Okay, with the UPF Battleship completed, I’ve now recreated all the original military miniatures. I still need to make the Pirate Frigate model and also the freighter and privateers but those are going to wait a bit. Before I tackle them, I want to finish all the ships in the UPF and sathar order of battle. These remaining ships are ones for which no miniature was made by TSR. There weren’t models for the fighters or destroyers either, but I’ve already made those. That leaves us with these missing ships: the UPF Minelayer (if you don’t use the sathar Cutter model), Assault Carriers for both sides, and the UPF Heavy Cruiser. The latter is the topic of today’s post. The image to the right shows the completed model. This post will talk about how we got there.

Sources

There aren’t a lot of sources for the Heavy Cruiser. For “definitive” images, we only have the silhouettes on page 6 of the Knight Hawks Campaign Book (KHCB) and the game counter. You might be able to argue that some of the other ships depicted in the books are heavy cruisers, but nothing else is labeled as such. Since I’m saving the profiles from page 6 & 7 of the KHCB for a second set of miniatures I’ll produce later, we’re going to go with the image on the counter for our basic profile.

This is the image we have to work with. It has a relatively small head, wide fuselage segments and a fairly narrow “waist” region. We also notice that like the destroyer, this has a prominent cannon hanging under the bow of the ship.

Based on the data in the KHCB, the heavy cruiser should be between HS 16-18 and have 6 engines. Since the Battleship was HS 20, and the Light Cruiser is HS 12-14, this ship should fall somewhere right between those two ships in size. That’s what we have to work with, so let’s get started.

The Basic Hull

Building the basic hull was straightforward as I just had to measure the relative sizes of the various parts of the ship and scale them appropriately. There were two main deviations. The first was the engine region. The images on the counters show small engine structures. Since the light cruiser and the battleship both use the same engine design, I intend to reuse that engine here on the heavy cruiser as well. That necessitated making the engine region just a tad bigger than what is shown on the counter, and the engines will stick out further from the body of the ship.

The second variation was in the bow or “head” of the ship. The rules say that heavy cruisers are all old ships. That, combined with the fact that the bow of the ship looks kind of small compared to the body of the ship, led me to make the decision to use the same bow portion on this model as I used for the light cruiser, similar to how I used the same head on the destroyer that I did on the frigate. This gives us the following basic profile.

Adding Details

Next I decided to reuse some of the major elements from both the light cruiser and the battleship. On the aft portion of the fuselage, I used the domed structure from the back of the battleship but only placed three of them compared to the battleship’s four.

Then on the forward fuselage, I used the cannons from the light cruiser placing four of those compared to the light cruiser’s three emplacements. I also add the external cannon onto the bow of the ship. Along the way I also added in the crenelated trim at the edges of the cylinder sections. That gave me this profile.

That was the relatively easy part as I was reusing major structures that I had created for the other models. After that it was time to work my way up the fuselage adding in random bits of machinery, piping, and other structures to give it a bit of surface character to match the other ships in the series.

For some of these bits, I reused some of the structures from the light cruiser and battleship models while for others, I just added things in that fit my fancy. In the end, the final model looked like this:

In the end, the model was 112.5 mm (4.4″) tall which put it right in the middle of the 94 mm and 120.75 mm heights of the light cruiser and battleship, respectively.

Printing

The next step was actually printing it. It’s all well and good to have a cool looking model, but if it doesn’t print, that doesn’t do us any good.

For this printing, I switched back to the grey resin that I had used for the light cruiser. It’s an opaque resin and takes about 50% longer to print but it photographs much better. The total print time with this resin was about 14 hours so I started the print before I went to bed and let it run overnight. When I got up in the morning the print was almost done. After it finished and I gave it some time to cure, I snapped a picture of the heavy cruiser model along with the light cruiser and battleship.

This shows the relative sizes along with a ruler for absolute scale. I think it turned out just fine and looks like a ship made from the same design templates.

Getting the Model and Miniature

I’ve added the Heavy Cruiser to the Miniature Price Table if you want to order a physical miniature. The cost for this miniature will be $5.50, the same as the sathar heavy cruiser. Anyone who joins my Patreon this month (Nov 2019) at the Crafter level will get a printed battleship and heavy cruiser miniature in December.

If you would like a copy of the model STL file, I’ve made the model available on DriveThruRPG along with all the other models. The cost of the UPF Heavy Cruiser model is $1.99. My Patreon backers received the model last week when I finished it.

Final Thoughts

What do you think about this model and miniature? Feel free to let me know in the comments below.

