Space fighter sources

Space fighters don't grow on trees.

The space fighter minatures for Starfleet Wars/Galactic Knights are relatively large.  My size comparison with Stardate: 3000 and Star Frontiers ships generated a number of responses, in the comments section of that post and in this thread on The Miniatures Page.

Commenters suggested several other lines of fleet-scale fighters as possible diminuitive substitutes for SfW/GK minis, in addition to the Stardate: 3000 fighters (pictured above), and I thought it might be convenient to list all the suggestions in one place:

• For the Star Fleet Universe series of games based on the original Star Trek TV series, Amarillo Design Bureau sells space fighters as part of its Starline 2400 line of miniatures.
• Speaking of television shows, the (now out-of-print) Babylon 5 game Fleet Action (scroll down) had miniatures for the various factions of that setting, including fighters for the Earth, Minbari, Narn, Centauri, and others.
• Turning to animated productions, Star Blazers (the American dub of Space Battleship Yamato) has its own Fleet Battle System, with minis for Earth, Gamilon, and Comet Empire battlecraft (its term for fighters).
• In addition, Studio Bergstrom sells fleet-scale fighters for a multitude of settings--original, and some inspired by popular science fiction franchises.
• Heading away from mass media, UK-based Brigade Models offers fighters such as these, these, these, these, and these.
• Finally, Ground Zero Games produces various fighters for its Full Thrust factions, examples of which can be seen here, here, here, here, and here (you have to scroll down for some of these links).

 Let me know if I've missed any sources for fleet-scale (10mm and smaller) fighter minis.

Small craft: Star Frontiers and Stardate: 3000

So I'm taking a closer look at the Star Frontiers ships I recently bought.  The Federation scout looks pretty cool, in a retro style reminiscent of War Rocket minis (although the latter came out last year, and the former came out in the early 1980s):

The tops and undersides of these ships are almost identical.

As you can see, these scouts are very small when compared to the SF frigates (or any other ship, for that matter):

Left: Fed frigate; right: Fed scout.

Not to harp on scale discrepancies again, but although the scouts look OK on their own, or next to larger ships, they just don't mesh well with the Starfleet Wars/Galactic Knights fighters--or rather, they are so close in size that the Star Frontiers scouts blend in with the SfW fighters:

Left: Terran Comet; center: Fed scout; right: Ent Mosquito.

I also have these small craft from the Stardate: 3000 range of miniatures, referred to as pursuit ships.  Once again, they look all right on their own, and they're supposed to be in the same scale as the larger vessels in this line of minis:

Left: assault ship; right: interceptor.

However, the Stardate ships also close in size to SfW fighters:

From left to right: Comet, assault ship, interceptor, Mosquito. 

Why does this matter?  At present, it doesn't.  But in the future, I may want to expand the game to include rules for small shuttles or transports that are larger than a fighter, but smaller than the typical warship on the board.  The SF scouts and Sd:3K pursuit ships would fill this role nicely.

The problem comes if I have them on the table at the same time as I have stands of fighters--it might create a mixup, with players confusing a transport for a fighter, or vice versa:

That's the Federation scout in the middle.

The first solution is the same one I came up with before: don't worry, be happy.  Another solution: use smaller fighter minis.  Stardate: 3000 also has sprues of fighters.  As you can see, they're a lot smaller than the SfW/GK miniatures:

Stardate: 3000 fighters still on their sprue at top.

Of course, they're fairly expensive.  And Battlefleet Gothic fighters, although the right size, are also just as costly.  Not to mention neither line of fighters is compatible style-wise with the ships of the Five Powers.  Since I don't have any looming games in need of transports, it's a moot point right now.  But it's something to think about (or obsess over) in the future.

Starfleet Wars scale part 3: discrepancy



Can you see the problem with this picture?

In Part 1 of this series, we confirmed the "official" scale for Starfleet Wars starship miniatures is 1:9600.  In Part 2, we discovered the "official" scale for the SfW star fighters is 1:1200.  In this post, we learn how the two scales collide with the background material and the miniatures themselves.

