it's in pieces, having a fully-intact wing wouldn't make much sense anyway.

Some pictures would of course help to communicate this better. I'll see what I can do in that regard, although it may not be until the weekend or so before I can find the time to tackle more wreckage.

Please don't do it, if you want to play X-Wing, at least buy the ships of the game, greettings.

You do realize that in order for me to take those comparison pictures, I had to use real Fantasy Flight Games ship models, too, right? And I'm using these to handle the combat for an "Edge of Empire" RPG (another FFG product) campaign, complete with all those packs of FFG's special custom Star Wars dice (and I even sewed up custom Star Wars dice bags for them, too).

So I assure you that in addition to any crafting projects on the side, my gaming group is collectively spending UNREASONABLE amounts of money on Fantasy Flight Games products right now, and we're happy to do our part to support the hobby. But if I'm going to have battle-wreckage or goofy paint jobs, there's no way I'm hacking up pricey FFG spaceships to do it. I have too much respect for those pretty models to do that.

Please don't feel the need to justify your perfectly reasonable actions to someone with a random gripe. You are making some very cool things and it looks like your group is very lucky.

I decided to try for some smaller subjects for making wreckage/debris markers for use with X-Wings Miniatures (and Star Wars RPG): a TIE fighter and a Y-wing. I wasn't about to subject pricey Fantasy Flight Games starfighters to the Instant Mold, however, when I had perfectly good (and more durable) Micro Machines around.

Note: Instant Mold is great for fairly shallow surfaces, but I am concerned about trying to extract particularly FINE master objects once the plastic has cooled off, if they end up wedged in there too deeply. There's absolutely NO WAY I'm getting Instant Mold anywhere near the guns on the X-Wing wings; I have enough trouble just safely getting them in and out of storage without a prong snagging on the pluck-foam.

"1:270 Scale" TIE Comparison: Micro Machines (top) vs. FFG (bottom)

The Micro Machines TIE fighter has noticeably smaller wings than the FFG model, making it closer to the proportions of the old Kenner TIE Fighter toy vs. the movie models -- but the cockpit bulb is still comparable in size and thus good enough for my purposes.

TIE & Y Wreckage Push Molds

For the main TIE cockpit, I used two small bulbs of Instant Mold: one for the front, then I waited some time for it to cool, and then I applied one to the back. When I applied another bit of Instant Mold to the exterior of the TIE fighter wing, I deliberately only covered part of it; I'd only have a FRAGMENT of the wing as part of the wreckage, thus disguising the comparative size of the original's wing to the FFG version (because it just isn't entirely THERE).

I had some leftover Instant Mold in the mug, so I tried pressing a Micro Machines Y-Wing into it. Trying to get the whole thing at once (even just one HALF of the ship) proved problematic, as when a shape of that much complexity (with that many sharp corners) is involved, the putty tends to mash around while I'm trying to impress it into the details. In retrospect, I would've been better off to just apply tiny bits of putty to only a portion of the ship at a time. I had enough trouble with it that I didn't bother making a two-sided mold; I figured a one-sider would do fine for experimentation purposes, so long as I keep the underside DOWN at all times.

Wreckage WIP (with originals in background)

Finally, I took a picture of the casts (after letting the putty cure overnight). The TIE fighter "cast" came out more-or-less intact, and I did a bit of trimming around the edges of the wing to give them a more "torn" look. Lanse Tryon's recent projects reminded me that I have far too many spare HeroClix bases lying around, so I decided to use a couple here.

The Y-Wing body is broken up, but it wasn't that way when it came out of the push-mold. While the putty can withstand some amount of rough handling, it really doesn't hold up structurally well when doing very fine, spindly things -- such as the thinner neck/connector areas of the Y-Wing. Those parts just broke apart with fairly light handling. If I'd attempted to replicate something as comparatively delicate as, say, the wings of an X-Wing at 1:270 scale, I can imagine the putty just falling apart if I so much as looked at it funny.

For the final version, my plan is to support the bulk of each ship from the clear "flight peg," and then pin and attach the other fragments with pieces of wire, to try to give a sense of bits and pieces floating around.

Ok, thanks for the anwer that I never ask, GREETTINGS

I'd forgotten how crap the Star Wars micro machines were, but they were the only X-Wing miniatures you could have as a kid so I loved them

And then Action Fleet came out and crapped all over those tiny micromachines! Action Fleet was so good...

