"Sci-fi terrain manufacturers lack imagination?" Topic

Whenever I see a topic that announces a new terrain company I get a little excited. I think, let's see what these guys are doing and how I can use it on my table. I end up disappointed most of the time.

We get new companies offering more of the same pods/single story buildings or gothic ruins for science fiction.

In the future everyone will be living in little pods or buildings that are no taller than three stories where every surface is covered in hexes…

It is a realm where you can let your imagination run free yet everyone is copying Sarissa, Micro Art or GW.

Don't like these?

TMP link

TMP link

Or these?

TMP link

Dan

I think that is just the point! "IMAGINATION" try it yourself sometime it is a lot harder than you may think i certainly have over the last 5 years and had very little success building my scratch built outpost. I certainly don't like much of what is out there to buy, much of it rectangular boxes with bits stuck on!

Sparki

Decadent capitalist pig!

True, most of them seem to have assumed that all outposts will begin as collections of pods, if not dongers or otherwise constructs that fit into the frame of a container. Then again this might be a more efficient way to start an outpost or colony, particularly if it is only a research or military training camp. Also if it's a company or government site with no thought for anyones mental stability, just designing everything as a machine to live in. Warmill only appear at first glance to be the same, but a closer look shows much more complicated and interesting designs. Still with a dystopian appearance, though. Also, about the height, I believe many of the modular building systems will stay on after 3 storeys.

The hex thing – no idea. OK for pavers or some sort of armour or roofing, but it's popping up as floor and wall coverings.

My real problem with pod buildings is that they end up with no interior detail at all, and we just have to come up with something, smeg-knows-how.

Possibly the greatest contributor is the fact that most of these manufacturers are using laser-cutting for production (even CNC Scenery Workshop are switching from mechanically cut to laser, my first of which is disappointing) and while it is permissible to do this:

This would take some doing and use a lot of material:

If you were thinking of a city, it would take much effort to make a whole city of an architectural style that wasn't entirely pods or modules. Also you would then have to join it together with transport systems.

Then again, this sort of thing looks sufficiently slab-sided for a laser cutter:

A tad expensive, but could probably be done.

There were times in history people believed we would live in pods, though:

And wouldn't you believe it, people are still designing these things:
link

If you decide to go with organic shapes, they may not lend themselves to connectability; adding things to them to help this will probably ruin the effect. They would also be difficult to produce, and assemble; though maybe Amera could have a go at vacforming them?

In this age, we are generally most familiar with the Used Future and ISO Standard Human Spaceship tropes, due to the development of those tropes in 70s SF, from the mechanical-but-with-some-style looks of the 60s, to the just-a-machine-which-happens-to-have-beds-and-toilets-inside look seen in BSG, Alien, Star Wars etc. where anything else is usually presumed to be alien in origin. No, it hasn't changed since people started putting touchscreens in the control rooms instead of clumsy Cold War missile silo consoles. Earlier SF produces styles such as Raygun Gothic, but these are usually reserved for homages and parodies of 50s pulpy SF in which everything is metallic-coloured and rayguns don't have trigger guards.

Then again, why wouldn't there be rectangular boxes? What shape would be more practical? Would that shape be usable as wild scenery or would it look silly if placed anywhere else other than the location whose shape forced the building to be built in that shape? Are you dealing with architects that use fancy styles and awkward shapes just because they can and they treat the design as sculpture more than something someone can use, or would you prefer to maximise your use of footprint, trim all the frills and treat the occupants like communist citizens? Or have you found the Middle Way between the two points?

What the smeg is the building to be used for, anyway? This will also help determine its shape. Having a strange shape just so it is definitely an SF building is just the same as covering a box in gubbinz, you may prefer it but it doesn't show much imagination either.

Corsec have managed to make rounded edges, but otherwise you will have to look at the rounder Kryomek range from Scotiagrendel, or Blue Moon if you're looking for 15mm.

Maybe if you got some craft seashells…

I wrote an article once about making SF terrain that I intended to be sent to a magazine for submission, but never got to do so (I think it went to one but I never heard anything about it afterwards). In it I described several common SF styles. You hardly saw that many of them on the tabletop, though. The only ones easy to scratchbuild were the slab-sided sculptures of today and the equally slab-sided, but not sculptural, boxes of Used Future SF.
How do you build for Eldar?

