Traveller Reskins: Scout, type S

Kicking off my redesigns of the Mongoose Traveller spaceships, here's my version of the iconic scout ship. Now, I know that in it's original incarnation, the scout ship was wedge-shaped, much like the Imperial Star Destroyers, so I did not want to use that. Also, I'm not quite sure what the sublight propulsion of the Traveller ships is supposed to be, but whatever it is, in my book there should be some sort of reverse thrusters, unless you want to turn the whole ship around in order to slow down. Hence all of my designs will have engines in back and front. Sure, there should also be some smaller navigation thrusters, but I guess they are too small to be significant on the deck plans.

Other than the thrusters, I also deviated from the 'standard' plan by making the individual staterooms much smaller, so that I could get larger common area (washroom and a kitchenette) for the crew. I also introduced a second airlock at the bridge, 'cause that just seemed to make sense. The Scout is all about utility and redundancy, and having a second airlock in case the primary one malfunctions was a no-brainer.

One thing that also bugged me about the Mongoose plans that it was not always clear how the decks related to each other. Hence the cut-out section, to show the decks and the vertical shafts align.

Just one final note: These are just the previews, the final files will have grids and whatnot. But that will have to wait until I have all the designs I initially planned to do ready.

Mongoose Traveller: Spaceship reskins

The other day I was re-reading Mongoose's Traveller Core rulebook, and it occurred to me how - well, uninspiring, the designs for the iconic spaceships were. And not only that, but most of them are in a scale that is of little use for a gamer. Also, although I only have the physical book, I've come to understand that even in the PDF version, the plans are in low-resolution raster images, and therefore unscalable even there.

So, here then is my mission: to present good quality, scalable (meaning: vectorized) deck plans of the various Traveller ships. At the very least, my intention is to cover the Scout ships, the three Trader ships, the Yacht and some of the various Small Craft -class vessels: Fighters, Ship's Boats etc. The attractiveness of the designs will of course be in the eye of the beholder, but I at least try to make the designs feasible, interesting and functional. And of course, the designs will follow the numerical descriptions and tonnages of the ships in question. And if I'm able to grok it, I will try to publish each design as a layered PDF, so the grids and legends can be switched on and off when needed.

Foundry Hydra assembled

Woops. Time sure flies. Nevertheless, here's some pics of the assembled and based hydra. Despite the figure having seven heads, and the body in multiple parts as well, this was one of the easiest pinning jobs I had done, thanks to the relatively soft metal, and having big enough surfaces to drill in.

The figure settled nicely on a 40mm round base, and I made the cobblestone basing by making first a 2"x2" square from HirstArts blocks, then making a Green Stuff impression of that, and finally pressing that mold on the GS I had put on the top of the base. Worked out quite well, and now I have a ready mold for similar use at the ready.

The figure is now basecoated, and is waiting in the to-do shelf for an inspiration. Mainly, I have two conflicting colour schemes in my mind, and I can't seem to be able to pick my favourite. The first is 'eldricht', which would mean pale green underbelly and darker green back scales; the other one is 'poison', with bright orange (yellow highlights) bely, and black scales in the back, may haps with some reddish striping. Something resembling a coral snake. Then again, I already have some small spiders in similar colours. Oh well.

(Argh! Why does Blogger want to correct my English spelling and how do I get rid of that?)

((Okay, after searching in vain through Blogger preferences and whatnot, I realised that it was OS Mavericks that did the auto-corrections. I've switched it to UK English, although I suspect that it's only a matter of time until I have to switch it off altogether.))