Re: [FT] Building Ship Minis

Donald Hosford wrote:

>I have a question for the FT mini's players out there...

>I am slowly bashing together some ship minis on my own.

>I am assembling them from bits and pieces like electrical connectors,
beads, ect.

>What I need to know is:
   About how long is an escort class ship?  Cruisers?  Capitals?

On average, my escorts are about 1/2" to 1" long, my cruisers are about
1.5"
to 2" and capitals get up to 3.5" before I consider them superships.
Part of
this depends on your length to width ratio. I have 8 scoutships made
from
toothpicks that are 1.5" long, but very thin (a toothpick, and two
"engine
blocks", plus some fiddily bits for a bridge and weapon turret) My
fleet's
flagship barely fits into the course guide lengthwise, but it is very
thin,
sort of a flying wall.

In the end it is entirely up to you how long they are, or even how big a
ship a paticular model represents. Generally speaking though for most
ships
make them fit in the course guide. (although I have heard stories of
someone
going to Kinko's and getting a three FOOT diameter course guide....)

>I like the idea of making my own minis...just don't want to make them
>too large/small.

>I know they won't look anywhere as good as the professional stuff...

Not necessarily... Home built pieces can look just as good as
professional
pieces, after all how do you think they made them in the first place.
For
added touches that are difficult to replicate I reccomend going to a
hobby
store and buying cheap models, dosen't matter what they were supposed to
be.
I have a Cutty Sark model that I pull apart for details, I still haven't
used the whole thing and I've had it for three or four years now. Other
things to look for are BB/airgun ammo. Specifically flat tipped pellets
and
bbs. Put a flat tipped pellet with the tip on your model, and a bb in
the
hole in the back... instant Quasi star destroyer radar dome. I'm looking
at
building Fighter groups with pointed pellets and a bb in the back
(Blakes
Seven : the fighter/escort class ships from the race that built the
Liberator. For those that didn't see that episode they look like one of
the
engine pods on the Liberator.) You can get a lot of detail from scoring
the
surface of your model with an xacto knife. Just try to think of how they
did
it in the first place.