FASA Battleships: Star Trek starship parts kit expansion #11

Note: Because Thingiverse has had problems in the past, especially with including all files in a single zip, I’ve also posted these files to an alternative Google drive location. You can access that location here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1OM93WdyZ2D0KNjlDbAs5RC9ZFbh_GkRk?usp=sharing

Update December 9, 2021: I’ve made some significant quality improvements to the Federation Indomitable, Romulan Nova Z-1, and Klingon Fatman L-13 models. Most changes may not be immediately obvious, but I’ve added model detailing to remove large scale defects like the “crease” that was previously in the Z-1’s wing. I’ve also included a variant of the L-13 that adds hull detailing similar to those seen on the K’t’inga class Klingon battlecruiser.

This is the eleventh expansion parts kit meant to complement my original Star Trek Constitution Class Parts Kit (https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3652210), providing parts and ship models to support the major Klingon, Romulan, and Federation battleships from the old FASA Star Trek tactical combat board game.

See my Thingiverse Profile (https://www.thingiverse.com/CaptainMojo/designs) for the full list of parts kits I’ve released so far. All parts are meant to be cross-compatible between kits. Gorn battleships and the Federation Excelsior class (also classed as a battleship in the game) are included in other kits.

This kit supports the following FASA ship classes:

The Federation Indomitable class, including versions using parts from the MK2 and MK3 (Enterprise-B type) Excelsior class. Note the original Stardate magazine art included out of scale Constitution class warp nacelles. I have replaced these with scale-correct Excelsior parts. Otherwise I’ve tried to stay close to the original art for the secondary hull.

The Klingon L-13 “Fat Man”.

The Klingon L-24 “Ever-Victorious”.

The Klingon KDF-2 “K’mirra”. This design is from the apocryphal FASA Next Generation Officer’s Manual, and represented a modified L-24 integrating large amounts of Federation technology.

The Romulan Z-1 “Nova”.

The FASA Star Trek RPG was very popular among us older Star Trek fans who came of age in the '80s and '90s. It lost its license to produce Star Trek in 1988, seemingly because Gene Rodenberry, hot off of the success of TNG season 1, wanted to de-emphasize the military aspect of Starfleet, despite the abundance of uniforms, ranks, and 50-megaton matter-antimatter warheads that all his shows were chocked full of.

FASA Trek provided a tremendous amount of background on a Trek universe that was, in many ways, more realistic and interesting than what Rodenberry and company wanted in TNG and later shows. Although much of this background has been supplanted by later official canon, the ships from this game remain popular among old-school fans.

Notes on scaling and working with Blender

My target scale for all source files and output STL files is 1:1000. Although
these files have not been extensively tested through printing, they are intended
to be resized to match common modelling and miniatures scales.

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: These kits were built using Blender 2.8.

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.

Parts list

See the contents of fasa-battleships-parts-stls.zip.

Part files, separate from the published ship files, are included to allow you to easily kitbash your own ships, and are not meant to be printed by themselves. For most items, the mesh origin has been set so that when you import these objects into your 3D editor of choice, they are positioned as they would be on the sample ships provided.

Parts