Thursday, September 16, 2021

A Tall Ship, and a Star to Steer Her By

  For gamers of a certain age, the Imperial Type-S Scout/Courier is iconic.  It was one of the go-to player ships in Traveller, the first major science fiction role-playing game.  I spent many a weekend roaming around the Spinward Marches in a Type-S in the 70s and 80s, and it's been a part of every single edition of the game since then.  

  That's one of the reasons I was intrigued by 2nd Dynasty's Kickstarter to produce a tabletop scale miniature of the ship.  They've made a specialty of producing digital spacecraft models designed for 3D printing and sized for the gaming table.  How cool is that?

  Now Seth Skorkowski has provided an in-depth review of the model.   He's one of my favorite YouTubers, thanks in large part to his focus on scenarios for the Call of Cthulhu RPG.  His review embraces the inherent awesomeness of the Type-S miniature, but it's tempered with some caveats.  That includes the sheer amount of effort, including 450 hours (!) of 3D printing time, needed to create the model.  In response, 2nd Dynasty posted a video addressing those concerns.  Both videos are worth a watch.

  I love the possibilities of a project like this, but I'm not sure if the technology is quite there yet.  In the video you can see the filament printed parts have the distinctive striations produced as the hot plastic is deposited on the master, something that bugs me to no end.  Those artifacts make me think conventional resin casting would be a better approach for at least some of the parts in a model like this. 

 

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