UPF Light Cruiser Model and Miniature

I didn’t think I would have this done by today but in a burst of fevered work, I finished up the light cruiser model so that’s what I’m writing about today. The image to the right shows the final model (click for the full-sized image). Let’s talk a bit about the ship.

First off, I’ve been calling this the light cruiser but on the Federation Ships boxed set of miniatures that the original came in, it is labeled as a Destroyer. However, it’s much too big to be a destroyer so I’ve always considered it a light cruiser, although it could arguably be a heavy cruiser also.

The frigate model is 2.25 inches long. Based on the size given for the frigate in the rules, this makes the model 1/2500th scale. The destroyer is only 30% longer and so at that scale should be about 2.9 inches long. This model is 3.75″ long. As a light cruiser it is a 1/3800th scale model which makes a little more sense to me. The battleship model is at 1/5900th scale so that would put it in between the scales of the frigate and the battleship and similar to the sathar light cruiser model which is at 1/3500th scale.

Here’s a picture of the two original miniatures side by side. They are roughly the same size (when I’m comparing them and quoting scales, I’m looking only at the fuselages and not counting the engines) and have basically the same volumes. So you’d expect the ships to be of similar sizes as well. So that’s why I’ve been calling this the light cruiser and not the destroyer despite what the box says.

With that out of the way, let’s look at creating the model.

The Fuselage

The first step was to build the basic fuselage that all the other bits would be attached to. This was fairly straight forward as it was mostly just some cylinders and cones hooked together. The calipers provided the lengths and diameters and that got us from the stern up to the neck just before the bow.

This is where I made my first deviation from the original miniature. On the mini, the bow is a hexagon from back to front so it extends out beyond the neck portion of the ship just a little on the sides. I decided to make if flush there and so used the software to smoothly transition from the circular neck to the hexagon, just like I had done on the frigate model.

At this point, I also added all the ridged trim to the edges of the model. I ended up making my trim a little more finely grooved than in the original miniatures. With that done, I had the basic fuselage and could start adding details.

The Engines

As you can see from the photo above, the engine structure on the UPF ship is much more complicated than the sathar one. That was part of the reason I started with the sathar ships several years ago when I first started making the reproduction models – it was simpler. However, I knew I was going to have to tackle this.

Then I got looking at the engines for the battleship model as well (they are not attached to the model like they are for the light cruiser). On closer inspection, I realized that they were exactly the same! Which meant that once I created a model of the engine, I could use it for the battleship as well.

So I busted out my calipers and started measuring. I quickly realized that that wasn’t going to work too well as there were little bits and pieces that I couldn’t reach with my calipers to make measurements. So I also took a series of images of the engines from each side that I could pull up in a graphics program and measure the number of pixels across a given feature was and convert that to millimeters to use in making the model. The result was the model to the right.

If you look closely, it’s a little bit cleaner than that one on the model. That’s because I’ll be 3D printing these and don’t have to pour molten lead into a mold. That allows me to leave of features that on the miniature look like they are there just to get the lead to flow into all the right parts. So it’s not an exact replica, but rather a close match.

The Guns

The next bit was to do the gun turrets. They are all the same and not quite equally spaced around the body. This was another instance of being able to make a single model and reuse it. It was also at this point that I discovered that there are two slightly different versions of the light cruiser miniatures.

Over the years I have acquired four different Federation Ships boxed sets, primarily in an attempt to get one that didn’t suffer from lead rot. It seems that these ships were particularly succeptable to that, primarily the battleship model. I finally ended up with two good sets, one of which had a coat of primer applied. In looking at the light cruiser models from these two sets, I noticed that the gun turrets were different between the two. On of the minis (the painted one) had more details on the turret than the other. I pulled out my other two cruiser minis to check and there was one of each in that pair as well. The difference is minor but I chose to model the more detailed version.

Again, like the engine, there were some features, mainly material supporting the gun turrets, that were there to help the lead flow into the mold that I left off in my model.

Details, Details, Details

With the easy and repeatable parts out of the way, it was time to start adding in the individual details all along the surface of the ship. I simply started at the stern of the ship and worked my way forward using calipers, rulers, and my good, old-fashioned Mark I eyeball (assisted by a magnifying glass) to determine the size and position of each of the features on the model.

The boxes, cylinders, and spheres were easy enough to add in as those are native shapes the modeling software I use produces. The really tricky part was all the piping along the body of the ship. Getting those shapes created and positions was a bit trick but by the time I got to the bow of the ship I was getting pretty good at the process and had built up some tools that simplified it that will help me in models going forward.

And then it was done. I wasn’t keeping exact track of the time but I think I spent something on the order of 10-20 hours producing the model. Now it was time to print.

Printing

If you remember from my review of the AnyCubic Photon printer, the print time is directly related to the height of the object printed. Since this model was small enough that it could lay flat on my print bed, I had two choices, flat or vertical. I was going to print this with the grey, opaque resin because I wanted to get more familiar with that resin and because it makes the details a little easier to see. The opaque resin takes longer to print and cure as you have to spend a little more time on each layer when printing (16 instead of 10 seconds). So printing flat meant a 3 and a quarter hour print while a vertical print meant a 12 hour print. In the interest of testing, I went with the shorter print (I really wanted to see a print that day and not wait all night).

Once the print was done and cured, I started looking it over to see how it compared to the original miniature. The “down” side looked fine, there were some variations but overall it looked fine. Then I turned it over. The “up” side did not look nearly as good and felt almost melted to me. I realized that this was from resin pooling on the upper surfaces and not draining off and then slowly curing during the printing process. I also noticed some warping due to not having enough supports in certain places. It looked like a flat print was not going to work. So I set one up to print overnight in the vertical orientation.

This first image shows the three minis side by side. The original metal miniature is in the middle (this is the primed one). On the left is the vertically printed mini and on the right is the horizontally printed one. This is the “down” side of the horizontally printed mini. Comparing the two printed minis, they look about the same on this side. Although I think the vertically printed one is just a little crisper.

Comparing the plastic and metal minis, I realized that despite always reducing the size of the features as I measured them off the unpainted mini, a lot of the features came out slightly larger. Also, the metal miniature still wins on the details in some places. I think I could fix that but I’m happy with the way it looks.

Turning the model over we get this view.

Here you can immediately see the issue with the printing on the horizontally printed model (on the right). The features are just not as crisp and clean. As I said before, to me it looked a bit melted. You can’t really see it in these images but the bow and ends of the engines are pinched and skinnier than the other model and the original. This is due to flexure in the printing process that could probably be fixed with more supports (I don’t think there were supports on the very tips because they were higher up and therefore didn’t technically need them). However, the issues with the remainder of the surface make this not really worth pursuing. This model will need to be printed vertically for best results.

Here’s another picture of the first side with the models in a slightly different orientation that includes a ruler for scale.

In this view, you can actually see a bit of the curvature I was talking about in the bow and engines of the model on the right.

Wondering if the opaque resin was part of the problem of the parts looking bigger or less distinct (due to the longer curing time while printing) I printed another vertically-oriented one win the translucent green resin that I did a lot of the other ships in. I don’t have a picture but I decided that there really wasn’t any difference between the two other than it was harder to see the details on the green one.

Final Thoughts

This model is good to go. I could tweak it in the future to make it look a little bit more like the original miniature but I’m happy with it the way it is so if I do tweak it, it will be some time in the future when I’ve got the rest of the line of ships complete.

I’ll be sending the model file out to my Patreon supporters later today. I’ve added this model to the price list on the Order Miniatures page for those that want to order minis for their collection. It’s priced just like the Sathar light cruiser at $2.75.

Some time in the next month (probably after we get issue 26 of the Frontier Explorer out the door), I’m going to start posting the model files up on DriveThruRPG for download as well. The models that are reproductions will be offered as pay-what-you-want while the ones that are original to me will have a small cost.

Next up is the UPF battleship. I already have the gun turrets (but not the bases, those are different) and the engines ready to go. There are a lot of repeated features on that model so it might go faster but it will definitely be November before it’s done. After that, I plan on filling in the gaps in the ship lines by designing a UPF destroyer, minelayer, and heavy cruiser, and then the assault carriers for the UPF and sathar. That will give all the ships necessary for full fleet engagements. After that I’m going to go back and tackle the pirate frigate, freighter, and privateer minis from the original sets to complete all the reproductions. There might be some new ships thrown in along the way as well.

Feel free to share your thoughts and comments below.

Armed Station Model and Miniature

I teased this model in the last State of the Frontier post where I showed a picture of the printed miniature. In this post, I’ll talk about the creation of the Armed Station model and miniature that I created as part of my current interest in doing more 3D modelling.