Yeah but they were wayyy too big for miniature gaming ( I had a sh*tty proto-wargame designed for them using 40k rules) and were more like toys. Pretty pricey as well so I never had more than an X-wing and a B-wing.

I was GMing Edge of the Empire just before getting into X-Wing. We had trouble with its more abstract space combat and I thought about using the X-wing rules instead but the diferances in the two systems didn't seem like they would mesh, so I never tried it. What's your aproach, do you alter the talents and skills from eote or change the ship stats from x-wing? Say a PC has training in pilot(space), how does thier ability score/skill ranks translate?

Ok, thanks for the anwer that I never ask, GREETTINGS

I wonder how you say goodbye.

Well, maybe bye, I don't what are you try to probe, it's an intencional mistake, by this some friends reconaisseme, greettings

I'd forgotten how crap the Star Wars micro machines were, but they were the only X-Wing miniatures you could have as a kid so I loved them

I know what you mean. When I had nothing to compare to, they were AWESOME. But now, when I put them side by side with the FFG models, even if they're even remotely around the same size, I can't help but notice how they're bent a little here, warped a little there, overly thick in one spot, etc. it's REALLY noticeable on my various TIE fighters, with their warped panels.

I still get use out of the few Action Fleet toys I have, though. Some of them are so grossly out of scale that it's embarrassing to put them on the table, but others are nice touches, even though "Edge of Empire really IS NOT a miniatures game. For example, I've got that Millennium Falcon toy that pops open with a "play set" inside; I've never gotten around to trying to "furnish" the inside, but it serves as a nice placeholder for putting minis as a visual reminder for "Who's still on the ship," vs. who decided to go outside at the space station, or who's in a fighter, etc. (Just glance at the table and see where your mini is located, and issue a correction if the GM has it wrong. )

I was GMing Edge of the Empire just before getting into X-Wing. We had trouble with its more abstract space combat and I thought about using the X-wing rules instead but the diferances in the two systems didn't seem like they would mesh, so I never tried it. What's your aproach, do you alter the talents and skills from eote or change the ship stats from x-wing? Say a PC has training in pilot(space), how does thier ability score/skill ranks translate?

Since I'm doing this for RPG purposes, there's an awful lot of "winging it" going on, and I need to make some updates to my "cheat sheet" since the last game. For each ship being used by the players, I've been pasting together quick-ref sheets that have the Edge of Empire stats, and then a bogus (Photoshop patched) ship card for the X-Wing stats, along with paste-in equipment cards that seem appropriate (for ion cannons, proton torpedoes, etc.). In some cases, I don't happen to have both Edge of Empire *AND* X-Wing stats for a given ship, so I have to make something up. I don't yet have a smooth "conversion" process, so it mostly consists of my conjecture about stuff like, "Well, this ship is supposed to be a lowly mass-produced craft, so it's probably close to a Headhunter in stats,

I've seen folks posting stats for various ships, but quite often, when I examine the stats, they tend to be suspiciously powerful (as in, "Why would anyone ever want a mere X-Wing, when they could have THIS?!"). So for now I'm just eyeballing it and hoping the players don't think too much about WHERE I got these stats.

For game play ... it's still a work in progress, and I think my own balance is a bit broken and in need of further work. But with that in mind, here's where I am at the moment.

>>> Determine Piloting score by adding up the character's dice in Piloting (Space). Each green die = 1 point; each yellow die = 2 points. This puts the typical TIE fighter pilot (3 Agility + 1 rank Piloting) at a Piloting score of "4." This is used for purposes of determining order in which movements are made.

>>> Every PC who is a member of the crew of a ship (e.g., multiple PCs acting as gunners, etc.) acts at the same time as the ship's pilot. (Yes, this means a ship with awesome gunners and a lousy pilot will be severely disadvantaged in terms of action order, but I can live with that. And what player group will tolerate having a lousy pilot at the helm for very long? )

>>> We go through rounds of X-Wing Miniatures combat like usual -- but if there is any non-starfighter-combat activity that's taking place at the same time (e.g., a fight taking place ON one of the ships right in the middle of the battle, or the "talkie" guy in the group is trying to negotiate in the middle of the shooting), then any die-rolling exercises related to that are handled at the "bottom" of each round.