Urban Construct has got something nice: link

CNC is doing interesting things with mdf. This concept art of what they plan on creating has promise: link

If I had the architectural skills, then I would create my own buildings.

Antenociti scratch built this

Matakishi has done this link

So it would be nice to see some kits like this instead of more pods and single story buildings covered in hexes.

If you are looking at a new settlement on a previously uninhabited planet why would you have more than one storey there is presumably plenty of land to colonize so the complications of building more than one storey are not economic just use more land.

Sparki

With potential wind and dust storms, I would expect buildings to be low to the ground. Wouldn't you?

A modular honeycomb design does make a lot of sense too:

link

As you can see, NASA doesn't have a problem with hexes.

Maybe these guys can produce a few of their hexagonal modules for use with 15mm miniatures on bases:

link

Dan
TMP link

"If you are looking at a new settlement on a previously uninhabited planet "

And if you are not? There is more to sci fi than creating new colonies. Certainly, though, a company that wants to produce terrain should say to themselves "hey, there are already 10 guys out there doing the exact same thing, let's try to make our mark by trying something different."

"As you can see, NASA doesn't have a problem with hexes."

Hexagonal shaped buildings would be great. I'd buy that! Buildings that have every surface, including windows, covered in hexagonal decoration gets old.

Impudent Mortal has some interesting stuff: link

CC, I do appreciate your participation, but please read what I am writing. I griped about unoriginal terrain design and you offered me artistic sci-fi concept sketches. I complained about the emerging prevalence of putting hexagons as decoration on everything and you claim I am calling hexagonal-shaped structures as boring.

I don't mind it if you disagree with me, but please disagree with what I've written, not with what I haven't.

The design Antenociti scratch built would be fairly easy to laser up, as only a set of stacked circles.

A lot of the MDF designs are square/oblong as easy to design & MDF does not do curves very well.
Someone did some Yurts in 2mm MDF but the top must of been a pain to design.

If you at modern buildings most are basically square or oblong (might have a added or subtracted sections to give a more interesting shape. They use basic shapes as easy to design, construct & relatively cheap. More complex design tend to reserved for company Head offices, expensive hotels or anywhere else someone wants to show how rich they are.

Regards

Mad Mecha Guy, I also think you are doing interesting things with mdf. Your buildings may be 'boxy', but their designs look good and you are doing innovative things such as the monorail.

Round things would waste much of any sheet of material if built up bread-and-butter style.

However, there are more polygons than the square or rectangular prism.

And, you can stick them together into other shapes.

These look like they would require plastic moulding or vacforming, or solid resin (making them hollow in resin is for master modelling and not gaming).
link

There is this system, which could form quite a city if it has sufficient structural integrity, but would cost you a massive amount of money:
link

Go West had some hexagonal buildings in development, but their Kickstarter didn't. (pun mode)

Still, there is a practical reason for having the buildings rather low. Who wants to be taking the tops off high-rises every time they reach over the table to move a mini?

I would like to see some more Raygun Gothic styled buildings, but who would make them?

link

What is needed is for manufacturers to read a few books on modernist and eco building design.

Of course, if a city has been there long enough there will be many styles installed; even Townsville, which has only been here since 1864, is already quite the anachronism stew of architecture, with many cyberpunk/modernist buildings scrambled in with zeerusty, industrial and Victorian styles:

I think could mostly design/produce the top design but would slightly modified would be laserable but might belong to someone.
The 3rd (cutting disk) & 4th (3D hash) from bottom are largely doable, some modification/Fudging for MDF would be needed.

That Go West stuff looks really great, must have used laser-ply for a lot of it.

Regards

MMG.

It does belong to someone, and you can buy it here:
link

Dear Caesar

As a terrain builder and scratchbuilder for all my life, let me offer a few points.

Architecture is always a struggle between culture, aesthetics, and functionality. We build houses the way we do today pretty much as we always do, and the result is a combination of the above three. Our doors frame our bodies or the general outline of our forms to allow easy egress and access. So do the windows. Very true the throw-away comment of Dr. Morbius in "Forbidden Planet" that some general idea of the shape of the Krell might be gleaned from the characteristic door. Doors and windows also determine the shape of the rooms and the whole structure as well. The rooms must be functional in allowing as much useable space etc. Cultural ideas of what is "the beautiful" or "the pleasing" enter into it also. Finally "keeping up with the Jones's" is another factor as the size and configuration of houses, decoaration etc develops tropes and tendencies.