Scale and Sizes

The basic outline of this model is based on the space station counter that came with the Knight Hawks boxed set, pictured to the right. For scale, I assumed this to be a HS 6 station making the diameter of the station 1200 meters, just short of a mile. In the end, the model was a bit bigger than that as I set the diameter of the center of the ring to be 1200 meters but that’s a minor quibble that can be fixed if really wanted by scaling the final model.

When I do my modeling, I typically work at 1/1000 scale in the model files so 1 meter on the actual vessel is represented as 1 mm in the model. However, for the space station, that was just a little bit too bit so instead I worked at 1/10,000th scale or 1mm = 10 meters. In the end, at that scale, the model came out at 137.4mm across, or 5.4″.

With the outer ring having a diameter of 1200 meters, that gives us some dimensions of other parts of the structure using the counter image as a silhouette.

The Main Ring

First is the cross sectional size of the ring itself. I chose to model the ring, at least for this version of the model with a circular cross section. I may do a future one with a square or rectangular cross section. Regardless, at this scale, that give the ring a height of 100 meters in the radial direction. So for the model, it has a diameter of 100 meters

That means, assuming you have 5m per deck, you could put 20 separate decks in the ring of the station, with the widest deck at the center being about 100m wide and the decks getting narrower as you move up or down from the center. The upper (and lower) two or three decks would be fairly narrow and probably used for machinery and other non-public areas.

The Spokes

On this station, the spokes connecting the hub to the ring are 60 meters across. Again, I chose to use a circular cross section so they are 60 meters in diameter.

In addition to the spokes of the station, the counter shows a thicker “sheath” around the ring where the spokes meet it. This sheath is 164 meters in diameter compared to the 100 meters of the ring. That means that there can be an additional 12 decks in this section of the station.

The Hub

Let’s start with what we can see from the picture on the counter. Measuring this out, the hub is 400 meters in diameter. That is the same size as the outer diameter on a hull size 2 station! But that’s fine. This is a big station and is supposed to be able to dock a lot of ships of all sizes.

That brings us to the first constraint. According the Star Frontiers rules, a hull size 6 station can dock any sized ship, including the HS 20 ships. Those ships are 100m in diameter. So the bay opening into the hub has to be at least that big. As drawn, in the counter, it’s only 85 meters wide so we’ll have to make it a little wider but that’s not that big of an issue. I ended up modeling it 110 meters wide. A HS 20 ship will fit, but it will be tight.

The harder part is the length of the hub. Those same HS 20 ships are 600 meters long. Or equal in length to the radius of the entire station. For our hub to be able to house those ships inside as the game implies, means that the hub has to be really long, at least 650 meters (to handle variations in width/length both the door and length should probably be larger but that’s what we’re going with here.) This results in a station that looks like this.

I tossed in some HS 18 Sathar heavy cruisers for scale. There’s also a HS 6 freigher (the CDCSS Nightwind) there to the right of the hub.

The same is true for the smaller stations. This image is one I made a long time ago of a HS 1 station which is just 200m in diameter and supposed to be able to house up the HS 6 ship. This shows a cut away of the hub with the CDCSS Nightwind inside along with a couple of assault scouts. I didn’t put bay doors on this one, as it was just for scale comparisons.

Personally, I don’t like the hub that big and in my game, the bigger ships don’t dock inside the hub. Rather they just enter a nearby parking orbit and material and people are moved across by shuttles, which can dock in the hub. So for the final version of this model, I made the hub just 200m tall instead of 650m. That’s still big enough to dock up to a HS 8 ship inside. In a future version, I might make it a little bigger, at 250-260m allowing a HS 10 ship to dock inside. But anything else starts to look a bit to big.

Finishing up the Model

Once I’d decided on the size of the hub, the basic shape of the station was done, but it was pretty boring looking. So I decided to add a bit of surface detail to the model to make it a little more visually appealing.

First I created bay doors that I could position either open or closed. In the end I decided to print the model with them closed but I created models with them both open and closed.

Then I added some surface detail all around the ring, spokes, and hub to give it a little character. In the end, the final model looked like this.

The asymmetry in the number of pips to the left and right of the doors was accidental. But I decided to leave them. The V-shape and half moon shape above and below the bay doors where intentional as navigational markers. The side with the ‘V’ that touches the bay entry is the “up” direction to orient ships aligning with the bay for entry. the opposite side of the hub is identical.

Printing the Model

As I said earlier, the completed model, at 1/10,000th scale is 137.4 mm. The problem is my high resolution printer has a maximum width of 120 mm. So this is just a bit too big. It’s not too tall, the limit there is 155 mm. And it’s not too thick as it can be 68 mm wide and this model is only 22mm wide (that would have been a bigger issue if I’d gone with the fat hub). I could easily print it on my big printer; in fact, I could print it at 1/5000th scale if I wanted to) but that wasn’t the plan. I wanted to print it on the SLA printer. If I rotate it just right, the software says it is possible to print the station at 1/10,000 scale in the build volume I have. And I might try that one day

However, from the beginning I had planned to print it at 1/20,000th scale which makes the largest dimension just 68.7 mm or 2.7″. So that’s what I did. You can see the result in this image.

The station was printed with black resin, the assault scout is 1″ tall and printed in the green resin that came with the printer.

The only detail that doesn’t show up is the “X” on the bay door. They are there, but very, very faint. I might go back and thicken them up in the future so they show up better on the print.

Final Thoughts

Given the size of the station, if it is spinning such that the deck at the center of the ring has a gravity of 1.0g, then for every 60m you move toward or away from the center of the station, you gravity will change by 0.1g. This means that the upper deck, 45m above that position will have a gravity of 0.925g while the outer deck will have a gravity of 1.075g. In the part of the station where the spokes connect, assuming there are decks all the way out to the edge, you get a range from .87g to 1.13g. And the hub with a radius of 200m, has a gravity of 0.33g, roughly the equivalent of the surface of Mars.

That raises an interesting point. The docking area in the hub is supposed to be fairly low gravity. I wouldn’t consider 0.33g to be that low so the hub is probably a bit too large in diameter. But it looks cool so it’s fine for the model.

The model has already gone out to my Patreon supporters at the Surveyor ($2/month) or higher. If you join at that level you’ll get access to it as well. Anyone that joins at the Crafter level ($30/month) in the month of October will get a printed version of the model as well as 8 UPF and 8 Sathar fighters. I’m also planning on posting the UPF Light Cruiser this month (the model is almost done) so a printed mini of that model will go out to backers at that level as well. Those will all be printed and shipped out in early November.

If you don’t want to back the Patreon, but still would like to get a print of any of the miniature models I’ve created, you can jump over to the “Order Miniatures” page to see the costs for the minis and place an order.

Let me know your thoughts and comments on the Armed Station model and miniature in the comment section below.

Detailed Frontier Timeline – FY60.238 to FY60.267

Here’s the next installment of the timeline. This month sees the Frontier races start to explore a bit outward. Unfortunately for them, they stumble upon a heavily defended sathar starship construction center almost immediately.

I’m also trying out a new layout/design for the table let me know if you like this one or the old one better.

