3D Printer: Raise3D

Well folk's looks like I finally found a printer that can do the job that I need done.
to boast 10 micron layers, a powerful slicing software and a big enough build space.

Ill have more details coming in latter but ultimately this means I can by pass shapeways and print directly.  This should allow me to cut prices by at least 40%.

In other news, my 1/2400 scale Garfish from shapeways should be here in the next few days. Do to legal rights I cant offer it up for sale,  sorry folks,

Day 3: Ikazuchi

I got a chance to spend a little more time on this mesh. Added anti-fighter guns to all the command tower splines. I installed the Radar dishes on both sides. Cut the panel lines into all the hanger bays. I also added in windows for the secondary control towers which are under the upper fighter bays on both sides. I also played with the idea of adding in ship registrations to the sides of it. I started with the 21st Mars Division , I may add in the Division Logo later on.

I did grab a bunch of pictures of the Ikazuchi from the Shadow Chronicles. I hate to say this but from what I saw the ship was a low poly design. Most of the details like the hexagonal plating was done via a texture graphic. By the time I get this ship done I am expecting it to have double the amount of polys over the mesh used in the movie.

Still have a lot of work to do to this mesh.

Day 2: Ikazuchi

Cut into the mesh to get those panel lines to stick out. All the Anti-ship turrets have been detailed out. I am going to take a small break from working on this ship to get some more close up shots of it from the Shadow Chronicles. All the turrets have been pegged for a future option of magnetizing them. If the hull wall is thick enough to do it.

Project: Ikazuchi

Day 1: Got most of the basic out line of the mesh in place. I hallowed this one out fro the get go to help reduce it's cost.
Most of the panel lines are there, I just need to cut them into the mesh. This of coarse is the Shadow Chronicles version of the Ikazuchi. I may do another variant that represents the Ikazuchi we have seen in the 3rd Gen, which launches it's fighters in Battliod mode. If I build one with open Mech Launchers.

Garfish: Possible Final.

Just when I thought I might be done. It was brought to my attention the heavy lift thrusters that was used in "Ghost Town" to get this ship off the ground. This also reminded me of the door to get into the Garfish. I put three heavy lift thrusters on the lower side of the hull both on the port and starboard sides. Four forward and only two aft.
The doors are just a little forward of the very front port and starboard windows. I did put in probably more detail into them than you can see here in the render.

I also did a test 1/2400 scale on Shapeways this afternoon to see how much it would cost in Frosted Ultra Detail.
It would cost a little over $36 and be 3 inches in length. In White Plastic it would be $8 and a lot of tweaking to get it to print. The amount of detail put into this ship would disappear.

Minor Up-date: I redesigned the turret with a rounded peg that will be inserted into the turret's base. My hope is that this can be magnetized to give us some turret rotation

Invid Clam Ship

Well I got the details in place tonight after work. I also designed the doors to have a peg for support. This give us the option to either glue it in place, hope friction keeps it there or you could magnetize it. In 1/285th Scale this ship would be roughly 8 inches long. 1/2400 it would be just a little over an inch long. The Invid inside this ship are not designed for the 1/285th scale. I would have to go back and add in some more basic details.

This ship was designed to be used for a fleet scale type of game.

Keep this thought in mind. 1/2400 scale the Ikazuchi would be 11 inches long. The Izumo would be close to 24 inches long.

Invid Clam Ship

Since the Garfish and the rest of the REF fleet needs something to shoot at. I thought it would be wise to start working on the Clam ship. I will have two versions of this ship meshed out. One with the doors open as seen above and one with the doors closed. I may also look into putting different Invid shapes in the mech bay to show something other than scouts.
Currently I managed to fit 380 Invid scouts into the Clam ship.

More Garfish

Here is another perspective shot of the Garfish. I am still not sure about the main engine thruster positions. I am currently open to second opinions on this matter. I also spent some time breaking this ship up into portions for a possible shapeways printing. The Grand total to print this ship out to 1/285th scale would be $2,098. Granted this ship would be 24 inch long when assembled but $2,100 dollars? Yeah, not happening via Shapeways, not for the quality that you will get.

Anyways I am looking into a few local 3D Printing companies around my area. My guess is anything would be cheaper than what Shapeways is currently offering at their detail level. For that price you could buy a printer and do it your self.

Garfish Break Down

Now it is time to break down the Garfish into manageable sections. I still need to pull all the engines out and build in pegs so the parts line up correctly when assembled. The Upper Mech Bay and the Lower Hanger Section are two pieces. This will allow me to change out the lower section to other ship configurations (Sensor Pod etc..)

Garfish Day 7

Poly Count: 310,000
Over all shape of the ship is now in place. Time to go back and add in more details.

Garfish Day: 6

Poly Count: 260,000

Getting closer finishing the Garfish. I am going to touch up the smaller engine fins since they seem to have to much of a hook to them. All the Aft ribbing still needs to be put in place and I still need to add in some more details around the main engines.

Garfish Day 5

Poly Count: 238,0
I have the basic out line of the ship in place. Still have a lot of detail work I still need to do. Get the main thruster fins in place and all of the ribbing between the upper and lower hull.

The image in the middle was rendered in "day light" this gives you a better idea of the detail you would see on the object. My normal blue tinted render adds a slight metallic look to it which can make some of those fine details seem to disappear unless you really zoom in.

Garfish Day 4

 

 



Current Poly Count 176,000

Well I went back and started adding in more details to the lower hanger / mech bay section. I also got the fins in place for the thrusters. Speaking of thrusters, I should really go back and add in more detail to the out side of the thruster bell. It looks good now, but just a little more added detail would really make it shine.

Other things to address is making the six missile launchers more curved / rounded, currently they are to squared off and a little more curves would go a long way.

I still have plenty of work that needs to be done in this area before I move on to the aft section of this ship.

Garfish Day 3

 

 

I thought I should pick up where I left off over a year ago. I still need to detail out the lower engines and add in the fins. So far this model is sitting around 136,000 polys and it is coming along nicely.  

Shiva Destroyer

I am going back to my roots with ship concept design while I keep tinkering with a few game design ideas.  The Shiva Destroyer is my first attempt at creating a bio-organic ship design to be the players nemesis in the game. I am afraid the tear drop hull design and soft curves gives it more of a zen look, when it should be invoking more of a "Oh that's not good" type of feeling.

I don't know if I will use it for the game but I did make it available at Shapeways in Ultra Frosted Detail.

