Jerac

Thanks everyone! :D Yeah I know it was quiiite bold to go with tan, but aside maybe from copper, this really seemed better for me. Anyway you can always swap this for different colour, it is mostly 4L bars and just few 6L with stop (which you can most likely go with cut flex instead, too).

I do have a problem with that 4-wide dish sticking on top, hmm. Other than this it is a superb build. Panels have correct shape, canopy and rear work just fine and it seems to have proper proportions, not an easy thing in a T/F. What would happen if you lowered the dish, removed the 1x4 curved slope under it and put corner 1x1 rounded tiles there instead?

Hello! Y-Wing is the last original trilogy ships I planned to build. It ended up being last because everything else was more interesting: alien-looking TIE Fighters, X-Wing with its crazy angles and wing mechanism, or beautiful little A-Wings. Compared to them, the Y-Wing is much like in SW universe: aging, not particularly effective or nice. But is that so? The Y-Wing does come with few tricks. First, is it really slow? This started being a thing with old lucasarts games, but in the movies, Y-wings easily kept up with basically anything else. Over Endor they were chasing and destroying TIE Interceptors. One kept up the pace with an A-Wing, inside the Death Star. And, come on, they are relatively small body attached to two huge engines. Yes, when handling the model you can feel it is much harder to turn than a nimble A-Wing or especially the Interceptor, but in straight speed, I believe Y-Wings are actually not any worse than other ships. They are also tough. In the movies everything dies from one shot so it is pretty irrelevant, but again: Big ship, plenty of space for secondary systems, and so is the model. Except maybe manoeuvering rings, but I believe the ship can fly without these just fine. Maybe a little bit more straight than usual. The build itself was definitely easier than the X-Wing but had few things to solve. The head shape is pretty complex, sloping and curving all the ways, and I ended up using this cockpit piece instead of "the one every MOC builder goes for". This is more for consistency with other ships done for BrickVault which have transparent glass cockpits, but I might revisit the ship to go for the usual part. That said, it has its perks. Sand blue nicely pops from the greebled main section and altough individual side window lengths are all messed up, overall shape does not seem too bad, also giving plenty of space for minifig inside. The Y-Wing features havily greebled center section, but also with noticeable features which define major shapes. The texture varies in depth between the neck and, for example, engines where it is smoother. Since I was never a fan of dark grey and light grey combination, this was built in a way where the shadows give all the variation, instead of colours. It looks cleaner to me this way. For the same reason the piping is in tan. It should be something like light copper, reddish brown is too dark for this in my opinion. I explored many options for the struts. Plates with tiles are too thick. Rail tiles are either too short or too long, and definitely too bulky. Technic axles would be fine, except they don't just happen to be available in grey in long enough variant. Flex hoses are too flimsy, and flex hoses with 1x1 tile clips have proper shape, but they are textured too deply. Hence those link pieces... they are a bit too short, but have proper smoothness, texture and offer nice attachment points. As for the manoeuvering rings, amazingly it all holds together pretty nicely even though the shape is quite complex. It mostly is a ring made out of technic tread links, with each piece having a droid claw hand inside, lined with either 1x1 round plates with hole or newer 1x2 rounded plates with holes. ...I forgot a tile. Damn. Anyway, I am particularly happy with the cockpit. It might not be Inthert's level but still far better than most of what I done before in this area. And the pilot even gets the fold-out targeting computer! Unless you try to use waaaaaay bigger newer helmet piece, the pilot fits nicely. Landing gear works and the droid goes to the ship from the bottom. I now know it should enter from the top, but this way it is sturdier and has less holes around the arms. The "Red Jammer" variant. Original ship was never used in the movie for whatever reason, but I still like the colour combination. Some parts did not arrive in time, so please excuse me for renders instead of actual photos. It also seems I got the BTL-S3 name variant wrong. It should be BTL-A4... sorry for that. I hope you like it! Instructions for this ship can be obtained at https://www.brickvault.toys/.

Cheat or not, this must be the best cannon tip I've ever seen! Great job!

:D It is supposed to be hard, so wings keep open when swooshing, at least as much as possible. I guess something involving worm gear would be nice here, but there is so little space inside...

You need to check the gearbox. There are two 3L axles with studs entering a 1x1 technic brick, and this is what provides most of the tension. Please also check if the gearbox is properly attached to the upper hull beams with the 1x2 clip-hinges. I think it is the gearbox not attached to the frame which is most likely to cause these issues. Please understand however that it is still more a display model than a play one, and it was not built to hold wings open during swooshing forever.

Most recent version is 0.9 (either fading or normal). If you happen to get the older one, ask BrickVault for the correct one.

Eh if only I had so much space to put entire friggin 1x12 (or 1x10) technic bricks down there. Your cargo bay area is a bit bigger than it should be and this really really helps here. That said - maybe 4-long core would be viable in my case too, if the core itself could be structural like it is for you, hm. I did a 2-long one just to have more space for attachment points behind the scissor section. Well - there is always space for an improvement!

Out of curiosity, how do you achieve proper friction in the core to avoid "flopping" when twisting the ship along its longitudal axis?

These weren't available in lbg back then and I am not sure if they are available now. Structural reasons are most important reason for which I did not use more inverted tiles though; I could - even with standard inverted 2x2's - but it was just too fragile. Even now plenty of people complain about low structural integrity of the model and I cannot blame them...

I quite like it, especially the wings. Great idea with old 4x4 roof piece, it works there so well. These new inverted 1x3 tiles are a godsend. I just wonder when will LEGO finally admit defeat and produce this much-required doublesided plate piece. There are few areas I'd do different but, hey, that is the point. Most amazing though, is that this may be using plenty of ideas but has its own character, coherent style and all in all it is an entirely new x-wing subtype. Great job with this!