Date (FY)	Event
60.238	Discovery Squadron arrives at Stenmar (Kazak). This is their last stop in known space and the squadron will spend a week here making sure the ships are fully repaired and stocked for their journey.
60.239	Work begins by the Discovery Squadron astrogators to plot the first new jump route of their trip. Their destination is the star system OFS19, five light years away just above the jump route to the Cryxia system.
60.240	Resupplied, the HSS History’s Hope leaves Histran Station (Scree Fron) to return to the OFS224 system and then begin charting the next new jump in its journey.
60.241	Sathar starship construction center in the Liberty system completes another destroyer.
60.242	The assault scout for the K’aken-Kar system is completed at the Fromeltar starship construction center. It begins its travel to its home system.
60.243	After six days of waiting, the storm on Mt. Spire clears and the members of the Spire Dragons team begin their descent from the mountain.
60.244	Having made no detections of signals from OFS200, Strike Force Nova departs Hentz (Araks) for the Scree Fron system.
60.245	After over thirty days in the Kizk-Kar system with no further sign of sathar ships, the assault scouts from Kaken-Kar and Fromeltar begin their return trips to their respective systems.
60.246	Discovery squadron begins accelerating toward Void speed on its first jump out the Frontier and Rim region of space.
60.247	Investigations into the source of Ixiol have definitively linked it to Malco Enterprises on Outer Reach (Dramune). Unfortunately, the UPF charter prevents any direct action against the operation without express consent of the planetary government which denies the allegations.
60.248	Based on the findings regarding Ixiol production on Outer Reach (Dramune), Inner Reach (Dramune) implements a strong inspection policy against any ship coming from Outer Reach to search and inspect all cargo from that planet before it can be delivered on Inner Reach.
60.249	HSS History’s Hope arrives safely in the OFS224 system. Work begins to chart a jump to the neutron star in the OFS221 system, a jump of 7 light years.
60.250	Streel starship construction center (Pale, Truane’s Star) reaches 90% original capacity as repairs continue.
60.251	Discovery Squadron successfully jumps to the OFS19 system, a small M1 red dwarf star.
60.252	– After a day of deceleration into the OFS19 system, the Discovery Squadron detect radio signals from the direction of one of the inner planets. They appear to be sathar in origin. Subspace radio messages are dispatched back to the Frontier and Rim. – The squadron immediately changes vector to not be decelerating directly toward the inner system and the astrogators begin working on calculations for a return jump to Kazak.
60.253	After a day of collecting signals in the OFS19 system, at least 10 different sathar ships have been detected by Discovery squadron. Composition is unknown.
60.254	– Strike Force Nova arrives at Histran (Screen Fron). It will spend 11 days in system exercising around both Histran and Hasokar before departing back to the Araks system – Eight sathar ships begin accelerating out toward Discovery squadron. Two new ships have been identified but four have gone silent.
60.255	– The militia assault scouts that had been deployed to the Kaken-Kar system arrive back at their home systems. The crews are given some needed shore leave. – Calculations complete for the return jump to Kazak, and apparently detected by the sathar vessels, Discovery Squadron begins a hard acceleration to stop and reverse direction for a jump out of the system.
60.256	Discovery Squadron completes the stopping maneuver and begins acceleration out of the system. The sathar vessels are nearly half-way to their position and have a sizable speed advantage. It is questionable if the squadron can reach jump speed before the sathar ships catch them.
60.257	With a known path, the Spire Dragons team make it back to their camp at the base of the mountain after only fourteen days of hiking. All that is left to complete their expedition is to make it back to the coast.
60.258	– After two days of grueling high-g acceleration, Discovery Squadron manages to enter the Void for the jump back to Kazak just hours before the sathar vessels overtake them. Unfortunately, due to the haste of their departure, the Discovery Squadron, misjumps into a binary star system rather than Kazak. – Prior to their jump, the Discovery Squadron identify the sathar vessels as 1 heavy cruiser, 1 assault carrier, 1 light cruiser, 2 destroyers, 1 frigate, and 2 ships of a new design approximately the size of the Streel corvettes.
60.259	The HSS History’s Hope jumps into the OFS221 system. While they arrive much further out in the system than planned, the jump is considered a success. They will spend a week in the system studying the neutron star before returning to OFS224.
60.260	After two days of rest from the grueling jump and observations by the astrogators, the Discovery Squadron determines that it is in FS50 system between Kazak and Osak, having overshot their target. Work begins on calculating a jump back to the Kazak system just 4 light years away.
60.261	With preliminary jump calculations done and the crew mostly recovered from their days of high-g acceleration, Discovery Squadron begins accelerating toward jump speed for their return to Kazak.
60.262	– While they don’t know if the UPF ships detected the starship construction center in OFS19, the sathar high command decide to shift some of the assets there to increase the defenses. – Four destroyers from the Liberty system are dispatched to OFS19. Even with a high-speed traversal of the jump routes, this will take approximately 80 days. – A frigate, light cruiser, assault carrier, and eight fighters are dispatched from the sathar SCC#4 (OFS111) to reinforce OFS19 as well. Much closer, it is only a 20-day trip.
60.263	The new assault scout arrives in the K’aken Kar system. After a brief checkout, it takes up regular patrol duties.
60.264	The third saurian Ark ship is completed and begins its shakedown cruise.
60.265	– Strike Force Nova departs Hasokar (Screen Fron) to return to Araks. No signals from OFS200 were detected while in the system. – Discovery Squadron successfully jumps back to the Kazak system. They immediately begin broadcasting the details of their findings in the OFS19 system to both Rim and UPF contacts.
60.266	With receipt of the information about the sathar forces in OFS19, both Spacefleet and the Flight begin discussions on how best to deal with the sathar presence. While discussions are occurring, the Flight dispatches several ships to both Cryxia and Kazak.
60.267	HSS History’s Hope begins accelerating to return to OFS224 and chart the return leg of the jump connection the OFS221 and OFS224 systems.

And here’s the full timeline file:

DetailedFrontierTimeline-1 Download

State of the Frontier – Sept 2019

As I was getting ready to write this, I noticed that it was post 100 on the blog. That definitely marks this as the most successful single blogging endeavor I’ve ever undertaken. Back when I was blogging regularly on the Arcane Game Lore blog, I had a total of 91 posts. I’ve considered pulling those posts over to this blog to consolidate but have not done so yet. My old Programming Space blog only had 16 posts before I stopped posting there and my really old Star Frontiers Lives On blog only had 25 posts before it died. (Another set of posts I’ve considered importing here.) To be fair the cause of death of that one was the Frontier Explorer magazine, it started eating up all my time. I’ve also tried off and on to run a personal blog but the most recent incarnation (there have been others that have been lost to time) only had 6 posts and one of those was a test post. So this has definitely been my most successful endeavor so far and will so exceed all the others combined.

Looking Back

I started out with the now regular timeline post which was followed by the map for a small space station location, the space dock crew lounge. This was part of an adventure I’ve been meaning to write up for a while now so I officially launched it as a new project, Asset Recovery.

And then this month took a right turn and went off in a completely different direction that I hadn’t planned on. About two weeks ago I really got bitten by the bug to do some more 3D modeling. This really shouldn’t have come as a surprise given that I just got my new 3D printer and enjoy modeling, but still. It started with me setting up a page on the site where people can order custom printed miniatures using my new 3D printer. I can print any miniature they want or they can choose from the selection of models I’ve created.

When I posted about this new page on the Star Frontiers Facebook group, someone (Andy) suggestions that I make “scenario packs” with the minis needed for the various modules and battle scenarios in the books. I had been thinking along this line already and I guess Andy’s comment was the push I needed to move more in that direction. To do that, however, I needed the rest of the models. That’s when everything went off the rails. I started by sitting down and whipping up models for the UPF and sathar fighters, miniatures that are lacking in the originally released sets. And then I launched into some more miniature models that I’ll get to in a moment.

Behind the scenes, there have been two major projects going on. The first is issue 26 of the Frontier Explorer. I’ve been working on editing the articles for that issue which comes out next month.

The other is I’ve been working on writing my novel set in the Star Frontiers universe. I’ve added over 7500 words (which is half again as much as I added in the two previous months combined) to the manuscript bringing it up to ~52,500 words total. That is now longer than my entire previous novella, Discovery, which clocked in at just over 48,000 words. And I’m only about 1/4 of the way through the story.

The other thing that happened is I got the first round of Extended Frontier Maps shipped out to those that ordered them. There was a bit of a hiccup with the printer but we got that sorted out and the maps shipped. As as far as I know, with the exception of the one going to Germany, they have all arrived. The upside to the hiccup was that I discovered that it’s actually easier to me to order these print-on-demand style rather than having to order them in batches. So I’ve turned the ordering page back on and will leave it open. If you still want a copy, you can order one anytime.

Looking Forward

This month is probably mostly going to be about miniatures. We’ll start off tomorrow with what has become the regular first post of the month, the Detailed Frontier Timeline post. And if you don’t want to wait until the beginning of each month for the timeline events, I still post them daily on Twitter from the @StarFrontiers account.

The post the following week will be a post on the space station mini I made. The picture at the right is a bit of a teaser for that. Continuing on the miniature theme, I’m currently working on reproducing the UPF light cruiser miniature. You can expect to see a post on that before the end of the month, probably on the 22nd. I don’t think it will quite be done by the 15th as I’ll be focusing a lot on the Frontier Explorer between now and then. As these new models become available, I’ll be adding them to the Order Miniatures page so that you can order them if you want. I plan on putting all my miniature files up on DriveThruRPG for people to purchase if they like although all the ones I’ve developed recently and going forward are sent to my Patreon supporters at the Surveyor ($2/month) level or higher as I finish them. I’ve already sent my supporters the fighter and space station models. They’ll be getting the light cruiser when it’s done. Anyone at the Crafter level of support ($30/month) will be receiving a printed space station and light cruiser miniature in November as those models will be released this month. In addition, anyone that joins that support level in October will receive a set of 8 UPF and 8 sathar fighters as well.

October is a five post month so I expect that the other two posts will be one on the module campaign and another related to the Asset Recovery project. Since the next miniature after the light cruiser will be the battleship, I don’t think that will get finished this month. Those will be my regular Tuesday posts.

As I mentioned, this month sees the release of issue 26 of the Frontier Explorer and a lot of behind the scenes work will be going into that. You can expect to see an out of band post announcing its release towards the end of the month. I’ll also continue to work on my book.

You may also see more shorter posts coming in the future. I often post small snippets of things I’m working on on Facebook or Twitter. Since my posts here are posted there as well, I’m toying with the idea of posting those small bits here as short posts instead. We’ll see how that pans out. Let me know what you think of the idea.