3rd Generation Talk & Scaling Game Design Issues

 

Since Palladium Books is talking about potentially using a sliding scale for their 3rd Generation. I thought I would dig out one of my 10 year old models. I have had a few requests to do the Cyclone's and offer them up for sale which as we all know would be a huge mistake on Shapeways.

 

Due to PB's last few up-dates, I have had to remove my self from the Robotech Tactics Facebook page. The general environment on that page was so disgustingly negative that it became unbearable. Some of those people I believe are actually happier when they have something to bitch about. I do not need that type of negativity in my life. I put up with that sort of thing from my ex-wife for 14 years. Once you get out of a negative cycle like that. You will adamantly remove people and places like this out of your life because these things do impact your day to day life.

 

Honesty, Kevin needs to have someone read his posts before post them up. Most of the negativity that gets generated towards PB could be squashed if they understood the Tabletop Wargamer Mind set better. Kevin S, I do believe truly cares about this game first and foremost. It is just that he is over his head and having to learning how to handle a whole new manufacturing and get caught up with people that have had over 20 years of tabletop war gaming.

 

Now on to the subject of staying with 6mm. I knew from the start this scale was going to be an issue when it came to the 3rd Generation. Many people questioned this during the Kickstarter but it was made very loud and clear between PB and Ninja Division that this scale would be do-able. 6mm was an easy market to break into. You can get those Battletech players to buy into the Mechs because they fit with their scaling. You could help keep the costs down on the early Macross Mechs because they would be smaller. They should have known from the beginning this was going to be an issue. they should have modeled the Largest and Smallest Mech for each Generation and adjusted the scales on the entire set before even committing to a scale. This Scale Issue has been a long time arch-enemy of mind when it comes to Robotech. I spent several years combating this problem when it came to video game modifications to product a space combat Robotech game. Either the ships were to big or to tiny there was NO in-between. Which brings me to this train of thought. Robotech Tactics is meant to be more of a skirmish table top war game. Smaller number of units, roughly under 20-30 per side. Think about it, when you fire any type of weapon, that stat and dice roll has to be remembered so the other player can counter it. This type of system only works well if you keep the game some what on the small side. Otherwise it becomes very time consuming and weighed down. With the 1/285 scale you are given the impression of  how vast the battle is. How each unit plays an important role on the battlefield and you can see it all play out across an entire city. With this scale, they game system should have been designed to handle 40 plus units per side on the table with out slowing down the game play. Now with a potential scale change, it is seriously going to stress this over sight on the game design. It could be so much smoother of a game system, than to bring out the old Warhammer 40K design. Even with 40K when an Attacker shoots at you and then damages you. You do not have to keep track of how high of a roll they made when they hit you. It just plainly doesn't make sense to keep track of this number. It would make more sense to change the PL value into the number of dice rolled for the attack action and you only succeed on a 4-6. You count the number of successes and the defender can try to dodge it. Again all the Defender needs to do is get 3 successes other wise he takes the full impact of the hit. Hell if the defender ties the successes, you could allow it to half the damage etc... Anyways, this is the point that I am trying to make, with the addition of more conventional vehicles keeping tabs on all of this is going to get increasingly harder. Dust Tactic's system is an example of how to stream line a table top war game, yet have so much layers of tactics that it is still hard to master.

 

So now that this topic is out of the way. This Cyclone model is already set up with changeable parts for its weapon systems and alternative heads so you can have characters with helmets on or with out. I see some thing I should change but you get the general idea. 

Review: Orion Nebula Game Mat 3x6

Manufacture: DS'tone Art
Retail Cost: $50
Total Cost w/Shipping: $58
Link: http://www.ds-tone.com/products-wave-2/
Ordered Date: May 3rd
Delivery Date: May 13th

 



Since I have been itching to get back into a space based table top game. I needed to find a game mat that really popped out to me. Something original, Something realistic and Something that will give me the best bang for the buck! I spent a good week searching the net a good hour a day comparing other mats and reviews. There are a lot of mats out on the market right now and most of them are not easy to find on the net and new companies keep popping up. One lesson I wish these companies would do is; to better promote their product to their intended audience. Even myself can be guilty of not promoting my competed model kits enough.  I understand how much of a time sink it is to do all of this and still maintain a full time job and spend time with your family.

 

Quality: 9/10

 

With all game mats and especially vinyl game mats, like this one, it is often hard to achieve good image quality. The color depth is hard to balance and yet keep the darkness of space in that rich dark hue. Most of these issues is due in part to the naturally reflective quality of vinyl and there is nothing any manufacture can presently do about it. The picture above was taken with no flash at noon next to a patio door. So some of the light from the out side is bleeding out upon the mat and making it appear lighter in color.

 

The quality of their product is top notch! You will have a hard time finding anything out there even close to what they have to offer at this price point. Like I said earlier in this review, I was looking for something original and realistic. Well as it turns out I could not get any more realistic than this. DS'tone art specializes in astrophotography, all of the images on their game mats are actual pictures from outer space. You can not get any more realistic than this and to have a 3ft by 6ft game mat with excellent image quality is out standing. The mat it self is fairly thin, probably close to 1mm thick. The surface area seems a little tacky with a nice smooth surface. Then again I unrolled this mat shortly after receiving it after several days in transit. In either case, none of these things diminish the over all quality of the mat. I would have given this a 10 out of 10 for the quality but there was one feature I was looking for in a vinyl mat and that was its thickness. I originally set out looking for a game mat that was 2-3mm thick. A thickness that you can find in neoprene mats and or mouse pad.

The thickness of these mats seems to give it more flexibility and durability. Not that a 1mm mat can be just as flexible and durable. But if you are a textile person like me, the feel of those thicker mats are hard to beat. With all that being said, I still purchased a thinner mat. At the price point and image quality I was willing to do with out a thicker mat. I hope in the future that they offer thicker gaming mats. I know I would be willing to throw down another $10-$20 more with out question for a thicker style mat with the level of detail they currently produce.

 

(Here you can see how thick the mat is)

 

Customer Service & Shipping: 10/10

 

The whole process of ordering and shipping was extremely smooth. A ten day turn around from the time I placed my order till the time it reached my door is hard to find.  The vinyl mat arrived in a USPS triangular priority mail box. The mat it self was wrapped in four places with shrink wrap awhile both ends had some more padding to them to help prevent any unnecessary damage during shipping. I can not currently report on their customer service but if they treat their product with this much care I would speculate it to be good as well.  

 

Bang for the buck: 10/10

 

Like I have stated before. You are not going to find any other vinyl mat out there that can met this level of quality. These are useable art pieces that just happen to be in the form of gaming mats. 

