posted
Impulse engines ... I was going to build one, aft of the Torpedo strut. Think I should have a mini-engineering room there? This is actually going to be a big-strut, what with an airlock fore, and an impulse engine aft! Honestly, I can't think of where else I can put it ... except maybe directly above the shuttlebay doors ...
Water Tanks -- good idea, I might try and incorporate them into the hull or something (or just pretend that they're in the hull).
Arboretum -- hadn't given it much thought, truth be told. I might be able to put some plants in the rec-room
quote:Thats a LOT of stuff just for 4 decks...if you compare it to, say the defiant which, is deckwise, quite similar, they seems to only have the bare minimum, much less a gymnasium.
It is a lot of stuff, but on the other hand, what I'm trying to do here is not, for example, make a scale room-by-room model of an existing starship. A friend of mine calculated that he would need his GARAGE to build such a model of the Defiant (do a member search for "Scott Keys", I think, and you should find his post). Since I'm using a much smaller work area (2.5 feet by 6 feet), my focus is on building a ship which, although it doesn't contain the awesome crew that a REAL version would, captures the spirit of it.
I mean, it's like there are actually going to be plasma pipes under the deck or anything.
Using graph paper, I drew out rough schematics and blueprints for the ship, assuming that a block equalled 36sq. bricks.
Including the torpedo launcher, there are six decks. So, here we go:
Deck One:
Torpedo Launcher. Includes one turbolift tube, torpedo storage, weapons control, and torpedo launcher.
Deck Two:
The Main Bridge is located at the front of the deck (mid-saucer). A compartment behind the main bridge is the weapons systems control. A corridor leading out of the bridge leads to a turbolift tube, and behind that, an airlock which allows access to the deck for hull repairs & maintenance.
Deck Three:
Here are dual turbolift tubes (side by side) - these tubes continue down together to deck six (with a brief horizontal ability on deck four). The saucer portion of the deck includes quarters for five senior officers, the wardroom, captain's ready room, and the conference room. Sickbay is located here as well, and with Transporter Room 1, Shuttlebay control, and the Brig are located in the secondary hull section.
Deck Four:
The largest deck of the ship. Crew Quarters (eight rooms accomodating 8 crew or 8 mission specialists each), the galley, mess hall, two rec rooms, and crew services are located in the foreward section. In the aft of the deck, the upper warp core, shuttlebay, and Transporter Rooms 2 & 3 can be found.
Deck Five:
Main Engineering takes up most of the aft section of this deck. In addition, Computer Core access, and the ship's science departments are found in the saucer, as well as dual (direct mating) airlocks on port & starboard sections of the hull.
Deck Six:
In the aft section, the lower warp core, plus the massive cargo bay (with two space doors on port & starboard, as well as a dedicated cargo transporter). In the forward section is access to deflector dish control, and accomodations for twelve junior officers.
The ship's complement is 64 enlisted, and 17 commissioned officers.
* Senior Officers defined as those ranking Lt. Commander or above.
* Junior officers defined as those ranking Lieutenant or lower.
For the shuttlebay ... now, clearly, the TIE fighter is going to go, and it's not going to be as large, but it will be as tall. Anyway, I liked the look of this.
See the size of this sucker? That's about the length and height of this ship, although clearly not the same shape.
And I REALLY like this basic door design as a "heavy door", to serve as the cargo bay loading doors, shuttle-bay doors, airlock doors, and blast doors in Engineering ... it looks nice and solid compared to the standard sliding door design I'm going to use ...
posted
Something that may be difficult to do with a saucer hull and the annoyingly rectangular Lego bricks, but which may work for the aft hull:
What about building a series of utility modules for the interior? You know, choose a standard base plate size, build generic walls, doors and power sockets, and then configure each module internally for a role. Plug and play. And pretend that this is what Starfleet does as well. For a small vessel, this could be a very sensible arrangement.
And it immediately creates a very "shippish" feeling when you have a framework of perhaps highly asymmetric common utilities (turboshafts, computer core, power trunks) and a series of neatly uniform modules. The modules could be loadable for each mission, necessitating some sort of access doors or plates on the hull, or then the selection is set during construction. In the latter case, the interiors can still be changed afterwards by hauling the furniture in and out through the corridors, as a barebones module can serve equally well as a crew cabin or a brig or a laboratory room or a morgue.
In practice, modules would mean double walls between all cabins, eating into the interior space. But as long as it looks cool... And you *can* do that with pie-wedge modules, too, to modularize the saucer. The walls will just be all that much thicker and clumsier there, and individual modules should perhaps be larger than their rectangular counterparts.
You can always pretend your ship is modular this way, even when you build single walls. But really doing separate modules within a structural frame would be so much cooler! This isn't a mere Lego house flying through space, it's an actual ship built like ships *are* built.
I'm planning on using sloped (regular & inverted) pieces to give the hull some "smoothness" so it doesn't look too rough.
I like the modular idea, but with such a big construct, I fear it might make the entire thing too fragile. I've been working on some "concepts" of, for example, what a corridor wall might look like ... some exposed piping, "ribing", and the like ... I really hate just bare hallways!
