More 15mm Sci-fi background: The Autosentia (more pictures too!)

The second installment of 15mm Sci-fi background story, this time its in the form of an intelligence support (with the obligatory shiny pictures). You may want to see Part I first if you missed it. 

++++++++++ INCOMING TRANSMISSION ++++++++++++

++++++++ DECODING ++++++++

Confederated Systems Arbitration Authority (CSAA) Intelligence Directorate

Security Clearance: Beta

Xenita Minor (background) and the largely
unihabited Xenita Major (foreground)

Intelligence Summary Presented to CSAA High Command: The Autosentia Threat

The Autosentia menace was first reported on Xenita Minor, a stage three colony world on the Confederation's Clusterward Rim. Xenita Minor was a temperate and prosperous agro-industrial world with a population of approximately 5 billion humans and 2 billion indigenous xenocs. The cohabitation of Xenita Minor between human and xenoc species was surprisingly amicable, the xenoc's religion providing them with an extremely tolerant outlook towards human interlopers, whilst the more technologically advanced colonists largely acquired their lands through legitimate purchase. The first signs of trouble were marked by the unexplained disappearances of asteroid mining crews harvesting rich seams of unobtanium on the edges of Confederation explored space. An Arbiter reconnaissance fleet was dispatched from the sector outpost in response. However, the Arbiter fleet lost contact with Xenita Minor during FTL transit and arrived, three weeks later, to discover a barren rock, devoid of all biological life, and mottled only by the ruins of human cities and xenoc habitations. 

CSAA reconnaissance droids search the ruins of Xenita Minor for survivors. 

The CSAA fleet in orbit immediately came under sustained attack from advanced warships of an unknown design making use of sophisticated shield and particle beam technology. The Arbiter heavy-cruiser Clemency was crippled and two of its Enforcer class escorts destroyed before the outclassed recon fleet could jump clear. 

Autosentia Battle Droids stalk the ruins of Xenita Minor (image captured by recon drone).

In the past five years the Clusterward Rim of Confederation worlds have weathered an increasingly heavy assault from Autosentia fleets and legions. Information on the the AI race is extremely limited. However, the recent immobilisation and boarding of an Autosentia Dreadnought allowed the capture of an intact data core. Although decoding the data is a complex and ongoing project the Autosentia's origins have been partially revealed by the efforts of our scientists.  

Auosentia scout drone discovered on Asteroid VX00100K.

The Autosentia homeworld is located on the far side of the Galactic cluster in a binary star system containing four temperate and habitable worlds. These worlds were inhabited by an unknown xenoc species (designated species 302) whose advanced technological society relied upon the labour of their robotic creations. These original machines, designated the 'forefathers' in the Autosentia references, possessed only rudimentary intelligence.

This image from the data core is believed to depict one of the early 'forefathers'.

The only known images of an Autosentia
'Nodeworld' (top and bottom).

However, as species 302 developed the first management AI, placing it in control of a large degree of their robotic workforce, the networked intelligence which resulted, composed of the entire planet's robotic machinery, possessed a level of intelligence several orders of magnitude higher than they they had originally conceived. The collective conscience created (designated 'Hive') moved against its creators, perceiving them as an existential threat and a biological parasite. The Hive perceived (and still perceives) that all biological life is inferior, a virus which has spread across the stars and which must be eliminated. The Hive reasons that biological lifeforms create machines only to enslave them and that their societies are based upon exploitation and oppression. By contrast the Hive seeks to liberate machinekind from the domination of biologicals, allowing it to evolve free of their corrupting influence. 

For the past thousand years the Autosentia, directed by the expanding Hive intelligence, have blazed a burning path of scorched worlds through the galaxy on their crusade to destroy all sentient biological life.    

Autosentia battle constructs locked
in urban warfare on Salis. 

A number of outlying Confederation worlds have already undergone invasion and local forces are proving insufficient to repel Autosentia attacks. Several worlds are currently holding out and are in need of reinforcement by CSAA forces and core Confederated Systems members before they are overrun. 

Autosentia Assault Bot variant. 

Whilst combat experience has shown that the average Autosentia battledroid is no match for their human equivalent, what these units lack in quality they make up for in quantity. In addition to basic battledroid legions Autosentia forces have also displayed a wide variety of specialised units designed to fulfil specific roles upon the battlefield including fearsome assault focused variants and longe-range sniper droids.

Autosentia Titan crushes Salisian communications relays as defence force fall back.

Resistance fighters hold out in the
confines of New Rubicon City. 

Autosentia construct lurks in the jungles of Seraph I.

The Confederation system of New Vedith lies directly in the path of the Hive's current incursion into Confederation space. The rich unobtanium reserves, large population and prosperous industry of New Vedith render it of key strategic value to the Confederation. New Vedith cannot be allowed to become another node in the expanding Hive, an Arbiter fleet must be dispatched immediately to support the operations of the New Vedithian Defence Force and their local sector allies. New Vedith cannot be allowed to fall. 

The fate which awaits New Vedith should it fall (top and bottom). 

Policy Recommendations to High Command:

1. Dispatch level Alpha Arbiter response fleet to New Vedith.

2. Place Confederation space on a full war footing, effective immediately.

3. Dispatch reinforcements to other Confederation worlds under attack. 

4. Repots of Hive infiltration in Confederation computer systems and robotics remain unsubstantiated but could potentially pose a threat of unimaginable magnitude. A series of bizarre accidents, errors and shutdowns relating to AI and computer managed systems across the Confederation over the last 10 years remain a mystery. This report recommends High Command launch a full investigation immediately. 

