Rational

One of the things that had me so excited about First light was something I have been wanting to do for some time in my Star Wars RPG is represent the Players ships in pretty much scale for them. In the past I have done it by going to places like this, . Frank Bonura’s site and a few other that are floating around and printing off the deck plans blowing them up and printing them off. I did this with the Ghtroc 720 that is on those pages, printed off the deck plans, to scale as well as different views/angels of the Ship and stuck them of all bits to a series of Coke 12 pack boxes (pre fridge pack, one and a half worked pretty well), and that was the Characters ship. This was used for things like when they needed to sprint across a Cargo Hold, docking bay to get to it and have it in scale.
the Deck plans were there as well for shipboard activities. But there was always something missing about it. I had 3D models of So many other things, X-wings Y-wings, A-Wings TIE’s and a number of other transports in scale pretty much for the RPG but the players ships never worked out. I did an YT-2000 and YT-2400. The YT-2000 (the ) was made out of a Modified Falcon for Action figures, and the was an actual ship they also put out for Action figures in the Shadows of the Empire Line, as well as many Action Figure Scale Toys, and they worked great as space taking props but many never worked on the inside for the RPG. Yeah, you could drop the Falcon down or even the other ones, but they lacked a lot for me in RPG aspect because all they did was take up space.

And after a while I got sick of using the Falcon, I wanted other ships to explore the whole SW universe, in years of the running the RPG… always having your ship be a falcon knock off is boring.
So that is why over the years things like the Ghtroc 720 was used, and the Barloz.



The Barloz is actually my favorite ship out of the RPG/EU created ships it still feels really Star Wars, it is made by CEC (Corellian Engineering Corp) and so it is game wise pretty modular, and so they have cropped up from time to time as either enemy ships or player ships. To me the Test of First light was could I make a Barloz that looked like a Barloz, and had the stuff a Barloz has.

So when the first release of the info on room sizes etc came out with the bringing together, and such I grabbed some graph paper and went through a series of drawings getting the skeleton and back bone of the class of ships down. I was pretty happy after a few attempts to get the length to width thing down and a general over all look.

The Design
The first version I started on was just the Bridge level and it was going to just be the whole ship going from the old WEG book Stock ships. In it and in WEG there was one level, that was it. There was a pretty big cargo bay, and tiny little rooms. The original floor plan mimicked that kind of. The large aft cargo, big engines, and then small series of rooms on the bow. I had decided not to go with Bonura’s plans at first because of the three level designs. I had a one floor plan ship I liked, and had decided on a way to make the (Hint, after doing some more work on one of my Mel projects).

I wanted to keep the trapezoid look as much as possible, and in original sketches had the Escape pods in the Aft so the Air locks could come out from the widest section, but a few things about it bugged me.
The biggest that if you wanted to flee the ship you would have to go through 4 doors, and an area that I had decided would also keep cargo.
I had originally thought about just having the Cargo hold be one wide and squat hold, cutting the interior doors off and putting a spacer section in and putting the doors into the ship parallel to the Engines, so you went through the hold to get to the engines. With the doors across from each other. But something about the idea of a Huge Cargo hold I didn’t like, and having to go through all of that to get to the engines seemed wrong.
I liked the idea of compartmentalizing things so the Characters could have stuff in one hold and not the other, etc as the way I wanted to go, as well as the structural aspects of having so much open space (more for the paper end of the ship not the “real” one). So went with the two holds (which is the same design as the T-gate). But since the ship was set up that way and to increase cargo area, I decided that a crew, to pack as much on board would end up using the empty space in the hall that didn’t block the doors as more cargo room, (delicate, more sensitive stuff seemed like a shoe in to go there). You would need to go through 3 doors minimum and go to the far end of the ship to get off it. Didn’t make sense, and most deck plans that existed put them much closer to the bow. So still debating, I ended up having an interesting idea.

In the Talon I never tried to deal with removable bits, but in this I knew I wanted the Escape pods to come off. But I didn’t want them to get lost, and still connect to the ship in a pretty sturdy way, and no matter where I put them unless I put a Tub or other two-inch across area or they would look odd, or require some mods. I thought about the Escape pods in ANH and the way they came out of a tube, and they did in many deck plans in SW as well, so I decided to make a tube out of an airlock. It would serve to make a section for modifications in the RPG, they could keep it an escape pod of they need to escape, they can… or even turn it into a turret (which they have done) and the space would be available to do it easy. (And I could decide to change my mind an put them aft in the end if I really wanted, and still leave an Airlock there…)

So I had figured out how to do Airlocks, escape pods, and make the sides more angled, as well as how to cut the rooms down in size.

While I love the idea of spacious ships, it seems really impractica. The rooms just seem to be really nice for a Freighter. So I decided to shorten them, and make more. It opened up possibilities, and kept the ship within the size I needed it to be. (Originally the little rooms were not meant to be in there (the ones in the diagonals by the escape pods, and were added in as an after thought). So with a design firmly down on graph paper I made a list of parts and started plugging away at the construction.



