A Question Of Scale/A Matter Of Taste

Hi there folks!
Some have asked: what scale is xyz to pqrstuv?
Here, we delve deeper into why 1:5000/1:4848.48* is my preferred baseline for STAW and similar tabletop games.
It just works. Its big without being too big like 1:1000 or 1:2500 can be. It lets you field massive starships and, with a slight upscaling, it lets you fit the small shuttlecraft and fighters easily.
It is also storage and transport friendly.

I also feel more of whats available out there scales well to these two ships, the Hallmark Warbird and Eaglemoss/Shapeways Valdore. The Dragohawk (available from many makers out there) sits nice. The other types sit well. Once I locate a Griffin and a Raptor, they'll sit well next to it and be in scale with the akira class and nebula class.

Here's a specific comparison;
Eaglemoss Valdore to Hallmark Warbird to Furuta D.

Above: What I said before, but somehow a tetrahedron snuck into frame. I feel they scale well. Thanks to Si's Soldiers for the idea - I would never have become involved in STAW if I had never found your blog. I would be keen to hear your thoughts on scale and in particular, romulans.

Above: Valdore Type is a wider but sleeker craft that is not as long as a standard warbird. This craft scales well to Shapeways Sovereigns and to the Furuta Ent E.

So, here's a little more to the scale debate;
what do you feel? Where should scale be?
Should I 'upscale' the borg geometries? Should I upscale the existing romulan designs?

Cheers!

Tale of the Goofy Monk

Howdy!
There's been a few questions about when the goofy monk will be available, and what options there'll be for the costumes.
I can say that there'll be male and female options, and in terms of costumes we've opted for a monk robe and generic armor variant. This'll be a decent bed for customisation into middle-earth styled project through to sci-fi-esque applications, and hopefully there'll be something for everyone.
They'll be available in a limited run once the rest of the mold has been filled up - only 2 more characters to go over at ExManus Studios or so I'm told. It'll be excellent!

In the meantime, here's how I've styled one of those goofy lizard monks.

 Above: The goofy monk and the murderer that took the character away in a comicbook no less.
Personally, I feel that robot chicken was a better ending.

 Above: The monk's light-broadsword is interchangeable, and glows blue-violet under blacklight as no suitable ~1.7mm - 3mm translucent rods were sourcable at time of assembly. The figure looks good with clear or yellow/orange IMHO too.

Above: A few good monks for scale. You'll see that the goofy monk scales well to the source material, and that particularly it scales well to the RPG images that were available. The monk stands 2 heads taller than the Plo Koon monk, spot on. Some say its a little too large, but I can't hear them and all agree that the raw mini has so much detail packed on it (which I hope my paintwork didn't obscure too much). Thanks again for the awesome work to be found at ExManus Studios - those folks really know how to craft awesome sculptures in any sized application first time every time. The customer service cannot be understated - my dealings with them have been thoroughly warm and professional!

Cheers!

Up later,
review of futures resource estimates literature and population estimates:
what is the leeway here? How accurate are we talking, and are things closer to the 70year end of the curve than the 270 year end? (hint, its closer to the 70year end at present).

More Plasticrack Part nth

Apologies for not utilising a handy tag system... I'll tidy that up in the future.
In the meantime, here's another installment of Plasticrack - cybernetic geometry the continuing voyages.
There's even some 'enhanced' imagery.

Above: A hapless Sutherland is ambushed by an Obelisk. "Resistance, as it always has been, is futile." Sutherland fires a fullspread in the rearward arc, hoping to knock out the Obelisk's engines long enough to reach the board edge.

Above: A W.I.P group shot of gen1 techno-geometry, courtesy of a Velleman k8200. That cubeish thing? Its actually a tesseract, with magnets/ferrous materials holding it together. At the time this image was taken, the glues were setting and so an elastic band has to hold them all together to ensure proper drying. The cube is slightly larger than a tactical cube from a popular boardgame presently out there. The idea is that this fusion cube can break up into 'Multi-Vector Assimilation Mode" and there are a few scenarios for it that yours truly has made to compliment it.
The sphere also shown costs about $3.80USD at cost price, a little more for a painted and 'tactical'd' variant as shown. The sphere same size as other spherical things on market.

Above: Sutherland for scale with Obelisk (type 1) and Scout Fusion Tesseract

Above: Scout Fusion Tesseract in its 7 constituent components. Each Pyramid is in terms of gameplay, roughly worth 2 spheres. The scout cube (MM) in terms of gameplay, is slightly weaker than the Interceptor (so, easily dispatched by an oberth and miranda)

Above: Tesseract shown with a pyramid missing (the vehicle can dissassemble and reassemble at will, provided 4 of the pyramids and the core scout cube are above half health...).
Sutherland unfortunately did not escape the pursuing Obelisk; A.Vessel#948-7612 is being salvaged and enhanced at Regional Nexus Node #4598759.

Above: Another group of tetrahedrons for a client;these ones are some of the finest yet (if I do say so myself)! Email or contact me to get yours secured today.
You'll notice the photoetched parts, which were donated from a recent swap meet - so many modelmakers have spare sprue that they'll sell for cents or donate at freebie tables at conventions or swap meets, and sadly many aviation model makers never use their undercarriages or missiles. Luckily, those parts can be used to cybernetic-ify your geometries!

So, thats it for this installment;
many thanks to everyone that's ordered their geometries
- I hope the geometry brings much fun and something different affordably to your game tables!
Thankyou for your concrit and feedback on enhancing the geometry.

