Wing Commander Prophecy 3D Printed Goodness.

[Knight26-77]

@DefianceIndustries gave me permission to print to do some test prints of a couple of his WCP Model upgrades designs. We have started with the Piranha and the Midway.
DI warned that they were but under-detailed, but I decided to give it a try anyway. We'll start with the Midway.

Flying alongside her Kilrathi War contemporaries, you can see just how much of an absolute unit the Midway is.

Up against some other Sci-Fi Heavy Weights: At 1800m the Midway dwarfs even the a Star Destroyer and the Big-G herself.

And would a 3D print be without a timelapse.

And yes, Casey did get cursed out for allowing the bridge to fall. (Or at least I did to myself for not giving it enough support.)

Next up the 1:72 F-106 Piranha alongside some of her Kilrathi War era precursor light fighters most by the super talented @Klavs81 and one random Arrow. (And yes I might have mis-scaled on or two).

As @DefianceIndustries sends me more, I will work on converting and printing them. We are thinking the Vampire a bug fighter along with some more capships.

 

[Knight26-77]

1:72

Vampire reporting for duty.

Not the best painter I know, but from a distance... LOL

Alongside her wartime counterparts.

Either the Vampire needs to eat its Wheaties, or Confed tech just improved that much in the post war era to really shrink the tech.
And of course, a timelapse.

With a preview of what's coming next:

 

[Rylex]

Beautiful models! Although the Vampire is a powerful fighter, it is less beautiful than the Excalibur and especially than the Arrow!
But well, I'm really biased here... but I find the "old" ships like the Epee or Rapier more beautiful than the WC Prophecy ships.

 

[Knight26-77]

Casey we got bugs!!!
Printed this in Burnt Titanium. I like the look it gives.

She just looked so good in the sun and wet.

 

[Knight26-77]

When the moon hits your eye, like a big pizza pie, that's a MORAY!!!

They're Teaming up on us!!!

Time to take a swim like their namesakes.

Can't forget the build video.

 

[Knight26-77]

I couldn't resist.

 

[Chronocidal Guy]

1:72
View attachment 13635
Either the Vampire needs to eat its Wheaties, or Confed tech just improved that much in the post war era to really shrink the tech.

Vamp came out really nice! Always loved that design, I might have to print up one of those myself someday (once I upgrade to a much faster printer.. the build time on the Excalibur was just insane).

Size-wise though, I think there are a lot of nonsense dimensions lurking in the WC lore. If you go back and read the notes and specs on ships in the games, the stated dimensions of many things really don't add up (and that's not even touching the fact that combat was supposed to take place at speeds measured in kilometers per second).

The Excalibur there, based on the game stats, is only 1/100 scale, because they state it as over 100 feet long (32 meters). I sized it to a foot long, because I wanted one that size, but when I had it in-hand, the cockpit was a perfect fit for an existing 1/72 pilot I had from another model kit. That puts the ship at roughly 76 feet long, which is large, but not unbelievable. I called it "1/72" because it's a size that fits the boarding cutscenes in the game, based on the size of the pilot.

In comparison? To me, that Sabre looks about 1/48 scale, just from the size of the cockpit. It's huge. You could fit at least 8 of the pilots I made for the Excalibur in there, with room for extended cab SUV-style seating.

I know it's all a stylistic thing, and people throw numbers around because nerds like us gobble up the specs, but it's something that has bugged me forever about a ton of designs. 🤣

This is how you wind up with things like Bandai labeling all of their Star Wars kits as 1/72, when the A-Wing is 1/48, and the B-Wing is about 1/100. Everyone just accepted that the published specs were accurate, without thinking to scale them based on some constant element like the pilot. I think the only reason why the X-Wing and Y-Wing scales are so consistent by comparison is because the R2 units are external details that have a fixed real-world size.

 

[Knight26-77]

I agree with you, @Chronocidal Guy, but at the same time, I like the "more realistic" scale of the majority of WC Craft. Regarding the larger size of the cockpits, especially @Klavs81 versions, I always saw it being a side-effect of the space suits the pilots wore requiring larger crew spaces to fit them. His Sabre, in particular, I see as being a two-seater out the gates, being the WC2 equivalent of the F-15E Strike Eagle, and that there might even be a smaller cockpit single seater. There are also some serious size differences in WC2 craft, with the light fighters (like the Epee) being absolutely tiny by comparison.
Then there is Kilrathi problem. Kilrathi fighters tend to be absolutely huge, unless you take the canon lengths to actually being their wing spans. Even then they are pretty massive by comparison to their Terran counterparts.
I try and keep all the craft "in scale" as best I can using either "official" sizes or the artist's lengths (which do tend to do differ slightly).
I am wanting to do more Kilrathi ships, but to keep them in scale will be crazy, so might have to size them down just a bit and cheat it.

These are mostly in "artist size 1:72" with the exception of the Vampire at "canon" scale.

When you get to canon lengths though there are even discrepencies there as some craft just don't have them, or they are variable, the Morningstar for example is somewhere between 16-23m in length, with @Klavs81 model coming at ~20m, but others scaling up to ~26m. I did print a "1:72" morningstar that took the 26m length and it HUGE. So I reprinted Klavs at 1:72 and is like comparing a 1:48 to 1:72 scale.

 

[DefianceIndustries]

The WC3/4 fighters that were ported into prophecy (Excal, Tbolt) were scaled down by half to match the game models for WCP. The meshes I did were to game scale, not sure how Klavs scaled his.