I can understand that. How big is it going to be?

19 minutes ago, Commander Klank said:

I can understand that. How big is it going to be?

Top down, I'm going for no more than 4 inchs/10cm square. Around the same high. Still templating in paper at the mo.

On 2/18/2017 at 11:33 AM, Commander Klank said:

Sort of the idea... it will be faster and more maneuverability than an ISD but have less armor (hull points) and slightly less firepower. It's main protection will be it's shields and speed.

Actually this ship is going to be an Enforcer class cruiser. That is the ship made from the smaller Immobilizer ship which was stripped of it's gravity wells and equipped with more armor and weapons.

Enforcer-class cruisers were built on the same 600-meter frame as the Immobilizer 418 cruiser and Vindicator-class heavy cruiser after naval architects removed the massive power generators from an Immobilizer 418 cruiser and discovered that by re-arranging the vessel's power grids, they could significantly enhance the ship's energy weapons, shields, and tractor beams. Even the engines experienced a bonus from this reconfiguration. The end result was a very fast and maneuverable vessel that was well armed for a ship its size.

1 hour ago, Commander Klank said:

Actually this ship is going to be an Enforcer class cruiser. That is the ship made from the smaller Immobilizer ship which was stripped of it's gravity wells and equipped with more armor and weapons.

Enforcer-class cruisers were built on the same 600-meter frame as the Immobilizer 418 cruiser and Vindicator-class heavy cruiser after naval architects removed the massive power generators from an Immobilizer 418 cruiser and discovered that by re-arranging the vessel's power grids, they could significantly enhance the ship's energy weapons, shields, and tractor beams. Even the engines experienced a bonus from this reconfiguration. The end result was a very fast and maneuverable vessel that was well armed for a ship its size.

Sounds like that'll be a challenge to balance. I guess you'd have to go with a fast glass cannon?

Yeah... I looking at something like this: Hull 7, defense tokens 4; contain, brace, re-direct x2, shields : 4,3,2 (like an ISD) Command 3, Squadron 2, Engineering 4, Speed 4; speed 1 (1/1,1), speed 2 (1/1, 2/1), speed 3 (1/1, 2/-, 3/1), speed 4 (1/-, 2/1, 3/-,4/1) Firepower (F) 3 red, 3 blue (S) 2 red, 1 blue (R) 2 red, (AS) 1 blue, Upgrades: officer, weapons team, offensive retrofit, ion cannon, turbo-blaster, title. (around 110 points?)

Title: Clovenshield ; Advanced reactor power distribution: When ship is at speed 2 or slower it may add 2 red dice to it's front firing arch or 1 red dice to it's side or rear firing arch once a turn or store one engineer token if no dice are added to it's attacks that turn. (10? points)

This is the kind of pocket star destroyer I've always wanted for the game. Fast and maneuverable but fragile once you get through the shields. If you slow down to speed 2 you get to play with some engineering shenanigans...

*looks at newest addition to Mel's line up*

Ooooooooooh... still gonna wait till they announce the next wave to see how much Rogue One stuff is going to make it in...

OK, here we go... megadelivery time.

Many small bags! I'm going to focus on the differences between the plastics, any issues I see with them, and I've also got a 3rd party resin ship to throw into the mix, too! I'm also going to split this post to make it easier to read/quote if you need to :-)

Beginning with the freighter. So here's a close-up of the WSF printed bulk freighter. As other people have commented, the plastic looks extremely porous, and the detail is mostly lost - given this is a trader ship and will have had bumps/bruises/knocks over its surface life, I can work with that; however for an armoured warship, I'd probably want to give it a miss! Also this is perfectly acceptable for scenery or modding.

I also managed to pick up one of Utar's resin bulk freighters:

As you can probably tell, they're not carbon copies of each other (woohoo originality), and the detail is much more striking in the resin model. I actually prefer Mel's rendition and scaling, between the two versions, it feels more like the in-game model.

