Spaceship in a Shoe Box - Part 2

Spaceship in a Shoe Box - Part 2

 

 

 

In part one we came up with the plan, cut out walls, made doors and tested out the set up. I did end up cutting out about 6 more doors to make the walls section complete. In part two we will be adding a few elements that will create an engine/life support room and a command and control room. Just like part one I wanted all of the pieces to be able to be stored inside the shoe box therefore I made it all modular again. 

 

Engine room

       Every spaceship has one. Often overlooked, it is the beating heart of the floating hulk traveling through the hostel void that is space. The people that work on them are vital and serve as the blood that keeps the ship alive. Without these fantastic creations of human power and resourcfulness traveling the dark depths of space would be impossible. There are many movies and TV shows that portray just how important the life systems are on a spaceship. Malcolm Reynolds got shot to get a part he needed I order to keep his beloved Serenity flying. Captain James Kirk risked his life and took some serious radiation to keep the Starship Enterprise traveling the final frontier. Hell there are even video games out now that have this very concept in mind. Throw in an eight foot tall black alien turn out some lights and try to fix a spaceship. That's enough to scare the pants off anyone! One of the very reasons I wanted to include an engine room into my designs is to give me the opertunity to portray this same sense of urgency and seriousness into some of my games. I may have to create special rules to play with it but imagine if while you are playing anytime someone rolls a 20 to hit with their BS skill they miss and hit some part of the ship that requires fixing or maybe all or the characters orders can be irregular until the life support becomes fixed to represent emmissions coming off of the reactor, scrambling comms. What if destroying the life support and prepulsion system becomes the objective of the games where one faction is trying to prevent their ship from becoming crippled. There are so many possibities that you can come up with endless scenarios to run through. 

 

 I find inspiration for terrain all over the place. When I see something cool I look at it and think what can I make out of that! Well that happened to me a bit ago while trying to keep up my virtamin intake. The caps on this orange juice container have been really great to work with. They look really futuristic and make great additions to terrain pieces. Plus I drink tons of the stuff so I have loads of them that I have been saving.  

    I took a few of the caps, turned them upside down and used them as the supports to some raised walkways. The ended up being the perfect height to provide cover and still allow the minis to fire over them. 

       

Next I used some really cool cylinders aka cardboard tubes that my wife brought home for me. I spiced them up with some of the cutoffs from the supports for the wall sections. This will provide nooks for defenders to bed into.   Below is an example of how these pieces can be set up. Once painted these pieces will look really cool I could possible add wires or other small details to help further push the engine room feel.  

 

 

Command and Control

         If the engine and life support rooms are the heart of the ship then the control center is the brains. With commanders, such as theses fine gentlemen to the left, these hunks of steel can turn into flying fortresses. The nerve center of theses vessels are crucial to keeping operations under control. With monitoring systems, weapon defenses, and communications the one who controls the command deck controls the ship. I wanted to make and objective that both teams would want to take over and in effect not destroy the ship in the process. This would also serve at a location for info war to take place. With severs full of vital information and data links that span the fleet the control center is any hacker's wet dream! I imagine I will be making objectives based on both stealing or uploading information and simply control of the C&C room. The challenge was trying to give off the feel of a high tech room without taking up too much room. My solution was to create large computer displays that could be broken down. 

        Here you can see that I found some opaque material for the screens (it's actually just a dollar store cutting board that I have been cutting up to use as Windows for other projects). I will have to go back and draw "displays" onto them. 

 Here is an example of how it can be set up. Nothing super fancy just the bare bones to get the point across. Again I may add more technical pieces to add to the effect but this will certainly do for now. I really like how these rooms came out! This will add another element to the spaceship table and give us the option to explore different objectives. I still have not filled up the box; although we are coming mighty close. I could make some more room if I take out all of the door cut outs so I will keep you updated if I make and additions to the box.

Next up we will be preparing the terrain for painting and painting these bad boys up! I still have not decided on a color yet. I am currently leaning towards Nomad red but I am also considering yellow. Let me know what you think in the comments! Also if you have any ideas or experience with this type of work please share I would love to try some new things out!

 

You are only limited by your imagination! -Chad-