I begin by noting the description of a couple of super galactic dreadnoughts in the Observer's Directory & Identification Manual.  The Aquarian Typhoon-class SGDN carries "Twenty attack craft [fighters], one positioned in a ready launch in the bow at all times."  Likewise, the entry for the Entomalian Swarm-class super galactic dreadnought notes "Fifteen 'Mosquito' attack craft are carried ..., one in the ready position on the 'Balist' apparatus in the bow."  There you have it: official word that a couple of the largest ships in this series carry fighters attached to their exteriors.

Sure enough, the manual's illustration of the Typhoon depicts a Pike fighter at the back of what resembles an aircraft carrier's launch catapult, although the drawing of the Swarm does not.  Although I don't own a Typhoon model, a look at the underside of my Swarm confirms the ODIM: there's a Mosquito fighter affixed to the front of the starship, as the photos below indicate:



Can you see it now?


 

How about now?



Here's the problem (which someone pointed out on the Galactic Knights mailing list some time ago): at 1:9600 scale, a model of the 22-meter Mosquito star fighter would be just a hair over 2 millimeters big.  As is obvious in the photos, the attack craft sculpted as part of the super galactic dreadnought is as large as a regular fighter miniature.  So either the SGDN is really at 1:1200 scale, or the fighter is really at 1:9600 scale.  So which is it????

Scale discrepancies always bothered me as a kid; I wouldn't play with my army men and my Hot Wheels at the same time because it was obvious the plastic green guy was too big to fit into the car that came up to his knees.  So how do we resolve this one?  It's one thing to have fighters on separate stands at a larger scale than the capital ships; that can be handwaved as an artifact of the game's representational system.  But a fighter that's a part of the mini is more difficult to explain.  After all, if an actual Swarm is 1400 meters long, at 1:9600, the fighter sculpted into it would be 172 meters in length!

Luckily, I think I've found an answer to this problem:  I'll repeat to myself, "It's just a game."  I should really just relax.

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 ...

Starfleet Wars scale part 1: ships

How big "in real life" are the starships that the Superior Models miniatures are supposed to represent?  The obvious resopnse, of course, is "As big as you say they are, or as big as they need to be to fit in with other lines of minis.  Why are you obsessing over such trivia?"  Well, obsessing over trivia has got me this far, so I think I'll try to figure out the actual scale of these miniatures.  Please note that while I remember reading something about this on the Galactic Knights mailing list some time ago, all observations in this post are my own.

Let's start at the beginning.  The Alnavco product sheet listed the figures in Superior Models' Starfleet Wars miniatures range under the category "STARFLEETS STARSHIP MODELS (1:1200-1:9600 Scale)."  The center pages of the Starfleet Wars rules booklet consist of a chart with stats for the initial SfW line of minis, along with a note at the bottom of the page telling players

This scale of STAR SHIPS can be used with any of the following scales: 1:1200, 1:2400, 1:4800, 1:9600 or any other scale.

So what scale, exactly, are these miniatures?  What's the "official" word, according to the creators' own works?  Let's grab a ruler and the Observer's Directory & Identification Manual so we can find out.

OK, the ODIM gives us the dimensions of fighters and super galactic dreadnoughts as part of the Starfleet Wars setting background.  The manual gives the Terran Victory-class SGDN dimensions of 1482.2 x 636.4 x 333.7 (presumably in meters).  Divide the length by the given scales gives you the following possible model sizes, rounded to the nearest millimeter:

Scale     Length    Width
1:1200     1235        530
1:2400       618        265
1:4800       309        133
1:9600       154          66

In other words, if the mini was 1/1200th the size of the "real" Victory, the scale model would be over 1.2 meters long!  I don't think I could lift that much solid metal.  My own measurements confirm the actual model is quite smaller, at 152mm by 64mm.  Therefore, adjusting for any errors in my measurements or bad eyesight, it looks like the "official" scale for the Starfleet Wars ship models is 1:9600. 

I'll double-check just to make sure, checking the official length agains my numbers for the minis I own:

                "Actual" length    Measured length
Gryphon         1391.5m                   142mm
Polecat           1331.0                      137
Swarm           1402.0*                     141
Typhoon        1346.1                        n/a**

* ODIM gives length as 140.20, presumably this is a typographical error.
** Measurement not available, as I don't have this miniature in my collection.