If you are looking to have large fleet battles on a table top a 3ft by 6ft gaming mat might be the perfect fit for you. These mats are easy to unroll but they do suffer from the edges not wanting to uncurl down just like all vinyl mats. Again, I don't blame this on the mat, it is just something that comes with the material used. It would function great for you, if you have a dedicated table to just leave the mat laid out. It can still be used as a portable gaming mat. My recommendation would be to either buy a large clear acrylic sheet to lay over the top of it or to have two 6 inch by 36 inch clear acrylic pieces to go on both ends of the mat. These two acrylic pieces can also be used to keep all of your fleet cards in place on the edges of the table. The down side with clear acrylic sheeting, is that it is extremely smooth so your models may be easily bumped out of place and that its very light reflective. Not to mention that a 3 by 6 sheet will most likely cost you $70 plus dollars.

 

Over all: I would recommend this vinyl mat to anyone! Just as long as they are aware of the issues you are going to run into with any vinyl mat. It is portable but you will have to weigh down the ends. Don't expect to crumple this up into a ball and throw it in a bag for storage with out it causing issues of unwanted creasing. If this is for a permanent table, I wouldn't think twice about not purchasing one. You can find felt mats for a similar price but with felt mats you are going to run into creasing problems because the mats are folded up for shipping. Granted you can steam them out but felt also is a magnet for collecting dust and small fibrous materials all over it. With vinyl you don't run into these issues plus they are more durable than fabric. If this was a thicker neoprene or mouse pad style type of mat with the same image quality you would have to be out of your mind not to pick one up!

 

Please check out DS'tone art for more mats that they offer.



 

 

 

Atmospheric Booster Up-Date

Just so you know, I have not stopped working on Robotech Stuff. I am currently awaiting to go over the possible improvements I can make on this kit with Ken F. When we get a chance to go over the revisions I'll up-date the model.

NEWS: Star Wars Armada Coverage.

In the near future, I will be adding coverage of Star Wars Armada to this blog site. I originally got involved with writing a gamer's blog when Star Wars X-wing came out. Being 30 minutes away from Fantasy Flight Games and the total lack of information out there about the game made it an easy choice for me. I eventually dropped the blog and the game shortly after Wave 3 when I realized there was going to be no signs of the larger Imperial Star Destroyers. Deep down I knew that was an unrealistic for the X-wing game and I eventually sold all of my miniatures to get into Robotech Tactics.

Well now I have come full circle again. A fleet scale Star Wars game is now available and from the game play video's I have watched. I can not just sit back and not play this game. The feel and simplicity of the game is beyond elegant. It is heavily immersed in tactics, it doesn't seem like it at first look but their are layers of tactics through out the entire game design. Pre-painted Miniatures that are already assembled with a good amount of detail, is very hard to beat. It allows players to just jump in and play instead of taking a few weeks to just assemble your fleet.

You might be wondering what this means for Robotech Tactics on this site. I will continue to design and build stuff for the game but not at the pace I have been doing it. I am suffering from a mild degree of burn out. It is a lot of work with next to no pay.

I might start designing items for Star Wars Armada to help flush out a table top some time down the road. I don't know, it is time to just play for a bit and recover from a long project.  

Up-Date: Shapeways: HeavyLifter 3 Pack Failure.

Well I got a nice E-mail From Shapeways the other day saying they had a print failure with the Heavy Lifter 3 Pack.

 

I have stated this before, I do not know what Shapeways is doing to these models when they clean them up. I have had only 3 of these Heavy Lifters fail from Shapeways including this batch. One of them, they actually sent to the customer which is not right! It seems they can print these out fine if they are done one at a time. I am afraid I am going to have to pull the 3 pack down because they obviously can't do it.  I know, it is the most cost effective way to get these Heavy Lifters but the madness has to end some where. Thankfully the customer was credited back for this failure by Shapeways. But when I have customers buy something that has passed all of their checks and tolerances. Yet some how gets damaged in the cleaning process, it is unacceptable. I don't like customers taking the risk.

More Booster Info

I have broken up the Atmospheric Booster into three major groups so people can buy the parts that they want. Instead of buying all of them and setting aside the ones they do not need. The most expensive part of this kit is the Crawler and there isn't much I can do to reduce its cost. (Other than print them out with my own printer). The Rocket Booster is at a good price point of being just under $20. On the down side, this single part will require a large amount of time to modify a VF Fighter into it. If you don't have the patience and or developed the skill set to take on a modification of this type. I would *NOT* order it!
This piece is in Beta for a reason, there are to many variables to this part and it fitting correctly with the PB VF Fighter. Not to mention all of the modification work you would need to do to the VF Fighter it self.

Some time down the road, who knows, maybe the powers at be will allow me to print out a VF designed for the Booster. Then they would be no worries about fitting & massive amounts of Modification.

All of the Control Arm kits are being sold at a reduce cost, ie I am making .50 on them. Since they should be apart of the basic Crawler, you are getting them close to cost. Plus if one ever gets damaged you can order a replacement one. It gives you more options to building the Crawler you want to have.

As I have stated before on the FB page. I do not make a lot of money on these models. I have over 120 hours of work just in designing the model. This does not count getting it ready and set for Shapeways printing. I know in two days I spent another 10 hours spinning my wheels trying to get it to work in shapeways with no results. Needless to say, your average 3D modeler works for $20 a hour. So I have over $2,000 in time put into this model so far. The bulk of the price is all shapeways profits. I will only see $2 in profit from this model. I know the price is to hefty but I need to be able to recoup some of my time. Granted it may take 10 years I would have sold 1,000 of them by then.

 

Atmospheric Booster in Beta

It has taken a good week to make the Atmospheric Booster available to print in Strong White Plastic material which is by far the most affordable for a model it's size. Although it is still a hefty price at $76. But to do it in Frosted Detail was ranging from $160-$300 for the kit.

I am offering this only in Beta because it may very well be a nightmare to assemble. It will require a VF Fighter model and heavy modification skills to trim the feet thrusters, cut the knee joints and adjust the hip joints with the VF's main body to get it all to work. This is not for the faint hearted!!!

With all of that being said, I am still not sure how well the VF Fighter model will fit into the Booster. With Shapeways tolerance even a slightest difference of -/+ .01 can be a big problem.

The Crawler and its related parts I am not to concerned with. Some may take some filing again because of shapeways printing tolerances. Example the Control Arm with bucket, if it is printed exact there should be a .03mm gap on both sides with its recessed version when place into the hull.

