Cousarmy0001

I've seen a few ships that have only sloped the bottom gun deck inward, and I've seen a few images of historic ships that suggest that at least some multi-deck ships did this in real life. You may be able to swing it so that you bring it out at the very bottom, then bring it back in by the top of the bottom level. If you manage that, then you can leave your upper gun deck as it is. This thread features a multi-deck ship that appears to make use of the Green Hair method all the way to the top, though, so that might work as well.

Something I just thought of, and I don't know why I didn't sooner, is if you're giving this two decks, you may want to look into "tumblehome" techniques, particularly on the lower deck. (In case you're unfamiliar with the term, that's what it's called when the ships slope inward the higher they go) If the ship is straight up and down from top to bottom, you might not be happy with the finished product. I'm not familiar enough with multi-deck methods to give good advice, but there are some ships on the forum that do this, and there may be a tutorial somewhere as well. It might be worth looking into.

In the immortal words of IconaPop, "I LOVE IT!!! I DON'T CARE!!!"

I think my favorite feature would be either the crane, or the railing on the edge of the wharf. How exactly did you get somebody to PAY you to design and build stuff like this?

Is this on a small hull? It looks terrific!

In looking at your pictures, you should be able to keep the blue arches while scooting everything closer together, the only difference is that the upper level of arches will be continuous, instead of having a two stud break between them. I can only think of one ship that's even tried making hammocks, and that was the one that IAMMAC posted. I've seen several where people have made bunks on a lower deck where there are no guns, but purists usually comment on it. Most people (myself included) tend to make a nice captain's cabin, and leave it at that. I'm sure your crew will be grateful for the dormitory, though. What faction do you plan on this ship belonging to?

One cannot rush perfection! Take your time. (But hurry it up!)

The Imperial Flagship is certainly an iconic ship. I remember the first time I saw one, my head almost exploded (that was before I found out about this forum, mind you). If you're going to emulate an official set, that's definitely the one you should do, and you're certainly moving along well! The more detailed kitchen you designed is a great addition, as is (I assume) the armory on the lower deck. Furthermore, I like the blue arches between the decks. I think it adds a bit of a personal touch, and makes it less of an exact copy of the original. I'm curious about the floor level window at the bow, though. Are you intending to raise it as that deck continues? Do you intend to have another deck above the upper gun deck as well? If you do, the hull may wind up being disproportionately tall, you may want to add a few hull sections to make it longer and balance it out. That would have the added bonus of giving you additional guns, of course, but will make the ship more expensive if you ever plan to build it. On that subject, though, you also may want to think about condensing the space between the guns. Sixteen guns spread over two decks is a rather light armament, you may want to consider eliminating the 1x2 bricks between each port, and scooting them all closer together. This would allow you to increase your gun complement, making it look something like this: If you kept your four hull pieces, and your two decks, this would take you from sixteen guns to twenty-eight. Naturally, if you add additional hull pieces, you would increase the gun count exponentially. The other thing that stuck out to me from your pictures are what I assume are three beds in the aft of the ship, in what I assume will be the captain's cabin. Historically, pretty much everybody slept in hammocks, so you may want to cut that down to one bed, unless your captain enjoys sharing his living space with his officers and crew. In their place, you could add furniture that would give a lot of character and detail to your ship.

I've realized that I'm going to have to pick a different color. I looked up dark green 1x6 bricks on Bricklink (Lego only has 1x4s) and they're running about $10 each. Which really sucks for one of the buildings I have, that was going to be made almost entirely of dark green 1x6s... Anyhow, thank you for the encouragement. I don't know the term for the curtain holders, but "dogs" works for me. Kolonial, those are a little bit small, but I can probably use that on some of my other buildings. I really like the bust as well, I'm quite sure I can use that. Actually, the more I look at your picture, the more things I see that I'm pretty sure I'll steal from you

So I'm working on a colonial display, and I'm looking to put brick built curtains in a very large room. I've got a basic design in LDD, but since they're all pretty much just a single row of bricks, I'm not certain it will actually look good when it's actually built: I've been watching this forum for quite some time, and I can't say I've seen anybody post any buildings that have curtains on their interiors. Do any of you have curtains in an MOC or official set, or do any of you have suggestions for building them?

