"Scale in Space Combat?" Topic

In the past, I asked for help in ideas for rules for both land and space combat which shared rules sets, and after passing your suggestions on to my friend, he chose Legionnaire Games' "Strike Legion" and "Task Force Zeta."

Well, the so-and-so has gotten me hooked on the games. and now I'm looking for spacecraft, which leads to my question:

Is there a particular scale being used for these games, or do folks just use models to represent particular craft, with the size of the model corresponding to the size of the ship?

I've looked on-line, and darned if I can decide which way seems to work the best. I've found really cool models, though, so I'm interested in what folks here have to say.

I find that a simple, relative size scale with large, medium and small ships representing size classes is sufficient and that the ships don't necessarily have to adhere to an exact scale with respect to each other.

So, for emaple, i might have 3" models for capitol ships, 2" models for non-capitol ships like cruisers and destroyers and 1" fighters.

Yeah, the fighters are technically way too big, but you can still tell at a glance what is what and the fighter models can have some detail to them. In a strict scale, the fighter models would be teeny tiny pinheads.

Pretty much what Daricles said. There is a lot of variation in scale with starship miniatures though sometimes the detail on a miniature makes it look wrong and you have to reject it from your fleet. While they are too large for my tastes (I try to stick to a fleet action scale) the miniatures from Spartan games Firestorm Armada are a pretty consistent scale throughout their range.

If you are looking for a line of space minis for both you and your friend, I'd check out ground zero games line of full thrust fleets. They are very reasonably priced, have a huge selection and are a good size for table top play.

The Spartan models are beautiful, but are more expensive and as quite large. Unless you are all doing Spartan models you will get some funny looking battles.

Here is a page I did to compare the sizes of starship miniatures out there with actual measurements of the minis listed to help you compare and decide.

star-ranger.com/Scale.htm

My bad. How could I forget GZG's Full Thrust Line. Yes, they are very nice and scale is consistent. The other maker of similar and consistent scale ships is Brigade Models. It was 3am when I wrote my last post and I was in a bit of a fog.

I mix and match ships from many ranges. I class them according to size. All my ships are scaled to the micro machines Blockade Runner. That counts as a large corvette. I am really funny about my ships all looking in scale. I like the Firestorm Armada ships for my bigger ships and use GZG and Brigade for smaller ships as there is not much that gives them a scale identifier. My suggestion is just go with what looks right for the scale you go for. Pick a ships and say they represents a corvette and then go up from there. Hope that make sense.

We've not decided upon going for particular companies, but I do appreciate the mention of Spartan Games.

Somehow I missed them during my web searches. :)

Next weekend, we're getting together and probably trying to decide on which classes of ships we're going to use. I suspect that we'll use something similar to Stealth1000's suggestion – pick a ship size to represent one class and go from there.

Thanks for the help!

Did you web searches include Starship Combat News?

While he's admitted burn out and a lack of recent updates, Dean's site is focused on this topic, and has an excellent list of manufacturers.

star-ranger.com/Minis.htm

Doug

You know, TheBeast, my searches did not include that site.

Very cool, and I think we'll be scanning it heavily over the next few days.

OK, I've ordered an example of six different ship classes (or sizes) from Ground Zero Games.

If they look as good in real life as they do on the web site, they may end up being our first choice as a source.

Of course, this depends upon our choices for ship classes for Task Force Zeta.

Then my job here is done. *bow*

Do keep is informed on your progress; TFZ is one of my 'I really must break that out and try' pile components.

Doug

Got the ships today, and they look pretty nice.

I'll have to take them over to my friend's house this coming weekend – we're fairly certain what types of ships we want, now we'll need to see what sizes are going to go with each class.