Sadly, no. It is just too big, too unoptimized for easy construction, requires "configuration" of tensioned members and I am not sure if bricklink could support even just 5 copies right now. And my computer blows up when I try to render 3k parts.... and what about the other 47k :D Fun fact; the stand would have more parts than any of my other MOCs itself has.

Sorry. This picture clearly shows disjoined hinge. It is the crucial structural element of this connection between nose and main fuselage section. As for throwing against the wall, I am deeply sorry, but the warranty does not cover that, along with asteroid collisions and turbolaser blasts. I treated it pretty roughly as you can see. Multiple elements failed, including most obvious (engines and nose tip). The core did not, though. That said - I was able to eventually find breaking point just like you did, and indeed the hinge disjoins. This requires some REALLY rough handling though. Please understand that achieving the looks requires sacrifice on structural parts, the more angles you have in little area, the more you need to sacrifice. And the X-Wing has all the angles in the nose forming the sloping hexagon shape... Now, if I reinforced that particular area where it broken for you, it would break just in front of the cockpit, this is the next failure point in line (at which point the nose entirely disintegrates). There is not much you can do to have a nice looking AND solid model.

How on earth did you manage to disjoin this hinge? :O I mean, you can hold the ship by the nose and maybe not flail it like a mace but it nicely handles such treatment. And hinges don't just disjoin. Especially these. You really need A LOT of force to do so.

People cannot be criticized for having trouble building a model. Especially a difficult one, and the X-Wing, altough relatively solid for a MOC, completely pales when compared to usual LEGO-set experience. You are totally right that assembling lego is not 100% repeatable. The instructions are a guide, but the guide is incomplete. It cannot be. It shows you where the next parts are supposed to be, but not where to hold the thing, how to apply force, what are the areas you need to focus on getting angled properly and so on. It might be possible to show all that, but currently the software I use makes that too time consuming to be considered possible. Then there is testing... The LEGO company has plenty of testers and us "indie" developers work in the dark. I'd gladly like to watch someone build any of my models live, just to see what the usual pitfalls are. Brickvault guys help me a lot with testing, but they are, simply, too experienced and also have grown to understand my style. Even they have had issues like subassemblies not aligning right, and if whoever worked in IT development knows that "it works for me" is about the most lame excuse a developer can use. I found and fixed whatever I could, but the bottom area baffles me. I just can't see yet what is causing trouble there. And, I might never be able to, since I was the one who has assembled this area at least hundred of times, which means I could do it blindfolded and handcuffed I guess. I am actually considering reaching some non-lego friend for help - with a crate of beer and a bag of x-wing parts. Maybe us little indie developers could form a shared testing platform for our creations and their instructions...?

Guys. There is absolutely no need for glue... Granted, this is not a set-level durability, but believe me, I've seen FAR more delicate builds, many of them mine :D

What areas are you having problems with? Maybe I could help?

Great build! I am pretty sure it can't be done much better in this scale. All the new colours released by lego really help in making this patchy surface. Actually, it might be even better with few studs randomly scattered here and there, but that's minor!

I am sorry you guys have so much trouble with this little area. And there is not even anything I can think of doing about it without compromising either the looks or whatever is there left of structural integrity. Maybe this little movie clip will be helpful?

Well, I did. :D Aside from wings and engines which are pretty darn impossible to innovate on, and believe me, I tried. As for crediting, it is nice, but is it mandatory? I believe it is best to leave it for the author to decide. After all, the line between "mod" and "new" is a blurry one and what might be "new" to somebody is just a "mod" to someone else. Personally, if a build of mine would not happen without build of somebody else - like Atlas, Cehnot and Inthert whose builds I deeply investigated before designing my own x-wing platform - then I credit them.

I believe this confusion is due to the fact there were two major ISD versions, the Mark I used in the New Hope era and then Mark II used from Empire Strikes Back and onwards: This is the roughly 1-meter long Mark I: And the better known, almost doubly sized Mark II: (Note: this is the less-detailed starboard size, detailing was assymetrical on both models). Back when I was building the Chimaera, I could easily list over twenty differences between the ships. Now the memory is a bit fading, but different main batteries are definitely one of the differences, along with angling of the bridge tower, angling of radar domes and the orientation (horizontal vs vertical) of the linear sensor array. Since your ship has more traits of the Mark II (altough bridge angle is from Mark I) the batteries you used are correct. Now, the build. As usual, it is fantastic. Given the techniques used I can boldly say it cannot be done any significantly better. Even if you corrected the minimal Mark I vs Mark II differences, nobody except few maniacs like me would see any difference. My usual nitpick goes for the studs at the edges which simply should not be there, but then the surface you got with varying types of tiles is vastly better than one made with sideways-built bricks. It is a tough call and now I know that whenever I steer back to building ISDs, the Next Ultimate Thing has to have your tiled surface with, somehow, smooth studless edges. My favourite detail have to be the engine "bowls". You scaled entire ship to them, right? Because this is how well they fit! Great job, as usual!

Golden minifigs? Meh. Not very useful for building. I'd take hands apart, they are somewhat useful though.

Yup exactly. And makes the nose wider. I opted for this unusual approach because aside from achieving right proportions it also strenghtens the build by adding tension, much like in hardened glass.

There is reason for which it is done like that though, and you will see it few steps later.

Wow, really? Sorry for that. Damn, maybe I should have put an instruction on how to do that. It is simple once you know... first you slide the aft-facing end into the clip, then you just apply little pressure on first stud of the front-facing 2x3 wing to connect the subassembly to the 1x1 round plate with bar.