Next up is the UPF Assault Carrier. I’ve’ already started working on it so you can expect to see a post in December with that model and a printed version of the miniature.

I’m also considering making a chess set using the ships from both sides as the pieces. Is that something you would be interested in? Let me know.

I thought I’d be done with this model and ready to post this last week, but the model ended up taking me about 50% longer than I had originally planned. And since I had guessed 10-12 hours, that was a significant time overrun. In the end, the model took about 17 hours to complete.

Let’s not bury the lede, here is the finished model, pictured to the right. With the engines, it stands 120.75mm (4.8″) tall (or long depending on how you look at it) and is a little less than an inch (23.7mm to be exact) in diameter at the widest point on the engines.

The extra time was spent in trying to get all the details just right. There are a lot of them on the battleship and it just took longer than I was expecting. However, I’m really happy with how it turned out. Let’s look a bit at the process.

Getting Started

This is a miniature that was part of the Federation Ships boxed produced by TSR. On the box, it said that there was “some assembly required” for the battleship miniature. This model comes in 10 different pieces. The eight engines are each separate and the main fuselage comes in two parts. Now, I picked up my miniature box(es, I have four now, only 2 of which didn’t have lead rot when I bought them) used on E-bay in the last few years. As such the previous owners had already glued the fuselage together in three of the boxes but hadn’t attached the engines. So this is what I had to start with.

Now, as I discovered while working on the Light Cruiser, those are the exact same engines on both miniatures, so I had already done the work to create them. I just had to make 8 copies for the battleship.

There were also a number of repeated elements on this ship, namely the three main levels of gun turrets, the structure around the waist of the ship, and the “grill” around the neck.

That’s what I tackled first. For the gun turrets, I created a model of each of the structures and then just placed four of each of them, ninety degrees apart, around the fuselage. For the structure around the waist, it was repeated six times, and the grill around the neck has thirteen bumps. That piece ended up being just a stretched and squished sphere rotated around the neck. Getting those pieces in place was the “easy” part and only took about five hours to do giving me a model that looked like this.

The gun turrets are the same as used in the Light Cruiser, but they are sitting on different base platforms. So while I could reuse the turret, I had to build the bases new for this miniature.

Adding the Trim

At that point I just started at the back of the ship and worked my way forward adding in all the little detail bits. When I got to the area between the gun emplacements, I would work one section at a time filling in the space between the turrets, rotating 90 degrees and repeating.

While there are some repeated elements across the ship and mostly on the bow or head of the vessel, almost all of the the little decorations on the surface are unique. So each one had to be measured with my calipers and reconstructed. In the end, that just wasn’t as fast (and there were a lot of details) as I had expected. When I hit the 12 hour mark, my original upper estimate, I was only up to the area between the upper guns and the model looked something like this. (I didn’t save an exact picture at the time.)

The details on the upper fuselage (right side in image) are only on the little bit you can see. Everything around the back side is still blank and the details between the gun turrets in the middle and bottom on this image are missing as well.

The one nice thing about filling in the details on the bow of the ship was that, unlike the light cruiser, which had irregular hexagons for the shape of the head, the battleship has a regular hexagon shape. That meant that the angles you had to tilt all the pieces were exactly the same on all the faces. That made lining things up much easier. Plus there are a number of repeated elements on the bow.

With that done, I added the cannon on the top and the model was finished. Here it is again in the same orientation as the previous two images.

Printing

As I learned from the light cruiser, these ships really need to be printed standing up. So that’s what I did. My biggest worry were the middle gun turrets. With the barrels facing down, each barrel was going to need it’s own support that would then need to be trimmed off. It turns out that those supports had to be added by hand as my printing software didn’t add them automatically.

I had black resin in the printer at the time so that’s what I used to print this model. Unfortunately, the back resin doesn’t photograph as well as the green or grey. The image at the right shows the finished battleship model next to the Sathar Heavy Cruiser. Both still have their printing supports on. This was taken just after the battleship finished printing but I hadn’t cured it yet. The total print time was nearly 12 hours.

I also discovered after the fact that the vertical structures on back of the upper turrets that stick straight out need supports as well, which I didn’t add. They printed at an angle on the actual print. It looks fine, but isn’t what I had planned on.

I’m still amazed at the detail this printer can achieve. All of the details on the model show up in the print. Here the final printed miniature with all the supports removed.

And here it is next to the original metal miniature (minus the engines).

You can probably spot a few differences and there are a few more visible if you’re holding them, but I’m really pleased with the way this turned out.

