The Engine Room With this project I seem to be jumping around from concept to concept. Physically the only thing I've built of the VSS is one lower deck. Assembling this deck was mostly to see what the rest of the VSS was going to be and what it would take to build it. Since then I've taken a step back to design everything first in CAD. In this way I can see how concepts might look before committing time and resources to them. With this said, I found myself shifting away from the walkway mentioned in the previous blog and back to the engine room. A cool looking space ship needs a cool looking engine section. VSS 002 is going to make use of some LED torch lights that have a "realistic" flickering flame effect. I was able to find some on Amazon for cheap that is USB powered. Fortunately I also bought a Star Trek warp core USB device charger for my car when ThinkGeek was still around. The USB ports can power the LED torch lights. So all of these things will need some way to place and mount within the VSS. Thus I would have to build them and make this into an engine room where consoles and bulkheads and acrylic displays can be placed. The first step was to model in SolidWorks -- my primary CAD package -- all of the models. These models will either be laser cut or 3D printed. For the stuff that's big, such as a floor or wall, these things could be laser cut. I'm going with wood for most of the assembly. 3D printing will be applied to areas for strength and visual appeal. Some surfaces might be layered with Styrene or ABS sheets, but that's later down the road. For now wood is the primary material I'll be using. Thrusters! The LED torch lights will be housed in a cage. This cage will be able to hold the LED lights in a horizontal position. One end of the cage will have a 3D printed thruster "bell", although the bell won't look like a traditional rocket bell. For the size of the VSS a cylinder will look most appropriate. The rest of the "cage" will have opened areas enabling some of the light from the LEDs to spill into the interior of the engine room. This is for effect. The warp core has it's own LED lights that pulsate in blue, so a lot of the room where acrylic displays will be will have the blue. To offset that a bit, the thrusters will pulsate in orange. But two LED torch lights can easily overpower the blue from the core, so forcing the thruster orange to the side walls might be enough to balance everything out -- blue from the core in much of the room with soft orange in the background. Connecting to the VSS The engine room is going to be constructed like a box. It should be fairly easy to simply slide the engine room "box" into the VSS's lower deck. There is a possibility I might have to drill some holes to clamp the engine room more securely for long term or if the engine room "box" tends to shift. The entire challenge is that the VSS must be able to be broken down for transportation. But I'm trying to avoid making holes in the base VSS structure.
The Harpoon is an anti-ship missile system. Part of our line of VSS (Venomous Sea Serpent) products, the Harpoon launcher is based on the real-world missile system. So even though we intended it for placement with the VSS, the launcher will work well with non-VSS vessels. In real life, the launcher typically consists of two launch tubes side-by-side, or a stack of four. The DioWarriors Harpoon system comes ready with two launch tubes for the side-by-side configuration. The launch tubes are also sold separately so it is possible to simply purchase two additional tubes for a stack of four tubes.
There's more to come in our VSS weapon system series, including Anti-Ballistic Missile Lasers, Phalanx CIWS and similar system, and others.
Greebles Everywhere A greeble is the term used to describe a technique of adding detail to a surface to give a sense of complexity. Many Sci-Fi spaceships use greebles. VSS 002 will also be greebled. Mostly I want to hide the smooth surface of the MDF board the hull is made of. I have a bunch of spare excess shapes from doing laser cutting that I can repurpose into an interesting greeble surface. This should help the spaceship look. The standard VSS has some large doors and windows. They enable access to the interior for things like positioning a figure or taking photos. Adding greebles to the outside hull presents an opportunity to alter the appearance of the windows making them more Sci-Fi looking. All the exterior windows and doors will have frame. This also presented another opportunity: a walkway. Walkway Around the outside of the ship there will be a walkway. A few years ago DioWarriors had begun experimenting with a modular diorama system -- it's been a side project for some time now. Including a walkway presented a good opportunity to try out a working concept of the system -- if it works, great. If not, well..... So the walkway will be constructed along the port and starboard exterior. Plans for the walkway include locations for an airlock, weapon stations, and lots of spots for photos. The walkway will also have to be easy to remove so that accessing the interior of the ship would be possible.