Upper Deck


Lower Deck

The Construction
A while back some one mentioned the lack of cargo space in the FL stock model, and versions by Robby or Bizcut. And while the Barloz is not a huge ship, the cargo to crew area did seem a bit out of whack for a freighter, even a light freighter. So I revisited Bonura’s designs and decided yes I would make a 2-deck ship. This gave me the chance to make more cargo, and put in another level with a few amenities. But this made a partial revision of the design necessary. I could have added doors to the corridor and allowed access to the little triangle rooms, but in the end decided that they were to small for much real RP use, and decided to keep them as hidden smuggling holds, and the like, with a lower floor I put floors in and flap to get into them. I did a little designing of the lower level and decided on two cargo holds a side, for 4 total giving a lot more room, and matching more closely the look of the ship as seen in Frank B’s designs. Now I had an interesting idea here since I was going for another deck I decided to put in another engine. The mounts however were problematic since the jut up, in the end I decided to cut out the middle mounts base, and stick the lower mount up into it making the ship actually stay together, and making a kind of cool like on the end. With the T engine bank.


I put the matching corridor spine on, and the airlock for the boarding ramp and was done… or so I thought, when I had drawn it out it looked good, but when I put the airlock in as a prop to keep the upper deck up, I had placed it so the back (the slide door section) was flush with the back of the Bridge Tub, because it looked better, less of a jutting bridge. However when I drew it I drew the front flush the jut, and when I put the 9-length corridor on, I forgot I had changed it and cut three inches, off. I new I was cutting off 1 at one end for the rooms, but forgot I wanted to keep the other two on so it looked less jutting. It wasn’t till I got down beside it to take a picture of the finished model that I realized I messed up…

In the end I just put another airlock section on, and cut the back out of one and the front of the other to get it to match up, not perfect, but it bet the Heck out of trying to take it off and add two inches of corridor in. This also allowed me to try to get the longer boarding ramp into effect if I can ever figure out how to do the Landing gear.

So here are the pictures.

Barloz -

Barloz-

Barloz -

Barloz –

Barloz – - (still under construction)

Barloz -

Barloz -

Barloz -

Barloz

May put up some construction shots, but I accidentally deleted a few (read about 30%) when I cleaned out my cameras memory card

Barloz and

http://hangarbay.tripod.com/td-barloz.html

Um......WOW? Is "wow" even suffcient? I think we need a new word to describe amazingness on this level....

Very cool.

I like your stacked build.

WOW

Un-Freaking-believable....
I am sorry to say, I may not buy SW:FL because I have seen your work and feel like I could never live up to the standard. (j/k, Denny)

Now I want to play Star Wars....

I'm glad everyone likes it.
It was fun to build, and passed the test of can i make a Barloz with flying colors. Even though i messed up a few times, one of them with Glue (Again!! &o# #@** %@@^*' $*#^!!) I am happy with it.

I know it needs some touches, like the foamcore edges, and some edgeing and blocking out the white in places, fixing some cuts (on the foamcore and and the airlock/escape tubes) and the Top hull, i wanted to get it up and in let people see it.

I think it came out pretty good.

One of the reasons i did the Talon first was an effort to figure out what i was doing... worked ok, but i have come to an interesting discovery about white glue on almost the last day of this.., the amount o warp is porportional to the amount you use.
I have used it with the Derelict fine, No problems, but Mel makesTiny tabs. The amount of glue on there wether runny or not is not a problem, becuase it covers such a small surface area. The 2inch by 3, or 6 and double that (the two sides) for a Worldworks wall means you are dealing with about 6-8 inchs of surface area, to get glue on. The bigger the area it covers the more warp you get. I ran out of Spray mount, and wanted to get the second level done... so decided to use up some of the White glue, VERY thin layer almost none exsistant and used the thicker glue i had (less water content), and seemed to work fine, till i looked the next day, WARPED, it Warped Foam core, and it wapred it alot, to the extent that if front of the ship was on the ground the engines were off by about an inch (more really but under 1.5). And the surface area was HUGE

While this took about two weeks of work every night for a few hours after getting home and eating, one night was litterly spent, un-bending the foamcore, took about 3 hours just to do that. So White glue works but only on small surface areas... (i was so mad at myself).

If i had it to do over, i may have left the airlocks on the long corridor, and put the escape pods in the little triangle rooms... Maybe a modification version for later

but it was fun, i may try some other ships later, but i need to rest and finish up the props for this puppy (and finish a big project i have using derelict but am wait on some of it, i want to see what comes in some of the newer releases so leaving a few rooms open).

I plan on useing thins to try to drum up a few more players for the SW RPG i run, we lost one recently...

Well, heck. If you were in Austin, or even near, _I'd_ play.

It also made me want to get Starship Troopers by Mongoose publishing when it comes out, something like this would be very good for modelling the Rodger Young.

The Auld Grump - Well they have no use for glory in the infantry,
They have no time for ballads brightly sung,
But to the everlasting glory of the infantry,
Shines the name, shines the name, of Private Rodger Young...

A Few more Pics

,

OMFG i love it... now i know why i could find the mage knight pices i wanted some one else had the same idea i did.. looks great i hope i can at least come close when i get some free time

<bows low>

You da man Ghenghis

Is that ... did you ... I mean ... how big ... how did ... it looks ... *speechless*

*double-post error edited for content*

Now that's a tribute to the First Light set ! I love the obvious time and effort that you put into this build ! You have answered several questions I had regarding the idea of multi floor ships . I would love to see future builds, and thanx for the deckplans link, I may not play SW's but I do have uses for a variety of ship designs, and I love mapped out interiors !

Truly an outstanding build/conversion! How did you get the triangle pieces to work so nice?
Kudos to you for your imaginative design and skillz, and to WWG for designing such a versatile model set!