| By Shawn Hantke (Shantke) on Saturday, May 05, 2012 - 09:43 pm: Edit |
So reading some of the gaming forum comments on the web about Traveller deck plans. Some people like the bigger scale some hate it. What do gamers her perfer, 15mm squares (1/2"), 25mm squares (1"), 37mm (1.5") or 1" hexes? I have seen 1.5" hexes in wargames does anyone know of deckplans that use 1.5" hexes?
| By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Saturday, May 05, 2012 - 11:23 pm: Edit |
You have to be very careful (and precise) in just what is 15mm (or any other) scale.
The size of the square?
The height of the mini?
The equivalent of one meter?
My squares are about 1.0 inch by 0.8 inch or 25x20mm. They present an area 3x3.6 meters. They're designed for a 28mm miniature (this is measured to the eyes and is the "heroic" scale which is ... well, funky).
So is my scale 7mm (the equivalent of a meter), or 28mm (the size of a mini), or 20mm (the short side of one square)?
Anybody feel like sending a probe to Mars?
| By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Saturday, May 05, 2012 - 11:41 pm: Edit |
Shawn: You'd want to confirm with Jean, but I think hey're using 1.5 inch squares and 25mm or 28mm figures. They may be putting four or five people in one square, which is ok for standing in an elevator. No so great for sword swinging.
| By Shawn Hantke (Shantke) on Sunday, May 06, 2012 - 12:04 am: Edit |
My opinions, Classic Traveller and Star Trek FASA deckplans used 1/2 squares, one person per square, minis were 15mm high (or 25mm high with 15mm base FASA) in the game scale a square was 1.5 meters by 1.5 meters. That is my preferred gaming scale since ships fit on a table and sci-fi guns can shoot across the whole table. For fantasy gaming my preference is one inch or 25mm squares. One person per square 25mm-28mm figures. 1.5 meters by 1.5 meters per square. It is great because the figures are nicer at that size and look better than the smaller figures. Fantasy weapons are shorter ranged so they usually can't fire across the whole table. Combat is up close and personal. A ship at this size can fit on the table if it is not a large ship.
| By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Sunday, May 06, 2012 - 12:15 am: Edit |
Well, shawn, my plans (at current, as big as will fit on 11x17) are 7mm per meter.
1.5 meters would be 10.5mm. I actually do have a set that have such 1.5m (10.5mm) squares. Maybe you can just accept a little crowding?
I would have to make the 20% bigger to get them to your 12.7mm size. Email me tomorrow and i'll do a quick test and tell you what size board that would take.
That would take them to a size impractical for any production game box.
Leanna wants one of the stretch goals to be 12x18. There are 9x12x2 production boxes we can get.
| By Jean Sexton (Jsexton) on Sunday, May 06, 2012 - 09:36 am: Edit |
I've asked for feedback on the Mongoose forums.
| By Loren Knight (Loren) on Sunday, May 06, 2012 - 10:24 am: Edit |
If the deck plans are "Wow" then a little crowding is, to me, a non-issue. After time, fitting on the table will matter (but seriously, not at first if the plans look great.)
| By Shawn Hantke (Shantke) on Sunday, May 06, 2012 - 12:41 pm: Edit |
Crowding is okay for me as well, if you can still get a 1/2 inch counter in the square. My second goal would be to be able to fit a 15mm mini in the square and most of them don't have a 15mm square base. The dimensions can be fudged some on the map to make it easier for the ship plans to conform to game scale. In reality not all doors are 1.5 meters across, and a small room is rarely 1.5 meters of wall, then a 1.5 meter door and another 1.5 meter wall making a wall exactly 4.5 meters square.
Someone on the SJG boards said, "Both sides are printed at one meter to the inch. Editions of Traveller other than the hex-based GURPS mostly use a 1.5 meter square grid (a couple editions use a 2 meter square grid). The squares end up being so big because of the meter to the inch scale GURPS uses."
| By Shawn Hantke (Shantke) on Sunday, May 06, 2012 - 01:09 pm: Edit |
Looks like from a preview pdf of Mongoose Traveller "Supplement #2- Traders and Gunboats" they are using the 1.5 meter to a square scale. The squares printed in the book look to be 1/4 inch so the deck plans are more for reference than gaming on but easily scaled up.
| By Dal Downing - Rambler (3deez) on Sunday, May 06, 2012 - 01:42 pm: Edit |
I have been running the Wandering Child from PD1 Adventures when I go to cons. I have taken the original ship and blown it up so I have 2 Decks side by side that are about 5 feet long on a sheet and i carry 4 sheets rolled up with me in a tube. I am thinking what am going to do for future games is revamp my maps to fit on 22x34 sheets with just the Command Bubble and Engineering Bubble in true 1 inch hexes and just use the exsisting multi deck map to cover the cargo areas.