Getting the Model Files

I’ve already added the UPF Battleship to my Miniatures Price Table page here on the site if you’d like me to print you one or more of them.

Additionally, as I’ve been posting these models, people have asked me about getting the model files. To that end, over the last few week I’ve been publishing all the STL files for printing the models on DriveThruRPG. You can find them in the 3D Models section of my New Frontier Games storefront.

All of the models that are recreations of the original TSR miniatures are free, pay-what-you-want products. Any of the the models that are my original creations are listed with a small cost. I’ve posted all of the models I’ve created to date on the site with the exception of the UPF and sathar fighter models, and two models I’ve made based on deck plans created by Bill Logan. Those will be going up shortly, I just haven’t had a chance to get them posted. All future models will be posted there as well.

If you are one of my Patreon supporters at the Surveyor ($2/month) level or higher, I send you all the model files as I create them. Or you can support the creation of new models by becoming a patron or making a donation through the pay-what-you-want option on the models listed on DriveThru. And if you are a Patreon supporter at the Crafter Level ($30/month), I will send you a printed version of the miniature. Anyone who joins at that level this month will get the battleship mini.

What’s Next?

Now that the UPF Battleship is done, I’ve finished recreating all the UPF and sathar ships from the original boxed sets. I still need to do the pirate frigate, the freighter from the Federation Ships box, and the privateers to get all the original minis recreated.

I’ll tackle those, but first I want to fill in the order of battle for the two main sides in the Second Sathar War game so that people could potentially play out that game with a full compliment of miniatures. As such I still need to do the UPF Heavy Cruiser, the UPF Minelayer (if you don’t use the cutter miniature), the assault carriers for both sides. Of those the easiest will be the UPF Heavy Cruiser as it will draw heavily from the design of the light cruiser and battleship. I’ve already started working on that model. It might even be finished before the end of the month. It’s much easier to make my own designs than trying to recreate existing ones. Plus I have a lot of little details structures already designed from the other ships that I can reuse.

After the heavy cruiser, I’ll tackle the assault carriers and then the minelayer before going back to finish the recreations.

And that’s it for now. Let me know if you have any suggestions, questions, or comments in the comment section below. I hope you enjoy the miniatures as much as I enjoy making them.

This post is a couple of days late as I was traveling and completely forgot to get a post queued up for Tuesday.  And this is not what I had planned to post at all.  I had not planned to do another model post this month.  I was planning on putting together a table of all the star systems on the Extended Frontier Map to provide the spectral types of all the stars and notes about they systems. However, on my flight I had some time to kill and wasn’t completely decided on what I wanted to include in the table so I decided to do a bit of modeling.  I’ll probably finish up that table for next week.

The UPF Destroyer

Since I didn’t have my battleship mini or calipers with me, I couldn’t continue working on the battleship model. Instead, I thought I’d take a look at the UPF destroyer and start working on that.  Since there is no existing model for this ship, this would be a scratch build.  There are two references for this ship.  One in the Knight Hawks Campaign book on page 7 in the image showing the silhouettes of the various ships and the small game counters.

The silhouette images for both the frigate and destroyer are shown in the image to the right.  As you can see, the ships are fairly similar.  The destroyer is shown with a shorter engine block area, a longer neck, and an obvious gun on the bow.  The counters for the two ships are shown below.

These images also show a slightly smaller engine area and noticeable gun on the bow, but here the neck area is about the same and the main fuselage is longer.  Also, the width of the fuselage is a bit larger on the destroyer.  Since there is some detail on the body of the ships in the counters, you can notice that the main body of the destroyer is very similar to the body of the frigate, mainly that it has that same cross structure.

Since it’s always been in the back of my mind to make a set of models that match the silhouettes in the book in the future, I chose to take the counter as my guide for this project.  Especially since that meant that I could use a lot of the work done for  the frigate on the destroyer.

Building the Model

The frigate is a HS 5 ship while the destroyer is a HS 6 ship so we expect in the end the destroyer will be a little larger.  I started by pulling up the model for the frigate.  Since I’m using the original mini model as the basis, this model, like my recreation models, are not designed at an exact model scale but at their actual physical size.