That's WSF (in Bulk freighter form). I should also mention before anyone asks, nothing here has been cleaned, primed or otherwise treated - what you're seeing is straight out of the bag.

Up next, FUD. Oh FUD, you are so expensive but I do like you...

I'm going to ignore squadrons for the purposes of this discussion because you really wouldn't want tiny ships in anything other than FUD (I'll add some at the end as a bonus), but here's the Dreadnaught:

Compared to the WSF Bulk Freighter, the detail just leaps out at you:

Closer in you can still make out the variations in the printing technique, but it's nothing you'd worry about on a table-top miniature, for sure:

Also interesting to note, and something I will be trying with this miniature is that they're completely hollow, and to facilitate the 2-material printing process, there are drainage holes in the bottom to allow the supporting waxy material to run out (this is also why the smell like coconut!) I'm going to experiment with pouring into the model to give it a bit more robustness and a bit more heft, and see what happens from there.

So there's FUD in a bigger-than-squadron scale.

And next, the grand experiment (for me at least) - Hi Def Black Acrylate (HDBA)

This is a total unknown to me, and reading some of the other guys concerns on it I was a little worried I'd have loads of work to do with it. I needn't have worried!

The detail on this X5 platform isn't *quite* as crisp as it would've been with FUD, however it feels much more substantial and less delicate, and cost a little bit less. I was "lucky" with the platform also, as it has highlighted one of the concerns people have with HDBA.

Slight rounding of the edges which may bear a touch of sanding or filing, however on the bottom...

Uh oh! Pinhole city. Now I am actually pretty happy this is where it is, because I'm really never going to look at it after the painting is done, and it does look like it will sand back OK. However I might be pretty p'd if it was on the bottom of my MC80 or similar. However...!

On this Nebulon-B2, I can't find any pinholing at all. This one came out really well and is just about perfect.

Plenty of detail, substantially more solid-feeling than FUD, and also smells like a fresh marker pen when you open up the bag (admit it, who doesn't love that smell :-D )

And just for the sake of a relevant sample size, you understand (and totally not because I'm switching out the Light Cruiser model)...

They both came out perfectly.

So colour me a HDBA convert (unless I run into unforeseen painting difficulties of course)

Finally, a little bonus:

TIE Avengers:

TIE Droids:

And if anyone is interested I'll post some primed/painted/finished pics too, and let you know if I have any headaches (other than my normal being-alive headache!)

Finally (finally), in case anyone was wondering about the scale:

NB: Better top down square paper scaling below! Use this as more of a "what will it look like on the tabletop" reference

Mel's stuff always looks great. You got lucky with the black. I wish I still had pics of the Star Trek Miranda variant I ordered where the entire bottom (and everything under the rollbar) was covered in pinholes.

As for the scale, his dreadnought is enormous. That's my only complaint about the one I have. I wish I had ordered 1/7000.

3 Dreadnaughts were supposed to be able to stand toe to toe with an ISD, any smaller, and I wouldn't feel right sending them to their death.

I quite like the size, any smaller and they'll be dwarfed on their bases if you wanted to use them on a medium. Brings the details out too.

I guess it just depends on how much you want accurate proportions. A dreadnought the size of a Victory looks very, very weird to me. It's like having a Constitution-class be the same size as a Galaxy-class starship -- it breaks the immersion of the ships being from different eras and the Empire's rapid expansion of ship sizes.

5 minutes ago, jscott991 said:

I guess it just depends on how much you want accurate proportions. A dreadnought the size of a Victory looks very, very weird to me. It's like having a Constitution-class be the same size as a Galaxy-class starship -- it breaks the immersion of the ships being from different eras and the Empire's rapid expansion of ship sizes.

Squadrons - the definition of suspension of disbelief :-)

2 hours ago, jscott991 said:

I guess it just depends on how much you want accurate proportions. A dreadnought the size of a Victory looks very, very weird to me. It's like having a Constitution-class be the same size as a Galaxy-class starship -- it breaks the immersion of the ships being from different eras and the Empire's rapid expansion of ship sizes.

