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1/3788th?

 
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Dan Ibekwe
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Joined: 08 Mar 2007
Posts: 453
Location: Manchester UK

PostPosted: Thu Oct 08, 2009 1:15 am    Post subject: 1/3788th? Reply with quote

1/3788th scale, the standard miniatures scale of Star Fleet.

Um, why? It does not appear to divide by any whole numbers other than 2, 4 and 947.

How did this peculiar number get chosen? Was it back in the days of Lou Zocchi's SF Battle Manual game, or earlier?

I normally round it off to 1/3000, so the starships are in scale with my assorted 1880s to present day naval models. Makes it easier to visualise their size, and why you'd hope the turbolifts were working on a B10.
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djdood
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Joined: 01 Feb 2007
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PostPosted: Thu Oct 08, 2009 1:34 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

My understanding is that it is because, w-a-y back in the day Colonel Zochii had his GameScience mold for the classic plastic ships done so the "Enterprise" was three inches long. The scale fell out from that.

It's much like weird "box scale" issues that so often come up in scale plastic modeling as well. They scale the model to be the biggest that will fit their existing boxes, not to match one of the established scales like 1/72 or 1/48.
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Scoutdad
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Joined: 09 Oct 2006
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Location: Middle Tennessee

PostPosted: Thu Oct 08, 2009 2:53 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Will is correct. When Gamescience began producing the Star FLeet Battle Manual game (and the miniatures for it), Col. Zocchi wanted the Federation heavy cruiser to be 3-inches long. That worked out to 1:3788 scale.

All the SFB miniatures produced since then have been built to the same scale.
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Steve Cole
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PostPosted: Thu Oct 08, 2009 2:31 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Confirming. That's correct.
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Dan Ibekwe
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PostPosted: Thu Oct 08, 2009 8:21 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

That's been bugging me for a while. Thanks!
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