One other idea I’m toying with is expanding the scope of this post each month. While I call it “The State of the Frontier,” to date I’ve really only used it to talk about things I’ve been doing. I think I would like to also include other things going on related to Star Frontiers and FrontierSpace that others are doing as well. We’ll see if that come to fruition but if you have news and want me to help disseminate it, let me know.

Your Thoughts

Thanks as always for reading my blog and especially to those that support me on Patreon. Let me know if you have any thought or suggestions on current or future projects.

Fighter Miniatures

I’ve been bitten by the 3D modeling bug again. It started with me creating this page here on the site. I figured that since I had my high resolution 3D printer and a bunch of 3D models I had already made, I could offer the opportunity to print them for those that wanted them.

So after creating the page, I posted a link to in in the Star Frontiers Facebook group and got quite a number of comments. One from Andy Campbell, which suggested that I make “scenario packs” – basically providing all the minis needed for a given module or scenario from the rules, was very close to something I had noodling around in the back of my head already. The problem was, I only really had the sathar ships and a few of the smaller UPF and pirate vessels like the the Assault Scouts, UPF Frigate, and Corvette.

Plus there are a number of ship designs for which no official miniature was ever released such as the fighters, the UPF Destroyer and Heavy Cruiser, and assault carriers for both sides. There’s no official Sathar Destroyer either but I’ve already made that one. I’d need to make models for those missing ship types if I was going to to pull this off.

Now, I already had plans to create the Sathar Assault Carrier. It was one of my original project when I started this blog. So I think I’ll be getting back to that one shortly. However, to get started I wanted to start on something small, and something there were some art references for. I also wanted to test out how small of a miniature I could reasonably do with my printer.

I had a Sathar Fighter model that I had created several years ago but it was based on a fan created fighter drawing and had just a bit too much resemblance the the rebel logo from Star Wars. I had also played around a while back with the idea of making 3D counters, basically versions of the ship counters that came with the Knight Hawks game but with raised reliefs of the ships on them instead of just being flat. I had made one of the UPF Fighter so I had some experience modelling that one. So that’s where I decided to start.

UPF Fighter

I made this model based on the image on the counter that came with the game. It has a short stubby rudder and is somewhat atmospheric capable. I didn’t put any detailing on the engine package at the back as shown on the counter but I might go back and do that at some point. However, it’s really small so the detail would be mostly lost anyway in a physical miniature.

I do all my ship modelling at 1/1000 scale so that 1mm on the model equals a meter on the actual ship. Since according to the rules, the fighter is a hull size 1 ship, that means it is only 10m long. The ship ended up being 11m in size as I gave the 10m size to the fuselage and tacked on an extra meter for the engine nozzle at the back.

This model was printed at full size (1/1000th scale). That means that the printed miniature is only 11m long and about the same wide. For the capital ships, I typically print them at 1/3000th scale as that is roughly the scale of the officially release miniatures. However, printing these fighters at that scale would make them absolutely minuscule. It also wouldn’t have printed properly as the wings would have been too thin. As is, they are just a bit larger than the thinnest piece I can print with this printer. This is a little, tiny model and you have to be careful because if you’re not careful, it might just blow away. This is now my UPF Figher MK I miniature.

That one worked. And it only took me about 3 hours to make the model. What’s next?

Sathar Fighter

As I said earlier, I have a model of a sathar fighter that I created based on a fan image (the model and image that inspired it is to the right). This one was designed to be printable on a FDM style printer with 0.1mm layer resolution and it works. But it is a very simple model. And I had always called this my Sathar Fighter MK II model as I knew this shouldn’t be the original. What I wanted was one that matched the silhouette on the counter that came with the game.

For this fighter model, in addition to the game counter (at left), there is this great illustration from page 54 of the Knight Hawks Campaign Book showing this same fighter being pursued by another fighter. So we have some more detail to go on for this one.

This model was going to take some more work. With the bent wings and contoured surface, on the cockpit disk and the wings themselves the modelling was going to be a little more complicated.

Again I went with a 10m length, this time including the engine nozzle in that 10m. Since I’m still modelling in OpenSCAD, I started creating little modules that will allow me to reuse some of the elements I created along the way in other ships if I need them.

This model took me a bit longer. I was getting back into the groove of modeling and so getting faster, but this one was a bit more complicated. In the end, this model took me about four hours to finish but I really like the way it turned out. Here is a couple of view of the model, plus the printed version side-by-side with the UPF fighter.

You can’t see it in the picture, but that detail that I added on the back of the fuselage is just sort-of visible on the printed model. Which means I should go back and add some detail to the UPF fighter as well. As it currently stands, this model is only printable on my SLA printer as the wings are almost exactly one resolution element (0.05mm) thick. In fact, I wasn’t sure it was going to print and was relieved to see that it did. I will probably go back at some point and make the wings a little thicker. If or no other reason, to make them a little stronger.

Compared to other ships

Here’s another comparison image showing the two fighters next to a small assault scout mini (my Swift-class assault scout model printed at 1/2000 scale), and a replica of the officially released UPF frigate mini which is also happens to be at nearly 1/2000th scale. So the two larger ships are roughly to scale with each other but the fighters should be half again as small to be on the same scale.

Future Models

At the very least, I want to make a second UPF Fighter (Mk II) mini that matches the ship depicted chasing the sathar fighter in the image above. There are also some other fighter-like ships depicted throughout the illustrations in the rules that I might take a crack at.

Also, if you are at all familiar with the rules, you know that these fighters as depicted could not possibly match the stats given for them in the game. These fighters are supposed to be packing three assault rockets, each of which is roughly the same size as the fighter’s entire fuselage. One of these days I’ll make a model that depicts that.

But first, I want to start seriously looking at finishing off the line of ships so I have a model of each ship type. I’m also going to need some space stations. As I’m writing this, I’ve already made my first space station model. I’ll post about that here in the future but if you are following me on Twitter or are a member of the Facebook group, you’ve already seen some pictures of that model.

Getting the models and minis

My Patreon supporters at the Surveyor ($2/month) or higher level will be getting copies of the model files for each of these models (and all future models as well). If you’d like to get them as they are produced, consider signing up to support this work. In the very near future, I’ll also be putting all my model files on-line, probably on DriveThruRPG for everyone to access.

If you’d like to get 3D printed miniatures of any of the models I’ve created, you can check out my Order Miniatures page which gives the details on how to order them and lists the prices.

Asset Recovery – Project Outline

It’s been kind of a crazy week for me and while I’ve been working on things behind the scenes, between travel for work and getting caught back up once I got home, I haven’t had a lot of free time. Plus I’ve been in a fiction-writing mood and while I’ve broken the 50k word mark on my manuscript, I don’t really want to post anything from this very rough draft.

So today I’m going to post a new project overview for another adventure. This is another one that I’ve actually run before, at least partially, but this version will be a bit more fleshed out. Some of the bits and pieces are already online, like the Ship Dock Crew Lounge I posted last week, which was originally designed as a location this adventure. So let’s dive into this.

Asset Recovery

Project Tag: Asset Recovery

Level

An adventure for 4-6 moderately advanced Star Frontiers characters with level 2-3 Knight Hawks skills. One of the PC’s should be a level 3 pilot in order to fly the ship in the adventure.

The adventure is designed for a single session and was originally run as part of an on-line con back in 2012. This version is slightly expanded.

Premise

The PCs work for the Cassidine Development Corporation (CDC) as troubleshooters that are assigned missions to solve problems for the corporation around the Frontier. A starship prototype, which vanished six months ago, has suddenly turned up under a new name. The PCs are assigned to recover it for CDC and return it to Triad in the Cassidine system

Basic Story

The CDCSS Nightwind is a prototype, para-military freighter that finished completion six months ago at the CDC shipyards orbiting Triad. On its maiden voyage and shakedown cruise, the ship supposedly misjumped on it’s way to Prenglar and disappeared. Now six months later, it has reappeared in the Theseus system registered as the Timeon Star Ship (TSS) Stargift.

The misjump to Prenglar wasn’t a misjump at all but a calculated jump by the astrogator to take the ship astray. Together with the chief engineer, and one of the gunners, they took control of the ship with the help of a pirate vessel at the end of the jump. The three original crew members are listed as the ship’s owners under pseudonyms and the ship is listed as found in the Timeon system and claimed under salvage laws. The Nightwind’s current crew have loaded a shipment of air cars and are awaiting several cargo units worth of StarPlay robots for delivery to the K’sta-Kar system.

The PCs will need to determine if the ship is legitimately salvage or not (it isn’t) gain access to and control of the ship, and successfully return it to the Cassidine system. There is another ship (an East Indiaman Freighter) in the system allied with the Nightwind’s current crew, as well as those that might help the PCs. If they get control of the ship, there will be a pirate ambush waiting for them on the route back to Cassidine.

