{"id":4759,"date":"2016-09-14T12:04:45","date_gmt":"2016-09-14T16:04:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rocketshipgames.com\/blogs\/tjkopena\/?p=4759"},"modified":"2022-07-01T17:59:08","modified_gmt":"2022-07-01T21:59:08","slug":"molokh-gambit-production-begins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocketshipgames.com\/blogs\/tjkopena\/2016\/09\/molokh-gambit-production-begins\/","title":{"rendered":"Molokh Gambit: Production Begins!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Very very late last\u00a0night I started physical production for our Molokh Gambit<\/a> 1-day X-Wing narrative campaign. Behold, a fleet of\u00a0CSS-1 Corellian Star Shuttles appears!<\/p>\n

\"CSS-1s<\/a>

CSS-1s and X-Wing escort.<\/p><\/div>\n

By this evening\u00a0I’ll have four of these sweet babies to hand over to Matt<\/a> for painting. In the\u00a0process I learned that the Senator’s Shuttle token from the X-Wing Miniatures<\/em> core set is probably the most out-of-scale “model” in the game.\u00a0I barely remember it from the prequels\u00a0at all, but Wookieepedia tells me that the\u00a0CSS-1 Corellian Star Shuttle<\/a> is actually 80 meters long and can carry 200 passengers. So more of a cruiser than a shuttle.\u00a0To be in scale with the other 1\/270 standard\u00a0ship models, the shuttle\u00a0would have to be almost three times\u00a0the size seen above. Even against the 1\/400 Epic ships it’d have to be double this size. However, I think this version\u00a0looks great\u00a0and the size gives it\u00a0better\u00a0and simpler playability for 100pt missions as we’ll be using it.<\/p>\n

Modeling<\/h2>\n

I did not create this model, I found a design<\/a>\u00a0Losik published\u00a0on Thingiverse. Err404 also has a great version that embeds the model directly into the shuttle token<\/a>. I thought hard about using that, but we’re planning\u00a0to build a bunch of models for the campaign so I went with the flying version so it would fit in better.\u00a0In the end all I did to\u00a0the model was recut the\u00a0base to have a blank top, created\u00a0a thicker flight pole with matching slots on base and ship, and added\u00a0a tab & slot to the two ship halves to guide better\u00a0gluing.<\/p>\n

\"Exploded<\/a>

Exploded view.<\/p><\/div>\n

I also realized that despite instructions, the front half could be printed laying down rather than on its end. Although this model is thick enough it would almost certainly print\u00a0fine, and you can\u00a0put more on the build plate by going vertical, I try to avoid tall structures. Laying it down\u00a0also let me easily add the gluing tab.<\/p>\n

I’ve posted\u00a0these re-cut models to Thingiverse for free download<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Print<\/a>

Print layout.<\/p><\/div>\n

Printing<\/h2>\n

A somewhat interesting realization was that\u00a0the\u00a0front half isn’t\u00a0actually perfectly flat though. I could see this looking at the shading on the model in various viewers as it moved around, but you can see it very clearly by examining the somewhat\u00a0degenerate first layer toolpath. The nose of the shuttle lifts up a bit, creating a weird shape for the initial layer. However, it’s literally just the first layer. Given that, I’d assume this is unintentional. If I had to guess I’d say it’s possible (I have no idea) that the model\u00a0was originally ripped from a game and this is some artifact from the video-oriented modeling and mesh construction.\u00a0The\u00a0print is unaffected though and it would have been\u00a0an effort for me to correct\u00a0using my\u00a0software at hand, so I did not bother to fix it.<\/p>\n

\"Somewhat<\/a>

Somewhat degenerate first layer; the bottom shape should be the hull front half.<\/p><\/div>\n

A more\u00a0interesting general note about printing is that originally I had a taller flight pole. Most of it printed fine. However, toward\u00a0the end when it was the last component\u00a0being printed on the layer, the printer hot end cycling around continuously made\u00a0the top of the piece too hot, keeping\u00a0the deposited plastic\u00a0melted a bit and letting the motion swirl and gnarl it. You could fix this with a sacrificial tower<\/a> pulling the hot end away long enough for the piece to cool<\/a>. I did the same thing here though by just cutting the flight pole down to the same height as the engine stack. As long as you print them together, the printer will be pulled away from the flight pole long enough, as it goes to print the engines, that the pole will cool and retain its shape.<\/p>\n

\"Printing<\/a>

Printing in progress.<\/p><\/div>\n

The Gambit!<\/h2>\n

That’s a good start to physical production for the event, with three months still to go. Colin and I had a long discussion on our way to and from NOVA earlier this month about basic squad construction rules and logistics, the outcomes of which are on the\u00a0event webpage<\/a>. Matt, Colin, and I have also started passing around a draft\u00a0dungeon master’s guidebook with detailed\u00a0proposals for\u00a0the campaign mechanics that I’m excited about.<\/p>\n

More to come; hope you can join us!<\/p>\n

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Very very late last\u00a0night I started physical production for our Molokh Gambit 1-day X-Wing narrative campaign. Behold, a fleet of\u00a0CSS-1 Corellian Star Shuttles appears! By this evening\u00a0I’ll have four of these sweet babies to hand over to Matt for painting. In the\u00a0process I learned that the Senator’s Shuttle token from the X-Wing Miniatures core set … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4760,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[408],"tags":[261,274,328,29,45,307],"class_list":["post-4759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-workshop","tag-3d-printing","tag-miniatures","tag-molokh-gambit","tag-page","tag-redcaps","tag-x-wing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocketshipgames.com\/blogs\/tjkopena\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4759","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocketshipgames.com\/blogs\/tjkopena\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocketshipgames.com\/blogs\/tjkopena\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocketshipgames.com\/blogs\/tjkopena\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocketshipgames.com\/blogs\/tjkopena\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4759"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocketshipgames.com\/blogs\/tjkopena\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4759\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4776,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocketshipgames.com\/blogs\/tjkopena\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4759\/revisions\/4776"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocketshipgames.com\/blogs\/tjkopena\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocketshipgames.com\/blogs\/tjkopena\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocketshipgames.com\/blogs\/tjkopena\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocketshipgames.com\/blogs\/tjkopena\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}