The small square part is meant to help secure the Booster to the Launching Arm. It should also be a snug fit between the two lower sections of the Rocket Booster. It is detachable so you can display your crawler with out this attachment part. Plus you shouldn't have to glue it in place on the Rocket Booster either. This is meant to help keep the model clean looking in its two separate parts.

Shapeways 10% off!!

That's right with the site going down for days they are offering a 10% discount on your next purchase. Just use the code "THANKYOU10" at check out, this is good till only Monday, April 20th.

Shapeways is still down

Yup, the site is still crashing. Not wasting my time like I did yesterday trying to work with their system.

Booster Up-date

I have spent the better part of 8 hours trying to get the booster just up-loaded to Shapeways.
It seems every time I try to do this, the site crashes on me. And when the model finally gets up loaded , every time I try to see if it passed its checks, it crashes on me.

Shapeways, says they are having issues with their site. So I don't know how much of all of this is, issues with the model. What I do know is, it takes over 10 minutes to up-load the model which starts the shop file for it as well. Then it can take up to an hour or more for it to scan the model.

So you understand where this is going, I then need to fix all the errors one at a time. Up-load, scan etc... So roughly at the very least 1 hours worth of time just to fix one wall thickness error.


Now from what I did see, some of my problem areas shouldn't even be an issue. So I do not understand why they are being flagged as to thin. There is something happening to my booster rockets that I do not understand yet either. Most likely has to do with groupings with the model. But the Rocket bell's are covered when exported in .obj format.

A part of me thinks that after the 15th when Shapeways makes their changes to their product line, most of these issues should be resolved. If I do this is detailed plastic, odds are I will not have any errors. But then it will go from a $80+ print to over $200.

I'll try working on this tomorrow. Maybe shapeways will be stable then.

Oh, it passed for Ultra Frosted Detail, just the crawler and its price point is $310. Are you F'ing serious!

Shapeways changes April 15th.

Here is the e-mail I got this evening.

Dear Shapeways Designer,

Here at Shapeways, we are constantly looking for ways to improve our material offerings to be more enabling, better and faster for you. As a Frosted Detail Plasticdesigner, we are writing to let you know about upcoming changes in our materials that will affect products you have made and/or are selling in your Shapeways shop.

What's happening? On April 15th we are:

Introducing Frosted Extreme Detail (FXD), with a higher resolution than Frosted Ultra Detail (FUD)Retiring Frosted Detail (FD); FUD will remain unchangedRenaming the Detail Plastics materials Acrylic Plastics

What does this mean for you?

If you would like to order your designs in FD, please do so by April 14th to ensure your FD order goes through, as the transition will happen on April 15th. As noted on our Material Status page, we have added 4 days to our expected production time for FD in anticipation of high demand.

Designs that you’ve printed in FD will not go away, and can be ordered in either FUD or FXD. We are updating success rate metrics so successful FD prints from the past will count towards FUD and FXD.

If you have a Shapeways Shop, customers will no longer be able to order your designs in FD after the transition. Products previously available only in FD will no longer be for sale unless you enable another material like FUD or FXD (when it becomes available.) If you have multiple products, the Pricing CSV Wizzard makes it easy to update materials and pricing in bulk.

Where you currently see Detail Plastic material names, you and your customers will see the Acrylic Plastic names. White Detail becomes White Acrylic, Black Detail becomes Black Acrylic and Transparent Detail becomes Transparent Acrylic.

Why are we doing this?

Frosted Extreme Detail has a higher resolution than Frosted Ultra Detail, decreasing the layer height from 29 to 16 microns (the shorter the layer, the higher the resolution). While more expensive to produce, thinner layers means unprecedented detail and surface finish, sharper edges, less stepping, and stronger models. It’s perfect for the most demanding miniatures, figurines, and molds and masters for casting.

Frosted Detail is a fragile material that often breaks during 3D printing, requiring reprints that make the process costly and slow. Because it is printed enclosed in support material that is difficult to completely clean, it's also hard to give you the quality you deserve. Unfortunately, after trying hard to improve the process, we've decided to stop production and focus on better alternatives for you.

Finally, we are renaming Detail Plastic to help reinforce that it is stronger but less detailed than our Frosted Detail Plastic.

----

In short Frosted Detail is going away and Ultra Frosted is taking its place at a higher price point. If you want something in Frosted Detail do it now, you are running out of time.

Finally!!!!!

So it took twelve days to get this model done. So far I have invested over 120 hours worth of time to get this complete. Since much of the details of this model are hard to see when its rendered. I thought I would show you some of those details that get lost in the shadows.

 

Some of the model kits of the Booster showed an Reaction Control System (RCS) between the two main boosters. This would allow controlling the pitch once it got out of the atmosphere. Which seems a little weird since the booster would mostly separate once it got out of the atmosphere.  But hay, it is some much needed detail,

 

Here is another non-rendered shot of the rocket boosters. In keeping with the RCS, I put some more maneuvering thrusters into the rear section. It did not make since to only have them controlling the pitch. By doing this it keeps up with the theme that you now can maneuver this booster in outer space.

 

I also made a connector that fits onto the launching arm and that should fit snuggly between the underside of the two boosters. This piece does not need to be glued in place.

 

Only thing I have to tackle at this point is, can the actual Robotech VF Fighter be inserted into this Booster. Easy fix would be to just print the VF already with the booster but that brings about big legal issues.

 

 





Global Lifter

Well I thought I would tinker on another one of my low poly models and see what I could do with it. I scaled this aircraft so that a Heavy Lifter could fit inside it. Needless to say, this aircraft was supposed to be big to begin with. Unfortunately it is to big, the Shapeways price estimates put it at over $130 and I am two hours into shapeways checking the mesh out with no results yet.

Once it done scanning the file, I will see what needs to be corrected before doing anything else to the model. I am thinking about hollowing out the cargo area so you could put vehicles in its bay plus bring the cost down. This will mean a two part model so you can have the option to glue the bay door up in place or have it down.

I don't know, thought this wouldn't be this much of a time sink. How quickly five hours go by.

Racer

This is one of my older low poly models that has been cleaned up a bit and readied for Shapeways. I had to adjust some of the wings, fins and engine cowling so that shapeways would be able to print it out. This was a much needed break from the Atmospheric Booster & Crawler.

On my short to do list, is finishing the Particle Cannon, Phalanx's alternative blue head and , maybe the Sea Sergeant.