One of the features of this adventure, in a nod to long time Star Frontiers players, is that one of the ships currently docked at Minotaur Station is the IRSS Gullwind, before the Dramune Run module. This crew and ship are potential allies of the PCs. The Gullwind and the East Indiaman are docked in adjacent berths with the Nightwind (sharing the same crew lounge area).

The two main parts of the adventure are figuring out how to get onboard the Nightwind and then a mini dungeon crawl with the PCs traversing the various decks of the Nightwind trying to capture/incapacitate the crew and take control of the ship while being opposed by the crew and security robots.

Materials Needed for the Adventure

Deck Plans for the Nightwind – these were published many moons ago in issue one of the Frontier Explorer.
Crew Stats
- Original Nightwind crew (dossiers provided to the PCs by CDC)
- Current Stargift crew (to be determined by the PCs)
- East Indiaman crew (allies to the Stargift crew)
- Gullwind crew (potential allies to the PCs)
Details and stats for the shipment of robots being taken on by the Stargift.
Stats for StarPlay contact about the robots
Stats for contact about aircar shipment
Stats and reaction notes for station security
Map of public observation area
Map of dock lounge area – This was last week’s post
Some basic responses to possible player options for getting on the Nightwind.
Stats for Knight Hawks encounter (optional) on the trip back to Cassidine.

Last Thoughts

I have scattered notes for a lot of the pieces of this adventure in notebooks and digital files. Part of the purpose of this project is to get it all collected into a single cohesive form. I already have the beginnings of an adventure outline and I’ll be fleshing that out and posting bits in the months to come.

I ran this as part of an on-line con many years ago and due to some technical difficulties getting started, we ran out of time and the team only got as far as getting onto the ship. But fun was had. I’d like to run this again and so there may be an opportunity for a one-shot on-line session in the coming months and my ultimate goal is actually go to a gaming convention and running this there. I’m looking at Gary Con in 2020 in Lake Geneva, or maybe ORCCON 2020 in LA. Although I may have to wait to go to a con later in the year as ORCCON is just before my birthday and Gary Con is just before a potential work trip to South Africa. We’ll see how it goes.

I also already have a 3D model of this ship. The model was made directly from the deck plans published in the Frontier Explorer so it matches the irregular deck structure exactly as detailed. It’s even one of the few minis I’ve actually painted (although I can’t seem to find it at the moment, my boys have probably made off with it).

Ship Dock – Crew Lounge Area

This is a common dock lounge found on most large (HS 5 or 6) civilian stations around the Frontier. Located in the station hub, the gravity here is only about 0.1g. Just enough to keep you in your seat but light enough that you have to be careful with your movements.

This lounge area provides a place for crews to get off the ship without going into the station proper, mingle with crews in adjacent berths, and even conduct some semi-private business away from the hustle and bustle of the main station.

Each docking hub can accommodate up to four ships so there could be members of different crews here at any given time but no more than four at once. Depending on the size of the station and its central hub, there could be from 4 to 16 of these areas on any given station.

The Map

Click for the full resolution (50px per square/meter) image.

I’ve had this map kicking around in my sketch book for years. It’s actually part of a one-shot adventure I’ve run and will write up some day. This weekend I decided to give it the full, vector-graphic treatment and turn it into a usable map. I’ve used this location in a couple of different adventures over the years and it’s part of my concept of the design of the stations around the Frontier.

The map above is the labeled version at my standard 100 dpi resolution with each square representing 1 meter. If you want an unlabeled version, or either version at 70 pixels per square which is the default for Roll20’s map system, here are a few more versions of the map. The ones labeled 70ppm (pixels per meter) are the larger versions for VTT systems.

ShipDock-noLabels Download

ShipDock-70ppm Download

ShipDock-noLabels-70ppm Download

If your particular virtual table top uses a different default resolution, let me know and I’ll add in maps at that resolution as well.

Area Descriptions

Area 1 – Station Passageway

This is the main passageway through the hub of the station. I’ve drawn it here as a 2m wide passage with a small side passage going to the crew lounge. That’s how I originally drew it and described it the first time I used it. When I used it in the “A New Can of Worms” game, the hub corridor was much wider, like the terminal area in modern airports, and the crew lounge area was right up against it with glass walls. The PCs in that game tried several times, unsuccessfully, to get in.

Area 2 – Crew Lounge

This is the crew lounge proper. It has a couple of desks, some tables and chairs and a sofa and a couple of recliners. All in all, it’s a bit over 45 feet long and 20 feet wide.

The desks are fixed in the corners but all the other furniture is movable and can be positioned wherever the crews want. There are sensors that monitor the area in front of the doors and if they are blocked, the lights in the room flash and an alarm sounds until the offending item is moved. Since there is only 0.1g in the area, it’s fairly easy to move even the sofa but everything stays on the floor and doesn’t float around.

The door into the room from the hallway is locked with a level 4 security lock that opens only to beings who have been registered with the station as part of the crew of one of the ships assigned to these berths. The registration is typically done as part of the docking procedure so that the doors are working as soon as they arrive. The door itself is a pressure door and takes 3 turns (18 seconds) to cycle and move through: On the first turn the person wishing to pass through stops at the door and starts the process, on the second, the doors cycles and opens, and on the third, they can move through into the room. The door closes and seals automatically if not held open.

The roof of the room is a series of large windows, allowing those in the room to look up and out into the central hub of the station and see their ship and the other ships docked in the area. The ships attached to passages 4b & 4c are directly above the room while the other two are slightly higher up and off to the left and right.

Area 3 – Access Halls

These short passages provide access to the docking tunnels on either side of the crew lounge area. Like the door into area 2, these pressure doors have a level 4 lock on them that only allows the registered crews of the two ships docked off of the passageway through. Thus the crew of the ship docked in passage 4a could not open the door to 3b.

Area 4 -Docking Tunnels

Each of these passages ends at another pressure door (not shown) that opens into the docking collar connecting one of the ship’s airlocks to the station. For small ships this may be the only airlock and so all crew and passengers come out this way. On larger ships with more than one airlock, this is connected to the crew’s airlock with passengers typically going through a different part of the station. Alternately, for large ships, more than one of these docking tunnels may be connected to different airlocks on the same ship.

The tunnels move away from the lounge area, angling upward as they do, and then turn into a vertical shaft going up to the ship with ladders and hand holds along the walls. Gravity decreases from 0.1g to less than 0.05g by the time you reach any of the ships.

Tunnels 4b and 4c typically connect to smaller ships (up to hull sizes 8 and 6 respectively) although a single large ship could be connected to both of them. The other two tunnels extend farther out into the hub and can accommodate ships up to hull size 10 (4a) and 12 (4d). Even larger ships could take up 4a and 4b or 4c and 4d together or even three or all four of the tunnels (for a HS 20 ship).

The pressure doors to these docking tunnels are keyed only to the crew of the ship docked to that tunnel and use a level 6 security lock.

Some Thoughts on Station Sizes

The 0.1g gravity in this area only really works if you don’t allow very large ships into the station hub. That limitation goes a bit against the Star Frontiers setting as described in the rule books. There it says that a HS 6 station is 1200m in diameter. Assuming 1 g at the rim, that mean you hit 0.1g of gravity at just 60m from the center of the station. So the hub can only be 120m in diameter. The size given for a HS 20 ship is 100m in diameter so it could just squeeze in but would take up all the space. So you either have to limit the size of ships that can come in, or you have to make the hub bigger which means the gravity would be a bit higher in the lounge area probably up to 0.2g. It’s even worse on smaller stations. Because they are smaller, you hit that 0.1g even closer to the center of the station. Just something to keep in mind.

Detailed Frontier Timeline FY60.207 to FY60.237

Running a little bit late today getting this up due to the long weekend and being completely swamped. This month sees the launch of the exploration project by the Yazira Heritage Foundation in an attempt to plot a route to the start suspected to be Yazira, the yazirian home world. We also see the sathar probing the Frontier, and the Spire Dragons finally reach the summit of Mt. Spire.