I assume the bow is meant to be a ram, though using it as such will likely destroy the bowsprit and foul the rigging. I think it looks pretty sweet, though.

He's saying there aren't any *actual* cannons on board, just imaginary ones behind the panels in the hull.

This is a very interesting piece. It's not overly complicated or intricate in its structural details, which makes me suspect that it's actually solidly built, and wouldn't come tumbling down if you looked at it funny. It makes up for the lack of structural details, though, through a lot of clever accents. The statues above the entrance are incredible, as is the bedroom and the hallway. Very well done, indeed!

That's a nice little ship. Are there cannons implied behind the two inscribed panels on the hull?

A very nice little ship! I particularly like your figurehead. It's easily my favorite feature of this one. Your crew also has a lot of character (no pun intended). It almost looks like the cast of an anime, or something akin to Firefly in the age of sail. I don't think the color scheme looks bad, by the way. I think you've got just the right amount of yellow to provide highlights, but not so much that the ship looks garish. The only things that I might do differently is to put latticed windows on the sides of the captain's cabin (similar to the one on the stern), and to add a sail or two running from the bowsprit to the mainmast. Probably just one sail, though.

As far as I know, they're all the same layout, just different colors, as The Imperial Soldier said. There's the grey stone one like in this MOC, the same thing but with green stone which came with the Rock Island Refuge, and one that was all grass and rocks, that came with the old castle sets.

That's quite the layout! I like what you did to spruce up the water plates, rather than just leaving them plain blue. I think that's probably my favorite feature here. It looks good, yet is a whole lot cheaper than putting bricks over every single stud of water.

In some ways, I actually like this better than the original. The colors are more subdued, which I think is a definite improvement over the original. Even as a kid, I thought the yellow made it look like the main thing the Imperial Trading Post traded in was hotdogs and mustard. I also like the redo of the little merchant ship. That was one of my all time favorite Lego designs, and it's nice to see it looking a little more modern.

This is incredible! The Alaskas were one of my favorite ships of the war, it's too bad they came along too late to do very much. An excellent reproduction, indeed!

I wasn't bothered by the original, but I think of your tinkers, the last one looks best.

My only complaint is that she seems to be riding rather high in the water, maybe 5-6 bricks high- presumably that's so that the berthing deck can be shown. The prow does seem a little bit too vertical, but that's also only above the waterline.

Geez! And people think my Thunderchild's 2,000 pieces is huge :-D

Both kidneys and a chunk of liver, I would bet :-P

A *simple* thing you could do that would help gussy up this ship a bit would be to add some deck guns. There are a wide variety of deck gun (aka caronade) designs available on this forum- they're pretty much all brick built, meaning that they're made from scratch, not using the normal Lego cannons. Adding two or three carronades to each side of your ship will do a lot to add some detail and make the ship look more complete. Perhaps adding a ship's boat or two in the center of the main deck might be a good idea, as well. As for more complex improvements you could make, you could try adding "planking" to your decks, via 1x1 to 1x8 tiles of your preferred deck color. I usually go with "brick yellow", which is more of a tan than a yellow, but you could always do white, brown, sand yellow (tan), or any other color that tickles your fancy. It would remove some playability for your daughter, but IMO it looks a whole lot nicer- so much so that I recently redid all of my ships in this way. Additionally, and this one is one of my favorite things to do when I design and build a ship, is to make an interior for your captain's cabin, assuming that you can view it by moving some windows or lifting a deck plate. There are a lot of cool furniture designs out there for beds, desks, bookshelves, liquor cabinets, musical instruments, etc that can really make a ship design "pop". If you want to get your daughter involved in the process, this might be a fun thing for her to help you with. If you don't already have it (you said you're new to the whole Lego thing) I HIGHLY recommend you get Lego Digital Designer (LDD). It's a building program that is free from Lego, that will let you design your own stuff, and then give you a list of the parts you need to order either from Lego's "pick-a-brick" or from Bricklink. It *usually* makes things a whole lot easier. On that note, if you haven't already discovered Bricklink, you should check it out. You can get just about any Lego part you can imagine there.

You should look into Brethren of the Brick Seas, the forum is at http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showforum=177 You've already got a ship for it :-)