"Why not?" Topic

So I remember reading something, I think it was on here but the gist was that if the ships were made to scale they'd be about the size of a grain of rice. That got me thinking, people game in all sorts of small scales for historicals, 6mm even down to 3mm. Why not for space ship games? You could have huge armadas going at it and pleasantly complex rules for detection and maneuvering. Would there be an interest and what problems would there be?

Spaceships are covered by copyright for the most part, so multiple scales are usually a no no. That said there are a few different scales for many universes – Not Trek for instance has at least 3.

I would go on a shopping spree if small ships like that were available---saya battleship that's 1.5" long, and.half inch destroyers, or something similar.

Large fleet action rules, that weren't dice chucking, would be great.

I got some Trek ships from a friend who found them at a flea market and these ships are real tiny and I believe they were done on Shapeways.

There's about 30 ships or so which includes Deep Space Nine,K-7 Station and the Regula Station now some of the ships are based on a Star Trek Computer game called Klingon Academy and there's even a few Fasa ships like a Romulan Nova Battleship which might be around 1 inch long.

Now if I had a 200 of them I could do great things.

Plus you could finally have realistic weapon ranges. The more I think about this the more I like the idea. I played a ww2 naval game that had a ref. And in the beginning the two fleets had no idea where the other one was and it was a lot of fun.

if the ships were made to scale they'd be about the size of a grain of rice.

What scale?

I would like tiny starships. Sounds fun to me. I do starships in 3 scales and would be happy to go real tiny too.

One other thing regarding tiny Starships would be storage boxes example I have a large number of Fasa Star Trek ships and in excess of 400 and I have many containers to hold the ships.

If we took that same number say 400 and they're very tiny then the number of boxes/containers would be 2-3 depending on the size of the boxes.

Sneezing could be detrimental to the fleet's cohesion.

I play mostly in fleet scale, where a battleship is about 2 inches long. I could go a bit smaller than this, but at some point the ships would be too small to look "good" – ie identifiable.

That's the only hiccup I see. When you get down to frigates and corvettes. Fighters would also be either impossible or out of scale.

These would do nicely: link

And here are your rules: thegobspage.com

My personal preference is for the ships to be loosely scaled relative to each other. Meaning that a battleship is bigger than a cruiser, which is bigger than a frigate, which is bigger than a fighter.

I just want to know which units are what at a glance and don't care if the sizes are realistically proportional to each other. So, a BB might be 3.5" a CA might be 2.5" a FF might be 2" and a fighter might be 1". It's all good as long as the size classes are easily distinguishable.

For my rules, I stole the old BFG convention that the mini was just an indicator of ship direction and attitude, and that the actual ship was located at the post that held the model to the base.

As for models themselves, I'm kind of at the mercy of the manufacturers. Generally speaking, we playtested with models about one size class down from what Daricles described. (Think about a half inch less in each class.)

As for "real scale", I've been working on a scenario around Earth, and the Moon doesn't appear on a 4x4 foot table. The space elevator barely fits!

The game, as written, is deliberately scale-less because space is really big. This scenario is scaled such that the turns are 15 minutes, and a one gee acceleration is 2 inches/turn squared.

The beta test version is available here: link

A better version should be up after ComicCon. The prep is distracting.

There is absolutely nothing preventing a miniatures company from designing and selling a range of starships in any size/scale they choose. Certain famous designs are protected by copyright and trademark, but there are endless possibilities for original designs.

It is also very easy to scratchbuild small scale starships. I did the full ship list for every Iron Stars scenario using matchsticks for base hulls tiny scale but I can fit all the ships in a match box. The largest ship was less than inch long.

I game naval in 1:6000, the ships are tiny, but the ranges look better. Depending on what the ships looked like and how many fleets/classes were available I would be interested in microstarships. About 3cm for captital ships is probably as small as I would go. Smaller than that and escorts and fighters become too small to work with and the detail that can be put a ship is very limited.

@Captain Gideon: Would they be these?

link

There's a thread over on the Lead Adventure Forum where there are some painted pics of them:

link

I'm got two more fleets ready to release and I'm looking at tackling some BSG- and Star Blazers-inspired ones in the near future. Anything in particular anyone would want to see in this nano-scale?

javelin98 I believe they are and the bases are identical whoever had them put some magnets on the bottom of the bases.

I would like to get more so please email me at yamamoto87@hotmail.com and we can work things out.

As to other ships with regards to BSG I'd like to see the old style Battlestars and Baseships as well as other Colonial and Cylon ships.

As for StarBlazers ships I must think about that and get back to you.

Please email and we can talk.

The Star Blazers ships with the actual license for the show are already Fleet Scale and not much bigger than this thread proposes. Plus they have been releasing a whole lot of new fleets lately in resin.
starblazersonline.com

Cool! I hadn't seen those Star Blazers ships before. Mind you, mine would be around 20mm long at the largest, but those are very nice.

@Captain Gideon: I'll send you an email tonight! If you want to send me some pics of those, I can confirm if they're mine or not, but I have a pretty good hunch that they are.

As for models themselves, I'm kind of at the mercy of the manufacturers.

No, you're really not.
Making spaceship miniatures especially, is incredibly simple. If you wan't them small, it gets even easier.
Do a search for Scratchbuild spaceships. Dozens of examples, all simple.

javelin98 I took some pictures of the ships and will send them to you after I get your email.

I look forward hearing from you.

Thanks
Michael

If y'all can give me ideas for ship sizes and general styling, I would be more than happy to CAD up some models for this project and sell them via my Shapeways store. Costs would vary based on material and exact sizing.

SouthernPhantom,

How bout a link to your Shapeways store? Always looking for stuff.

Al

…and that the actual ship was located at the post that held the model to the base.

VERY common convention where you measure distance rather than use hexes; in most games, the ship would be microscopic at the scale of movement.

Certains, what you see in Full Thrust as well.

Think of the game table as a 'holo display', and the ship models are merely 'informational'.

Doug

javelin98 I got your email this morning and responded to it I sent the pictures of those tiny Star Trek ships for you to indentify.

Michael

Allen57,

shapeways.com/shops/galaxia

Here's your link! Most all of what I have up there is 1/1000 scale for a hard-sci-fi universe and ruleset I am developing.

Great looking stuff, SouthernPhantom!

Thanks Parzival for mentioning my blog and my ships :) That's why I joined as I found there was traffic coming from here. As for scaling its just a matter of resizing, but given 3D printing is still at an early stage printing them at a larger size is not going to be cost effective.

I do have other space ship and scifi structure models at my shapeways shop though for those interested
link

Thank you, javelin98!

Projectmobius is completely correct about scaling and price issues with 3D printing. Thanks to the square-cube law, a linear increase in length leads to an exponential increase in volume- and therefore cost. I have halved the price of models in the past by shrinking them 20%. Hollowing out models tends to work as well, but not as dramatically.

However, this works both ways. Small models are oftentimes ridiculously inexpensive. As Shapeways has a minimum $1.50 USD handling charge for each model ordered, spruing these small models together is best for cost-effectiveness. I have ordered massive numbers of small-scale fighters (~1/1000) for less than $0.50 USD/ea. Similar could be achieved with capital ship miniatures.