Main Fuselage

I’m doing this design work in OpenSCAD which looks and acts very much like a programming language.  I give it positions, sizes, and rotations of various primitive shapes and it places them on the model.  I then “compile” it to get a render.  For example, this is the code that draws the main body of the frigate with its crossed block structure:

cylinder(r=3,h=15);

for(i=[0,90]){ rotate([0,0,i]){

  translate([0,0,2]) cube([11,2.9,4],center=true);

  translate([0,0,7.75]) cube([11,2.9,6.5],center=true);

  translate([0,0,4]) cube([10.5,2.5,1],center=true);

  translate([0,0,11]) scale([1,1,1.4]) rotate([0,45,0]) cube([7.77,2.9,7.77],center=true);

  translate([5.5,0,8]) sphere(r=1);

  translate([-5.5,0,8]) sphere(r=1);

}

Since I wanted that same block structure for the destroyer, just bigger, I just needed to increase the length and width of the blocks and shift the positions of some of them to make the body longer.  Basically, I just change a few numbers and re-render.  If I wanted to just make it bigger everywhere, I could wrap all of that in a scale() command and not change anything.  However, I wanted to keep the core diameter (that first cylinder) the same size so I modified each of the items.  Overall, I increased the length of this part of the ship by 2.6 mm and its width by 3 mm.

I kept the neck length nearly the same but stretched out the spherical section of the upper body by 0.3 mm (10%).

I also lengthened slightly the area behind the crossed block structure.  In the counter image, this is larger on the destroyer than the frigate and has a grilled structure, so I added in a hull section to match that image.  This also helped to lengthen the entire body of the ship.

The Bow

For the “head” or bow of the ship, I decided to just reuse wholesale the head of the frigate model.  I figure that since the ships are nearly the same size, the designers would just reuse an existing design to save on design and fabrication costs.  However, I did make one change.  On the frigate, the main gun extends out from the center of the head which means that the long lasing cavity of the laser cannon runs through the center of the bow taking up space inside the ship. 

In both destroyer images from the game, this laser cannon is very obviously mounted outside the ship and visible on the exterior.  So I added an externally mounted cannon on the model. This gives a bit more room inside the ship’s bow and helps to match the profile on the counter better.

Engines

According to the rules, both the frigate and the destroyer are supposed to have three Class B engines.  The original frigate mini just had a single engine mounted directly aft of the ship.  Since I’m building this model from scratch, I decided to give it the three engines it is supposed to have.

I started by shortening up the cylinder on the model that was the actual engine on the frigate model.  I effectively just chopped off the nozzle portion and added a small taper to the end.  On the destroyer, this is now part of the interior hull space instead of the engine itself.

Next, I created an engine model.  It’s roughly the same size as the engine from the frigate but I gave it my own set of surface details.  I added an engine strut and then put three of them on the model distributed symmetrically around the tail section of the ship.

Finishing Touches

Finally, I went back and added a bit of surface detail to the ship.  Some of the bits were also used on the frigate and some I added in just for the destroyer.  That gave me the finished model. 

The image on the left shows the destroyer model alongside the frigate model for a size and feature comparison.  The image on the right is the other side of the destroyer model so you can see the externally mounted laser cannon a little bit better. You can click on either image for a larger version.

All told, the destroyer is about 58mm long while the frigate is about 52mm.  I realized after the fact that since the silhouettes on the counters are constrained in size, the actual physical size of the destroyer might be a bit bigger than I made it but it’s distinctive enough that I’m not going to worry about it.  Also, I feel better about the engine area being bigger, not smaller, than on the frigate.  When I do my complete custom builds, they’ll all be to the same scale.

Printing

I got home from my trip yesterday and fired up my printer to try printing the model.  It worked out just fine with no issues.  The image below shows the printed destroyer alongside a printed frigate.

I decided to print the destroyer with the white resin which unfortunately doesn’t photograph well, so it’s kind of hard to see the details on it.  However, they are all there. 

Ship Stands

In discussions about the models on the Star Frontiers Facebook group, Jess Carver asked me about stands for the ships.  I hadn’t really thought about that yet but figured I’ve give it a go and see what I came up with.  I actually did this build a couple weeks ago before my trip.

Looking at the stands that came with the original minis, they were just X shaped and designed to fit in a 1” square.  And they came with a small, 2” long, 1/32” diameter steel rod to mount the mini on. 

If you’re playing on a 1” hex grid, that original model stand is going to be a bit big and extend out of the hex the ship is in.  This could be a problem if you have a bunch of ships close together.  If you’re playing off a grid, that’s not so much of a problem but you then need a protractor to measure turns and such.  I wanted to make a stand that solved both of those problems if possible.

I started by making the stand circular instead of square and 1” in diameter.  I asked around a bit about what size hexes people were using as I have actually never played with minis, just the original counters from the game.  The answers I got back were 1” and 1.5” so I went with the 1” option.  It’s easy enough to scale the model up to 1.5 inches if someone wants that sized base and a 1” base fits in a 1.5” hex but not the other way around.

