Geihlen

I am a huge sucker for vertical ships, especially since we see so few of them. I love what you've created here, such a sleek, clean ship. I really like the use of the technic panels as a kind of cowling, those few parts add a lot of dimension leading into the main engine. Beautiful work! Edit: I imagine the answer is no, but does it lift off the stand? Or are those clear lift arms built into the main structure of the ship?

I'm pretty fond of this version! I tend to think that the original back is probably the way to go. As you said, neither are super accurate , but you'd have to add to the ship's length for not a whole lot of gain imo. Seeing it in the "proper" colors really makes me hope we get them one day. I think they really sell the work you've done. I think this design has gotten some really nice refinements and really sells what you see in game. If it were my design, I'd probably call it done, or be pretty close to doing so.

It looks like the guns are mounted under the engine pod in game, and that's what I remember from my time with it as well. I was trying to come up with a way to get a gun center mounted on the ones I was messing with, but couldn't really come up with an elegant solution, at least not with the rounded 1x2s I was experimenting with.

Well, I wasn't able to come up with any new solutions for the XS, buuuuuuuuut I did have a thought about the Mantis. Obviously, colors tweaked to taste (and a couple renders are with unavailable colors), but I think it might have some potential:

This ship is deceptively difficult I'm discovering. In some art the pod looks more narrow, in others it looks more or less the same width and that's to say nothing of some of the other oddities. That said, I think you're right that they are the same, or damn near enough to not matter especially at this scale. As a result, you widening the cargo pod is the best look either of us has gotten so far imo. If only the triangle tile (35787) came in dark orange, then you could get a stripe in there too. I'll probably still fiddle too. I can't seem to leave well enough alone with puzzles like these.

My original thought was shorter vertically. I believe 4 stacked plates are just slightly shorter than the 2 stud wide tile on its side that you had there in the first picture. But I got to fiddling and I think I got it slightly shorter both vertically and horizontally...or maybe I lost track of dimensions and only got it a little shorter vertically. I may have also gotten too weird with the shape to try and mimic that orange on the front of the cargo pod, but you can still get a feel for what I mean, I hope. The bracket on the side is for the little gun, I just could not for the life of me remember that part number or what it's classed under.

I'm glad my suggestions helped! I think, especially given the scale, that this has come out really good. The cutaway really shows what needs to be done to get the shape as close as you did. It seems like such a brick in game, but it has some very weird shapes. And I think your XS is looking great too. I wonder if we could at least get the cargo pod on the side a little shorter. I guess it would require a redesign of that entire area. But if we tried something with studs facing up, you might be able to get that painted stripe with some wedges. My mental image of that solution isn't as clear as the Mantis suggestions I had though. I might have to fiddle on stud.io later.

Also, since I didn't say it in my initial post, this model is beautiful. I've said it on other threads here but it's worth repeating here, their are some truly incredible builders here. I'm regularly awe inspired by what people create, especially when it's Technic, and this model is no exception to that. You've done an excellent job with the build (and with everything else discussed in the thread imo).

This post sums up my thoughts pretty succinctly. But I am also in the same boat, I'm not a Technic guy so some of the finer points of Jorgeopesi's grievances could be easily lost on me.

I think that's a genuinely good first stab at it. My immediate suggestions would be to swap the tan parts for orange ones (provided they exist in orange), as I think it might match the model a little better. I don't think the two different greens are inherently a bad thing, the Mantis has a fair amount of weathering in game iirc and this kind of replicates that. Also, the back end doesn't feature engines quite like this moc, but not having them might allow you to bring in some cheese wedge pieces and make the back end a smidge more on model. Edit: Also, looking at the game model again, maybe cheese wedge pieces could replace the 61409 wedges. You could use one and either stack a second below it, or maybe use a tile or even....use part 49307 under them in orange. Edit 2: Couldn't help but mess with it when I got home. I hope you don't mind. It gets a little thicc, but the Mantis isn't exactly streamlined, so maybe something like this:

Looking really good! I'm excited to see your takes on the rest of the TOR ships. The Mantis should be really interesting. I don't know that I've ever seen one done in Lego at any scale.

Those are looking really good. I think the light gray was the right choice on the Phantom and the Thunderclap is looking slick. I have a soft spot for the player ships in TOR, so I'm glad to see you do more of them.

I knew what this even before reading the post, so it reads really well to me and I didn't even play the class that uses it. It's been a while since I've played TOR, but my recollection is that it's fairly metallic, and so light and environment can really mix it up in screenshots. I think the dark gray works well, though I believe light gray with dark gray accents would technically be closer to the model.

Add me to the list of people who liked and preferred the Mako. ME1 was really something special. As for your build, I think you've done an excellent job. Mass Effect has such a clean visual design and your recreation of the Mako really captures the lines of the "real" thing. I like the extras a lot too, like the interior and the little boarding hatch.