Date (FY)	Events
60.207	After weeks of debate, an initial charter for the Frontier Expeditionary Force is approved. A young Spacefleet commander, Space Commodore Karl “Rough” Rider (SFKH3), is given command of the operation and assigned the task of building the project.
60.208	Three days out from Hargut (Gruna Garu), the UPFS Nexus, Strike Force Nova’s communications ship, detects signals from the direction of the vast expanse that match the profile previously reported. Strike Force Nova aborts the jump to Araks and begins return to Hargut while monitoring the signals.
60.209	Discovery Squadron arrives at Faire in the Capella system. It will spend a week here meeting with Rim Coalition representatives to attempt to recruit a few members of The Flight to make the mission a joint UPF-Rim operation.
60.210	Assault scouts from the Fromeltar and K’aken-Kar system arrive at Zit-Kit (Kizk-Kar) and begin sweeping the system.
60.211	– The CDCSS Nightwind arrives in the Kizk-Kar system with an assault scout escort delivering a shipment of security robots to CDC operations on Zit-Kit. – The CDCSS Nightwind is set upon by the sathar ships and a running battle ensues as the freighter tries to escape and its escort uses its superior maneuverability to fend off the attackers. A distress call goes out and the two militia ships happen to be less than an hour away. – The CDC assault scout, having damaged the sathar destroyer considerably, is destroyed by the sathar vessels just as the militia assault scouts arrive. The militia assault scouts join the battle fresh and defeat both damaged sathar vessels.
60.212	Shakedown cruise of the second saurian Ark ship is complete. Refugees begin shuttling up to the ship.
60.213	Construction of the first of the TransTravel escort vessels, a Streel Red Thunder class Corvette, begins in the shipyards in Prenglar.
60.214	Strike Force Nova arrives back at Hargut (Gruna Garu). Collection and analysis of the signals continue. They seem to be coming from OFS200, and the signal is often masked by emissions from the pulsar at OFS203 making observation difficult.
60.215	Construction of a pair of TransTravel Assault Scouts begin at the Triad shipyards
60.216	Sathar starship construction center near Fromeltar (SCC#4) completes a light cruiser.
60.217	HSS History’s Hope departs Histran (Scree Fron) on the first leg of what will most likely be a multi-year endeavor to attempt to chart a series of jumps to the star that he Yaziria Heritage Foundations now believes to be original yazirian home system. The first step will be an 8 ly jump to the OFS 224 system.
60.218	After just over a week of discussion, Discovery Squadron continues on its mission leaving the Capella system and headed toward Osak. While the Rim generally supports the mission, they are hesitant to officially contribute ships for fear of increasing sathar ire if problems arise.
60.219	Landing Day celebration held on Hentz (Athor) celebrating the anniversary of the Yazirian Exodus arriving in the Frontier region.
60.220	Having identified and isolated the transmissions, Strike Force Nova departs Hargut (Gruna Garu) to head to the Araks system, continuing its tour and looking to attempt to identify the signals in other systems.
60.221	With the ending of the winter season on Alcazzar, a CDC freighter, the CDCSS Trucker XIV, departs Triad (Cassidine) with crew and equipment to establish mining compound on Alcazzar (Rhianna) (SF4)
60.222	A new cutter is completed at the sathar starship construction center near Zebulon.
60.223	Loading complete, the second saurian ark ship departs into interstellar space.
60.224	Construction of another corvette for TransTravel begins at the Fromeltar shipyard.
60.225	The HSS History’s Hope arrives in the OFS 224 system, successfully plotting the outward segment of the jump. The crew will spend a few days observing the system while the astrogation team calculates the return jump.
60.226	A new destroyer is completed at the sathar starship construction center in the Liberty system.
60.227	Discovery Squadron arrives is the Osak system, where they will spend a two-day layover before continuing on to Kazak.
60.228	Spire Dragons begin their final ascent of Mt. Spire. Over 20 beings, with representatives from all seven major Frontier and Rim species, take part in this final ascent which is expected to take four days to reach the summit.
60.229	As Discovery Squadron is about to depart the Osak system, they are joined by two Humma-crewed vessels from Hum (Fockhrik). One is the equivalent of an assault scout, while the other is a small exploration vessel. Having heard of the mission, the humma are more than willing to take the fight to the sathar.
60.230	Strike Force Nova arrives at Hentz (Araks). No signals from OFS200 were detected on the inbound leg of the trip. The Strike Force will remain in the system for 14 days searching for signals from the system and conducting drills.
60.231	– Repairs at the CDC starship construction center bring capacity up to 75%. – A sudden and serious storm swirls around the summit of Mt. Spire requiring the Spire Dragons expedition to hunker down less than 1000m from the summit to wait out the storm. They dig in but are very exposed near the mountain’s peak
60.232	With repairs of the CDC starship construction center well underway and progressing, work on the CDCSS Mystic resumes
60.233	– After two days, the storm atop Mt. Spire finally clears. Four expedition members were lost during the storm, their shelters having blown away, presumably carrying them with it. The remaining team makes the final ascent reaching the summit about two hours after noon. – The team reaching the summit consisted of members of all seven Frontier and Rim races, although there was only one Osakar as the other two Osakar that were part of the summit team were lost in the storm. With another storm rapidly approaching, they take pictures and quickly begin their descent.
60.234	Construction of an assault scout for Trans Travel begins in the Minotaur (Theseus) shipyards
60.235	The CSCSS Trucker XIV arrives at Alcazzar (Rhianna) and begins shuttling crew and equipment to the surface. Cold conditions slow the initial construction while crews wait for slightly warmer weather.
60.236	The HSS History’s Hope successfully completes the return jump to the Scree Fron system fully charting the route to that system. They dock at Histran station to resupply and report the jump to the UPF. The proceeds from the jump registration will be used to help fund the mission.
60.237	The Spire Dragon summit team makes it safely back to their high-altitude base camp just hours before the new storm hits.

Here’s the full PDF:

DetailedFrontierTimeline Download

State of the Frontier – Aug 2019

Okay. This month has been a bit of a roller coaster (and that’s not counting the fact that I got to actually ride roller coasters this month 🙂 ).

Looking Back

As promised, I got out the regular Detailed Frontier timeline post and a post on the module campaign. I also created the sector map based on the region of space from my book Discovery as I had mentioned I wanted to do which highlighted the notation for the third dimension in the maps.

Speaking of the printer. I printed this model by Jay Thruman. It’s about 2″ tall. Bonus points if you recognize the ship.

The post that I wasn’t anticipating was my review of the AnyCubic Photon 3D printer. That one came about as a bit of serendipity. I was at the university library (where I used to work) printing out my poster for the meeting that I went to in Australia at the beginning of the month and they had added an SLA resin printer to the host of other 3D printers. We got talking about it and after seeing some of the prints they were doing, I kind of got excited to maybe get one myself. So I started looking and found that there were some entry level ones for just $300. And then I went on my trip. When I got back, I decided that for $300, I had to take the plunge so I ordered it and have been playing with it all month so I thought I’d write up a review for anyone else that might want to get one to make miniatures with. I mean if creating miniature for game play doesn’t count as creating RPG resources, I don’t know what does. 🙂

The 3D printer was the fun part of the roller coaster that was August. The down side was “off camera” so to speak. Somehow, my web hosting service got hacked and all my websites that were hosted there had malicious code injected into them. So I had to get that all rebuilt and back on-line. It didn’t affect this site as this one is on my home server but it did take the Frontier Explorer site off-line for about a week while I got it all cleaned up. The hack that let the malicious users in was on the webhost side, not my sites since they damaged several different (unrelated and unlinked) sites exactly the same way like they had access to account file system, not the web file system. As I’m writing this, I still don’t have one of the sites back up yet but that should be done in a day or two (probably by the time this posts). It’s my old blog that I haven’t written on since 2013 so I have a perfect backup. It’s just so old, I don’t think it works on the newer infrastructure at the web host so I’m temporarily reinstating it on my home server until I can get it upgraded.

I’ve also been putting some work in on my Star Frontiers novel. I’ve only added about 2200 words this month (and 2800 last month) but I’ve gotten some more organizational stuff done on the manuscript and done some light editing. It’s only about 3000 words shy of being the same size as my Discovery novel and I’m only about 1/4 of the way through the plot. So I’ve got a way to go.

I also posted an opportunity to purchase printed versions of the Extended Frontier Map. The preorders on that are still open and will be until Sept 4th. At which point I’ll be getting the order for the maps placed and get them printed and shipped out.

Looking Forward

September is likely to be a slow month as far as posting goes as I’m going to be doing a bunch of stuff behind the scenes that will probably not translate into posts. I’ll try to get a post out every week but they might be kind of small. There will definitely be the Timeline post as always, and I’ll do one more on the module based campaign, probably covering the Warriors of White Light and Dramune Run modules. Beyond that I can’t really say what will come up.

Behind the scenes I will be continuing to work on my books. I also am probably going to actually start getting Death at Rosegard put together properly.

But the big thing that will probably be taking up my time is an upgrade to my home server and moving websites around. The computer that is running my home server (an old laptop that was 2x faster and more memory that the previous server) is having issues and constantly throwing errors. It doesn’t seem to affect the running of the sites, but it is a cause for worry. Partially I think it is just over-heating and I need to clean it and maybe reapply some thermal paste or replace a fan to get better airflow. That server hosts this site, starfrontiers.info, starfrontiers.us, and starfrontiersman.com, and my old programmingspace.net site (once I get it moved back). So if you see a short interruption on those sites, it’s because I’m working on the server.