>>> For the various Talents, I've been figuring out their impact on the game on an "as it comes up" basis. Being able to reroll a Piloting check isn't of much use if Piloting is just a fixed value determining your position in the action order each round ... but I can entertain the idea that it could be used to reroll anything involving dice that could reflect upon actual piloting (e.g., reroll the damage dice when you pass "through" an asteroid in hopes that it'll come up with no hits ... or reroll evasion dice in hopes of negating an attack). Once I make a house-ruling on that, I write it down for future reference, but I haven't exhaustively gone through ALL the Talents to see how they might apply.

>>> Having multiple players on, say, a YT-1300 to man the turrets, etc., means the ship can get in more attacks. A YT-1300 has two turrets, so if you've got one pilot and one gunner, the pilot could make an attack in his forward arc, AND the gunner gets to make one attack that can go outside the forward arc (because it's a turret). If you've got TWO gunners, then it can make two attacks, each one ignoring the forward firing arc (but it doesn't magically add a THIRD attack, because in-game there are still only two turrets.)

>>> I calculate a "score" for certain other skills that might impact game play, mostly in the form of allowing rerolls on dice. My current formula is similar to that for Piloting: Add up your dice (green = 1, yellow = 2), but then SUBTRACT TWO. If, SOMEHOW, after that, you end up with zero or a NEGATIVE score, you're just too incompetent at that skill to contribute, or there's some sort of penalty.

(Note: I don't apply this to the Piloting score because it would be kind of moot anyway, since there it's just used to determine turn order.)

>>> Gunnery: You get to reroll a number of attack dice equal to your "gunnery score." You must take the new result, whether better or worse. If you have a negative Gunnery skill, you get NO rerolls, and in fact you must pull out one attack die per negative score. (Note: I treat the typical space pirate as having a "Gunnery Score" of zero. This tends to mostly benefit the players and "major NPCs.") If "Lock On" is an option, a gunner can "lock on" separately from the pilot.

>>> Mechanics: For this, I listed a number of abilities based on the various Astromech cards, and then ranked them by how "powerful" I thought they were (e.g., the ones that let you flip a Critical over to be a regular damage, or let you restore a shield point if the pilot takes a green action). Each round, anyone who is acting as a Mechanic (i.e., not doing anything else!) can take a repair action, choosing from the list, as long as he meets the minimum Mechanics score for each option.

>>> Computers: For this, I think I went overboard: You calculate your Computers score, and then you can engage in "electronic countermeasures" or providing "targeting support" over the course of the round (rather than waiting until your "turn") ... which basically means that you get a limited number of dice you can reroll on any attack or defense die that round, for friends or foes who happen to be within 3 range. So if you've got 4 yellow in Computers (4 * 2 -2 = 6) then over the course of each round, you'd get to reroll up to 6 attack or defense dice, friend or foe, hoping each time that the new roll is better than the old.

The first time I did this, however, there was no range limitation. Having a Slicer in the group meant that he was probably the most versatile and engaged character in the entire conflict, since he could mete out help or hindrance as desired, over the course of the round. (And being able to pick and choose which dice to reroll on both sides of an exchange is a pretty big deal.) Next time, I'm going with the range limitation, at the very least.

Since I've got a Slicer in the group, I pretty much have to make sure he CAN do something, and the fact he's specialized means that he's got lots of dice in it -- while others in the group (those acting as gunners, pilots, etc.) tend to be more diversified in their skill sets (since they need to be competent not only at space combat, but when the action takes place on land as well), so I'm not sure on where to properly balance things.

...

Anyway, that's just an abstract overview, and I still need to do some edits to reflect observations from our last game. We don't go through THAT much starfighter combat in our campaign (as half the time the group keeps AVOIDING combat situations through trickery, fast-talking, etc., and they're smugglers, not soldiers), so it takes me a while to go through iterations of "playtesting" this properly. Hence, it's going to be a while before I there's even a hope that I'll have anything worthwhile to post over on the Edge of Empire forums.

