|
Inspiration It seems like I have been thinking about this forever. The very idea of building a fantasy flying ship. The ship designs used in games such as Space 1889 and Aeronef are fine but they fit into an era with slighly higher technology to what I was looking for. Although flying ships in No Quarter were to be powered by a variety of means, some of the Space 1889 and Aeronef ship designs were too advanced for a fantasy setting.  Flying Sailship by i-Kore ©2002 Ships in the No Quarter world would be powered by wind (Elf, Fallen Elf), steam (Khothena, Regency, Dwarf), air oars (Dragii, Orc, Goblin) or magic (Chaos. Living Dead, Elemental). The other issue to bear in mind was that these would be large models, therefore the size of components such as sails would have to be carefully considered. Michael Jacobsen's Sail Ship No idea when I first saw this image, but this model certainly reinforced the plan to one day build a fantasy flying ship. However, it was to be many years before No Quarter was released and there was a games system such a vessel could be used in.  Flying Sailship by Michael Jacobsen ©2001-2005 There were two main choices when determining how to build the hull. Either scratch build the hull or use an appropriatley sized kids toy ship as a chassis on which to build the vessel. Salute 2005 At Salute 2005 was a rather large Cloudships Of Mars demonstration game using 25mm scale models on a huge floorplan of Martian terrain. There were many different types of Cloudship and the Salute/Warlords website gave a huge selection of detail images many relating to construction techniques.  Some of the Cloudships Of Mars ships were scratch built from polystyrene with others using old Star Wars toys.   The Salute pages also provied some serious tips on materials and constrcution techniques. Thanks guys, made my job a bit easier... Aeronef More inspiration was obtained fromthe Aeronef game. Although I know nothing about the game, the ships were pretty cool even if they are only 5cm long. Maybe some of the design elements of the Aeronef ships could be incorpoerated.  Iron Stars Another small scale sky ship game goes by the name of Iron Stars, although there appear to be fewer ships in the range, there were some interesting design features here and there.  The No Quarter Skyship Design Many sketches were drawn with various styles and deck plans being tested out for the very first Skyship. The first skyship was to be for the Regency and would be call the RSS Thunderchild in tribute to Jeff Lynne's War Of The Worlds CD. In the end, the deck was designed first. The No Quarter Skyships had to allow miniatures on normal 25mm bases to move around and so the deck had to be the right size and shape. Card mock ups were cut out to allow positioning of weapons and crew and to check the overall appearance. With a deck plan selected, the next stage was to build it out of something more substantial. The first stage of construction of the Thunderchild can be seen here. |