15mm Sci Fi project: Eden- New sculpt 5/2

[Brummie]

Excellent work! Really coming along. I've always wanted to have a similar set up for Ship Boarding Actions/CQB in the Void (Star Wars A New Hope, springs to mind ) its cool to see some ones take on that as I'd not know where to start!

[CookAndrewB]

Thanks, Brummie. I've felt a little obsessive about this project. I woke up in the night thinking about how I could mate a second section so that the hull was a doublewide 

Just wanted to share a few more little details about the project. First up, the engines.


While I wanted to do something big and impressive, I finally settled on something pretty simple, but effective. First, I didn't want to violate my 20mm height. Part of this entire project is about making a storable gaming system. So between tiles, and these ship hulls, I needed most of the game to stack flat so that it (unlike my 28mm post apoc world) easily fits on a shelf. So the engines got downsized, which might very well make sense in the future. I am going to stick to that. The good news is that the engines look pretty decent for a couple wooden beads, some cardboard, and caps off of laundry detergent refills.

Because I needed some points of interest for my game (and because empty maps make me sad), I have started to work on scatter terrain. These are the lockers and beds that I made to help dress things up a bit. I'll probably make some more beds in the future, but make them bunks for variety.


It was a nice surprise that the lockers fit three wide in a 4" space.


So configurations could be a locker room and three bedrooms, or three rooms with lockers.


Beds and locker bases are getting some finishing paint on them. I like the way the lockers turned out, so they are finished for now.


Both beds and lockers are expanded PVC foam board. The detail carves/etches in easily. It may be a bit difficult to see, but the beds do have a paper mache blanket on them, and will get a green stuff pillow at some point.

Lastly, in preparation for the eventual docking of said ship at some space station (yes, I tend to think that far ahead), I am going to include airlock access from outside the ship (round hatch with view port) so I have an idea of ingress/egress points when a ship is docked. Otherwise, this ship has a good sized shuttle bay for boarding actions. I will get around to creating something on the interior to denote the hatch as well. For now it is an exterior feature only.

[War Monkey]

You will have to forgive me but in the future I will be pinching many of you ideas! 

[Skullhamma]

You will have to forgive me but in the future I will be pinching many of you ideas! 

Same here! My apologies... 

[CookAndrewB]

No apologies needed. Most of this was already appropriated from other sources. The little crate piles are a pretty flagrant ripoff of some terrain Ockman did. 

Well, depending on how this week's game goes, I'm pushing towards having the follow on encounter on the planet. So I'm trying to make some progress towards getting the rest of my planetary terrain completed.

The first abode has some initial drybrushing done. Next up will be to add the color and details.


Front door:


Solar panel side:


And since I had some tall "tree" vegetation I decided I needed some shorter bushes too. More aquarium plants gave their lives for this effort. Because these were all previously on some other mount, I went ahead and created some little hills with air dry clay so they matched their other counterparts a bit more.


And arranged in a 4x4" block.


So I have my cork tiles glued to MDF. I did four 1'x1' tiles so that I can get a 2'x2' board put together. I've long admired certain boards that have a number of road patterns so that a tile can be used to make a city, or perhaps a road through the wilderness. At least at first, I'm thinking I'll probably make two tiles with roads/sidewalks and perhaps consider leaving the others blank. I purchased enough cork to make another 2'x2' board (why buy one when you can get two for twice the price?) with the overall idea being that I would perhaps make one set of tiles completely wilderness, and one set for a town. Regardless of which is which, my first step is to lay out a grid. Since the planet side terrain pieces are all dimensional (2"x2", 2"x4", or 4"x4" currently), I want to be able to mix some water features into the tiles, by carving out the cork (hence why they need an MDF bottom), that I could then place something like a 4x4 tile over to cover the feature. Or I could leave it uncovered so that there is a water feature. In this same way, I might also be able to create rivers that could be covered over with terrain features.

Of course, now that I'm thinking through this, I'm wondering if I should make the road sections so that they can be removed and skip the exercise of making two sets of tiles. 

[Ockman]

Lovely work, I thought I recognized the crate... 

