Federation Commander

Unless the aft bubble had more space to fit an enlarged reactor arrangement, no reason at all. So if you were moving to bigger warp engines, you might move it, otherwise, yeah, it stays put.

Garth is right here. It's easier to enlarge existing mounts than remove them and add entirely new ones. And Frankly, it makes much more engineering sense for the engines to mount to the center body.

My first order of ships from ShapeWay's arrived today. I was curious to see what ShapeWays is capable of printing with the inexpensive White Strong and Flexible material, so I included a 3125 Scale D7B in WSF to compare with a metal Starline 2500 D6 that I had on hand.

The first thing I noticed was the D7's neck is warped to the right. Some quick googling suggests I can correct the bend by heating the area and bending it back to shape, so it shouldn't be a major issue. Bent necks on Klingon ships isn't anything new, I remember the neck of the metal D6 I am using for a comparison having a larger bend in its neck when I received it. One other thing I noticed about the neck for the Shapeways version is it has a taper that matches the filming model, unlike the SL2500 sculpt.



The phaser emitters are better formed than I was expecting and the impulse engine radiators, while not as crisp as the metal SL2500 miniature, should look reasonable on the table top after painting. The WSF phaser bumps lack the sharp transition away from the hull that can be seen in StarCatX's earlier photographs of the higher resolution print, which is to be expected with the limitations of WSF, but there is enough definition that the WSF phasers will be identifiable on the tabletop. There is slight 'fuzziness' to the edges of the WSF miniature, which I suspect will be easily removed with fine sandpaper.



The small raised panels behind the bridge also printed clearly enough in the WSF to be identifiable, but they lack the sharp edges of prints in higher resolution materials.



Something I like about the ShapeWay's D7 miniature, in any material, is the one piece nature of the printing. No need to carefully glue the engine nacelles on the angle you think is correct.



Comparison of the engine nacelle details.



My first impression of White Strong and Flexible is miniatures printed in this material are perfectly fine for gaming and after painting won't look out of place alongside existing metal miniatures on the table top. I expect my future purchases will be mix of WSF miniatures to build up fleets quickly and FUD miniatures for those ships I think need the extra detail or that I want to have stand out a bit more.

Excellent post, Gary. Thanks for the clear / in-focus close-up photos.

Very Nice compare/contrast post. Looking forward to seeing more of your fleets.

I'm curious, in general, where all these sculpters are getting reference info and specifications from for modeling all the ships? I only really got into SFU when ACTA:SF came out and I haven't really gotten anything else, so I'm not really that familiar with any reference material that's been out there over the years.

It varies with the sculptor. There are 5 of us now and each came with their own background.

A common thread is most of us are long time Star Fleet Battles / Federation Commander players and have sizable collections of the materials for those games. Those, plus Captain's Log magazines, the painting guides included with the old lead minis, etc., are pretty common references. The legacy metal minis are always a primary reference.

In the case of the "tv ships" there are fanion blueprint sets (of varying fidelity) that have been around for decades and much photo documentation of the filming models.

The results also usually undergo public review on the legacy ADB discus board, where other experts weigh in on accuracy.

[Ignore the image-hosting gripes, below. Photobucket has decided to stop providing the service they exist for. Until I can edit my profile here to point to my new account on imgur, all my signature-line images are broken, in every post]

There is a metric asteroid ton of data about the ships.

There are miniatures for most of them, art for many of them, graphics for most of them, and of course the SFB SSDs have a wealth of information about this phaser is about here and fires in that arc.

I'm interested in taking a crack at modeling some romulan ships, i do have some of the 2500's to use as reference, I wonder what else I could look at for proper proportions and whatnot I could use.

I have someone(s) doing Romulans but that doesn't mean there couldn't be three. Will can show you the master specifications document and sometime you can email me some CGI photos (not STL files) of one ship and we'll see.

JohnDDW - If you would like to pursue this, send me a personal message here and we'll exchange emails to get you the information on what it takes.

I received my test Seltorian PFs today in FUD. Not the best quality photos, so my apologies, but they are all there and turned out great!

Sweeet!

(not a bad close up pics. Close ups are harder than most shots.)

Those turned out great. Using the extra-boom gimmick for the leader PF was a great idea.

Are there any plans to do omni scale versions of the shuttlecraft (would be kinda neat to see a different design for each empire or for specialized missions ), drones, and plasma torpedoes?