The Modular Landing Bay!
Oh man its been a bit!
Well, if you have seen the changes on the front page you will know what I have been up to. I have recently spent the last month doing primarily do two things.
#1 Catching up on the back log we built up in orders. With the help of two of my "assistant printers" who are now printing for us 24/7, I have new orders going out in about a week. To think of it, I have four printers printing great Star Wars Legion inspired terrain out of my garage around the clock. The assistants each have two printers, making for a grand total of eight 3d printers, feeding the desperate, hungry folks out there looking for terrain.
Wow, what an adventure this bad boy has been. I'm going to show you the very first concept, and you have to swear you will not make fun of us.
Isn't that crazy? The first concept did live up to a few of the core requirements we came up with when laying out how the bay would work. Modularity was critical, it had to be with many printing and shipping limitations. It would be nigh impossible for us to print one large piece and also limit re-playability. Scale had to be just right, not only for the infantry units but also for potential ships and cargo that would be scattered around the inside.
We settled on really two core piece types, straightaways and corners. Straightaways or wall variants are 160mm in length. A good balance of size / print time / and fitting on most normal printers. The corner pieces are all 175mm x 175mm, once again allowing for a good size of piece and being able to fit on most printers.
Its critical in building modular systems that from the first concepts you ensure consistency on measurements. The last thing you would want is to try to complete your shape with nine pieces and you are way off the mark! You will notice some of the corner pieces to be either curved or close to ninety degree angles. I think this will provide nice differentiation in the pieces and provide some authenticity to the bay as not something that is very clean, sleek, and found on Coruscant. Quite the opposite.
The idea is that the bay could potentially be on many different planets, more than likely outposts or on the outer edges of large cities. It is definitely not modern, sleek, or have many angles. As mentioned on the product page, my motivation for this set came from Tatooine and Ord Mantell.
I would say in total, the core set and one or two of the expansion pieces was about 40+ hours of work modeling. There are plans for nine total pieces, but I'm sure if someone shoots me a crazy idea that number will quickly go up. Can't wait for the game to come out, I know we are inching closer and the Landing Bay will be one of my top choices for terrain.
Now where did I put the plans for that Imperial Base I was starting....