Big Sal

Ok, since the submarine isn't new you don't get the 'Submarine' tag (which counts as 'Spaceship'), but you do get 'Water Vehicle' (which counts as 'Land Vehicle') for the boat. 'Engineering' tag doesn't exist. If you want the Engineering job bonus, you have to make a building, and tag the post with 'Building'. See here. So the tags I've given you are: Tags: Water Vehicle

This is fantastic! Every time I look at it I see another great detail!

EDIT: Oops, forgot the title tag: [M - C06] Location: C06 Tags: Vehicle, Land Vehicle, Spying Claypole, be careful with that MANTIS™ Spyglass©, it wasn’t cheap! Yes sir, but I can see them coming! Excellent! Magwitch, have you finished setting the explosives? Almost, sir… Well, hurry along now, they’re coming. Done, sir! Get over here then, chop chop! Claypole, blow the charges on my command. Not yet… not yet…now! What the blazes?? I say, Mr Snodgrass, what’s all the commotion? An explosion right in front of us Lord Nupkins! I recommend we disembark and make sure there’s no damage. Right then men, Lady Nupkins and I shall stay here while you inspect the landship for signs of damage. Oh, that won’t be necessary gentlemen. Who the devil are you? The name’s Big Sal. It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance, but I’m afraid I’ll be needing this fine landship of yours. He means to rob us! OH. MY. Now look here- You mistake me, my lord. A gentleman such as myself would never stoop to such degenerate behaviour. However, I’m afraid the same can’t be said of my… associates here. GOOD HEAVENS. Now listen, you’re upsetting Lady Nupkins! This has gone far enough! Mr Weller, take care of these miscreants! RIGHT AWAY SIR. Perhaps it would be best if you called your man off, Lord Nupkins. I regret that my associates have been known to resort to rather ungentlemanly conduct. Nonsense! Carry on Mr Weller! ERK. Lady Nupkins! Crikey! Gadzooks! By Jove! Well gentlemen, I did warn you. Now, we’ll be taking the landship regardless, but perhaps you’ll be so kind as to reveal the location of your base? Never! That’s unfortunate. My associates are not patient men. I’d hate for anyone to get hurt… Fine! The base is five leagues from here, directly northwest. Excellent! I bid you good day gentlemen! Thanks for reading! C&C welcome, and some more pics in the spoiler.

Great shaping!

Great M-Tron version of that old set! The bridge works really well, and I like how you made the crane on the back

Everyone except SpacerSteve gets an extra day to submit builds. Yeah, Week 29 runs from Dec 21 to Jan 03, Week 30 runs from Jan 04 to Jan 17.

OT-87 is correct, you must have made a mistake when you named it...

Both ideally, but you can leave it out of the title if you run out of space.

Thanks for the comments everyone! No problem, one of the points of the challenge is to get people reminiscing about their decision to sign up and choose a faction Check again I also added a picture of the whole lab before frogageddon. That would be awesome! I say go for it - I'd love to see a Kawashita version

I think you were probably away from the game when I posted the new super strict tagging rulesTM so I'll let you off this time, but the correct tag if you want the pilot job bonus is 'Spaceship' (or 'Airplane' or 'Submarine') not 'pilot'

There's a great in-depth tutorial on that stuff by A Plastic Infinity here using a free photo editing program - you have to click where it says 'secret link' at the bottom of the photo description

Location: H05. Date: 27 Maian 3815. So this is our main xenobiology lab here on Livgorn. Wow, you managed to get all this set up already? We’ve only been in Andromeda for a couple of weeks! Yes, well, Octan’s science department is known for its efficiency. Here, I’ll introduce you to Dr Johnson. Good morning Dr Johnson, this is Big Sal. He’s a pilot who’s considering a career switch to science. Oh, nice to meet you! You too! Dr, would you mind giving Sal a brief tour of the lab? I have some other business to attend to quickly. Sure, no problem! So you're a pilot, huh? Yeah, but I had an accident a few weeks back – gate anomaly, y’know? Ouch… Yup. I was lucky to only lose an arm really, but there was a lot of nerve damage so they only managed to give me this crude thing as a replacement. I’m still a bit clumsy with it. Too clumsy for piloting? Yeah, though to be honest I’ve been thinking of getting into a less dangerous career for while. The accident was kinda the last straw I guess. Ooh, what are these? Legendary explorer Wick Nole brought them in from the swamps a few days ago. They seem to be surprisingly intelligent, though mostly harmless. Hey, Eddie, watch where you’re going with that- What? Arrgh! Oh no! I’m so sorry! It’s this damn robot arm! Hey, don’t worry about it. Accidents happen. What’s that purple stuff? Will drinking it hurt the frogs? It’s awesomnium serum. We don’t really know much about it yet, but what’s the worst that could happen? AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH! Thanks for reading! This is based on my build from all the way back in Week 2. C&C welcome!

Yeah, that's right

No job or tech bonuses will be awarded, so tagging is unnecessary. Equipment won't count either, so you can't get bonuses from that or use spy equipment to place your build.

Each build. Also, if anyone's thinking about picking a low quality build to make it easier to pick up the improvement bonus, bear in mind that your main 8 point score depends on how well your build is recognisable as a tribute to the original. So if you choose a minifig on a plate as your original build and turn it into a SHIP that just happens to be the same colour as the plate, you're not going necessarily going to score that well.

Before any of you wiseguys ask about this rule: All entries must be new creations , not posted anywhere else prior to being entered in the challenge. You may be asked by a staff member to change your entry if it is too similar to an earlier creation. ...obviously the point of the Challenge is that your entry is in some ways similar to an earlier creation But don't just rebuild exactly an earlier creation with different colours!