Garden sheds tend to be simple boxes. They are merely storage containers. My point is that you can have complete aesthetic marvels like Frank Lloyd Wrights' falling waters house, or mansions or architectural avant garde structures, but such things are the ostentation of the rich. Few can afford such aesthetic masterpieces, and many of them are not functional at all.

In the case of science fiction I think we have three factors.

1. On the outer edge of exploration and colonization I don't think we will get much more than pods, simply because the basic requirements of keeping one alive push out any other consideration. So Pods or converted pods will be the rule. In every sense people who colonize and explore in the future will live in absolute misery and squalor. Their functional needs override anything. If you look at the miserable little shacks the Puritans and other colonizers made here in the new world, they resemble nothing so much as the tool sheds we store our tools in today. Single room, rough crude hovels. In fact it is no exaggeration to say that your lawn mower today lives better than the puritans of 400 years ago. This will be especially true in non-earthlike environments and in fact, may never grow past this pod stage.

2. In the case of settlements and going colonies, no doubt the pod stage will soon be superceded by buildings more or less identical to thjose the colonists grew up in. If they came from earth, for example, earth-like buildings, or buildings that look a LOT like those on the earth will be the rule, though they probably will be a little reminiscent of the Pods the original settlers lived in. Remember that the "Cape Cod" style of house today is a direct link back to the puritan huts and cabins of the colonization period, so that there will soon, in this alien environment, develop styles yielding to tastes and aesthetics. Buildings here not only will be sort of Earth-Like and might even be purposely constructed "as they did on old earth."

3. The Third style is the alien style. Here we come full circle. No doubt alien structures suited to an alien race will follow their three paths of culture, aesthetics, and functionality. The resulting structures will probably be completely unusable by us, (imagine a house of a race of intelligent raccoons. Probably the height from floor to ceiling of the rooms will not be more than two feet high)
Or a house for intelligent reptiles or serpents would be quite high, but a warren and tangle of braches, rods and interconnections for the aliens to move around on.

Klingons, Romulans, Vulcans, and all the rest are basically humanoid so apart from some decoration which is either tactful or tacky. their houses will look like ours.
As for public buildings, what need of these in a hive-mind society.

The problem with an alien society is that it Is very hard to conceive one, a truly alien society and thus, just as hard to conceive of what their culture, aesthetics, and functionality would be.

BUT!!!

There is another dimension. Remember that we have our own functionality within the game. The structure must be depictale, and useable and fit easily on the table top and not dominate the table top. We must like it or at least it must have some pleasing forms to us. No doubt alien norms would make it extremely ugl and primitive, but if it works for them.

I suspect that even for the rarefied cultural aesthetes, those intelligent bees of Tau Ceti 4, when they are in exploration and colonization mode- they'll use pods.

1. that's a bloody mine site, not a colony. They WILL live in misery and squalor. They WILL not build a nation. They WILL only survive. So why are they there? With nothing left to survive FOR? And of course we DO all know what WILL be.
Also Puritan architecture is not like a sci-fi pod. You're thinking of containers that someone thought the colonists could live in and forgot to order the ones that were actually demountables. Plus we've well beyond established the fact that this concept is already well covered.

2. What if, in the future, you still live on Earth?
And if not, what is an "Earth-like building" anyway? Walk along the street and see how many Standard Template Constructs there are. Certainly, in Victorian times there were some standard designs for houses, but over the last hundred years, this place has picked up everything from Neo-Classical to Postmodern, by way of Art Deco, Colonial styles, Neo-Gothic and even zeerusty Futurist, with a significant amount of Victorian industrial red brick and "tin sheds". Walk down many streets in my city and you will see over 100 years of styles.

3 Hive-minds do not explain each units' resource allocation magically being conjured up from nowhere the instant it is needed, they will need distribution points and industries, to say the least.

Bug aliens may secrete resin, so they won't need pods; they will be able to build very rapidly.

You might like this:
link
Octagons!