Well, the math works out for the Gryphon (pictured at the top of this post), Polecat, and Swarm; they're all around 1:9600 scale, so it's safe to assume the remaining super galactic dreadnought is as well.  Assuming the other starship classes are also in this scale, we can then work out real-world dimensions for other vessels based on the size of the models.  This is left as an exercise for the reader.

So what about the Superior Models star fighters?  Are they in the same scale as the Superior Models spaceships?  Read Part 2 to find out ...

Sizing things up

Dean over at Starship Combat News mentioned in this thread that he has put together a page devoted to the size of starship miniatures.  I noticed he had a few Galactic Knights/Starfleet Wars ships listed, but only from a couple of factions. 

Back in January, someone on the GK Yahoo Group asked about the size of the minis, so I whipped out the ruler and measured all the starships in my collection.  I have a few more measurements that Dean is welcome to use for his page, which spurred me to repost my measurements for anyone who's interested.  So here are measurements for all the Galactic Knights ship types in my collection:

Fighters

• up to 3/4 of an inch (20mm)

Aquarians 

• Destroyer: 1 & 5/8 inches (40mm) by 13/16 of an inch (20mm)
• Cruiser: 2 & 5/16 inches (57mm) by 1 & 1/16 inches (28mm)
• Battlecruiser: 3 & 7/16 inches (88mm) by 1 & 3/8 inches (34mm)
• Carrier: 3 & 5/8 inches (93mm) by 2 inches (50mm)

  

Avarians

• Destroyer: 1 & 3/4 inches (44mm) by 15/16 of an inch (24mm)
• Destroyer Leader: 1 & 7/8 inches (48mm) by 1 & 1/8 inches (27mm)
• Cruiser: 2 & 5/8 inches (60mm) by 1 & 1/8 (28mm)
• Battlecruiser: 2 & 3/4 inches (69mm) by 1 & 15/16 inches (48mm)
• Carrier: 4 & 1/8 inches (104mm) by 2 & 1/16 inches (51mm)
• Dreadnought: 3 & 7/8 inches (98mm) by 1 & 3/4 inches (44mm)
• Super Galactic Dreadnought: 5 & 5/8 inches (142mm) by 2 & 11/16 inches (70mm)

Carnivorans

• Destroyer: 1 & 13/16 inches (46mm) by 1 & 1/2 inches (38mm)
• Cruiser: 2 & 3/16 inches (55mm) by 1 & 5/8 inches (42mm)
• Battlecruiser: 3 & 1/4 inches (82mm) by 2 & 1/16 inches (52mm)
• Carrier: 4 inches (103mm) by 2 & 1/16 inches (52mm)
• Super Galactic Dreadnought: 5 & 3/8 inches (137mm) by 2 & 13/16 inches (70mm)

Entomolians

• Destroyer: 1 & 11/16 inches (45mm) by 1 & 5/8 inches (42mm)
• Cruiser: 2 & 3/16 inches (57mm) by 1 & 7/8 inches (47mm)
• Battlecruiser: 3 & 5/16 inches (85mm) by 1 & 15/16 inches (49mm)
• Carrier: 3 & 7/7 inches (97mm) by 2 & 1/16 inches (51mm)
• Super Galactic Dreadnought: 5 & 9/16 inches (141mm) by 2 & 15/16 inches (73mm)

Terrans

• Destroyer: 2 & 1/16 inches (50mm) by 1 inch (25mm)
• Destroyer Leader: 2 & 3/4 inches (70mm) by by 1 inch (25mm)
• Cruiser: 2 & 9/16 inches (66mm) by 1 & 5/8 inches (40mm)
• Battlecruiser: 3 & 5/8 inches (92mm) by 2 inches (50mm)
• Carrier: 3 & 3/4 inches (98mm) by 2 & 5/16 inches (58mm)
• Dreadnought: 4 & 1/16 inches (102mm) by 2 & 7/16 inches (63mm)
• Galactic Dreadnought: 4 & 1/8 inches (104mm) by 2 & 1/2 inches (64mm)
• Super Galactic Dreadnought: 6 inches (152mm)! by 2 & 1/2 inches (64mm)