[MOC] Tie Defender (Minifig-scale, UCS-style)

[Sylyphics]

Tie Defender by Sy Lyphics, on Flickr

 

 

Instructions: Rebrickable

The TIE/D Defender is an advanced experimental TIE starfighter from Sienar Fleet Systems, armed to the teeth with four laser cannons, two ion cannons, two warhead launchers, and a hyperdrive. It's know for it's agility and ferocity both in looks and performance.

This UCS-style Tie Defender is minifig scale and is based on the most common depictions of the defender in various sources. The model features a cockpit with controls that can seat a tie pilot. The bottom hatch opens for the restocking of missiles, maintenance, and refueling the hyperdrive. The top hatch also opens as does the front (pilot is put in through the front). The focus on accuracy and aesthetics means this is a delicate display model not for play. To the best of my knowledge, doesn't use any illegal techniques which would stress pieces.

2 months ago when the May 4th contest was announced, I wanted to see if I could make a novel UCS-style Tie fighter from scratch in 2 months time, and I picked the Tie Defender/AD x7 as there were some elements I thought would be really attractive if done justice and that it had the most quintessential "Tie ball" of any of the popular Tie variants. Brick built wings seemed to me the most appealing route at this scale and especially in this variant, and you see the underside as frequently as the top. The AD x7 is same as the Defender, but missing the top ion cannons, cockpit missiles, and the hyperdrive. As the completed version, a more show room background seems to me to be more appropriate for this than the AD x7. It's also way easier to get good photos of that with the story scene so I ended up with more shots I like. My AD x7 contest entry and story are here:

 

Edited June 17, 2023 by Sylyphics

[Mr Ogel]

one of the best smooth tie balls I have seen

[TeddytheSpoon]

I'll echo that. That cockpit is incredible!

[Big_Daddy]

Impressive, especially how you managed to recreate that spherical cockpit!

[Veynom]

It is really one of the nicest minifig-scale rendition of the Defender I've seen since ....

I'm particularly happy to discover a cockpit which is not based on the "I've-seen-it-too-many-times" Jerac's model.

Just one question: how sturdy is your model?

[Shiva]

Nice one :)

[Sylyphics]

Thanks everyone, I really appreciate all the comments!

12 hours ago, Veynom said:

It is really one of the nicest minifig-scale rendition of the Defender I've seen since ....

I'm particularly happy to discover a cockpit which is not based on the "I've-seen-it-too-many-times" Jerac's model.

Just one question: how sturdy is your model?

In terms of sturdiness, it's not a play model but when on rest on display it's fine. I moved it around and shook it plenty during filming and it held up fine. It sits and doesn't tip as the center of gravity is back far enough, but the large brick built wings and the thin pylons mean that if you tip it forward too much, the pylons can come apart. The most delicate part is the joint/pylon area with the wings, so as long as you have a solid grip on the bottom two wings/joints/pylons and don't tip it you can move it without much issue. If you drag in around by one wing it will loosen but it's a few second fix to press the joints/pylons back together. I swooshed it around with two hands for a bit for fun and nothing broke, but I don't consider it to be a play/swooshable model.

[McMurder_them_softly]

Looks amazing! 

[Brick-Wombat]

Masterpiece.

[Monkeyulize]

Really interesting wing connections. I guess the alternation of the 65578 bar pieces is what provides the stability? I hope to get around to building this one as I'm big on illegal techniques and am not happy with other models in that regard and you claim to have avoided them :)

Edited July 6, 2023 by Monkeyulize

[Kage Goomba]

Little small for UCS Style :) but still good.

 

(I'm teasing - as I did a UCS TIE Defender hehe)

[Sylyphics]

On 6/7/2023 at 6:29 AM, McMurder_them_softly said:

Looks amazing! 

Thanks, quite happy with it's look, too!

On 6/8/2023 at 8:21 AM, Brick-Wombat said:

Masterpiece.

Thank you!

On 7/6/2023 at 8:19 PM, Kage Goomba said:

Little small for UCS Style :) but still good.

 

(I'm teasing - as I did a UCS TIE Defender hehe)

Yeah, I wondered about calling it UCS as it's quite nebulous, and Lego uses it for a variety of scales and detail levels, and in my mind serves a similar role of display for the collector who wants the best they can get at the scale. Can be used as an indicator of the part count and price-tag (part count wise it's pretty close to the recent UCS A-wing, 1573 vs 1672), though my Defender is cheaper than any UCS set they'd put out these days (about $150 estimated new on Bricklink for where I am right now before shipping, and regular Lego Starwars sets are more expensive than that). I guess packed-with-as-many-relevant-details-as-the-scale-allows style, accuracy/fidelity focused, and minifig-scale, is more accurate, but figured UCS could be used to denote that more succinctly.

On 7/6/2023 at 1:05 PM, Monkeyulize said:

Really interesting wing connections. I guess the alternation of the 65578 bar pieces is what provides the stability? I hope to get around to building this one as I'm big on illegal techniques and am not happy with other models in that regard and you claim to have avoided them :)

I tested experimentally during design and it's stable enough without alternation between the 65578 parts, but the alteration adds a little bit of extra stability, yes. The model is delicate and for display only, though mine has stood without issue since I built it and survived being moved around for it's photoshoots. It doesn't use anything I know of to be "illegal", like connections that stress pieces due to not fitting, bending pieces, things half studded in/not fully connected, etc, essentially things that to me feel like they are "cheating" the system, as the fun of designing it for me is to get it to work within the confines of the "rules". I'm actually fair pedantic about trying to avoid these "illegal" connections and that's one of the reasons I greatly prefer to design with physical bricks, as stud.io is very tolerant of some connections that don't work in real bricks. 

An example of me avoiding said connections in this design from the Ad x7 thread linked in the first post:

Quote

The brick built wings also were tricky, as I wanted them to be accurate and robust but also like the rest of the build not use any illegal techniques which would stress pieces. The rear of the wing actually needed a slight trick with that, as the tiny irregularity of the 1x1 inverted bracket piece makes it push up pieces almost unnoticeably but it does. Not sure why Lego made that (I think 0.5 LDU) offset. In any case, by making the rear grey trim out of 1x2 tiles, which have no underside stud supports, allows the parts to push together the 0.25 LDU part tolerances in between them and solve the 0.5 LDU extra issue cleanly.

This kind of work around requires physical bricks as stud.io doesn't complain so doesn't even show as a problem digitally. I will say my personal definition of "illegal" connections doesn't extend to things that are difficult for children or open to interpretation in the instructions (i.e. how deep to insert a bar into a hole), though I think that's usually only a concern for Lego themselves and not MOCs.

Edited July 28, 2023 by Sylyphics

[Kage Goomba]

18 hours ago, Sylyphics said:

Yeah, I wondered about calling it UCS as it's quite nebulous, and Lego uses it for a variety of scales and detail levels, and in my mind serves a similar role of display for the collector who wants the best they can get at the scale. Can be used as an indicator of the part count and price-tag (part count wise it's pretty close to the recent UCS A-wing, 1573 vs 1672), though my Defender is cheaper than any UCS set they'd put out these days (about $150 estimated new on Bricklink for where I am right now before shipping, and regular Lego Starwars sets are more expensive than that). I guess packed-with-as-many-relevant-details-as-the-scale-allows style, accuracy/fidelity focused, and minifig-scale, is more accurate, but figured UCS could be used to denote that more succinctly.

Generally UCS models are larger bigger part counts. Again I'm just teasing.

Feel free to check mine out for comparison if you haven't already - def a very challenging design TIE Defenders are.