And that's just it, for Armada. Armada isn't supposed to be *scaled*, its deliberately on a Sliding, Playable scale... Because they're not scale models first and foremost - they're miniatures. There is a distinct difference there...

But that's not to say that Scaling is wrong ... Just that Playability and "Cool" factor is more important than exactness to the designers.

Which is specifically why Utar and Mel did the 1/7000s for people who do want it that particular...

But of course, you have to pay for that, because its otherwise not a priority...

I mean, I don't mean to be mean or anything - but you did come to the forums and introduce yourself as a scale modeller... You were interested in display pieces, not in game pieces... So no. They're not really "for" that in that aspect. They're Representative, not Exacting

For one, I enjoy the Representative... because it looks good to me, not being broken down in the minutia of counting turrets and thusmuch that I know some people do... I mean, my ISD-I "conversion" is just half-assed enough to give people conniptions if they're like that...

Mel makes the majority representative. The 1/7000s are exacting, and they're Apples and Oranges to each other... If there's no 1/7000 Dreadnaught, then by all means, get on his Reddit and ask for it... He'll generally Rescale (and provide multi-buy packs) for people who ask nicely

I should have paid for the 1/7000 dreadnought. I regret that I didn't.

But Mel's scale still runs big even compared to FFG's. Look at his Arquitens v. the Imperial Light Cruiser release. And the dreadnought runs, I think, even bigger (proportionally even to Armada's sliding scale).

I'm just surprised more people aren't bothered by how big that thing is. When I got mine from Shapeways (and when I saw MajSharpe's pics), I was just blown away by the size.

I've heard the dreadnaught size problem several times but I don't understand. The Nebulon B is 300m, the VSD is 900m and the Dreadnaught is 600m. My miniature is exactly the mid point between the size of the FFG VSD and the FFG Nebulon.

And the Arquitens didn't have a canon size back when I made it. I had to manualy scale it by looking at it next to Star Destroyers and Venators.

5 minutes ago, melminiatures said:

I've heard the dreadnaught size problem several times but I don't understand. The Nebulon B is 300m, the VSD is 900m and the Dreadnaught is 600m. My miniature is exactly the mid point between the size of the FFG VSD and the FFG Nebulon.

Are you sure?

I will look more closely at mine when I get home, but based on Maj. Sharpe's pictures and the picture I took a few weeks ago, I think the Dreadnought is almost the same length as the VSD.

If I'm not wrong the VSD is 138mm, the Nebulon is 90mm and the Dreadnaught is 114mm

Just now, melminiatures said:

If I'm not wrong the VSD is 138mm, the Nebulon is 90mm and the Dreadnaught is 114mm

Oh, now I see what you mean.

I think by using the oversized Nebulon B as a basepoint, it's making the Dreadnought look big to me. I see why you set the size as you did, but a 2 cm difference in length (particularly because of the VSD's tapering) isn't going to be all that distinguishable to the naked eye.

The VSD should be 50% longer than the Dreadnought. Using those measurements, it's only 20% longer and, to me at least, they are visually pretty much the same size.

I'll take some more comparison shots when I get home, but Maj. Sharpe does a pretty good job showing how big the Dreadnought looks next to a VSD. I have some mediocre pictures on page 1 showing how big it looks next to an ISD.

Well if we're getting into scaling, Mel, I would absolute LOVE a Millennium Falcon to fit on the back of a stock star destroyers bridge... goes nicely with old Captain Needa, for sure ;-)

Many Bothans died to bring us this information... many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view. Luckily, square paper doesn't lie quite as much as Obi-wan's rather liberal use of perspective...

(and yes I know I used a Corvette instead of the Nebulon. If you've got the starter set, you've got all three :-) Incidentally that's why I picked the Nebulon/Corvette/Victory combo as a scale reference, I'll try to stick to that in future too.)

That fits with what Mel said. The VSD is definitely not 50% longer, but it is longer.