Scratchbuilt starships W.I.P (em4 plastic figures)

[sundayhero]

Hi,

I just received my EM4 order, containing 3 sets of starships, and 1 box of mechas. All hard plastic.





My goal is to build at least 2 fleet of starships, with capitol ships, cruisers, etc... I'll mix the em4 plastic fighters and bombers with mechas bits to build new ships.

I'll come back soon with first results.

[Inso]

The arms from the mechas will be very handy for the starships... the missile pods are particularly bulky and could almost be used as the superstructure for one vessel.

I look forward to seeing the results

[Daeothar]

Nicestack of plastic you have there 

I once used the body of one of the robots (the large chickenlegged one) and two missilepods to create a small shuttlecraft:



I'm curious to see what you will come up with... 

[sundayhero]

Nice conversion ! I may borrow your idea 

I also saw some nice conversions a guy did for Eclipse boardgame, using the em4 plastic starships.

[eilif]

Great idea and it looks like you're off to a good start. A few years back I built a small detachment of ships just from cut-up Mechwarrior clix figs.

Sorry about the crap picture, but maybe it will give you some ideas.



Painted them up and I've still got them in a box somewhere. I really should take some proper pictures sometime.

[sundayhero]

Nice !

I made a few conversions with the mechas, but I'm a bit more concerned about the starships. They are nice fighter and bombers, but I'm not very good at mixing them, at least to build convincing cruisers and big battleships.

On boardgame geek, a guy made nice conversions, but I didn't buy enough sprues to build complete fleet as he did.

So I will probably keep most of them stock, to keep a playable amount of ships

I planned to play Star Navy (from Two hour wargames), building cruiser-style ships,  and finally my fleet will be more compatible with Fighter command, from the same editor...

[The_Beast]

Sorry, never got piccies, but your mentioning cliccies [I'm a poet and I show it...] brings up when I took a Star Wars Huge Crab Droid, and simply cut off the legs. I thought they had a nice old school 'cruiser' feel.

Also, don't be afraid to go REALLY cheap, rescuing handles from disposable items.

Doug

[nathan]

You can always add in other elements like the sprue chunks, buttons, bits from the hardware store, etc., if you need to make the smaller ships look larger.

For example, this Reaper Cav miniature looks an awful lot like they took bits of a fighter and stuck them on a larger chassis.





The other thing that make give a sense of scale would be to scrap away the cockpit and replace it with a little horizontal piece that's the height of one level/deck in the scale you are going for.

[Grimmnar]

On boardgame geek, a guy made nice conversions, but I didn't buy enough sprues to build complete fleet as he did.

Hey SDH,

Got a link to see more inspiration? :-)

Grimm

[sundayhero]

Here's the pics :

http://boardgamegeek.com/image/966525/aautio


Great work he did ! I tried to find wich parts he used (he gives a schematic somewhere else on the website), but it's some serious conversion work. Too much work for my own taste  

That's the problem, I bought these minis to save time, and finally, it would take me as much (or more) time than if I built the ships myself like this other guy does, for example :

http://solipsistgaming.blogspot.fr/search/label/scratchbuild


Not speaking of the needed amount of sprues to complete even 2 small fleet : because the EM4 sets contains all diferent ships. Wich is a great feature for fighters games, but not for fleet games or fleet scratchbuilding where you'll need a lot of similar parts/ships.

If you're playing in a group, it would be cool to combine the order with 2 or 3 other guys, this way each player could keep only the similar ships.


Anyway, I'll keep my crapy conversions into my bits box, and probably use the stock starships remaining for fighters and bombers, and simply build big cruisers and capital ships. Or even buy a few ones.

[eilif]

For those interested, here's the thread where the fellow on boardgame geek shows how he made his fleets.
http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/636657/eclipse-xeno-project-diy-spaceship-customization-d
It's pretty inspirational stuff and really informative.

It does use quite a few sprues but not that many if you're doing alot of mods, and it doesn't look that difficult.

[sundayhero]

I'm not saying it's difficult (even if the conversions are not as simple as you expect seeing the pics and schemes) but especially time consuming.

COncerning the amount of sets you need, take for example the biggest ship on this pic :

http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic956810_md.jpg


You need 6 parts from 4 ships (2 sets needed) just to build the biggest one, and because of that, it also means that you will not be able to build the 3 stock ships used for the biggest one, since you already used them for the big one.

So to make the small fleet you see on the pic, you will need at least 3 complete sets.  Considering also that the biggest ship will not be that big, finally.

And again, if you need the same parts for another customized ship, or small fighter squadrons, you will have to do your maths before.


These sets are great, but maybe not for everyone, depanding your skills or needs. Personaly, I'll keep these fighters stock (or almost stock) and buy a space fighters ruleset, like Fighter Command, and build or buy cruisers.


(edit : trying to correct my bad english)

[eilif]

I see what you're saying, but you're still going to have a ton of other parts for making other ships. The problem arises if you only want that group, but if you're doing what the poster of that thread is and making a few groups at once, it's a much better use of pieces.

[sundayhero]

I also understand what you're saying (it's easier since your english is far better than mine  ), but the ships designs have a lot of "personality" and very diferent shapes and styles, and there is not that much conversions and mixing possibilities, at least for my own creativity  

but if you're doing what the poster of that thread is and making a few groups at once, it's a much better use of pieces.

Take a look on the schematics he posted : he doesn't use a lot of diferent ships for his conversions. Except the "Descendants" army, all the other fleets share some ships designs for its own conversions.

What I mean is that no matter you want to build 2 fleet or 6 fleet, you will need almost the same amount of sets. Not speaking of the fact that if you take a serious look on the BGG project, you see that a lot of ships share the same "hawk-ish" design, because of the fact they share same components.


So finally, making my maths, I just realized that it would have be difficult (at least for me) to build 2 diferent but consistent designed fleet (about 8 ships/side) with the 3 sets I bought.  

3 sets, means 36 miniatures, but only 3 ships of each design. Great for fighters games. But for fleet scale, even if you want to build conversions, if you want (for instance) a group of 6 identical fighters, you'll still need 6 sets. Because no matter your conversions skills, you still need the 6 "core" components for your 6 fighters.

[eilif]

It would appear, that maybe that project is not the one for you.