Chronocidal

Can't believe those have gotten that expensive now, I think they were $25 when I got my first version of that. Two things I would recommend: 1. File off the locking wedge tabs on the clear parts for the deflector dish and warp nacelle grilles. They are far too big, and will more than likely shatter the part when you try to press them into place. The tabs will still work fine to hold them in place without any latches, even if you don't glue them. 2. Check the nacelle alignment before you get any further, if you didn't already. Mine looked a bit droopy, and I did some interior jury-rigging to brace them better, but you're probably past the point where you'd want to do that. You could probably still tweak the pylon alignment before final painting though. Definitely a better kit than the old AMT, and a whole lot easier to display.

There is definitely a texture there if you zoom into the photo, but it's also something that might be fine enough that it will disappear under a coat of paint. That's definitely a far better resolution than my FDM printer, think the max that one gets down to is 0.08mm Might have to look into a resin one for some tinier parts modeling.

Might depend on what you're shipping, but as far as HLJ is concerned, DHL is still a chunk cheaper than EMS for me. I haven't had any orders from anywhere else to compare rates with though, so it might vary by shop. Boat shipping for my final NY order finally arrived last week, and took almost exactly three months. Unless the tracking data was lying, the reason that takes so long is that they actually take the long way around the planet, rather than just crossing the Pacific. My package was processed through customs in New Jersey.

Hah.. no Excel, but I do shuffle about item combinations a great deal. I just know DHL ships by volume, so I start with the biggest box to see how much I can fit along with it.

I'm actually thinking about this a bit more, and I might need to see about getting spare pilots and instrument panels printed for the DX VF-1. Finally got a spare Roy, and I'd like to convert it as much as possible to a DYRL version, but would rather not have to cannibalize another DYRL release. So I caved and picked up the Discoprise to make good on that idea for a TOS repaint, and took a moment to perform a sanity check. Yeah, I think the ships are still essentially the same size. In fact, I think it actually is shorter by several decks, because the warp nacelle and saucer pylons were all squashed downward. Either way, saucer looks to have two decks at the edge, about 2-3 above and below that, 3-4 decks in the saucer pylon (offset because they left room for the TMP style torpedo launcher, but didn't include them), four decks above centerline on the secondary hull, one at the level of the shuttle bay deck, and two below centerline. Aside from a few oddball windows and lights between defined deck divisions (which the TOS design has too), it really looks like it just lines up as a nice mid-point between the TOS and TMP refit designs.

Yep, weight/volume play into things a lot. My order with HLJ was primarily a pair of Sv-262 Mirage kits. DHL was the cheapest base price for those, and then I was able to pick a pile of smaller items to add to that box without the shipping charge going up any. That's basically the way I've been shipping for a while now at HLJ; start with the biggest item, and then add smaller ones until the shipping goes up to know you've got the most bang for your buck.

I just shipped a rather large box from HLJ with a couple of kits that'd been sitting a long time, and DHL was about $20 less than EMS.. though it was a pretty big box.

So.. I can -mostly- give the BoP a pass. The reason its scale is so inconsistent is because they didn't have the budget for new ships, and used the same model in a wide variety of situations. It's not the only ship that happened with, and the BoP was about as good a situation as you can get for that, because it really didn't have any major external details that indicated a particular size, like clearly defined rows of windows. The modern version has no excuse whatsoever. It's all digital. JJ pulled a JJ, and said, "Why don't we just make this bigger?", without even considering that someone had already drawn the full schematic of the ship. There's a -reason- that the windows on the JJ-prise are in the same spaces as the TMP refit.. the ship was supposed to be the same size.. but noooooo.... they had to go bigger. They grabbed a TMP-scaled ship, and clicked the "scale" button. They did the same thing with the Discoprise... sort of. I've watched comparisons of the deck layout where people compare the window alignments, and it looks a lot like you could just call that version what I'm going to dub a "Pre-fit" 1701, like a transitional model between the TOS and TMP versions. The thing that baffles me about the Discovery Enterprise though is that the bridge... doesn't fit. I don't know what that bridge is supposed to be. The original upper dome was a single story module, set atop a larger deck that looked like it was also a single deck. I have no idea how that dome on the Discovery design works. Did they submerge the actual bridge into the subdeck? What's with that huge freaking bay window on the front? The bridge was always a single room in that dome, but now the room must be massive. What is even going on? Sorry to derail things with scale ranting, but to bring things back on subject... I think what I might do eventually is grab the Discovery Enterprise model, replace the bridge with a more TMP/TOS hybrid design, and just paint it up in light grays that look like a mix of TOS and TMP details. I might straight up print myself a new bridge design, if I can get the resolution to do it.

