Not much has happened in the way of progress for the HSS History’s Hope in the Detailed Frontier Timeline. The crew decided to go back to the Frontier for maintenance after their radar system failed during a jump. They were surprised to meet ships to escort them in YS01, the last system they had reported the jump route for and they and their escorts were attacked on the way home to the Scree Fron system. After maintenance was completed, they started on their way back out and have just arrived back in YS01. The adventure continues.
However, as I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I’ve been working on the 3D model of the HSS History’s Hope. This is now completed. I’m still working on the deck plans, which I’ll save for a future post. The reason I held off on doing those was because I suspected they would change slightly when I made the model. And I was correct, based on the hull design, there was a little more room for some of the ship bays which I expanded.
I’m making a series of videos showing my process while creating the deck plans, much like I did for the Rosegard maps. Once that is all done, I’ll post the deck plans and videos and start working on the Technical Manual for the ship.
But for now, let’s look at
The 3D Model
This is the front/top of the ship. I started the model by building the “skeleton” of the ship, namely putting in all the decks as I had sketched them out. I then wrapped a smoother hull around that skeleton to get the outline you see here.
I played a little with some different shapes to smooth out the profile but in the end decided to go with this simpler model. It’s a ship that while capable of planetary landings, isn’t really designed for it. There is some streamlining and thought given to atmospheric travel, it’s not a lot.
The ship stands 61 meters tall and is 30 meters wide (ignoring the engines and struts) and 13 meters thick (plus another 3.5 meters for the astrogation dome – this side, and the laser battery – far side) down where the engines attach.
Let look at some of the features.
Already mentioned, the big dome on this side of the ship is the astrogation dome. The ship has a deluxe astrogation suite so there is a 2-meter diameter telescope inside that 4-meter diameter dome
All the little circles are portholes, mostly in the crew cabins and common areas of the ship. Each of those are 1 meter in diameter. The row of what look like holes in the hull above and to the left of the astrogation dome are small cutouts in the hull to allow for portholes in the dining/lounge area of the ship.
Below the astrogation dome is the main cargo bay doors of the ship. These open, hinged at the bottom to lay down and form a ramp up into the ship.
The other noticeable feature on this side of the ship is the bit at the bottom of the upper wide section of the ship, This is the airlock, which sticks out a bit from the ship and has a bit of hull built up around it to reduce drag when flying through an atmosphere. I’ll admit that this was probably more of a cosmetic addition rather than a necessary one. I had a nice airlock structure from the UPF Light Cruiser model that I wanted to reuse so I did. I could have made it more flush with the hull but decided not to.
Looking at the other side of the ship we see the laser battery on the widest part of the ship.
Below that are the bays for the ships’ launch, the work pod, atmoprobes, and landing drone. There is a remote probe bay door opposite the landing drone bay (on the other side of the ship) but it doesn’t show up in either of these projections.
The feature sticking out on the right of the upper wide portion of the ship is the lifeboat bay.
Astute observers will notice that I used the same engines from the assault scout. I’ve decided that after their introduction for the assault scout, this model design for Class A atomic engines has become fairly standard, at least on ships that want to be able to operate in atmospheres.
And that’s it for the model.
Printing
With the model in hand, it’s time to print it. I created the model, as usual at 1/1000th scale with 1mm on the model representing 1 meter on the actual ship. Normally I then export the final STL at 1/3000th scale which is the scale I’ve decided to use for my ships. However, this time I forgot to scale it down in the final model. But that’s not a big deal as I can do that in the printing software.
I started by printing a 1/3000th scale version of the ship. You can see it here with a pair of hull size 6 ships printed at that same scale, the sathar destroyer and the CDCSS Nightwind, a freighter. The other ship I have at that scale, the hull size 10 agriculture ship, is nearly twice the size of the destroyer so I left it out of the image (There is a picture of the Nightwind and sathar destroyer next to the ag ship in the linked post).
After printing that one, I printed one at 1/2000th scale, which is the scale I use to print the small assault scout miniatures. You can see the History’s Hope next to a Swift assault scout in the following image.
You can see that the engines are the same size (although they are rotated 90 degrees on the History’s Hope). Also if you look closely at the left side of the History’s Hope model, you can see the cut out in the hull for the remote probe launch bay that I mentioned above that wasn’t visible in the renders.
Looking at these small models, I’ve noticed that I need to put a few more supports on the undersides of the engines as they are not printing as clean or as straight as I’d like. But you only really notice on these zoomed in image. You have to remember that that assault scout is just 1″ tall.
What’s Next?
I’ve sent out the model file for this ship to may Patreon supporters. I’m planning on getting this one, along with the agriculture ship, UPF Freighter, and sathar fighter models, uploaded and available on DriveThruRPG with the rest of the models already there sometime later in the month. I really just need to sit down and upload them.
For the History’s Hope, I’m working on making digital deck plans as I’ve already noted. I have them all sketched out in my notebook, I just need to make the files. Then I’ll be doing a complete technical manual write-up for the ship with all it’s details. Which means I need to make a full color render of this ship like I did for the Swift Class assault scout. Any suggestions on a color scheme?
On the modeling front, it’s probably time for me to tackle the Privateer models. I’m getting the itch to do some more modeling so that will probably be where I scratch it to start.
What are your thoughts on the model and the ship? Let me know in the comments below.