I am giving serious thought to doing Deckplans for a. ComPlat/SAMS in 1" Hexes to see how big it would be.
| By Jean Sexton (Jsexton) on Sunday, May 06, 2012 - 01:45 pm: Edit |
The 1.5 meter square is a given. The big question I am looking for is how big a square do they want to have to play on.
| By Gary Plana (Garyplana) on Sunday, May 06, 2012 - 04:07 pm: Edit |
Dal-D, be advised that a set of deckplans for a SAMS/COMPLAT pod have already been created.
SVC did them some 12-15 years ago ... In some strange computer drawing format that is not compatible with the way they're done currently, assuming the computer files themselves could be found -- I seem to recall those files are MIA, on an antique Mac at ADB somewhere.
I had a paper copy of these deckplans that I photocopied and sent to Nick Blank years ago. Haven't looked for my copies in years.
These paper deckplans were not in any real scale, and were simply formatted to print on legal size paper, and had no overlay of squares or hexes.
Which means that before they could be published, somebody would have to sit down and re-create them, which would take a lot of man-hours, plus SVC time, so is probably not going to get done anytime soon.
| By Reid Hupach (Gwbison) on Sunday, May 06, 2012 - 04:36 pm: Edit |
jean depends on what size/scale mini/counter they are using to play with.
15mm or smaller a 1/2 inch square would work 20 or 25mm 1inch would work 28mm or larger would need 1 1/2 inch square
| By Shawn Hantke (Shantke) on Sunday, May 06, 2012 - 04:38 pm: Edit |
@Reid what size bases are you using on you 28mm minis that they need a 1.5 inch square?
| By Nick G. Blank (Nickgb) on Sunday, May 06, 2012 - 05:40 pm: Edit |
Gary, I have been working on redoing those. I had forgotten who had sent them to me. The problem is the lower decks were incomplete, so I will have to improvise when I get that far.
| By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Sunday, May 06, 2012 - 06:33 pm: Edit |
The deck plans Gary and Nick speak of: They were done in the same program I use now, and the lower decks were finished. The problem is they were done on "optical disks" and the optical disk reader does not work and nobody uses that technology any more because it doesn't work very well. We found a place that would recover the files but...
1. They wanted like $250 per disk
2. We have 10 or 12 disks and don't know which one the plans are on and there is nothing on those disks we want or need except the plans.
3. Some of the disks stopped working so maybe the files are on a disk no one can recover.
4. Frankly, they were very early in my days of drawing deck plans, started from some data I was given that I later regarded as bogus, and If they could be recovered at all I'd regard them as place to start, not a working set.
| By Will McCammon (Djdood) on Sunday, July 01, 2012 - 05:54 pm: Edit |
Took advantage of evilBay to complete my collection of deck plans, by picking up a copy of the ancient Prime Adventures #1 with the tramp freighter/small freighter plans.
| By Shawn Hantke (Shantke) on Sunday, July 01, 2012 - 07:22 pm: Edit |
Speaking of deckplans, on sale at office max for $179.00 (reg 249.00) I just bought an Epson WF7510 (the WF stands for their workforce series or in this case wide Format) all in one scanner,copier, fax and printer. It can scan and print up to 13" x 19" which will be nice to scan oversize deckplans and reduce them down to a reasonable size and blow up and print undersize deckplans up to a playable size. There are also some 2 page ssds and other 11" x 17" things that will be nice to either copy and print or scan.
| By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Monday, July 02, 2012 - 12:18 am: Edit |
Nice. I had to take my Police Cutter plans (now obsolete) to OfficeMax to print out on 8-1/2x17" at a buck per sheet. If I needed a new printer (sadly, I don't), that might be the one I'd look at buying.
For what it's worth, I have started drating the new set of plans for the Cutter (larger, due to the new mini design). I have the ouline done and nailed down, and just got the bridge to something I'm happy with. This morning, I fought with the forward phaser control rooms, but I think I'm going to rip out what I have and re-do it all with a different idea. I do that a lot, but isn't that why they invented CAD programs?
Garth L. Getgen
| By Howard C. Beam (Ltjgbeam) on Monday, November 25, 2013 - 11:21 pm: Edit |
Back in 1990 I did some deck plans on a MAC for the Klingon F5 Frigate. I unfortunately no longer have the MAC, but I have printouts of the Deckplans. I was able to scan them into my PC and was wondering if they could be of any use to ADB.
| By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Tuesday, November 26, 2013 - 12:14 am: Edit |
Howard: email me.
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