That’s just maintenance. I’m planning on actually building a new server with modern hardware (instead of 5 year old hardware) to run the server on. On the hardware side, the amount of memory will be the same but the memory speed will more than double and the CPU will go from 4 cores to 8 with each core being about 60% faster than the older ones so there should be a definite performance increase. I’ll probably also use the computer to do some development on as well but it will primarily be my server. In addition to the hardware upgrade, I’ll be working on upgrading the software infrastructure as well.

I’ll also probably star migrating my sites on the shared webhost back to my home server. I originally moved them off to get increased bandwidth and stability from my now 10 year old server and slower internet connection. But since then I’ve upgraded my internet and with the server upgrade, I will have plenty of processing power and bandwidth so that it make sense to move them back in house where I have a bit more control. Once the migration is done, I’ll be looking to make upgrades to the sites themselves but that a project for several months down the road.

I’m still itching to do another Technical Manual so that project might start this month depending on how the infrastructure work goes. We’ll just have to see.

Your Thoughts

As always, let me know if there are any particular things you like to see me address more here on the blog.

And thank you to all of you reading my blog and especially those supporting me on Patreon. It’s your support that makes things like the server upgrade possible.

AnyCubic Photon – A 3D printer review

As you know, I like to build models and 3D print them. I’ve had Rostock Max v3 printer for a couple of years now that I’ve been very happy with. With it’s ~11″ diameter bed and ~16″ maximum height, it has allowed me to do some really large prints like my 12″ Assault Scout and my dice towers. I’ve also used it to print parts to repair things around my house or other useful gadgets.

Types of Printing

As a fused deposition modeling (FDM) printer with a 0.5mm nozzle, one thing the Rostock doesn’t do is super fine detail on small scales. It’s good enough for the spaceship models I’ve been making, especially since I designed the ships with the capabilities of the printer in mind. However, some of the models that I made to recreate old metal miniatures are right on the edge of what the printer could do. And while they print fine, they could be better. It definitely doesn’t do well enough to print small 28mm scale miniature figures with all their detail.

So earlier this month I purchased a new printer to compliment the Rostock on the small scale: an Anycubic Photon. Unlike the FDM printer that uses filament to lay down layers of material to create the print, the Photon is a Stereolithography (SLA) printer. It uses a UV sensitive resin and shines a UV light on the resin, hardening it for each layer. Early (and more high end) SLA printers use lasers as the light source. The Photon uses a UV LED screen. So instead of having to move back and forth across the print area to put down filament, it exposes the entire print surface at once.

Resolution & Build Volume

My Rostock has a cylindrical build volume 280mm in diameter and 405mm tall. Vertically, it can theoretically do 0.06mm layers but in practice, anything less than 0.1 mm doesn’t work but at that thickness and higher it works just fine. So I would use 0.1mm for high detail prints and 0.2mm as the default for large prints. That’s the vertical direction, in the horizontal direction, the positional accuracy was on the order of 0.05 mm but with the 0.5mm nozzle, you get actual resolution more on the order of 0.2mm.

Rostock on the left, Photon on the right. The Rostok is 3 feet tall.

The Photon is much much smaller. The picture at right shows them side by side. The print volume on the Photon is rectangular, 121mm wide, 68mm deep, and 150mm tall. However, that 121×68 mm print bed is imaged by a screen that is 2560×1440 pixels in size. That works out to a resolution in the x and y directions of 0.0475mm, 4 times better than what I can achieve with the Rostock. In the vertical direction, the default layer height is 0.05mm and it can go as low as 0.02mm, although I haven’t tried that yet as the 0.05mm height is amazing. It can go as thick as 0.1mm. So the default vertical resolution is already 2 times better than the best the Rostock can do and it has the capability to go even finer. The cost is print time and build volume.

Some Prints

Before I talk about the printing process, it’s time for some pictures. I’m still testing things out, but the default settings produce some amazing prints.

The images below shows a pair of miniatures that I printed for my daughter’s friends. I had tried printing them on the Rostock and it just couldn’t do it. The discoloration on the print of the sorceress is due to an alternate curing method I was trying out (more on that later). You can see the folds in their clothes and hair, and details in their armor.

The printer came with the green resin and that’s what I’ve been using. I’ve ordered some white, black, and grey resin but I’m waiting for it to arrive. Next up we have the pirate corvette. The silver one was printed on my Rostock and the green of course is the new Photon. You can see the difference immediately. The resin print is much smoother and doesn’t have the banding from the print layers that the FDM print has. That wasn’t actually the best print from my Rostock so it’s not a completely fair comparison but the new one is just that much better.

This image shows my sathar destroyer and hull 6 freighter models printed with both printers. The main thing visible in this set of prints is that the physical dimensions of the prints are more accurate with the resin printer. For example the bulb at the head of the destroyer is a bit distorted in the FDM print. Another thing that’s not as easily visible in this picture (as I wasn’t thinking about it when I took the picture) is that there are some fine details of bay doors and airlocks on both models that are just barely there on the FDM print but easily visible on the resin print. The other thing that stands out is that the barrels on my laser batteries (on the freighter) show up just fine in the resin print.

This next print I did to test out the resolution. The two prints are the exact same model file. The white one was printed with 0.1mm resolution on the Rostock and is 4″ tall. That was the scale (1/500th) that I designed the model to print at. I’ve also printed it at 1/333th, 6mm, and 10mm scales (6″, ~8″, and ~12″ tall. If you want one, you can order them here). The small one was printed just 1″ tall (1/2000th scale). It’s hard to see it in the picture, but every detail you can see on the large model, is also on the little one.

In addition, because of the very high resolution of the resin printer, details on the bottom of the model (back of the engines and fuselage), which didn’t print very well on the FDM version, are hinted at on that 1″ print but completely visible on a full-sized 4″ print as seen in the image below.

Next we have a comparison of the sathar light cruiser model. The FDM printed one has suffered some battle damage from my little boys playing with it. This is their favorite model of the bunch for some reason. Now the FDM version is pretty good but suffers on the underside of the engine struts. Otherwise it looks pretty good. But what blew me away when I got this print finished was the surface detail on the resin print. If you look closely at the head of the ship and the upper fuselage, you can see that the surface is faceted by a bunch of flat surfaces. That is the actual shape of the model file, not a printing artifact. It is washed out by the lower resolution of the FDM printer but the resolution is so high on the resin printer that the fact that I only used 50 faces to model circles is evident in the print. Those are the individual hull plates used to build the ship. At least that’s the story I’m sticking to.

The image below is the tallest print I’ve done, the sathar heavy cruiser. This one is about at the limit of the printer standing 142mm tall. In this case, I haven’t removed the support material from either of the prints so you can see what that looks like before it is all cleaned off. Not much more to add with these ones.

Finally, we have a collection of the smaller ships. These are all models, like the two above, that duplicate the original metal miniatures as exactly as I could (which turned out to be pretty close). We have the UPF and sathar frigates, the sathar cutter (which is the silhouette used on the UPF minelayer chit, but called the sathar cutter on the blister pack), and the pirate and UPF assault scout.

The Printing Process

The Photon’s SLA printing process comes with a different set of experiences, constraints, and challenges as compared with a FDM printer. The most obvious one is that everything is printed upside down.

Build Plate Adhesion

The layer being printed is at the bottom of the pool of resin. The UV light shines there to cure the resin, then the build plate slowly lifts to separate it from the teflon panel at the bottom of the reservoir, lifts it up and then puts it back down to work on the next layer. Because of that, one of the biggest challenges is making sure that your first few layers stick very strongly to the build plate. I’d say this has been my biggest challenge so far and I’ve had plenty of failed prints where it just hasn’t stuck and I’ve ended up with at layer of hardened resin stuck to the teflon at the bottom.

To achieve a good binding, there are two major factors that go into it. First, you simply expose the resin to the UV light for a lot longer on the first 5-10 layers. Typical expose time for a regular layer is 8-12 seconds. On the first layers you expose it for 40-80 seconds. This makes these first layers strong and well hardened and helps them bind to the build plate. The other part is to make sure that the build plate is as level as you can get it.

On the Photon, the build plate is connected to the mechanism that moves it up and down by a ball joint (that you can just see at the top of the picture above) which allows you to adjust the position of the plate. I’ve found that I need to realign this after every few prints. I think I’m applying too much force when trying to remove models from the plate, or not tightening the screw enough that holds it tight. I’m still working on making this more stable.

Layer Print Speed

Another difference is that it takes the same amount of time to print a layer whether there is only a small bit of the model on that layer or you’re filling the entire build plate. On an FDM printer, the nozzle has to travel over every bit of the layer where you want plastic to be laid down. Which means that the time spent on a layer depend on the amount of material to be placed. In fact, in the slicing software for FDM printers, there is an option you can set that is minimum layer time. This is because the plastic is still warm and if you print over the layers to quickly, you get smearing like you can see at the top of the corvette model in the earlier pictures.