Yeah.... those models were an insult. And really, the scaling isn't something you would even notice in the show, even if you did watch it. I watched someone unbox one and just stare at the camera baffled for several minutes. Even setting aside the ludicrous pricing for such a tiny lump of plastic, it begs the question, why couldn't they have just kept the same sizes? It's like they just want to do everything in their power to make as little sense as possible. It's frustrating because I actually really like the updated TOS 1701 design in Discovery, and would love to get that kit someday, but the pricing has driven me away repeatedly, and I can't justify it for something that doesn't even come with the aztec decals. Frankly, I was never going to decorate it as the show version anyway.. if I get one, I'm painting it straight-up TOS gray with a spare set of classic decals.

I don't even want to pretend to understand what the nonsense with the different scales is at this point. Far as I'm concerned, the Pike version is the same scale as the ancient 18" TOS Enterprise. Until I see someone drawing complete deck diagrams that show me why a pseudo-military ship has 30 foot bay windows, I'm just going to run on my own headcanon that the Enterprise has always been the same size, and the current generation of writers has absolutely no comprehension of scale as a concept.

Literally all I want from a new MP Starscream is for them to put in even half as much effort hiding the robot as the movie-styled Blitzwings have done. Just give the thing a flat bottom, I don't even care if I can see folded chest or arms or whatever from underneath so long as I'm not looking at an F-15 carrying its half-formed Siamese twin on its belly.

That wouldn't be a bad thing, but I feel like the BoP is one of the few AMT kits that isn't screaming for a remake, at least not nearly as loudly as several of the later Enterprises. I wouldn't turn down a new, more accurate mold though, especially if they managed to make the wings pivot. There is a small pile of inaccuracies with the rear engine ports that I see a lot of custom builds rectifying.

It's not a bad looking kit.. but I think I would very much rather have a new mold of any of the old disgustingly sub-par AMT kits. A modern 1701-D or E would be an absolute must buy, in pretty much any scale. Just.. anything even remotely equivalent in quality to even the 1/1000 snap kits would put the old AMT kits to utter shame. I think 1/1000 would be way too big for those, but even if they just matched the original scales of the AMT kits, I'd be tripping over myself to buy them. That voyager is pretty much as good as bought though. I have the old Monogram kit, and while it's very detailed, I'd love one scaled with the rest of the 1/1000 line. It's just a really good size for that scale of ship.

Two questions... 1. Where did you hear about this? 2. Who on earth asked for a 1/350 of that ship, and who approved it before all of the other MUCH more noteworthy designs they could make kits of? I could name a few (dozen) I would much rather see first.

Not wrong, sometimes it gets quite overdone. I think someplace that would make sense is on the wing thickness, instead of those fugly slopes at the root, but that would also prevent using the printed tiles, so it's a trade-off. I mostly think that those stark diagonal slopes on the sides of the cockpit and all the terraced sections they cause would look better if they were more subtle slopes, 60 degrees instead of the current 45s, or maybe more curved bricks. I'd also like to rework the canopy shape using some angled bricks. I think there's plenty of room in the nose to rig up some angled mounts that would give a better shape, but I'm not sure what that would look like yet. The wrap-around curve to the windshield just feels wrong to me.

So, I'm feeling like I almost need to rebuild the entire nose with either side or front-facing studs, and remove those giant hard edges from those angled bricks. I'm thinking layered plates would just give a much better profile overall.

Definitely an upgrade, that hatch tile is great, and love the Atlantis version. I can't say the hatch ever particularly bothered me, because I do appreciate little brick-built details, but things like that are what I would expect of MOCs, not an official set with the ability to print their own detail parts. Stickers are something I never touch as a rule, because I hate having them peel over time, but the Discovery stickers fell into a whole 'nother level of terrible when they printed that nameplate diagonally. Personally, I'm debating rebuilding a significant portion of the nose to use... not what they used. Might lose the crew cabin, but I don't particularly like the printed windscreen and cockpit top they used, and want to revisit some of the tiered slopes that make up the shape. LEGO seems to really struggle sometimes with the concept of building up those larger curved shapes (though fortunately nothing as incomprehensible as the UCS Slave I).

