Ships of the Starfleet Museum: United Earth ships of the Earth-Romulan War part 1

[Note: This kit is also available at a Google Drive mirror location: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1BYPim7e8uL_T4dufwvlEwkRg8SV4jorT?usp=share_link]

This kit aims to provide printable ships and kit-bashable parts supporting designs from Masao Okazaki’s Starfleet Museum website.

Going back to the late 1990’s, Masao offered fans an original take on Star Trek history and ship design between the Vulcan first contact and the original TV series. It featured a logical technological progression from the early years of warp drive, through the Earth-Romulan War, and on to the early Federation era. Star Trek Enterprise was produced after this time and contradicted much of this timeline, but the Starfleet Museum remains a fascinating and compelling take on Trek Lore.

My intention with this latest kit is to cover the ships of the Earth-Romulan War. This kit covers half of Masao’s United Earth Stellar Navy’s (UESN) ship designs. A subsequent kit will include the rest of the UESN designs, and another will include Romulan ships seen during the war.

As with my previous kits, these ships are meant to be compatible with all of my previously published starship parts kits.

See my Cults3d Profile for the full list of parts kits I’ve released so far. Each of these kits includes combined ships and ship parts STL files, along with blender source files used to create them. Ship files should be ready to print. Part files are provided so you can import into your 3d modelling software of choice to combine and modify to easily create your own ship designs. All parts are meant to be cross-compatible between kits.

Included Ships

This kit includes the following ships:

Archer class system patrol ship

The fusion powered Archer class of small system patrol ships were responsible for defending Earth’s colonies during the early stages of Earth-Romulan War.

Bison class fusion starliner

The Bison class was a large flexible transport ship, which later served as the basis for many of the UESN’s larger cruiser designs. This model is a fusion powered civilian starliner.

Bison class M/AM freighter

Originally fusion powered, the Bison class proved adaptable to the newly introduced matter/anti-matter warp cores. This model is a m/am powered ship that saw service as a transport by the UESN during the war.

Curran class system patrol ship

The matter/anti-matter powered Curran class served a similar role to the Archer class system patrol ships during the late stages of the Earth-Romulan War.

Little Nell M/AM experiments

The Little Nell ships served as Earth’s first matter/anti-matter technology demonstrators.

Minotaur class fighter

The small M/AM-powered Minotaur fighters, partnered with the larger Yorktown class carrier ships, where a key attack platform for the UESN’s offensives in the later parts of the war.

Powhatan class light cruiser

Powhatten class cruisers were designed to serve as escorts for Yorktown carrier groups.

Torsk class light cruiser

The Torsk class was a small ship designed for border intelligence and counter-intelligence tasks.

Yorktown class carrier

The Yorktown class carrier was the parent component of the Yorktown-Minotaur system, which was critical during the last several years of the war.

Yorktown with bay doors open, showing a docked Minotaur fighter.

Zip Files

Zip files are included in the following google drive locations:

• Earth-Romulan-War_Earth-part1-ship-stls.zip – Contains the combined, ready to print, ship files.
• Earth-Romulan-War_Earth-part1-parts-stls.zip – Contains all of the individual part STL files used to create the combined ship files.
• Earth-Romulan-War_Earth-part1-blender-files – Contains the source blender files used to generate the parts, as well as files with the parts assembled as used to generate the combined ship files.

Notes on scaling and working with Blender

My target scale for all source files and output STL files is 1:1000, However, I generally recommend 1:2500 or smaller given the detail level of the model. Although these files have not been extensively tested through printing, they are intended to be resized to match common modelling and miniatures scales.

Target scale - Scale STL files to: - Notes

1/3900 - 0.25641026 - FASA miniature scale

1/3788 - 0.26399155 - ADB Starline 2400 scale

1/3125 - 0.32 - ADB Starline 2500 scale

1/2500 - 0.4 - The Trek modelers "Golden scale"
1/1600 - 0.625 - TOS 3-Ship Set scale

1/1400 - 0.714285714 - Common resin model scale

1/650 - 1.538461538 - Modelling scale

1/537 - 1.862197393 - Common scale for TMP models

1/350 - 2.857142857 - Large scale

Blender

Blender is free, which to be honest was the primary factor in my decision to learn it. There are many fine video and text tutorials available online if you're interested in learning more. For a basic tutorial on moving and joining objects in Blender(which should be the minimum you need to know when working with these parts), see this instructables tutorial.

You can use File -> Import -> Stl (.stl) and File -> Export -> Stl (.stl) to load or save STL files in blender.

Note: This kit was built using Blender 3.1.

