Starfleet Wars scale part 2: fighters

 

Pike

So in Part 1 of the scale series, we figured out the "official" scale for the line of Superior Models starships for the game Starfleet Wars is 1:9600.  Something tells me the scale for the fighters in this game is a little bit larger.  Once again, let's get our our measuring stick and ID manual and find out for sure.

One note--the names of the ships in my previous post on measurments of Starfleet Wars/Galactic Knights fighter minis do not correspond to the designations as given in the Observer's Directory & Identification Manual.  I took the names in the other post from the Monday Knight Productions website, and they may have mislabelled the photos, or maybe I just got confused.  Regardless, throughout this post I will refer to the fighter names for the minis as given in the ODIM.

First, let's look at the Aquarian Pike attack craft (pictured above).  The book says its dimensions are 20.9 x 19.3 x 3.6 (again, I'm going to presume the unit of measurement is the meter).  So the Pike is 20.9 meters long, according to the ODIM.  A scale of 1:9600 would produce a minature just 2.1 millimeters in size!  Obviously, the star fighters aren't in the same scale as the starships.  Let's do the rest of the math for the Pike:

Scale     Scale Length
1:9600           2.1mm
1:4800           4.3
1:2400           9.7
1:1200         17.4

My measurement of the actual figure came out to 16mm, so it looks like the fighters are cast in 1:1200 scale.  Since I should double-check my math, it's time to take the ruler to the remaining fighters in the ID maual:

                "Actual" length    Measured length
Mosquito        22.0m                     18mm
Bobcat            20.1                        15
Comet             22.6                        19
Meteor            21.4                        20
Raven         Unknown*                   13

*This is an actual quote from the ODIM.  Running the numbers in the opposite direction gives the "real" Raven an approximate length of 15.6 meters.



Mosquito

So the math checks out for the remaining models, meaning that in our Starfleet Wars games, the fighters are much smaller than the figures that represent them on the tabletop.  Or are they?  Read Part 3 to learn more ...