On the SLA printer, it exposes the entire layer at once. Which means each layer takes exactly the same amount of time regardless of the amount of material being printed. However, because of the smaller layer sizes, you have to do more layers.

For single models, the FDM printer is faster. For example, the freighter print, and the frigates and sathar destroyer for that matter, all take about 4-5 hours on the Photon to print since they are all the same height and print time is just a function of the height of the model. The heavy cruiser took about 11 hours (I ran it overnight). On the FDM printer, those smaller models only took about 30 minutes to 1.5 hours depending on the layer height settings. So you’re getting the increased quality in exchange for increased time.

However, because the SLA printing is independent of the amount of material being printed, you can print a bunch of models all at once if they fit on the build plate. I printed the eight smaller ships (destroyer, 2 frigates, freighter, cutter, and 3 assault scouts) all at once. It took five hours and only filled about half the build plate area, if that (I could have packed them closer together). On the Rostock, that same set would have taken nearly 6 hours to print (at 0.1mm height resolution compared to the 0.05mm of the Photon) and the scaled down assault scout model would not have printed successfully at all as the details are too fine on that model. And that 11 hour print on the heavy cruiser? It takes 6.75 hours on the Rostock. And I can print 5 at a time on the Photon in that same 11 hours which would take just over a day on the Rostock. So while individual prints are slower, you can print many models at once and actually achieve a faster print speed with higher resolution. As long as it fits in the build volume.

Materials, Post-processing, and Clean-up

With the FDM printer, I just use PLA plastic which comes in 1kg spools that cost about US$22-25 depending on the color and transparent plastic costs a bit more. You can see one of the spools and its box in the very first picture sitting on top of the Rostock. For the SLA printer, you use a liquid resin that hardens when exposed to UV light at 405nm. You can buy it in 500ml and 1 liter bottles that cost about US$25 for the half liter bottles and US$40 for the liter bottles, again price varying slightly by the color and transparency. So the material on the SLA printer is a bit more expensive.

Additionally, you use more material for any given print. You always have to have a base plate (raft) that uses up material, plus the resin prints tend to be more solid than the FDM prints. There are techniques for reducing this that I’m still learning, but my resin prints are definitely heftier than the prints from the Rostock. Additionally there is a bit of resin lost in the clean-up process each time (although the amount is fairly small). All told, it probably costs about 2-3 times as much to print with the SLA printer than the Rostock.

There is also a bit more work involved on finishing a print with the SLA printer. With the FDM printer, once the print is done, you just have to let it cool, remove it from the build plate, remove the printing supports, and you’re done. Paint or use. It’s a bit more involved with the SLA printer.

First, the print is literally dripping wet. The last bit of just came out of the resin bath and you might have bits of liquid resin hiding in pockets higher up depending on the shape of your model. So you have to have to make sure that gets cleaned up.

Second, there is typically a thin film of uncured resin sticking to the surface all over the print. This needs to be rinsed off to get the highest surface detail. This is done by washing the material in a bath of high concentration rubbing alcohol (I use 91% isopropyl). The alcohol dilutes and washes away the uncured resin. This keeps it from binding to the model in the next step.

Finally, you need to finish the curing process. While the model is solid, it is not completely cured and you want to make sure it is. This can be accomplished in a number of ways. One is to buy a UV lamp that emits at 405nm and put the model under that for a while to finish curing at least the surface (which is really what you need, the interior will finish over time). The other option, which I typically use, is to take advantage of the big UV lamp in the sky and set the model out in the sun for 10-15 minutes. Of course that latter option only works during the day. At night I actually have a full spectrum lamp from an old fish tank that I use. It’s not super efficient as I don’t think it actually emits a lot of UV but it does work if I let it run overnight.

Since you’re working with a liquid, you get drops of resin falling across your work surfaces and printer as you’re working with the finished model, plus resin sticking to the tools you are using, so you have to make sure to clean it up as you go.

Finally, you have to deal with failed prints. On the FDM printer, you just pull the bad print off, make sure the nozzle is clean, and try again. There is a little more work with the SLA printer.

First, when a print fails, that usually means that it has come off the build plate and therefore is stuck to the bottom of the resin vat. Although I did have one failed print (of the heavy cruiser) where parts were just missing because they didn’t stick at first and then later layers worked. The printer comes with a plastic scraper for removing prints from the build plate and the resin vat when they get stuck there. However, you have to be very careful. The bottom of the resin vat is actually a thin sheet of clear teflon film. Clear so the UV light can get through, and teflon to help the resin not stick. This film has to be flat and intact for the printer to work. If you gouge it, it has to be replaced.

Which of course I did on the second day of printing. I was having a lot of failed prints and I accidentally caught the film with the corner of the scraper and gouged it pretty good making it no longer flat. Luckily the printer comes with two replacement films so I got to experience that right away. I haven’t had a problem since. (And I’ve ordered more film in case I do and for when the film just wears out from use.)

The other thing you have to deal with on failed prints, and even regularly after good ones, is little bits of cured resin in the vat. These have to be cleared out because if they get between the build plate and the bottom of the vat, the build plate doesn’t get into the correct position and the layer doesn’t cure properly which can cause it to not stick and the print to fail. This is done by removing the resin vat from the printer and pouring out the resin through through a very fine filter (that came with the printer) into a container. The little bits are removed from the resin and then you can replace the vat (after wiping it out) and refill it with the resin. The picture to the right shows the filter I’m currently using and all the little bits that have been filtered out. The filters that came with my printer are paper and eventually soak up a bunch of resin and have to be discarded. The printer came with 10 so I’ll eventually need to get some more.

Other Thoughts

Just a couple other thoughts before we wrap up. First is the smell. The PLA plastic that I use for the Rostock actually smells pretty nice. It’s not like air freshener nice but it is not a bad odor. The resin isn’t nearly as pleasant. And while it’s not too bad, you can definitely smell it when the printer is running. It’s best to run the printer in a well ventilated area. Also, there is a distinct odor from the rubbing alcohol as well. While I wouldn’t consider them to be really unpleasant, the extra odors from this printer are not as nice as the FDM printer. Of course, I’m not that sensitive to the smells so it might be worse for you.

Another topic is the slicing software that you use to make the print files. The printer comes with the software bundled on a USB stick and as far as it goes, the software works just fine. However, it is very limited in its functionality. It also has a bug in the rotation functionality that makes it a bit hard to position pieces if you want to rotate them. Namely, the x & y rotation work on the original model axes, no matter the model rotation, while the z rotation works on the printer z axis.

Additionally, it would be really nice if the slicing software would tell you how much resin was being used in a print. It gives estimated print times (which tend to be underestimates, I don’t think it takes the motion of the build plate into account) but doesn’t give you the volume of resin used. It also doesn’t do hollowing or drilling holes (an advanced topic I’m just getting to to reduce resin use) but that can be done in other software. I’ll admit that I haven’t checked the company’s website yet to see if there is a newer version of the software.

Others have recommend ChiTuBox which is what the bundled software is based on (an older version) as it does have all those features and fixes the rotation bug. But for some reason, I have yet to get a print to work using a file generated from that program. They always fall off the build plate despite having all the settings the same in the two programs (at least as much as I can. ChiTuBox has many more options). I’m still trying to figure that out. Right now I use ChiTuBox to position and hollow out the model and then use the bundled software to add supports and slice.

Finally, the touch screen is a little small. The icons and images are fine, but the print is really tiny. It’s a pretty high resolution screen crammed into a 2.7″ space so the words are small. I typically have to either use my magnifying glass lamp or put on reading glasses (even with my uncorrected closeup vision) to read the remaining time on a print.

Conclusions

The bottom line is that I really like this printer. Like any 3D printer, it has its quirks and there is a bit of a learning curve to get the best performance, but it is fairly turnkey and once I got the build plate leveling worked out, it pretty much just works. There is a bit more work involved in finishing the prints, and the materials cost a bit more, but it’s well worth it for the increased resolution.

I haven’t mentioned prices. My Rostock was a kit that I had to assemble and cost $900 (on sale from the regular $1000 price). The current model (the v4) is the same price as a kit and about $1400 assembled. You’re really paying for the large print volume with that printer. Getting a small FDM printer with a 6″x6″x6″ print volume will only cost you about $300-400 dollars. I got my AnyCubic Photon on sale for $300. The regular price is $539 but the sale price is still available (as I’m writing this) on Amazon. Here’s a link to the product page if you want to check it out.

So in summary:

Pros

Low printer price
Excellent resolution
Can print multiple models in the same amount of time
Easy to set up and use

Cons

Slight smell
Higher materials cost
More post processing work
Software somewhat limited and buggy
Relatively small print volume

I’m really enjoying this printer and you can expect to see more prints from it in future posts. If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, let me know in the comment area below.