On a personal level this transition definitely happened, at least in part, to me and I'm not exactly sure the root cause. I never really had a dark age, I've been building with Lego since I was old enough to not eat them (and it was Duplo before that) and there hasn't been a single year of my life without at least one new set being purchased by myself or being given to me as a gift. With that said, until very recently, I hadn't tapped into the creative aspect of Lego in probably 15 years. As I'm typing this I realize that all my creative outlets basically got nuked around that same time. Over the last few years, drawing and writing have come back and now Lego as a creative outlet has too. I think that my setup was also somewhat detrimental to this process too. I don't have a room dedicated to my hobbies, my thousands upon thousands of bricks are in huge storage bins. In fact, the bins I had as a child are still in use for the same purpose today. So doing a MOC requires more searching than building, or a humungous, floor consuming mess that still requires tons of rummaging. I can't speak to the community as a whole, truthfully my interaction with it was extremely minimal until I decided to be creative with Lego again. I will say that it has been very rewarding to build this way again and to see what other people create. I visit these forums every day now and am floored by what people come up with. Whether it's something that's totally sprung from their head, or a passion project to recreate their favorite car, or spaceship, or whatever in brick, it's truly amazing stuff. So, even if the focus of the community at large leans heavily on sets and related discussion, the MOCs are far away the most interesting and rewarding part for me.

Once again I will preface my post by saying that I think this build is incredibly impressive, and I think that all the tweaks I can see in your latest update were for the best. I'm really glad you decided to post this as a WIP as it's a blast to watch it evolve. I also just happened to stumble upon the builder Vieral over on Flickr and it looks like he took a crack at a YT-2000 about a decade ago. While techniques and part availability have changed radically since then, I think his build is pretty slick. I also think his and yours are roughly the same scale. The cockpit seems to imply that, anyways. The reason I bring this up is his cockpit piece is mounted basically flush to that first...ring(?) I guess, which I like since it shortens that area a bit. The cockpit piece is kind of tough one since the shape isn't 1:1 but I wonder how it would look if the section behind yours was another brick shorter. Alternatively, have you thought about a built approach to get more of the stubbiness present in the line art? Not to hit on this point again (or imply I think your solution is bad) but what about the brick built cylinder solution for the escape pod areas (specifically, replacing the large round corner bricks)? Does that just mess with your whole plan for that area? If they worked As someone who has nitpicked and agonized over accuracy on my own project of much smaller scale, I don't envy the task you've given yourself though again, it's looking fantastic so far.

I remember back when I was a very little kid I had this book on trains and the Big Boy was basically featured as the centerfold. You folded out the pages twice (I think) so the Big Boy took up 6 regular pages to show the whole thing. Pretty much from that moment on, it has been and we'll always be one of my favorite locomotives. This is a stunningly beautiful recreation of the Big Boy and I can't over state how impressed I am with what you've done here. It's amazing.

I was impressed when you first showed this off, but I am even more so now. It's super accurate and extremely well done on top of being pretty darn huge. Is the plan for this too be fully articulated too? What kind of mechanisms are you using to keep the joints stable?

Ratchet sets (or, like you said, CMF stuff) would be great. I feel like Lego could have a lot of fun with designs from that series. Spaceships and playsets and weird buildable robot badies.

This is pretty much exactly what I was envisioning. I'm glad you were able to help illustrate the idea farrrrrr better than I did. I think this could be the ticket for Kage's build, provided the increased part count is tolerable.

I'll just lead with that I think this is a great start, and I'm glad to see this after seeing your post about it in the lead up to your reveal here. I'll also say that I am not an expert, I have never tried to design something of this size and complexity myself. I am regularly impressed, even awed, by the creativity and ingenuity shown here on this board. Your build is no exception. As I was looking at what you've got so far, I can't help but wonder if the...cylinder/neck leading up to and including the area just before cockpit wouldn't benefit from some sort of...stacked brick/plate solution maybe with the stacks on their side. This ultimately means that the neck would be more polygonal, but I think it would give you more control over proportion and details (provided it's even doable). Again, since I'm not an expert, I don't know that I could give you a practical example of this technique and so my suggestion may be pretty worthless. It just seems to me that some of the design and proportion of that part of the ship is being dictated by the part usage. The saucer and turret domes are very round in the art, but you're using plates and the like to convey the shape. Obviously, for areas that big, there isn't really another alternative. I point this out only to illustrate that I think a similar type of shaping solution on the neck, if possible, would be just as effective and may even unify the look of the overall build even more.

All I see is the normal price, for this and the sets in your other thread.

Wow, color me impressed. You've packed in a great deal of detail and really excellent shaping, especially in a build so compact. Hope to see some additional pictures with it displayed with/around the new AT-AT.

I know what you mean, and while digital designing is really handy, I also found there are some interesting quirks that I wasn't expecting. Some things work way better in reality than stud.io seems think, and some things it thinks will be fine don't work at all. That's something I've been learning myself bouncing between digital and real bricks with my own project. Is it reasonable to assume the reveal will happen once you're satisfied with it digitally? Or are you going to be like me and keep it largely under wraps until you can prove it works for real?

These are some truly excellent builds. I'm especially fond of the Blockade Runner, Ebon Hawk, and the Outrider.