I'm flabbergasted at how many nations they've been sent to now - 9 and counting
That tells me that people really like their geometry.
Polychora and irregular shapes, all that sort of stuff. Its great!

I hope to get to a position where I can start to develop lazer printed componentry within the next 5 years - at this time, a pipedream, but one which would be awesome to realise.
Why? It would mean better resolution stuff, at negligible cost increase, and importantly...
CURVED GEOMETRY = )  (oval shaped saucer-y geometries)
at present, it is very difficult to produce nice-finished curved geometry at home with the k8200 and other systems. 

It would also mean I would be able to bring POP bases to market much more effectively, enhancing recycling and the final finish of many multi-media models. That alone makes lazer printing and in-home lazer cutter parts worth looking into.

Reflections on the futures debate

Hi there,

time to delve into the other stuff that this blog exists for; reflections on the ongoing futures debate.

If someone considers the literature, they find the division between boomers and gloomers.

some of that consideration and reflection is distilled and paraphrased here - I encourage readers to conduct their own thorough research into this area and to form their own standpoint and views thereafter.

The boomers *cough Simon reagan-nomics cough* believe approximately in 'progress' (whatever that ill-defined concept might be); that via decoupling, and exponential scalability/knockon effects, technology can outpace the various rates of decline caused due to overconsumption and overpopulation forces on society.

to varying extents, there is the belief of either infinite resources, or of scalable resources to the point where supply/demand is less a consideration in the short to medium term.

The gloomers are more cautious however,  being pragmatic

and believe that preventative measures might be taken to avoid any Seneca style collapses.

Bartlett outlines much of the facts of the matter, more eloquently than yours truly.

Coutts (of the exponentialist fame) also reflects eloquently and more importantly, objectively - a great resource for the reader to consider while conducting their research.

So,

what are the odds?

what does it all matter?

and as Monckton pointedly asks - what's the point, especially if some of these cycles are beyond controlling or altering in meaningful ways?

This hinges on our resource estimates, on our efficiency and on how our innovation might work.  

To the resources, we are shifting towards offshore and LNG, due to micron-limits and ERoEI considerations established elsewhere. There exists the potential for a peak oil scenario, inclusive of LNG and offshore reserves. This concept also applies to other resources, such as fissionable/fuseable materials...

So, as many have noted, the Green Revolution hinged on hydrocarbons to make fertiliser and countermeasures to ensure high efficiency of crop yield.  As those resources decline, it becomes difficult to manufacture in the same methods...

The estimates for resource futures are highly pliable, and contingent on demand from the populace...

suffice to say, the calculations when run and based on x amount of global barrels per day... can vary from as low as 70odd years of GLOBAL reserves, to as far out as 270years, or more (if consumption patterns changed significantly within the next 10 years)...

There are also many assumptions; notably that certain resources cannot be synthesised in commercially viable manners or quantities (such as fertilisers from electrolysis at this time).

This is also a point of contention... as in a digital economy in which solar methods (chiefly thermal solar plants etc), microwave collectors and catalytic converters are more abundant, and we follow more of an Asimov path (yeast farmed and exponentially growing foodstuffs, anyone?), it may be possible that resource depletion timeframes extend to the thousands of years ballpark.

Hydrogen fuels, if increased and made the norm, would contribute to this extended resource depletion timeframe. The critical resources would shift to fissionable materials and super-heavy metals. This is where astro-mining might make sense. We are presently at a point where this may be the only way to get sufficient quantities of rare-earths at high enough grades.

There are limits to how many people could exist on earth; how much material could be arranged as people before the planet broke up... that number is extremely high, and would equate to a large number of people per cubic metre - I don't think we'd ever get to those densities... we have to ensure that we don't, because we would see fewer and fewer other species in the food web/nature web and environmental cycle. Fewer species mean less diversity and lowered resilience to extinction events - this is especially important given that we are the only source of life thus far known in the universe.

So, to conserve, or not to conserve... that is the question!

Bottomline,

Conserve (just in case the risky alternative of progress doesn't pan out).

Centrist style. Conserve, if only to protect the only source of life we yet know.

But don't impede genuine science where possible. 

Its a delicate balancing act that we'll have to walk to get this to work... it can be done though. I'm convinced that history swerves to favor the longshot and marginal outcome - time and again, those who argue the sky was falling were proved wrong, only due to changing variables and that swerve of history (that they didn't account for).

We don't want a full Borg-like technocracy - where people are only valued in so much as they are contributing to knowledge while they are contributing to knowledge. That feels too much like eugenics, and we all saw how well that panned out... psh. (genetic bottlenecking is not such a good thing).

Flipside of the coin, we don't want luddite levels of ultra-extremeist conservatism that frustrate progress to the point of making a self-fulfilling prophecy .

What do you think?

Do you feel that resources are becoming increasingly scarce?

Do you feel that humanity will somehow "swerve away from the cliff" and progress up the Kardashev scale? Why?

Do you think that cosmopolitanism and an effacing monoculture are an integral part of that "swerve away from the cliff?" I would argue an imposed, effacing, monoculture leads towards and not away from the cliff... whereas if a monoculture/standardised culture is another identity people hold alongside their traditional identities, then there is a chance forward. In that case though, I wouldn't call that so much 'cosmopolitanism' as 'global humanism'. 

What truly is "progress"? Epistemologically speaking... what can progress be as a theory of knowledge (hint, dialectic here...)

Catch you next time!