[CookAndrewB]

Played through my first game of Five Parsecs: Salvage Team. I'll create a write up of that later in the week, but to get warmed up here are some sculpting updates:

First up are my new space bugs, the Shorts.


Things you need to know? Shorts get their name from the unique biological activity that sees them gain their energy through absorbing and storing electrical energy vice exo/endothermic means. This is done through an evolutionary organ that acts like a large capacitor. On their world of origin, the planet is riddled with electrical storms. The Shorts sit in saline puddles and wait for lightning strikes at which time they absorb the energy they need to create nerve and muscular impulses. They have no mouth, but rather excrete digestive fluids and absorb nutrients through a series of pores on their belly. If a Short manages to get into a ship's power conduits, they will wreak havoc by way of creating shorts (how they get their names) and grounds. Once "tapped in" a Short will digest and absorb energy in an effort to reproduce; seeing a steady power supply as an indicator to breed. If a Short runs out of enough electrical charge to create neural /muscular impulses, it will simply go dormant until such a time as there is more electricity to be absorbed.




I tried to give them all different faces.


This is an update on my Ameob figure. Finally has a face and the weapon is taking shape.






And then my Ship Engineer, who got the upgrade from power fist to power arm:




I'm hoping to sculpt her head and get her painted up this week.




 

[War Monkey]

I just couldn't help noticing you mentioned Star Frontier for the Dralasite, and the fine sculpture your making, when it came to me, how the Goat Men from Irregular Miniatures, could fit the bill for Yazirians as well as the race your using them for.



remove the horns and add some Green Stuff for their glideing membrane and a few more odds and ends could fit the role very nicely.

Could add another race to your games. The first opportunity I can get I would love to make a few.

[CookAndrewB]

Well, the goggles are about right!  Star Frontiers might have been the second role playing game I played, right after old Red Book D&D.

I'm open to an infinite number of alien species in my games. I like universes like Star Wars where everyone is all mixed together at the cantina. Star Trek did a fair job of having a few major races, but then every week introduced us to some new beings who were out there but maybe not a major player in the Federation (if they were a member at all). I'm currently working on creating some species character creation tables, from the species I have made, for Five Parsecs. So far I have the following:
Duz
Saurosian
Gruff
Ameob
Human (I worked hard to make this one  )
And a few critters that I have yet to name and work into the world as Five Parsecs allows critter enemies but not critter player characters at the current time.

Some shots from Sunday's game. This was campaign turn #1, and it was a nice gentle start for Super Salad and his untested crew. Here is the starting deployment from the Dropship Trou:


The crew spills out ready for anything, but the cargo hold/shuttle bay are empty (no contacts rolled).


Bucket and Decaf head to the rear of the ship while the rest of the crew decides to take on the more congested bridge and crew quarters section:


In the engine room (also no contacts rolled) Bucket hits the first Point of Interest, getting the engines back online. This rolls up so that Bucket needs to roll a 6, twice, to get her up and running. First roll, a 3. Second roll... a 6!!! We might just pull this off. Third roll, a 5. Damn. The engine whines and smokes, but the team was not able to start the engines and restore more than aux power (darkness limited vision to 2" due to low lights).


On the good side, Decaf located some scrap that would be worth credits.


Super Salad also found some scrap worth credits after hacking his way through a locked door. The big win of the day was Bubba working his way through a locked door AND overcoming an obstacle (second Point of Interest) which revealed a piece of scrap and a mysterious black box.


The third Point of Interest was tackled by Bakwotter's favorite son, Mel. Upon fiddling with the ship's log the panel exploded (Hootenanny wasn't the password, despite Mel's insistence). Fortunately Mel weathered the blast and only managed to be stunned.


The loot safely aboard, the crew departs:


So, despite six opportunities for there to be contacts, nothing rolled up. The crew scored three creds for their scrap finds, which Super Salad promptly spent trying to figure out what the black box was. Some rare tech, the deflector field that Bubba found now adorns Super Salad's belt. This allows Super to ignore the first casualty of every mission. That's like having a bonus life, and he feels it was well worth the credits he spent on it.