Randomly-scaled Micro Machines and Titanium toys only go so far, so I'm also trying to build my own craft using bits of plasticard (and similar materials), putty, foam-core, and whatever else fits the bill. I have a little Micro Machines model of the Hound's Tooth -- the ship of Bossk the Trandoshan Bounty Hunter -- and thought it looked like a nice, clunky freighter that could be useful for some scenarios ... but the one I have is horribly out of scale. It is boxy enough that I wondered if I could manage to make one out of plasticard and such.

I checked around for various visual refs of the ship (a YV-666 Corellian Light Freighter, according to Wookieepedia), and some measurements. For a while, I was perplexed about just how the thing flies, as models I'd seen made it look as if it had two thrusters sticking UP on the back end (perpendicular to its presumed movement) ... but fortunately the ship shows up in an episode of "Clone Wars" ("Bounty" - season 4, episode 20), and I caught a glimpse of the back end: There are horizontal rectangular thruster "nacelles" on the upper back side of the main "cab" body.

I used a couple of pieces of foam-core illustration board and some scrap plastic as spacers in the main body. For the back end, I'm using some impressions of the back/bottom of the Slave I as a starting point for "greebles" on the tail. I'm planning on using putty to round the corners where appropriate, then sand down for smooth transitions. I'm really not experienced at this sort of thing, so I'm just sort of making it up as I go.

More of a problem would be my work on a Gozanti Cruiser:

Wookieepedia stats put it at about 42m. I dug up all the views I could, including pictures from the new Rebels TV series (with the TIE fighters underneath), as my player group found stats for this in the new Age of Rebellion book and decided they want to save up to buy one as their big goal, and recruit some NPCs to fill out the rest of the crew (since it needs something like 10-12 or so people, being a pretty big ship).

Or so you'd think from the book stats. 42m is not much longer than the Millennium Falcon. I arranged the pictures in Photoshop, scaling to 1:270 for the main views from right, left, top, bottom, front, back ... and that's where it was pretty obvious that something was off.

There's no way those TIEs are going to fit so snugly under the "wings" like that if this is only 42m long. It looked especially silly when I shrank down a picture of Han Solo to 1:270 scale and compared it to the ship. To scale, Han's head would be bumping against the ceiling of that top deck, and he'd have to stoop over to look out that narrow view-slit (which is only around 20-25cm high, if the whole thing is 42m long). And those little side-areas where there are viewports? There's no way someone is fitting into those cubbyholes comfortably. In any case, I think it's fair to say that the players are *expecting* something midway between a YT-1300 and a Corellian Corvette. Maybe that's not quite right, but I don't think this will cut it.

So, once again, Wookieepedia stats are questionable. Argh! I shouldn't worry that much, and I don't want to be a "slave to scale" (I know the CR90 and Rebel Transport are a different scale), but it just LOOKS WRONG. Alas, I don't have any nice, clean views of the ship WITH THE TIE FIGHTERS straight on from the side, so I'll have to take some guesses on what would be an appropriate size to scale relative to the TIEs. (I'm aiming for "looks good on the table.")

Excellent. Because the gozanti always LOOKED like it should be much bigger than its stats listed (of course, so does the hwk), maybe FFG will make it bigger if they ever make one.

Addendum to my previous notes about the Gozanti Cruiser, once I tracked down a ruler:

* FFG's 1:270 scale TIE fighter model is about 1.25" long (measured from front to back of the wing panels at the middle, widest point).

* If I'm to take the Wookieepedia length of 42m for the Gozanti Cruiser, the length of the 1:270 model would be about 6.124" on the table.

* However, in order to get the TIE fighters to fit underneath the Gozanti Cruiser's "wing" in proportion to the "Rebels TV" clip, the TIE models would need to measure somewhere between 0.5" to 0.75" (closer to 0.75").

* Based on that dubious visual "measurement," I'm estimating that the model should actually be 10.21" long in order to scale with the TIE models. Converted back into meters, that would suggest that the canon length of a Gozanti Cruiser should be in the NEIGHBORHOOD of 70m.

Disclaimer: Please attach a pretty hefty margin of error onto that "70m" measurement. I've had some trouble trying to line up the details on that Rebels TV picture (plus another that shows it from below) with what "landmarks" I could find on the Gozanti's hull. All I'm certain about at this point is that the 42m measurement is a joke. I hope FFG will make an official Gozanti Cruiser at some point, and that they'll make it large enough not to be laughable next to the TIE fighters. But even if they do, I figure that will have to be a LONG way out, so in the meantime for my campaign I'm moving ahead with a scratch-build using my best guess.