Busy week

I took the past few nice days that we have had to get some much need house work done. It is hard to believe that it is in the 50-60's here in Minnesota. Since all of my windows are already open, I tackled re-staining some window sills and reconditioning some of my living room tables and then sealing them up with two layers of poly coat.

I did find some time, later tonight to answer a few questions on some of the stuff at the shapeway's store. Besides that, I broke out my digital micrometer and started measuring the Robotech Tactic's VF fighter model. I believe I have all of the measurements to now move forward on finishing off the Booster. I still need to figure out working in some attachments so the Booster portion can separate from the Crawler.

Besides all of this, there has been more stuff going on in the back ground. I really wish I could spill the beans on what is going on but I do not want to jinx it. In other news, a local miniature company, has contacted me wanting to know more about 3D printing and see some of the examples of my 3D printed objects. From what I am gathering they are looking into making master molds out of 3D printed masters instead of creating all of their miniatures by hand. It will be fun to share my experiences with what I have done with Shapeways. The technology is so close to being in place to do these sort of detailed miniatures on a level on par with what is currently out there with out a major production facility.

This has left me with thoughts on doing my own Space Combat System that is heavily inspired by Dropzone Commander & Firestorm Armada. I don't know, maybe I should just produce some 1:10,000 scale ships that could be used in Firestorm Armada.

I am also seriously thinking about only offering most of my products in Detailed Plastic. I think you getting a better print quality with this material choice.

Defender Armament: Arrived

As you can see this is the detailed plastic version of the Armament: Defender weapons kit.
I can see the details fairly clearly on these even at this small size. The Vulcan cannon's are 1-1.5mm longer than its standard armaments.  As you can see the search lights are tiny and the MLOP's or Micro Missile Lancher's also fairly small. Luckily enough those MLOP's have a nice pylon attachment that is flat to help mount it to the arms.

When I get a new Radar X kit to put together, I will assemble one with this Armament kit and take more pictures to post up.

Heavy Lifter: Arrived

Much like the resizing chamber, the details are present on this model as well, they just don't look as pronounced like they do on the 3D model. Again, I am sure some of this is due to the fact it is an all white object. I did this one in strong white flexible but I am betting the details would have been better with the detailed plastic.

Resizing Chamber: Printed Copy

Well my resizing chamber showed up this afternoon from Shapeways. I took this picture so you could see some of the details and have an idea of its over all size. Much of the detail of the object is there in comparison to the 3D model, its just not a crisp as I would like it. Then again, this might be because of the fact white sort of softens those details.

This model would make for a great objective marker!

So so close!

It is amazing what you can get done when you have two days off. So as you can see, I have the major portion of the Launching arm roughed in. I still need to go back to smooth out some parts and add the very front connector to it yet. I will do this once I have the booster done. Again I need to tackle mating the Booster to this Launching arm. The Booster in this shot needs to be moved up slightly but it makes for a fantastic mock up shot of the two.

Time to tackle finishing up the Booster. I will also take another look at adding in some details to the lower hull of the crawler. Plus I need to make sure I hit the launching arm with some more smoothing. Speaking of Smoothing, once the Booster is done, I still need to go back and smooth out some more sections. And the Biggest pain, is going to be Fitting my Mocked in VF with Robotech Tactic's VF. Again the legs just past the intakes we be apart of the Booster. Which adds one more item to the list of things to detail out more. Getting of the parts to seat correctly is going to be a nightmare. Between Shapeways wall thickness needing to be .07mm thick and plotting out all of the measurements with a digital micrometer and building them into the mesh. Eh... FUN!

You know I thought, this launching arm would have not taken so long to mesh out. I figured a few hours and I would have the rough shape of it in place. Lol! I started meshing that section just before 10am this morning and just quit messing with it a little before 8:00 PM. Between the angles of it, multiple pictures of the actual drawing and other model kits all shot at very different angles. Well it is enough to make you batty after awhile.

So I am going to take a much needed break from working on this for the next day or two. So when I come back to it I have a fresh pair of eyes on the model again.

Teaser Shot: Crawler & Booster

Since I just finished getting the Control Arm put in place I thought I should revisit how this mesh looks with the Booster added back into the shot. So I mocked up my Booster model and got it in place. I turned on the Control Arm in the up position and switched the down position one off. That's right I already made the two control arms already. I also went back and added two support forks into the recessed area of the hull. So the lowered control arm should just rest on them.  The up position control arm was designed to fit between one of these support forks.

 

Currently this mesh is sitting at 290,000 polys and some spare change. My computer is also starting to feel the affects of the large poly count. So close to having this model done.

Crawler: Day Eight

I rendered this shot with a hard white light so you can see more of the smaller details. Currently this mesh is just shy of 200,000 Polys and will most likely be closer to 250,000 by the time its close to being completed. As you can tell, I finally cut into the mesh for the control/boom arm. The back blast shield is complete. All of the hydraulic lines are in place on the top and side sections of the crawler. All three sides are complete with exception to the rear. I will look at adding in some more details to the rear section as it looks to basic / plain compared to the rest of the model. I revisited the glass canopy and gave it some more shape and smoothing on its edges to help give it more of a curve.

Next few phases is going to be meshing out the control/boom arm and then tackling the launching arm that goes on the turreted like mount. For the control/boom arm, I will be creating two different models for it. One that sits recessed into the crawlers hull and the other that is extended upwards. I will design a socket like area to allow you to interchange these control/boom arms out as you see fit. I know the basket to this arm is not going to be dead on with the look of the actual design. Due to needing a .07mm wall thickness for Shapeways. I'll see what I can come up with thou, that is a close representation of it thou. The launching arm is going to be tricky. There is a lot of detail put into this section. Plus I need to design some functionality into it as well. I want the space booster to connect into the launching arm so a player can detach the space booster from the crawler. Yet make sure it is not a loose connection. This might be tricky since shapeways printing can be off +/1 .01mm.

After these two area's are done. I need to finish my work on the Space Booster.

Crawler: Day Seven

As you can tell, I am getting closer to getting the launching arm set in place. Started working on the blast shield as well. I also put in hose connections on both sides, in that little recessed area.

Blast From the Past

Since people are starting to really want a Fleet Scale Game for Robotech. I thought it would be a good time to knock the dust off these models and take a quick picture of them. This is just a sample of a few of the ships I have on hand. I still have an SDF-1 I need to finish up and several Zentraedi ships that are too low poly for even my taste.