I think the answer to that is complicated. It's true, I think the Sv-262 is the only non-hero valk Bandai has ever made in their DX line. I don't think that alone is why, since it seems to me making Mirage's version would fix that to an extent (or, to whatever extent can be attributed to her character which.. let's face it, Delta didn't do her many favors, but that's another topic for another time). If you compare the DX Sv-262 with the 1/72 Bandai model kit though, I think you can also see that the DX figure is over-complicated in a few ways, and the transformation is more complex than it needs to be. It's a beast to transform. The thing that always baffled me a little about the DX though. It looks very fragile.. but we never saw many reports of broken parts, or manufacturing defects. That leads me to think one of two things must be true: 1. It really is actually very sturdy, despite its complex design 2. Not enough people bought it to give a good sample size of quality control. There is always going to be a portion of the fanbase that buys any design that looks cool, regardless of being a hero or villain, but I do think that hurt this one quite a bit. Between the complicated transformation, and villain status, I just don't think Bandai sees this as a design worth the effort to produce.

Holy cow.. yes. Same. It's a crying shame Bandai abandoned the Ba so utterly. I keep hoping they get back to it and give us a Mirage version, but it's like they've just given up on trying to sell the 262. I doubt even throwing the main character in one would help at this point.

The scale on the BoP has been wacky for years. There are long discussions about it, if you go looking, because the same filming model was used in multiple settings as multiple unique ship variants. You know.. without actually changing anything about the model like the sizes of hatches, or windows. From what I recall, the popular size tends to hover around 350 feet long, in order to work out for certain situations in Star Trek IV. That really is a nice little kit though, and really good detail for the size. Just keep in mind that the wing baffles are incorrect for the raised position. I detailed the process to fix them sometime in the last year, but it's a fairly involved mod that involves cannibalizing the lower position parts, so you can't switch between them. I just wound up buying two of the kit to make one in each mode. In terms of the Oberth though.. I've got no love of that ship either, but I'm absolutely down for cutting it in half and gluing it to a rock to make a phase-cloak accident USS Pegasus display.

I think the first half of this is absolutely true (and I agree with the second half because I'm in a similar situation ). Macross designs have definitely spoiled me for transforming aircraft designs, because they tend to be much more concerned with remaining at least mostly physically possible. Kawamori may design the battroids first, and work backwards to the fighter mode, but he designs them with the full intent of collapsing any robot parts down to be completely contained within an aerodynamic aircraft. That's the one thing Transformers never really seem to care about anymore. They'll absolutely try and mimic the character design from the cartoon, but do not give two shakes if the transformation into an "airplane" means that the character wears an airplane as a backpack, and the "transformation" consists of tucking in his arms so they hide under the wings when you fold them out. Starscream and the Seekers/Coneheads have historically be fairly decent.. but things like Superion and the movie Jetfire design just cannot pretend to care. I would really love to see Macross transforming toys become more prevalent, if only to have more examples on the market of transforming airplanes that actually look like airplanes. What's the point of a transforming toy if kids only ever want to play with it in one mode? You may as well just buy action figures at that point.

Animation-focused models do tend to be better off than ones designed for games, so you might not fare too badly just trying to print the raw file. The mesh does look fairly high resolution. You might get lucky, as some print software will add a default thickness to bare polygons, but the more likely scenario is that you would need to add thickness to certain parts, especially cloth if it has no physical thickness in the model. The cloth at the top of the boots looks very thin, for instance, and you would probably need to thicken it up to be printable. Any cloth modeled over the top of the character body would probably need to be made into solid objects, rather than thin layers.

I think it partially speaks to the necessary precision and labor involved in producing the Yamato design (including all the tampos). Remember, Yamato made sold a ton of the 1/60 v.2 mold, and still closed its doors. There's a reason why Arcadia's prices are higher.

Yeah, Zeta overcomplicated this to their own detriment with the way they packaged everything. I don't get it. I heard someone saying it was to avoid copyright problems, but I don't know why it affected them and not Mechanical Alliance with their version. I would say though that fortunately the butt flaps are kind of unimportant overall. I don't really miss them. Though.. I wonder if the smaller flaps on the upper back would fit in the same socket. They're slightly smaller, but since the upper pair is even less visible, they might at least complete the silhouette a bit better.

I'd be all over these if they weren't so small I could sneeze them off of a shelf.