Unless you have special equipment such as the spying outfit, the rules for where you can place a spying build are the same as for all builds: i.e. you can put it on any planet your faction controls or on any planet adjacent to a planet your faction controls. But you can't build on a planet if an enemy fleet is there unless your fleet is also there. Hope that all makes sense - feel free to ask any more questions you have

50 credits to moose please!

Yes, that's a good point! I use LED bulbs so they don't get very hot, but tissues wouldn't be too clever if you're using less efficient bulbs

Ok, so I make no claim to be a great photographer, but I'll share some things I've learned. Light sources Whenever humanly possible, I take my photos in daylight. I'm lucky enough to live high up in a flat with big windows, so as long as it's daytime I have easily enough light. In fact I usually have to use a big piece of white card to block the direct light (see setup photo below). The only problem with taking photos during the day is that the light can change over time, but it's worth the risk. When I have to take photos at night, I use a bunch of cheap lamps with daylight bulbs and tissues covering them to diffuse the light a bit. I don't like how these photos turn out - the lighting ends up too harsh. These two photos show what I mean - the first is taken in the day and the second one at night. Besides the warmer colours in the daytime one, the night time one looks more toy-like and less real. Notice the difference on Big Sal's glorious hair for example. If anyone has any tips for that, I'd be glad to hear them! Background Size A1 card for me when I can find it, in various colours. The bigger the better - I'm always finding my MOCs are too wide or tall for the background! You want a single piece of card where possible to avoid join lines. Camera I recently bought a Canon Powershot S120, which has all kinds of settings to fiddle with and is great. Before that I was using an Olympus VG170, which was... less great. The main problem was that it had a stupid autofocus that never seemed to focus where I wanted it to. My new one has a touchscreen and you just press where you want it to focus, which is awesome. But absolutely the most critical feature of all is a timer function so you can press the button and step away so that there are no vibrations when the photo takes. You'll need a tripod for that too, but they're not expensive (this is mine) and you can always build a crude tabletop one out of Lego if necessary. Settings You should look up the meanings of the settings that your camera lets you change. In general though, your aim is for as low an ISO number as you can get away with, since it makes your photos less grainy, assuming you have enough light. Your photo takes longer to take, but who cares? If the camera's held in place with a tripod that's no problem. General tips Buy/build/steal a tripod, or something/anything other than your hands to hold your camera steady, and use the timer function! This is the single biggest and easiest way to improve your photos, especially if you don't have a good camera. Take lots of photos for each single photo that you want to include in your post. The better your camera and setup is, the fewer you'll have to take to get a good quality one. If you're relying on your camera/phone to focus for you, it's worth taking plenty until it magically decides to get it right. Ok, here's my daytime setup: The big piece of white card blocks direct sunlight from the windows. Emmet is just there to hold the black card in place. The waffle maker and bottles of beer are optional, but they can help Night time:

Great idea Bob! I'll post my setup and tips when I get a chance!

The fleet positions for the week are posted in this thread as soon as possible on Monday, so you can just check them here.

I think that makes 500 so I'd like to buy Domination for Dummies please.

Location: E01 Tags: Vehicle, Land Vehicle ...and the mithril solution works? Yes, perfectly. Good. Then let's put it into action. Our spies have located a processing plant for the fruit. I'm sending you to infiltrate it and use the mithril solution to turn the fruit there back to the normal fattening kind. It should only take a few batches before word gets around that the diet products don't work any more. Wait, you want me to infiltrate the plant? Me, personally? Yes. Did you get the spy suit I sent? Yes, but- It's one of the new ones with persuadomatic technology. Since you promised us it would work, you should have no qualms about testing it out in the field. I guess... but I really don't have time to be infiltrating bases! Make time. Long out. Later... Are you sure these are the right barrels? Yeah, we had a guy scope out their supply lines and this is how they transport water. The wood just seems a bit... out of place. What do you think they should be made of? Bricks? Do you realise how heavy that would be? Uh... Anyway, let's go over the plan one more time. You two will hide in these barrels with the mithril solution, while I pretend to be an Octan driver whose truck got stolen. When the next truck comes along we'll hitch a lift right into the plant. I'm wearing a wire so you'll be able to hear what I'm saying. Once we're in, and the coast is clear, I'll say the first code word, which is 'Octan'. That means you should pass the mithril solution out to me. Then... We burst out and blow the place up! YEAH! What?? No! Then you stay in the barrels until I finish sabotaging the fruit and drive us out of there. You'll only need to come out shooting if something goes wrong and I say the second code word, which is 'Kawashita.' Got it? Yeah... I guess... Good. Quick, I hear something coming, get in the barrels. Y'know, this seems like a waste of our skills. A waste of your skills? Try being a highly trained scientist on a spying mission! Now shut up! Hello down there. Need a hand? I sure do, fellow employee! Don't suppose you could give me and this water a lift to the plant? No problemo, I'm headed there anyway, and I've got room for two more barrels. What an amazing coincidence! Uh, yeah... amazing! So they ambushed you and made off with your truck, eh? I knew this would happen when corporate decided to let M.A.N.T.I.S. operate on this planet. I said at the time it was crazy! Still, I hear we have a new CEO, so maybe we'll finally get some sensible leadership. Managed to squeeze in there, fella? Just about... Alright, let's get this show on the road! To be continued! Thanks for reading I really hate taking photos at night, but they'll have to do since I'm busy all weekend. C&C welcome, especially on the truck. A bunch more pics of it in the spoiler.

Oh, ok! I thought the taxi was the land vehicle, and wasn't thinking of a food cart as a vehicle at all . I'll allow it unless Bob overrules me, but your spying tag definitely doesn't count.