Post-processing STL output

Although all of the STL files included have been tested as valid watertight meshes, joining the parts together and exporting new STL files can introduce small errors that may cause issues with slicing programs. I recommend any STL files you create are checked using a program like Netfabb Basic free edition. Doing a simple "Close All Holes" repair has fixed most of the issues I've run into so far. If you do run into issues with mesh quality, please let me know.

File manifest

Parts

The
Earth-Romulan-War_Earth-part1-parts-stls.zip file contains all of the part STL model files listed below. Note that part files are not meant to be printed on their own, but instead they are meant to be combined to create new ship designs that can then be output as joined files and printed.

Part - Description

archer-front-hull.stl - Forward hull.

archer-rear-hull.stl - Rear hull with main warp bulb.

bison-fusion-reactor.stl - Fusion reactor hull section.

bison-fusion-rear-nacelle.stl - Rear warp bulb – fusion variant.

bison-main-hull-freighter.stl - Main forward hull component – freighter variant.

bison-main-hull-starliner.stl - Main forward hull component – starliner variant.

bison-mam-reactor.stl - Matter / Anti-matter reactor hull section.

bison-mam-rear-nacelle.stl - Rear warp bulb – Matter / Anti-matter variant.

bison-nacelle-port.stl - Supplemental warp nacelle.

bison-nacelle-starboard.stl - Supplemental warp nacelle.

bison-warp-pylon-port.stl - Supplemental warp pylon.

bison-warp-pylon-starboard.stl - Supplemental warp pylon.

curran-front-hull.stl - Forward hull.

curran-rear-hull.stl - Rear hull with main warp bulb.

little-nell1-body.stl - Main hull.

little-nell2-front-hull.stl - Forward hull.

little-nell2-rear-hull.stl - Rear hull with main warp bulb.

minotaur-front-hull.stl - Forward hull.

minotaur-rear-hull.stl - Rear hull with main warp bulb and impulse.

powhatten-front-hull.stl - Forward hull.

powhatten-rear-hull.stl - Rear hull with main warp bulb.

torsk-canon-pylon-port.stl - Pylon connecting laser cannon with hull.

torsk-canon-pylon-starboard.stl - Pylon connecting laser cannon with hull.

torsk-front-hull.stl - Forward hull.

torsk-laser-canon-port.stl - Main laser cannon.

torsk-laser-canon-starboard.stl - Main laser cannon.

torsk-nacelle-port.stl - Warp nacelle.

torsk-nacelle-starboard.stl - Warp nacelle.

torsk-rear-hull.stl - Rear hull section.

torsk-warp-pylon-port.stl - Pylon connecting nacelle with rear hull.

torsk-warp-pylon-starboard.stl - Pylon connecting nacelle with rear hull.

yorktown-parts-main-hull-bay-closed.stl - Main hull with launch bay closed.

yorktown-parts-main-hull-bay-open.stl - Main hull with launch bay open, includes docked Minotaur fighter.
yorktown-parts-nacelle-port-bottom.stl - Warp nacelle.

yorktown-parts-nacelle-port-top.stl - Warp nacelle.

yorktown-parts-nacelle-starboard-bottom.stl - Warp nacelle.

yorktown-parts-nacelle-starboard-top.stl - Warp nacelle.

yorktown-parts-pylon-port.stl - Warp pylon.

yorktown-parts-pylon-starboard.stl - Warp pylon.

Combined ship STLs

The Earth-Romulan-War_Earth-part1-ship-stls.zip file provides the printable ships created using the parts included in this kit.

Part - Description

ship-archer.stl - Archer class system patrol ship.

ship-bison-fusion-starliner.stl - Bison class fusion starliner.

ship-bison-mam-freighter.stl - Bison class M/AM freighter.

ship-curran.stl - Curran class system patrol ship.

ship-little-nell1.stl - Little Nell 1 M/AM experiment ship.

ship-little-nell2.stl - Little Nell 2 M/AM experiment ship.

ship-minotaur.stl - Minotaur class fighter.

ship-powhatten.stl - Powhatan class light cruiser.

ship-torsk.stl - Torsk class light cruiser.

ship-yorktown.stl - Yorktown class carrier.

ship-yorktown-open-bay.stl - Yorktown class carrier with open bay and docked Minotaur fighter.

Blender files

The Earth-Romulan-War_Earth-part1-blender-files.zip file contains parts files, containing the STL parts arranged as used in the sample ship designs, and parts source files, containing the raw blender objects used to create the parts.

License

I'm releasing this under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license. You're free to distribute and modify these files (even for commercial use), provided you attribute the creator and distribute your contributions under the same license.

Note: this license applies to the files released in this kit. The underlying designs are owned by Masao Okazaki and commercial use of those designs should get his permission.