building an alphastrike scale Drost IIa

[glitterboy2098]

the Drost IIa is one of the more interesting dropships in BT. i'd love to have one at a scale compatible with 3D terrain for my alpha strike games. however, it occurs to me that i'm not really sure what size that equates to. or what items might make the best core for the vehicle.

before i start painting up a landing area for my modular terrain, answering a few of these questions might be worthwhile. ideally, this would be more terrain than combat unit (given its current lack of MUL AS card and lack of combat ability), but the option to have it used as a actual dropship when/if rules for that come out is something i'd want to consider.

i know that under Tactical Ops and Total Warfare a grounded dropship has a specific hex footprint regardless of size, but would that have to be conformed to in AS?
i've considered using one of these toys as a basis (that's a 3.75 inch action figure beside it), but that might make it too big.

[john blackwell]

According to its stats on Sarna, it's 77 meters long - or 2.5 hexes.  It's probably not as far off hex-scale as you might fear.

Go for it.
JB

[Wikkid]

Hope this helps.

http://s747.photobucket.com/albums/xx119/wikkid_devil/?action=view&current=2014-02-07191520_zps00b371d1.jpg

[john blackwell]

According to its stats on Sarna, it's 77 meters long - or 2.5 hexes.  It's probably not as far off hex-scale as you might fear.

Go for it.
JB

Whoops, I'm off by quite a bit . . . sorry.

[Ratboy]

Battletech is approximately 1:300 (or 1:285) scale. For ease of math I will assume 1:300.


77 meters is 7700 centimeters


300 centimeters = 1 scale centimeter


7700/300 = 25.7 centimeters for a 1:300 scale model of the DroST IIA (just about a foot long)

[john blackwell]

On the other hand, terrain is 1" = 30 meters or in the neighborhood of 1:1000 scale.  At that scale, it's more like 8cm or ~3 inches.

I guess it's going to depend on whether you're using terrain-scale or mech-scale.

Either way, it's going to look great.  Please post shots when you finish it.

JB

[glitterboy2098]

alpha strike (which is the game i'm planning to use) has a scale more like 1" = 15 meters, so 6inch..

but given the abstractness of AS and the fact ranges are artificially short anyway, i'm gonna go closer to mech scale and use the toy as a base. don't expect rapid progress though.. a recent move has delayed construction of the basic terrain boards.. i've not even started with buildings and such yet.

[Technomagier]

Ok now I'm irritated. I thought AS was played with CBT miniatures and has just with a different ruleset for a more cineastic gameplay. And Battleforce has the micro scale miniatures.  :-\

[glitterboy2098]

your not wrong.. but it uses the miniatures rules convention where 1 hex on a mapsheet becomes 2" on a 3D table. so the AS/miniaturesrules mapscale is basically 1" = 15 meters. roughly. like all things in AS, the exact ratio is left vague so there is no reason to be strict about dimensions.

with AS being a much more visual game due ot 3D terrain, i've chosen to ignore the whole inch = so many meters thing and just make terrain that looks good and in scale with the mechs and other combat units. especially since i might end up cutting all the AS inch measurements in half at times when i want to play a really big game but don't have the room for a huge battlefield.

[Ratboy]

AS game scale (rules) is 1" = 15 meters horizontal and 1" ~ 10 meters vertical and AS miniatures scale (models/terrain) is 1" = 19 meters (1:285 or 6mm).

[Technomagier]

AS game scale (rules) is 1" = 15 meters horizontal and 1" ~ 10 meters vertical and AS miniatures scale (models/terrain) is 1" = 19 meters (1:285 or 6mm).

Ah, there were the 4 meters I was missing. thanks. So AS has also a mismatch between mapscale and mechscale. So then I would prefer mech related terrain, like the Drost in 6mm scale. Especially if you play without a grid.

So you have:
(1:285) length ca. 27 cm, width ca. 28,1 cm and hight ca. 10,9 cm
(1:300) length ca. 25,7 cm, width ca. 26,7 cm and hight ca. 10,3 cm

[glitterboy2098]

it does.. but only in that it was derived fro ma game that used hexmaps and had a big mismatch of unit scale vs map scale. if you go read the Miniatures rules rulebook for regular BT (you can down load it) you've basically got the core of the AS terrain rules.

personally, i'm ignoring the mapscale issue, and making terrain that visually matches the figures.. AS doesn't have a 'scale' specifically anyway.. they go out of their way to avoid saying how far each inch is supposed to represent, or how long each turn represents in seconds, etc. partly because it really confuses things in that its using Battleforce type rules (where each turn represents half a minute, and each hex represented almost a full mapsheet) with regular battletech movement and ranges. if they got into issues of scale, they'd have ot explain why the mechs are only moving 1/3th the distance they ought to be given the damage and such is based on battleforce 30 second periods..  :)

it's better to treat it akin to warhammer or other games that were originally 3D to start.. scale is "matches the figures" and distances and time are left vague/abstracted for ease of play. things like 1" = 1 level then just becomes record keeping, not scale.  O0