I'm not too worried about "eating into the interior", and I am planning on doing double walls between most interior spaces (if you notice the design I'm "inspired" by for some of the doors, it'll take up to four (and possibly more) pegs wide to accomodate. The regular interior doors will require, including threshold and frame, three bricks wide. But keep in mind that the ship, at its widest point, will be 94 pegs, and at its longest, 188 pegs. Since the ship also includes six decks, and will stand (approx.) 72 bricks high* (I estimated 12 bricks per deck, to include for deck depth, and to provide sutible interior "head-room"), I'm not too worried about "eating up" interior space
posted
I am curious how you plan to make each deck "easy access" as far as seeing into them once you build the next deck on top of the first. For instance in all lego ships or buildings seem to be either single decked or they have no back wall so you can access both the first and second floor. How do you plan on seeing what you got on deck 2 when it is surrounded on all sides by decks 1, 3 and everything else all around it? Other than actually being shrunk to Lego minifig size or to 'grow' the ship to scale, there isnt any way to accomplish both a "complete" ship and an "accessable" ship...or in all of my doubts have I overlooked something the soon to be christened "Lego Wizard Snay" has overcome?
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posted
This is part of the reason I suggested modularity. When I build Lego structures other than simple classic houses, I tend to create structural frames within which I place multiple floors one at a time. Something like a staircase might run through all floors, and the outer walls would remain intact to give the structure rigidity. But each deck would rest within on a series of support pegs or ledges on the walls, and these pegs and ledges would be arranged so that those of an upper deck still allow for the removal of a lower one.
Modularity in fact *forces* me to build things that can support their own weight, with or without the modules in place. Using old Technics series elements on the interior structural frames (you know, those yellow or red 1x16-stud beams full of holes for connecting bolts) gives great strength and also improves the realism of the model...
Perhaps the saucer of this ship ought to be a "single-piece" stress-bearing shell coupled to a central pillar that houses the computer and the bridge etc., with girders supporting pie-wedges of decks that can be individually removed to reveal the decks beneath? Alternately, the entire ship could split in two at the centerline, with heavy-duty locking mechanisms in two or three key locations. I've never done that with something as big as what you are suggesting, but I did do a 120cm cruise ship with the center-split mechanism for the lower hull and removable decks for the upper, and it turned out all right - you could lift and manhandle it safely enough.
quote:there isnt any way to accomplish both a "complete" ship and an "accessable" ship...or in all of my doubts have I overlooked something the soon to be christened "Lego Wizard Snay" has overcome?
You've pegged it. With the execeptions of lower decks with cabins with windows or doors (i.e., shuttlebay, cargo bay, airlocks), there will be NO access to the interior. Yeah, it's a bumber, but I want a complete ship over an accessible ship, so it's a trade off I'm okay with. I do plan on buying a digital camera and taking complete photos, so someone can pick up a binder filled with the shots and say "so THAT'S what Deck Four looks like!"
quote:Modularity in fact *forces* me to build things that can support their own weight, with or without the modules in place. Using old Technics series elements on the interior structural frames (you know, those yellow or red 1x16-stud beams full of holes for connecting bolts) gives great strength and also improves the realism of the model...
Timo,
My experience while building large models suggests that the structure is much stronger when I can "interlink" it as much as possible ... building in a modular format, unfortunately, won't allow that (IMO).
I don't know why I didn't think of this before ...
So I was thinking, "okay, what am I going to do for the crew?"
I didn't want to do just any-old minifigs slapped into service ...
So, here's what I came up for, based on the classis gold/red/blue system (with a change). Since Lego people are, after all, yellow . So, since this is supposed to be a "movie era" ship:
(PS -- all of these are minus the helmets & backpacks, with black trousers).
There's also a blue jumpsuit similar to the one above which I'd like to use as a "mission specialist" uniform for some of the science personnel.
And of course rank is important ... anyone remember those shoulder braids from the Pirates line?
On officer's uniforms:
White = Captain Green = Commander Blue = Lt. Commander Yellow = Lt. Red = Lt (jg) Brown = Ensign (none) = Warrant Officer
On enlisted uniforms:
Green = Master Chief Petty Officer Blue = Senior Chief Petty Officer Yellow = Chief Petty Officer Red = Petty Officer 1st Class Brown = Petty Officer 2nd Class (none) = All grades of Crewman Rates
posted
Of course, you *could* just take a lot of red torsos and black feet and apply a pen. It's amazing how much detail you can pack to a Lego figurine chest!
Another very good way to do uniforms is to apply the kind of adhesive tape painters use to protect areas they don't want painted (now what's it called in English?), and felt-pen it maroon-and-white with the necessary decorations. The surface looks very much like cloth. And doing a hundred of those isn't that much of a chore, compared with building the ship in the first place!
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posted
There ARE templates out there for lego torsos ... print 'em out on label paper, 'cut 'em, paste 'em on, and I'm good to go. Actually, I could probably do the same thing with the computer consoles, too ...
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