Cousarmy0001

Oh, Kurigan, I knew you had it in ya!

I like it! My only criticism is that the hull seems a wee bit tall. I wouldn't have used the brown 2x4 bricks to built up the brown part of the hull, I'd basically cut out the bottom two bricks all the way around. You'd probably have to rework the stern details a little bit, but not a whole lot. Unless, of course, you are intending to model portions of the ship below the waterline, in which case you've done an excellent job, and shouldn't change a thing! Aside from that, she's very nice. You've got some really good hull details, especially on the stern around the captain's cabin. Your tumblehome is very nice, and blends well. A very good usage of the CGH method. If it's still for sale, could you private message me the link?

Whoa! What happened?

Judging by the earlier comments, and your explanation of the relative lack of tumblehome slope, I think we could assume that you were a bit "reckless" in your design this time around, Kurigan I'll show myself out.

Yeah, but notice that the blues have an actual woman for their queen. That's because the blues are inherently sexier On a serious note, though, I think it would be slightly better if the blues all had red shoulderboards, except for their officer, who should have gold.

My Thunderchild was recently lengthened, and bumped from 14 guns to 18, and is a CGH style frigate, but for various reasons I'm unable to post a picture of it right now. I had planned on doing that once I finished redoing the sails, but that's likely to be quite a while from now.

Message incoming from a moderator in 3... 2... 1...

No such thing as too big!

Since this was already bumped, is anyone in contact with Dunkleostasis? If so, could you ask him if he has this ship in LDD, and if he's willing to share it? I've tried private messaging him, but he hasn't responded.

NICE :-)

I can't say I'm all that impressed by the hull of the ship, it seems kind of blocky in the transitions, though that may just be because of LDD. It's an interesting start, though. I've been building ships in and out of LDD for several years now, and I've barely dabbled in brick built hulls. Given his other work, I'd be interested to see him tweak his design some and see where it can go. On the subject of his other work, his military vehicles and field guns are very impressive. I particularly like his Abrams, Sherman, and Deuce and a Half.

If it makes you feel any better, when I posted my flagship here, which has four center hull sections, it was reblogged and described as "small but nice"... This is a very nice mod to a classic ship- one that I've always wished I'd bought. It makes me want to actually do something with the black and grey small bow and stern sections that I've had sitting around forever.

Kurigan, you of all people should know better than to bump a two year old thread

He's imagining all of the things he's going to do to his crew when he gets off of the island :-D I really like the trees in this. Very well done.

Yes, could you help me find the pieces of my mind? It got blown when I saw your ship!

I didn't notice the minifigures until Danny pointed them out. Holy crap!!!

I meant it in the way that you have it at the far right of your top picture there (only making the parts below the guns the same shade of red as the part below them) but I kinda like making the whole thing black, essentially making a dark red stripe down the length of the hull. The tan doesn't look as good as I thought it would, IMO. You definitely want horizontal stripes, though. Vertical would look really out of place, and silly. It would almost look like dazzle camouflage if you did that :-)

All of my ships have had light tan decks. While dark tan or brown would probably be ok, it might be a little too dark given the colors of the rest of the ship. I would definitely rule out black, if I were you. For the interior of your ship, you may want to put in a checkered floor using 2x2 plates or tiles, as that will give the interior a lot of class. I've also "tiled" the decks on my ships to make it look like planking, I personally think that adds a whole lot to a Lego ship's appearance, though it detracts from playability. After looking again, you may be right on the striping making it look too busy, since you've already got the red and dark red on the upper gun deck. If I were you, and wanted to work one in anyway, I would make the parts below the upper gun ports that are currently black, red, but leave the pieces on either side of the ports black, and make the parts in between the ports black as well, making your ship red with a black stripe. A white stripe might be too garish and might look busy, like you said, but I think a dark stripe like black might work. A tan stripe may also work, and on that note, you can probably leave the tan gun deck the way it is, without striping. The tan itself looks enough like a stripe, IMO, to fit the bill. So you may be fine as you are. I apologize, by the way, if my previous comment sounded harsh or overly critical. I didn't mean it that way, and spent a great deal of time trying to make it not sound that way. This is an impressive project, especially for a first build. I am truly interested to see where this goes.