So I took the Izumo and scaled it out to 1:10,000 just to see how much Shapeways would price it out. Well it priced out at $70. Granted its  4.8 inches long , 2.4 inches wide and almost 2 inches high.
If you take into account that this model is not hollow but just a solid mass, the pricing isn't bad. After all this is a Flagship and also known as the SDF-4 for many. But with a little bit of work, I know I could easily shave off a good $10 in price. Now for me a $60 ship is still way to highly priced unless it has a ton of detail. Currently most of these ships are in low poly format. No detail built into them other than, their body shape. turrets and weapon systems.  It wouldn't take much to start adding in the details. The issue with most of these ships is going to be wall thickness issues due to the thruster fins and even the thrusters them selves. Many of these parts would need to be reworked so it could print.

Anyways, I think this is very do-able the biggest problem that needs to be faced is what Scale do you do it in? And each race would most likely need to be in different scales to be able to make this work.

Crawler: Day Six

I know it some times appears that I am not getting much progress with the Crawler. Most of the changes seem minor in comparison to my Day Five Picture. I ran into to some issues with the mesh when it came time to cut into the front nose of the Crawler. I had to take a step back and redesign this section so that I could cut those series of vertical lines just right of the two bumpers. I finished out the major details on this nose section tonight while I was focused on this section. I had to readjust the crawlers rear end because it had the wrong angles. I also cut into the mesh on all three sides for that gap between the upper and lower half of the crawler. This led to some issues with the mesh that needed to be fixed. In between the crawlers tracks, I also cut into the lower hull to give it more of its saddle bag look. Also started putting in the fins on the back of the crawler, which I think might be some sort of heat sinks?

Its getting closer, next step is the turret / mount base and getting in the side details in place. After that is done, it will be time to cut into the mesh for the control arm with bucket attached.

Cooperative Play Mode: Robotech RPG Tactics

This is something that I have been working on in the back ground for the past month. The idea is to turn your Robotech Tactics into a quick paced Co-op Style Game where it is the players vs the Zentraedi. This system uses the RPG System which can be found starting on page 92 in the main rule book.

The concept is very easy and straight forward. You design your character using the AP point system out line on pages 93-94. As you accumulate kills you will be rewarded experience based on the AP value of that item. As you gain more experience, you accumulate more AP that can be used towards better Mech's and or Skills.

This Advanced Point System (AP) was to be used to cross over existing Robotech RPG Characters into the Robotech Tactics Tabletop game. However you can still use this system to get your own personal character started.

How To Start:
Each Player will get 10AP to start with to design their own character. They can pick a choose the Mech they want to use and any possible other skills they can afford
If the player wants to be in charge of a group of 3 units, including him self. They will gain an additional 5AP and 10AP to be spent on each of the two other pilots.
All Pilots that are done with this character creation are considered level: 0 Pilots.

Experience Level Break Down
Level 01: 50
Level 02: 100
Level 03: 150
Level 04: 200
Level 05: 250
Level 06: 300
Level 07: 350
Level 08: 400
Level 09: 450
Level 10: 500
Level 11: 550
Level 12: 600
Level 13: 650
Level 14: 700
Level 15  750

The AP Values of the Zentraedi on page 93 are the experience point values for that Mech when it is destroyed. Example: Regult has 5 AP for its value. Destroying one will give you 5 experience points to the character that finished it off. So if you destroy 10 Regults in one game you will receive 50 experience points which will bring you to level 1.

By achieving level 1 you now have 15 AP points to spend on your character. If you some how got to level 2 during a game you would have 30 AP points to spend on your character.

Levels 01-05: Pilots gain 15AP as they advance to their next level.
Levels 06-10: Pilots gain 10AP as they advance to their next level.
Levels 10-15: Pilots gain 5AP as they advance to their next level.

Up-grading your Characters:
The rules covers this fairly well in the book with the exception to changing what you want to pilot. To make this as simple as possible. Just add the value of the Mech you where piloting back into your AP pool. So If you where flying a VF-1A 5AP and you now want to fly a VF-1S 15AP. (5AP-15AP = 10AP) It will cost you 10 AP to make this up-grade happen with the trade in.

Zentraedi
Since this about immersing the players in a pitched battle against the Zentraedi War Machine.
All of the current rules for the Zentraedi are completely ignored. One more time, All of the Rules for the Zentraedi are ignored! This means we will not be using command points, we will not be taking count on missiles used, no faction ability to bring in more mechs. Which I know makes the Recovery Pod worth less but it is all about speeding up the game.

So with all of these changes how do the Zentraedi work?
They function with a very simplistic rule set.
Rule 1: They always advance towards their nearest target. If two targets are similarly in distance roll to see who they go after or the players may agree to who they should heading to.
Rule 2: They always attack the nearest target.
Rule 3: They always use the most damaging weapon system to hit their target with.
Rule 4: If the closest target is behind destructible cover. The Zentraedi will target the cover in an attempt to destroy it, unless the Mission Specifies the Zentraedi can not do this.
Rule 5: Recovery Pods: Any unit with the Life is Cheap ability if destroyed with in 8 inches of the Recovery Pod will come back into the game as possible Reinforcements on the next Zentraedi Spawn on a 4+ on a D6 roll. Place these units in a designated Reinforcement area for the Zentraedi Spawning.
Rule 6: Recon Pods: Follow a Special Rule set that will be describe in the Zentraedi Spawning section. If they are Jamming on a game turn, any Zentraedi with in 12 inches of a Recon Pod now has a -1 to be hit. Note: If in hand to hand combat there is no negative to hit.
Rule 7: Zentraedi Mechs avoid hand to hand combat unless they are Power Armor and or Infantry
Rule 8: Firing Missiles: All Volley X ability now only fires 1 single missile. All other Volley's are worked out as normal. Missiles are not used as apart of Anti-Missile defense. As a reminder Missiles are not tracked any more.
Rule 9: Squadrons are based upon what was rolled for the Zentraedi Spawn dice. If you only get 2 Battle Pod's then those 2 Pods are considered 1 squadron.
Rule 10: Zentraedi always use Anti Missile Defense, unless this ability is tied to Missile Weapon system.

Zentraedi Spawning

After you have your Mission picked out and your table set up it is time to place where the Zentraedi's are going to be spawning in on the game. These can be Mission Specific for a certain scenarios but the general rule is 1 Spawning in Point Per Player.

At the Start of the Game Turn a player rolls 6 Zentraedi Spawning Dice to determine what Zentraedi's show up at this location.