The Campaign event was that the crew elects a new leader. It turns out that Super's decision to spend all the credits earned on his new toy wasn't a popular decision with the crew. More to the point it wasn't popular with Bubba, the rest of the crew didn't have strong feelings about things. They were just happy to make it out in one piece and are ready for more missions. Bubba will head up the crew from here out.

Character event was to give a figure a makeover (physically change some aspect of a figure) so Bubba, as the new leader, is going to get something to show his new leadership role among the crew. More on that as I get there.

Between missions four of the crew members leveled up. Crew assignments, and results, were as follows:
Bubba trained in order to gain an XP to level up.
Super Salad and Decaf got sent out to try and drum up some new leads, and they failed to learn anything of value.
Mel and Ant went trading, and managed to get medical supplies (reduce recovery by one) and a buffer field (increases survivability in a brawl) respectively.
Bucket wandered around on a sightseeing mission and picked up a new lead where Super and Decaf had failed.

The crew having two leads actually managed to turn one of them into a contract. A local town official has hired the crew to examine an object that fell from space to the east of the settlement. Bubba already seems to be a more effective leader since he has managed to get a paid gig for the crew.

The next mission will be planetside, which means I need to get my terrestrial tiles in order, and build a primary mission objective.

For a more cinematic version of the battle report, check out page 7 https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/post_apoc_wargames/last-one-out-of-eden-lock-the-gate-15mm-sci-fi-t6176-s60.html

[blacksmith]

Love it!

[War Monkey]

Nice Report! I checked out the link you left, I like the improvements you did with the beds and lockers.

If you like a mix of races, to work into you games. I like to use RAFM's Sci-Fi Figures, in the mix along with many other suppliers.

http://www.rafm.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=SFNT&Store_Code=RAF

Nice to be able to build a few fairly sizeable forces of different aliens too. You'll never know who's territory you might be in and just perhaps a member of your crew may have some influence in that area.

[CookAndrewB]

Well, since War Monkey mentioned it, here are the updated lockers and beds:




I think I'm also done with Building 1 for now. I want to get building 2 and 3 caught up before I start worrying about the really small details.





The "purple" panels are really color shift paints from Turbo Dork. I don't get a lot of opportunities to play around with these, but a sci-fi setting seems like a good one.


And the boring side of the abode. Maybe some pictures or graffiti at some point.


And, nose art for the Trou.


For the time being, these will be the last of my "vegetable/mineral" builds. This set of a 2x4" and two 2x2" pieces will fill up the box where I'm storing my plants and rocks for Eden. I think these might be another good use for the color shift paints. These are some pink foam scraps that I picked up from a construction site I walk by on my way to work.




And since I was already chopping up and sanding pink foam, I knocked out a crashed escape shuttle objective for my next game:



I need to build up the "crash" zone and such, but I figure I can get that done over the weekend and be ready for the next game.

And, since I made one... why not two? Less wrecked, and something that can be sitting in a star port or in the ever-empty shuttle bay.



Needs a good number of greeblies and such, but the basic shape is there. I'm picturing the above as a basic people mover from planet to space.

This will, in time, become something more like a "space junker." The equivalent of every rusted pickup truck out on the roads today. Bakwotter would almost certainly have a couple of these "are you sure that will fly?" types of vehicles around.


And, last but not least here is the start of my terrain tile build. 2'x2' build. I have enough tile to do another 2'x2' section with some roads for a city build as well.

[Oldben1]

Amazing work!  The space tiles are really creative.

[zrunelord]

Lovely creative stuff Cook.
Keep it up.
Z

[War Monkey]

Some really nice and interesting projects you have going on there.

By the way, I broke out the old graph paper to jot down some ideas of my own. I plan on getting some square and round wood dowels of different thickness. 1/4 inch or 6mm square dowel would make for some very nice floor cabinets  with a little cereal cardboard for a counter top, would be nice for a Sick Bay  or a Laboratory, and other ideas for a computer system. round dowels for storage tanks both vertical and horizontal.

Plus a few floor plan designs and ideas.