That's an awful lot of space dedicated to crew areas, though. Even if you're looking at ships like the Vasa, it's rather extensive, particularly given the relative lack of space dedicated to such spaces in ships of that period. For a ship like that, you'd want to cut off the crew areas at about the 4th or 5th window from the aft end. If you're after the more common perception of a 1st rate, such as HMS Victory, you'll want to cut off the windows after the 2nd or 3rd window from the aft. What you have here looks terrific, and I think your proportions are good, but if you're looking for historic accuracy, there is way too much space here dedicated to the crew that could be used to haul guns. Additionally, most 1st Rates had three gun decks, as opposed to two. If I were you, and I wanted something close to historically accurate, I'd keep the length of the ship, but reduce the amount of space dedicated to crew comfort. If you're going the fantasy route, though, then it's a very good design. I could easily imagine something like this cruising around in Treasure Planet or any number of fantasy environments, and with the amount of space you have there, you could come up with some awesome interiors for dining areas, lounges, and such. On the less negative note, I think you've picked an interesting color scheme, though dark red pieces can be a bit hard to find. You might want to look into adding some stripes along the gun decks as well. The reds along with the black/tan look pretty nice, IMO. As you said, you're doing a lot of playing, and as one who has spent many a late night playing in LDD, I can certainly sympathize with rearranging every brick 3-4 times. What'll really get you is when you do that, and then just delete it all and start from scratch because you're not happy with it. Don't be surprised if you wind up completely redoing this whole thing 3-4 times before you're finished. I've done that with just about every single thing I've ever designed, and even the same with pretty much everything I've built. The number of adjustments increase exponentially with the size of the project, as well. My flagship has been mostly scrapped and rebuilt twice since I first "laid the keel" so to speak, with at least three times that many designs happening in LDD. It's an impressive build, if not historically accurate. I'm interested to see where it goes from here. I'm particularly interested in seeing what you come up with for the bow, as that's one of the most difficult parts to get right in a brick built hull. I like the look of your crew area, despite my criticisms, and if you can come up with something that looks that nice for the back, I'm sure you'll come up with something good for the front.

I'm a wee bit confused, is the tan part supposed to go inside the red part? Or is the tan part a really really big living area?

As a concept, it would be easy enough to widen, just add in extra spans at the bow, and widen the stern. You could also widen the tip of the bow to three or four studs instead of the current two. As fascinated as I am by the design concept, I don't know that an actual building of this is in the near future for me, as I'm trying to finally make some progress on my bluecoat harbor MOC. I really get the feeling that this would be much easier to do in real life than it is in LDD. If anybody else is interested in taking a stab at it, though, I would be happy to send them the file. Shoot me a message, and I'll send it on over.

I don't know if it can be done, Kurigan. It's not worth the trouble, Kurigan. It'll probably look like crap, Kurigan. All right, fine! You've convinced me to try! So I started thinking about it, and decided to give it a shot (I hope you don't mind me involving you in my inner monologue, Kurigan). After way long than I expected it to take, I finally wound up with a version that's two studs taller than the original, but has room for gunports that are relatively flush with the outer hull. I'd hoped to not have to raise the hull at all, but I couldn't work out a means of doing that without having the gunports two plates' depth inboard from the outer hull. I may try again tomorrow, though. I only gave her eight guns, because putting more than that on her seemed a bit excessive, though you easily could fit more if you wanted. So check it out, the Bark Gundeavor.

I built it with the hopes of figuring out a way to add gun ports. I think you could potentially add some in the exact center of the brown arches by placing a two stud gap there, but I'd have to play with it and see if that looks too weird. As narrow as the hull is, though, they'd have to either be staggered, or be really short brickbuilt guns (which I know you prefer). You could also try to widen the hull, I suppose. The last option would be to only add deck guns, but again, they'd have to be pretty damn light, essentially pop guns to any dedicated man of war. In short, it's an interesting technique, but I think in the end it might be too difficult to get in some of the details and features that we like to put on our ships (guns, captain's cabins, removable decks, etc). I do think that they used the "bending" technique that you like to get the upward curve in the blue plates at the aft half of the ship. I may play with it some more, but I did get rather irritated with it in LDD. If anybody wants the file, let me know and I'll send it to you. It would probably be a lot easier to work on with actual bricks, but I just don't have the budget for that right now.