As you can see these dice use icons to determine what spawns in. Each dice has 3 blank sides and 3 Zentraedi Icons them. There is also a Zentraedi Symbols which will have to change to something else because of Trade Marks. These Symbols represent special Tactics the Zentraedi are going to use this turn. If you run out of Zentraedi's to place at the spawn points, use any that maybe in the Reinforcement area. Once you run out, you run out.

Zentraedi Tactics
1 Zentraedi Symbol:  Reinforcements!
Any units saved by the Recovery Pod comes in with this newly spawned group.
2 Zentraedi Symbols: Jamming!
All Recon Pod's are Jamming: All Zentraedi with in 12 inches of the Recon Pod now has a -1 to be hit. Note: If in hand to hand combat there is no negative to hit.
3 Zentraedi Symbols:  Flanked!
This group of Zentraedi has cut threw your defenses and is deployed on your table edge closest to your deployment zone.

If at one spawn point a player rolls and gets 2 Zentraedi Symbols this means all Recon Pods on the table get this ability for this turn. If at the second spawn point , you again roll 2 Zentraedi symbols this does not mean this event happens again so this does not mean it is now -2 to hit. Once an Zentraedi tactic has been rolled it can not be used again even if you roll it again on the same game turn. You can not also opt to take a tactic lower than the one rolled either. What you roll is the tactics you get for  this game turn.
Note: If you do not get the Reinforcements! Tactic on a game turn those units that are awaiting to be brought in as Reinforcements are now considered lost and not available for the next Zentraedi Spawning Phase.  If you want to make the game HARDER, ignore this rule and have fun with it!

Player Death: Very Optional!
In the Robotech Universe even Main Characters die. You don't have to follow this train of thought and opt for another way to handle Character Deaths. You always have the option to make a break for it and leave the table if a combat zone is getting to hot. But maybe you didn't want to leave a friend behind or just maybe you got hit with an incredibly lucky shot!

If your Characters Mech gets destroyed in-game Roll 1D6 for the result with these modifiers. Remember if you roll an 1 it is always an automatic fail, meaning death of your character.

+1 If One Friendly unit was within 6 inches of you.
+1 If you where behind cover, even partial cover.
+1 If you are Level 1-5
+2 If you are level 6 or Higher.


6: Alive!
5: Alive but Hurt! Next game suffer -1 to PIL
4: Severally Hurt! Next game suffer -1 to GUN
3: Hospitalized! Loose half of your earned AP for that game.
2: Dead
1: Dead

Later on I will work with developing Mission Scenarios to be used with this system or you can use the ones found in the book and adjust them accordingly.

Crawler: At Day Five

This will most likely be my last up-date for a few days. I spent the better half of my morning and afternoon working on the Crawler. I got the suspension for the tracks in place. Add more hatches to the top side of the hull. Got some of the recessed areas in place on the sides and still plenty of work that needs to be done to the crawler.

I will need to add in some of the other smaller details to the main hull before I start working on the launcher arm. By getting the basic shape of the arm and its turret in place, it will help me better understand where I should cut into the hull for the arm with the bucket.

Other than this, I had a slight glitch with my 3D Rendering program today. Since I normally Render these Meshes in 3D Max a good chuck of the new tracks & suspension where not showing up. I Rendered it in .Obj format and they were there but I had faces in the Mesh missing. So I went back tot he original model. and regrouped a bunch of the items into different subsections. Exported to 3D Max and what do you know, the tracks reappeared again. I think I am going to be running into more issues like this soon. Currently this 3D Mesh is sitting at 155,836 Polys and is roughly 4.3 Megs in size. Thankfully Shapeways can handle 64 Meg Files and 1,000,000 Polygon Meshes.  Now the big question is how much can my Laptop Handle.

Booster: Day Four

Well I never thought the crew compartment area would take this long. Sort of a tricky shape to keep those rounded features. I thinned down the side railings, which may bite me in the but when it comes to wall thickness checks in Shapeways. I left the ladder close to 1mm thick so it shouldn't break right off in printing. Added the front bumpers, I think I am going to add in more undercarriage detail to how these connect to the crawlers main body later. Got a good number of the front detailing in place. I am hoping that it is relatively flush enough with the hull that it will avoid wall thickness errors. I know the gaps between walls are not bigger than .03mm. 

 

Over all it is coming along nicely. I know when it comes time for the crane arm, that this one item alone will burn up a lot of time .So I am planning on doing two arms for it.  I am going to cut into the mesh so an arm can lay in place and if you want a fully extended arm you could just remove it and place the extended in its spot. When it gets closer to doing the Launching Arm, I want to design it so the Booster can securing mate to it. Allowing anyone to remove the Booster from the Crawler. I will also look into a flight stand for the Booster as well.

 

It is never as simple as all I need to do is build a Crawler and Booster. Nope, I start thinking of things I would want to do to it. Might as well design those features into the Mesh instead of an after thought. If its not do able its not do able, but I will give it a good effort before giving up on the idea.

 

I should focus on the suspension and gearing for the tracks tomorrow if I can find the time.

Booster: Day 3

I was able to make a little leeway on the Atmospheric Booster this afternoon. The Main Booster is not finished yet, the lower section needs to be adjusted so you can mate a Robotech Tactics VF to it. Since that process is going to be the most time consuming  I am going to leave it till last. Now with that in mind, I also need to make sure I have the Launch Arm done as well. Because this also connects to the underside of the Booster. There is no point in adjusting this lower Booster section once, then have to go back and readjust all that work for the Launching Arm.

So I am going to divert my focus on the Crawler. I got the basic shape meshed out this afternoon and part of its track section done. I'll tackle the suspension / drive train later on. The next major area I need to tackle is the crew compartment. By getting this in place it will give me something to recheck my over all dimensions of the crawler. Every major new piece that gets added onto this mesh, helps me to readjust the mesh. When your working with 3/4 view drawings it can be difficult locked down the right proportions. What I found that works well is to mesh it out and then render the mesh out in the same 3/4 view. The over all lines and proportions should match up when you do this.

Mech Bay: Work in Progress

What we have here is a single Mech Bay great for any Destroid with exception to the MAC 2.
The doors are 55mm High and 42mm Wide, the doors are large enough to fit any 40mm based UEF unit into it. When this Model becomes available the doors will not be printed in place. You will have to insert them into the door way tracks. Then slide the door back before inserting the next the door. The doors are .15mm thinner than the door way track so it is going to be a snug fit.

I am thinking about adding in some internal details so when the doors are open that is not just a blank wall. This should go nicely with the Barracks once it is done.