The outer edge of the stand is slanted back toward the center and I put tick marks all around it at 15-degree intervals.  It took a couple of tries to get the sizing right on these so that they showed up well on the print.  The first tries were a little to small.  You could see them, but you had to get close and that defeated the purpose.  I made the 60-degree tick marks larger to help find them better and added a unique tick mark at one position to represent the “front” of the ship or the direction of travel.  Here’s an image of the model.

You’ll notice that it is just the base.  I made the decision to use a steel rod as the vertical piece instead of printing a vertical bar.  Printing it would require it to be a lot thicker and I didn’t want that.  Another thing that I discovered in printing the bases is that the hole in the middle that the rod is going to go into just doesn’t print well.  It keeps filling up with resin that would harden while printing.  I made the hole twice as large as the rod and it still didn’t work.  In the end I had to just drill out the hole for the rod.  Since I had to drill the models anyway, this wasn’t a big deal and probably better as the hole would be exactly the right size.  I did have to go buy a 1/32” drill bit since the smallest one I had at the time was 1/16”.

I was a little concerned about stability, at least when holding up the larger minis.  One inch is not that big when you compare it to a four- to six-inch miniature. So I gave it a stress test.  I grabbed one of my sathar heavy cruiser model, the largest one I’ve created at 5.5 inches, and mounted it on the stand.  I used one of the steel rods from my miniature boxed sets as I didn’t have any others.

It was surprisingly stable.  I gave it a tap and hit it harder than I intended.  The mini tilted by 10-15 degrees and then settled right back down on the base.  I deliberately tilted it in some different directions and it remained upright.  Obviously, you can tip it far enough that it falls over, but it seems to survive accidental bumping.  The plastic minis are much lighter than the metal ones so I’m sure that helps.  And if you want, you can always use two stands just like you had to do with the metal minis.

The only other issue was to find a source of steel rods.  I have the ones that came with my sathar and Federation ships boxed sets, but I am going to need more.  So I started looking around on-line.  I found some on Amazon that were 1.1mm in diameter (the ones from the boxed sets are 0.8mm) and 10cm long.  I wasn’t worried about length as I can cut them down to the 50mm size needed with my Dremel.  They were reasonably priced (20 for $8) but were shipping from Asia and would take a couple of weeks to arrive.  I kept looking.

I figured a hobby/craft store might have something I could use, especially if they sell model train supplies.  Sure enough, looking at Hobby Lobby’s on-line store they sold six 12” brass rods at 1/32” diameter for $4.  That was an even better price even including local sales tax. And I could just drive down and get them (about a 20-minute drive as the Hobby Lobby is a couple towns away up the freeway).  It took me a couple days to get over there but when I did, I found that not only did they have the brass rods I was expecting, they sold a four-pack of 12” steel rods for just $2.  An even better price.  So I bought a pack, went home, chopped up one with my Dremel, printed up a bunch of stands, and mounted up examples of some of my models.

I’m starting to get the itch to print out enough of these and run a big battle on my kitchen table.

Final Thoughts

The build of the destroyer went really fast, at least partially because I was reusing the basic design of the frigate.  I completed it in just about four hours.  For comparison, the light cruiser model took something between 8-12 hours (I wasn’t really tracking it at the time) and I’ve spent 6 hours on the battleship and probably have another 6-10 to go.  Similarly, the stand build was really quick, maybe a half hour as it was a really simple construction and had minimal details.

The recreation models take a long time as I’m constantly measuring, placing, remeasuring, and tweaking the features of the model to try to match the original as closely as possible.  With a custom build, I don’t have that constraint and can just build the model as I wish so it can go faster.

This was a fun build and fills in a gap in the order of battle for the UPF.  Once I finish the battleship, the only remaining models will be the UPF heavy cruiser and assault carriers for both the UPF and sathar.  Since the miniature labeled as the sathar cutter on the blister packs matches the silhouette of the UPF minelayer on the counter, and I’ve already done that model, that ship can be used as the UPF minelayer if desired.  However, that ship definitely looks more like a sathar vessel so I’ll design a new minelayer for the UPF as well.

I’ve added the destroyer model and the stands to my price list on the Order Miniatures page.  Anyone that joins my Patreon as a supporter at the Crafter level will get all the models I’ve done this month (space station, light cruiser, destroyer, and a set of stands) mailed out to them in November.

Let me know your thoughts in the comment section below.