"Flight Deck Fighters - Scratchbuild Help Needed" Topic

All,
I am scratchbuilding a Full Thrust/Starmada scale carrier. I want to put some fighters and other support crafts on the flight deck for the visuals. I have not been able to find any miniatures that are the right size. The closest that I have found is AOG's B5 Fleet Scale fighters, but even those look too big on the flight deck. The entire fight deck is about 4" (~10 cm) long and 2" (~5 cm) wide. The landing zone is about 2.5" (~7 cm) long and 5/8" (~1 cm) wide, for reference. I know that for GHQ WW2 miniature carriers, there are companies that produce decals that simulate the flight deck and aircraft. Has anyone found something that works at that scale for the sci fi genre? Has anyone tried to scratchbuild these flight deck craft at this scale? If so, please share. If anyone has any thought on how I might be able to accomplish this, please let me know. Thanks! -ZG

Is there picture/illustration as to what this would look like?

Studio Bergstrom do SF fighters link

If you can still find them, how about the fighters from Dystopian Wars.

@dragon6, already looked at Studio Bergstrom, same issue with B5 Fleet Scale, too big relative to flight deck. No drawing yet, but imagine a current US carrier with two angled landing areas/zones/ramps, mirroring each other along the center line, kinda sorta.

@haywire, thought about that, hard to find the aircraft resin counters. Thought about cutting those aircraft off of the counter base, but those are still little too big, more so than the B5 Fleet Scale. Cost too much to wreck the counters just for the pieces.

Appreciate the thoughts though! Keep those ideas coming!

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Not a good representation, but a general idea, ignore the periods, whew that took some time…

That's pretty cool! Btw, in the 5150 Carrier Command space combat rules you can be the Space Boss of the flight deck and use a diagram of a space carrier to keep track of the status of your spacecraft -- how many on mission, how many on recovery, how many on rearm and prepping to launch,how many down for repairs, etc.

Perfect job for a 3D printer. Now we need the 3D files to scale down.

Do 3D printers like Shapeway do anything that small and detailed? We're looking at fighters around 2-5mm long and 1/2 as wide.

Here's the flightdeck art I used in Carrier Command:

Here's the SpaceBoss deck management diagram:

If you can find the Dystopian Wars fighters, I'd just do a press-mold of them instead of trying to sand that base down thin enough to pop them off.

@Lion, wow, what a great idea! I actually helped my wife make ornaments this past year with a press-in mold and dental stone. I could totally do that with my DW fighter counters. Then sand them down to size. Thanks!

Ground Zero Games have some fighters for the deck….

link

Hooray for Lion in the Stars !

SBminisguy: Beautiful! Most folk would say 'fiddly' for a game, but I love it, and I'm one who hates getting bogged down in SFB.

Zen Ghost: Just for *****-and-grins, try clipping the tips of various plastic forks, say, with sprue cutters or nail clippers. Doesn't sound like you need a LOT of detail if you have quantities.

And, just to be recycling efficient, try cutting up the handles for ship hulls. ;->=

Doug

I can't vouch to their viability but the Star Blazers Fleet Battle System fighters are quite small:

starblazersonline.com

Example:
link