Booster: Work in Progress

Well we reached Day Two on the Booster. Ignore the bright  white VF that is used as a placement model to make sure my parts are all lining up correctly. This shot is a test fit of the upper Rocket Booster's. Those two upper portions still need to be hit with some smoothing. I will wait on doing that until I know all the parts are fitting correctly. The hard part is going to get Tactics Model portion of the VF to fit correctly in this Mesh. From the looks of it, since the VF's legs slump down a bit, like they do with the Super VF's Fast Packs. I might have to Mesh in those legs up to the air intakes to make this a smooth fit.

Next phase will be the low Rocket Boosters. The back half should be fairly painless, it is the front that is going to suck up a lot of time. If it gets to frustrating I will switch my efforts into Meshing out the Crawler for this Atmospheric Booster.

Arament: Defender Print Failure Up-date

I just received a notification that this model pack failed to print this morning. From what they are showing me the inner Vulcan Cannon barrels are .91mm thick. So they are off by .09mm since Shapeways requires a wall thickness of 1mm. Shapeways has a built in wall thickness scanner that checks your work every time you up-load a mesh. Some how this model passed with out issue but when it came time to print the Error was caught. I am not certain if this was before or after it was printed out.

Thankfully, this all happened on my day off when I was sitting in front of my computer working on another mesh. I quickly went in and thickened all of the inner barrels and realigned them again to keep their original look. I also added a center barrel to this Vulcan Cannon so that the six barrels have more inner structural support. Two of the round disks that hold these barrels in place looked a little shy of 1mm thickness. I went back and also increased these to meet the requirements. Hopefully this corrects the issue and also prevents any future ones on this model design.

Sorry for the delay and inconvenience.

Hopefully this fixes everything.


PS: This up-dated mesh passed the Shapeways wall thickness scanner with out issues. Granted so did the last mesh, for the time being I have placed this model in Beta until I know it prints correctly.

Work in Progress: Teaser

I had a little time to squeeze in my latest request. It is a long way from being done. You start out with the basic shape and start tweaking it about to get the look that you are aiming for. Once you believe you have the desired shape, then you start adding in more details and smoothing it all out. I am going to try to give this as much detail as possible that Shapeways will still allow to print. Once I know the mesh is good, I will go back and add in more details.

Hospital: Modular

Finally!! I built this Mesh a few weeks ago. 1st one had an RDF logo in the circular area of this model. I was nicely reminded to remove that (tm) logo out of the mesh. Then once I up loaded it to shapeways I was hit with sticker shock $250 plus dollars for this one model. Ummmm, no!
The only way I thought I could get around the high cost was to break this model up into three sections and make it modular. Sounds easy right? lol. Yeah, not so much the case. This is why it is important to design the mesh according to your needs. It took some time to cut this model up, fix all the edges and line the modular parts up so they fit right. Then on top of all that, Shapeways wall thickness errors. Yeah, I have spent over seven hours fixing wall thickness errors. Now remember I must have a wall thickness of .7mm or it generates these Errors. I am trying to shave off as much as I can to keep the build cost down. So I am extremely happy to report, that I was NOT shot down while riding a magic bicycle and the Mesh passed its quality checks.

So by making this Hospital Modular it gives you more building options. You have more choices to design the Hospital that you want. Like pictured above in the left corner, is just the Left and Center section. Pictured on the right is all three of the Hospital pieces. Each part is available on its own and then there is the option to have the whole building set printed out. Now in making it modular it actually cut some of the cost down but all increased it a bit because of new wall sections that were needed. I also have this aavailable in Sandstone. Not sure how much abuse it can take but by far it is more reasonably priced. This will give it a sandy texture thou,

I am just happy to get this Mesh out of the way. I have another project that I have been requested to do. the VF Space Booster and Launch Pad Vehicle. So count on seeing teasers of that project soon.

A Big Thank You For All the Support!

Today marks the most traffic this blog has seen in a day, 34 visits, in a little over a year since its inception. This is a big mild stone for me, considering 34 visits can be a weeks worth of traffic.

Plus on top of all that, there is my Shapeways store. I know I have been adding items like crazy the past few days and making corrections as quickly as possible. I still find it hard to believe that people are purchasing these items, who would have thought right? Every time I see a picture of one of my buildings or miniatures sitting on some ones table top , it catches me off guard. To see that people are enjoying them truly amazes me and leaves me kind of speechless.

So thank you guys / gals for all the support, it does not go unnoticed around here.

If you are wondering about the picture above. I originally did this for the Robotech MMO Project some 10 odd years ago. Enjoy the pic and Once again. Thank You!

Recon: Version 2 Packs Now Available & Hopsital: Modular

For the past few hours I have made it my mission to get some of these wall thickness errors fixed. So I can do more packs of Vehicles. I also included a Heavy Lifter & Recon Pack for those that want a mixture of vehicles.

I revisited the Hospital I designed over a week ago. This time I tore it apart and made it modular to you have options on how big you want your Hospital. It is currently broken into three sections. Center, Right Wing and Left Wing. All three of these parts can be buildings on their own if you desire it. Just be aware one face on the Wing Sections is blank because it is meant to mesh up with the Center Section. I will post pictures when I work out the rest of its Wall Thickness Errors.

Armament: Defender

This Kit will up-grade One Defenders Armament. Included are 2 Spot Lights, 2 Vulcan Cannons and 4 Micro Missile Launchers. I did shave down the Micro Missile Launcher's pylons by 1.5mm so they will have a snug fit, like seen in the picture. The Vulcan Cannons are a good 5mm longer than its standard armament.

Here is a picture of how assembly of the kit should look.

Armaments: Defender

This up-graded Defender is very impressive. There has been a lot of demand in the Robotech Tactics Community to get a kit done for it. My next project will be a full complete kit to help turn One Defender into this Armament Configuration.

Bases: 40mm Jolly Rogers

Who needs some custom 40mm Bases, I know I do! So what we have here is the famous Jolly Rogers Squadron Logo. VF-84 used this logo for its fighter squadron of F-14's. Towards the end of the F-14's career it transitioned to the VF-103 squadron. The use of this logo was also heavily used by Robotech & Macross as Skull Squadron.

I designed these bases to mimic Robotech Tactics 40mm Bases. Each Base has slight rounded edges and firing arch markers. I removed the name plaque and placed custom numbering down on this set.
I will also make a 3 pack of these so anyone can do a complete squadron with these bases. I will also do another set with out the numbering so people can customize them further.

I will also offer these up in Black Plastic so it might be easier to paint out the Skull & Bones detail on the base.