Also, I don't have pictures yet, but I got a few Titanium models off Ebay as part of a grab-bag deal. These things measure /about/ 3 inches long in their largest dimension, so that means that if there's a Star Wars vehicle that's somewhere around 20.57m in its largest dimension, the Titanium model just MIGHT be horseshoes-and-handgrenades close to 1:270 scale. It's a bit of a gamble, though.

* ARC-170: Titanium toy is 4" wide, 2.5" long. (So much for my "3 inches" rule.) At 1:270 scale, an ideal model SHOULD be 3.30" wide ... but boy the ARC-170 toy looks about right! I'm going to paint it up and use it. The model is of middling quality, with very sparse detail. The "opening cockpit" is a joke -- a single piece that opens the entire canopy area (pilot, co-pilot, and back gunner, all at once, with the astromech riding the canopy -- I sincerely doubt it's meant to open that way in-universe) and a completely bare area underneath ... but I'll see if the model can benefit from some painting.

I'm divided on whether to paint it up in original Republic regalia, or to paint it up as an early-Empire-era ship. It's the closest to this scale I've found so far. (My scenario next weekend involves the PCs traveling to a hazardous nebula to investigate the site of an ambush of an early-Empire-era convoy as part of a REALLY cold-case investigation ... so rather than having a bunch of wrecked TIEs, I figured I might have some Clone-Wars-era craft with Imperial regalia dotting the site of the "inevitable" clash with space pirates.)

* IG-2000: Titanium toy is 2.625" long. Canon length is 20m; at 1:270 scale, an ideal model would be 2.92" long. So, it's a bit short, but still pretty close. The fluff text is ridiculous, however. Seriously, this is a *starfighter* that had "living quarters" removed, that has an engine from a Nebulon-B frigate installed, and still has room for 8 prisoners plus the pilot? Riiiiiight. The fluff text on the package gives me further concern, as it's talking up this ship like it's something really huge, yet that engine allows it to be as fast as the Slave I (never mind that, given the measurements printed on the boxes, these ships should be about the SAME SIZE, so we shouldn't be so surprised). I'm thinking there's another goof-up on scale, but for my campaign purposes I'm just going to use the toy (and argue that the only way it holds 6 prisoners is by sticking them in "suspension tubes" or whatnot).

It also took some effort to track down references to find out WHICH END is the front, since the cockpit doesn't really look identifiably like a cockpit. Most of the pictures show the back end of the craft facing the viewer, possibly giving the impression that end is the front.

As for the Titanium model, the detail is nice enough, but I am annoyed that the "© LFL" copyright notice is ON THE TOP OF THE SHIP, and it's on the die-cast portion and in a recessed area, so filing it out is going to be a hassle. Still, I had to get this, so between it, the FFG Slave I, and my "Hound's Tooth," I should be well on my way to having a whole roster of bounty hunter ships.

* Slave I: Titanium toy is pretty sad-looking compared to FFG's model, but in the general neighborhood of size. I only got this because it was part of the grab bag with the ARC-170 and IG-2000 that I wanted. The Titanium model is about 3" long/high at its longest dimension, compared to 3.25" long/high for the FFG model. Going at 1:270 scale off the canon measurement of 21.5m, the ship "should" be about 3.14" long ... which puts it right between those two measurements.

In any case, the Titanium model is noticeably smaller than the official FFG model (and has much less detail), and I ended up with the "bare metal" or "silver" version. Given that I already have FFG's model (which looks nicer anyway), probably the only reason I'll crack this out of the package is if I decide to convert it to "space junk," or if my players for some reason acquire a Firespray in the course of the campaign and decide to repaint it. ("Hey guys, I have a great idea: How about you CHROME it? That'll make it REALLY inconspicuous!")

Also, I've found that the Jedi Starfighter and Jedi Interceptor from the Star Wars Starship Battles miniatures are pretty close to 1:270 scale (the ETA-2 Actis Interceptor errs on the large side -- especially noticeable if you put it next to the Jedi Starfighter -- but it passes the "eyeball test" next to the FFG ships on its own).