Primary Deck Layout In part 1 I settled on the layout for the two primary decks of VSS 002, a space carrier for my Cobra army. How many decks will this carrier have hasn't been determined yet. So far there will be these two decks, the primary flight deck, a secondary mini-flight deck, and the bridge. If the bridge is deck 1, then there will be four decks. Engines Deck 2 will have the engine room/engine area. Since VSS 002 will become a main component to any diostories I do, then I want the engine room to have some serious eye-candy for photographic purposes. For me that means interesting lights and shadow. So the engine room area should have a lot of lights, color, and things that go well with those lights -- acrylic displays, grills and floor meshes.
The Venomous Sea Serpent project by Victor Garcia is indeed a unique and very fun project that is highly customizable. If you already know, originally the VSS was envisioned to be an ocean vessel for Cobra from the GI Joe universe. GI Joe has their large aircraft carrier, the USS FLAGG. Cobra didn't have anything that could rival the Flagg. So the VSS was introduced. Action figure collectors -- including me -- bought the VSS kit and started building the Cobra carrier. This is where I think it gets interesting as some collectors started to discuss using the VSS not as an ocean vessel, but at a Cobra helicarrier. I, however, went another direction: space. I wanted my VSS (number 002) to be a space carrier along the lines of the carrier/cruisers seen in the TV show Stargate SG-1. Please note that this is an ongoing project that is currently evolving week-by-week. It is going to take a long time to complete, but the goal is to be finished in time for JoeFest 2021. Can I do it? We shall see.... Designing a Space Carrier VSS 002 is a standard VSS kit with three additional "lower decks." One standard kit comes with a lower deck -- the main compartment area. 002 has three additional, making a total of four lower decks. The VSS is very customizable, for example, lower decks can be stacked one on-top of each other, and there's no limit how many can be stacked. For me, I placed two lower decks end-to-end to make one long deck, then stacked another long deck on top of that. So VSS 002 is twice as long as the standard Venomous Sea Serpent. To further flesh out the space carrier idea, 002 would need a good looking engine room/engine area with massive thrusters. To further help balance the carrier so that it doesn't look like a long box, side corridors/walkways will be mounted on the port and starboard hull. These walkways will make use of the DioWarriors dio-system.. a prototype series of modular floors and walls for building a diorama. So the walkways will be a proof-of-concept. The walkways will have appropriate space-ship things attached to it: air-locks, weapon stations, sensor access points, and many other things as I can cram into the design. The Design Process To begin, the first thing I set out to do was figure a layout. For that I would have to digitize the physical VSS. This took some time, but once it was done then I could model a virtual VSS in 3D and experiment with different layouts. Since 002 will be a space carrier I wanted to find a layout that maximized the storage capacity of Cobra Stiletto's and also provide some diversity in terms of layout for different rooms. The rooms part is important because DioWarriors has a lot of furniture style props that need to be displayed. A space ship VSS would be a perfect showroom. After experimenting with placing two lower deck assemblies in different ways -- front to back, front to front, back to back, etc -- I finally decided on two configurations for two levels. The "Top Level" layout will be good to use as the eventual middle deck -- the flight deck will be directly above this. The large open maintenance area can be used for vehicle storage, or I can divide up the space to make smaller rooms. The rear portion will become the engine room where I will need to design the thrusters and engine and other things like that. The front portion I'm still not sure what to use it for, maybe a main weapon or extend it out some to make some sort of RADAR/communications area. The "Bottom Level" has a lot of open space and that will work as another flight deck area. Fighters (Stilettos or some other space craft) could be launched from the bow or aft portion, and stored and maintained in the large middle section. Or the large middle area could be sectioned into smaller rooms, such as barracks, hospital, or whatever I need to display for a diorama.
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