"Near-future space combat - gaming possibilities" Topic

IIRC Hard Vacuum uses a Hex Grid. CORSEC makes an AMAZING one for a reasonable price.

I used Silent Death Figs for the fighters back in the day.

Check out the toy aisle, especially in the dollar stores.

Consider kitbashing or trashbashing to create spaceplanes.

You might get inspiration from a blog like this one:

blackwidowpilot.blogspot.com

Or check out the Silent Death site:

metal-express.net

Matchbox makes quite a few small (1/144?) aircraft.

Also, you might look into cheap plastic kits in 1/144 from a supplier like Hobbylinc. They generally have lot of experimental planes at around five bucks a kit.

Lastly, if you're considering diecast, manufacturers like New Ray and Model Power usually have inexpensive planes (in the five to ten dollar range) in "box scale". Try Hobbylinc or The Flying Mule, and check out the specials.

Hope that's helpful. May post some specific links, if I get the chance.

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Both Trumpeter and Academy Plastics seem quite inexpensive to me.

Cheers.

QC:

You may also find this useful:

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And possibly this, as well:

link

If suitably inexpensive near-future kits are not available, perhaps a Cold War Gone Hot sub-orbital/spaceplane scenario would serve your purpose, with both sides forced to recommission various experimental aircraft, even those from prior decades, until spaceplane production ramps up. You could even include an RPG/anime element, where space ace pilots are key to victory. There seem to be quite a few kits available in 1/144 scale.

Cheers.

P.S. Spacecraft models seem to be a bit more expensive than aircraft models.

How about these ones? Pretty cheap, and a lot of the designs would work for a near future game:

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How near future are you planning to make the game, btw? I have done a near future campaign, set in about 60 years from now.

Brigade models Squadron Commander game may be what you are looking for.

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How about these ones?

I know the first ones are rip-offs of Silent Death figs; anybody know from where the second ones came?

For near future, I thought the Babylon 5 Earther 'X-Wings' would be pretty good, without the glazing, of course.

Doug

I know the first ones are rip-offs of Silent Death figs

IIRC, the plastic Silent Death fighters were licensed out to a lot of people, not exclusively to Silent Death/Iron Crown/Metal Express, I suspect to make the plastic tooling affordable for the boxed game. For example, EM4 minis sells the plastics, and I'm confident that Leland and company would have had some polite words with EM4 if they were violating any licensing agreements.

The Bab5 'Starfuries' would need a lot of extra tanks added for reaction mass to really make a good near-future space fighter, but that's easy enough to do with either beads or simple plastic rod. Multiple small tanks being preferable to one large tank because you're less likely to lose all your fuel to a single hole that way.

It's really too bad that most of the Bab5 Wars fighters are OOP now, they'd make great near-future space fighters.

I'm pretty certain EM4 bought the original moulds of the Next Millennium plastics; somewhat difficult to complain when you have those. Not impossible, but…

Semi-nameless toy factories are a bit of a different matter.

But I'm mostly interested in if someone knows of an origin for the other designs.

I hear you about the reaction mass question, but my own little game postulated long, slow, efficient approaches with brief but frenetic combat maneuvers.

Doug