Sloth's Vagyr Battlecruiser

Sloth

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Joined
Apr 9, 2012
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I'm a newb here, but I thought I'd jump in on this lil contest thang yall got goin on here. I figured it might be a good way for me to actually get this thing built as I've been putting it off for quite a while now.

So the plan is, to use a paper model pattern as a guide and scratch built a Vagyr Battlecruiser from scratch out of styrene, brass bits, misc extra kit parts, human hair, bat droppings j/k. You get the idea.

For those not familiar, the Vagyr Battlecruiser is a ship design from a popular game from back when dinosaurs roamed the earth called Homeworld 2. I don't play many games and never really did. If I recall correctly, I saw this cool looking box in the $1 bin at a local super turbo big box store and figured what the hey. I'd never seen anything like this game before and I was hooked. It is a massive space strategy game and a lot of people figured out how to hack it up and built all kinds of cool add ons for it. You could also go in and tweak settings for ships etc. One of the coolest things about it was the AI was built to auto level with you, so you couldn't really cheat it. For example, if you hacked the config file to start your fleet with 15 battlecruisers, the AI would give your opponents the same. Made it challenging.

Enough history. The simple explanation of the build is below.

First, the obligatory start proof image. I guess I'm getting a bit of a late start on this.

build_start_a_04-12-2012.jpg


Next, better than words, a screen shot of what the ship looks like. This is pretty much the paint/decal scheme I'm going with too.

Vaygr-Battlecruiser.jpg


I have no idea what scale this is. I don't think anyone ever knew the size of the ships in relation to humans or feet and inches etc.. I just like the design (designed by Rob Cunningham) and always wanted to build a nice model of it. From the print of the paper model plans, it is quite large. I'm guess it should be around 16 or 18 inches long!

So I plan on doing a build log and as soon as I start chopping styrene, I'll post some pics to this thread. I'm looking forward to this. I think this is my first model comp and first real build log.

Hope I haven't bored everyone to death...
 
LOL...not boring anyone here I think!!! Looking forward to the scratch-fest!!! Carry on Sir!! ;D
 
Oooh, yeaah! Homeworld! Love this series of games greately!
And will certainly follow this build log with lots of interest.
Cool choice for the build btw - thats a very interesting looking ship indeed.
 
You know something, I like the idea of a scratchbuild inspired from a game. It's a whole plethora of designs not commonly seen in Sci Fi kits. Nice choice Sloth.
You should get commendation for original thinking. I'll be watching this with enthusiasm.
 
Thanks for the comments and encouragement! So pretty much right after I posted, one of my NAS drives went haywire and I spent 3 days trying to recover the data! I finally got it today by pulling the hard drive, connecting it to a linux pc and hacking it to get to the data.

So I haven't done much, but I did spend a little time on the lathe today turning the master for the engine nacelles. It obviously isn't done, but I just felt I had to show some kind of progress. I'm still not convinced I'll use this. I might model them and have them rapid prototyped instead. Much faster and more uniform results.

engines.jpg
 
Nice project!

I love that game, it is the main reason for me to buy an old computer, to run it again! ;D

I will follow this thread with attention!
 
Dark Kyp said:
Nice project!

I love that game, it is the main reason for me to buy an old computer, to run it again! ;D

I will follow this thread with attention!

I recently got it running on a new machine. I had to mess with the graphics card settings a bit but... Most of the old mods are gone (websites no longer work) but I still have all the old files from when I played it. It helps for this because I can open the ship models in 3d studio max to look at the geometry for the model.
 
Not familiar with this ship, looks like a very interesting design, plus i love a good 'scratcher' :D

Bookmarked for sure ;D

will follow with interest

Good luck buddy


Gag
 
Went nuts last night with the good ol #11. What a PITA this is. Don't know what I was thinking. The tough part is, the paper model design is A) designed for "PAPER" not .020 styrene and B) as I've just figured out, poorly put together. I remember from playing this game that people discovered that the 3d models didn't export properly and the meshes were a mess. I'm guessing that's what caused the problems when the paper model patterns were taken from the 3d model. Bottom line is there are a ton of fitting problems between the pieces. Right now my plan is to use the paper model pattern to build the shell as close as possible. Then fill in the areas that don't fit right with detail. You can see in the pics that the outer plates will cover up a lot of the bad joints. Basically I'll have at least 3 layers of styrene on most of it and maybe 4 layers in some areas.

I got the front shell/module started. I'm wiring it up with incandescent bulbs because that's what I have on hand and from the look of the model, it's got a warmer glow in the tiny windows. I might wire in some SMLED's in the upper control tower, lower control tower and bridge. The dark redish/brown is a high build automotive primer I tried to fill in some problem areas and smooth out some of the lines. I'm struggling with getting enough inner support to deal with the sanding. I started gluing in basswood reinforcing bars across the inner hull which seems to be helping.

I decided to 3d model the engine area and have it printed rather than build a master, mold and pull resin copies. I think it would cost more to use all that latex and resin than it would to just have it printed. Hope that's not considered cheating. I plan to model the engine area today and get it off to the printer.

Anyway, this is turning out to be much more of a challenge than I thought it would be.

vgr1.jpg


vgr2.jpg


vgr3.jpg
 
Ok. Engines designed and sent off for rapid prototyping. Hope they turn out. Here's a screen shot of the design.

engines_3d.jpg
 

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