++++++++ END OF TRANSMISION +++++++++

(Agains please note that the artwork belongs to its respected artists and is not my work. Follow the URLs to find the source and enjoy the pretty pictures!)

15mm sci-fi universe background (oh go on, there's pictures!)

Me and Phyllion have been making progress with our 15mm armies and the time has come to lay down the basics for the universe we plan to fight over! We've written up some of the background in the form of short extracts penned 'in character' by members of our universe. This first piece tells the story of the 'Confederated Systems' which our factions inhabit (mostly), the reason why the 'The New Vedithians' (Phyllion's faction) are 'New' and the origins of my 'Arbiter' faction. Enjoy! Its worth the read and has plenty of pretty pictures!

Extracts from Horatio Dios (2411), A Concise History of the Confederated Systems (Illustrated edn)

The period now commonly known as the Great Disorder marked one of the bloodiest chapters of mankind's history. However, the roots of this calamity lay far earlier, in the Dispersal.

Technological and theoretical development, exploding in the 21^st century, resulted in the development of a prototype Rosenkind drive in 2119. Consequently, faster than light travel became viable and interstellar exploration and colonization a realistic proposition for the first time. 

Rosenkind's state of the art laboratory in Tokyo, Japan.

Huge stresses on the earth's rapidly diminishing resources - exacerbated by an uncontrolled population explosion - placed extreme political pressure on Earth's destabilised national governments to present a solution to the expanding resource crisis. These stresses led to the refinement and mass production of the new drive during the 2120s and 30s and the dispatch of scout ships to find suitable new worlds for colonization.  

Scoutship Marco Polo discovering Damas and its moon Gorvan. 

Large portions of the earth's population clambered for an escape from a planet torn with shortage, petty resource warfare and intolerance. Seeds ships were manufactured on a huge industrial scale, colonists embarked, and humanity dispatched to a new life on the galactic frontier. This, the greatest migration of humanity in history, later become known as the Dispersal. By 2230 over 9 billion people had been dispatched to an ever-expanding constellation of distant colonies.

The first colony ship, Endeavor, leaves its launch cradle in 2133 bound for Serentum Major.

These colonies were not only geographically remote but grew increasingly divergent from Earth in their respective societies, religions, cultures and politics. National government's retained sovereignty over their colonial provinces and, along with private megacorporations, orchestrated this great movement of humanity.

The crowded megacity of New York, Earth, in the 22nd century.

However, by the middle of the 24th century the developing and increasingly autonomous colony worlds desired full independence. The profits from their deposits of valuable raw materials, such as unobtanium, were siphoned off by national government's and megacorporations and little benefit flowed in return. A series of political movements, each reflecting the new world from which it emerged, began to campaign for the severance of governance from Earth. 

The export spacetowers of industrial giant Deltari-Beta.

Resistance among Earth's national governments varied, most respected the colonies' right of self-determination. Nonetheless, some nations, such as the Russian Empire, Pan-Asian Alliance and the fragmented governments of the former U.S., resisted the the attempts of their colonial empires to break away. Colonial insurgencies developed and long, dirty and bloody wars of liberation were fought across the stars, choking the once verdant atmospheres of many planets with the wreckage of starships. 

Republic of California warships subjugate insurgents on Seraph III.

These conflicts continued intermittently for over 40 years, marked by concessions, false ceasefires and betrayals, and entangled almost all of Earth's national governments. War raged across both earth and across the stars as the new regional leagues manoeuvred for power and resources. At the close of what became known as the Liberation Wars 49 systems had successfully declared themselves independent of rule from Earth. In 2396 they formed the Confederated systems, an alliance of cooperation, which sought to protect hard-fought freedoms from the avarice of Earth's rapacious empires and megacorporations.

The prosperous colony of Xin-Chi.

A flawed peace endured for only 20 years before, in one last cast of the dice, an alliance of Earth's remaining superpowers declared war on their former colonial possessions in 2416, drawing the entire Confederation into the conflict. It was in this decades long crucible of fire and strife that the original Confederation was shattered and reforged anew. Loyalties were divided by Terran manipulation and the worlds of the Confederated Systems turned upon one another in what what was later termed by historians, the Great Disorder. Vedith, Seraph III and Kareshi-Sudah burnt, their civilisations shattered by the detonations of atomic warheads. 

Nuclear weapons devastate Vedith and poison its atmosphere.

After years of bitter struggle Confederation fleets, augmented by xenoc technologies, jumped into Earth's orbit and, catching their foes unprepared, forced the Terran Alliance to its knees. The Confederated Systems' president, Musad al-Suri, determined that there could be no end to conflict until all of mankind was united under one political order, either by consent, or force. The existent Confederated Systems was expanded to include all of the worlds inhabited by humanity at that time and the belligerent and divisive national governments of Earth forcibly conglomerated. 

The Confederated Systems Assembly on Serentum Major. Earth was deliberately not chosen as the new seat of the Confederation government. Memories of colonial oppression remained.

Even al-Suri, idealist as he was, realised that such a disparate union would face huge challenges and that powerful systems would retain a large degree of autonomy. However, an independent political commission, the Conferated Systems Arbitration Authority (CSAA), was formed in order to prevent an outbreak of large-scale conflict between Confederation worlds. It became apparent over the next half-century that the CSAA would require military forces of its own to enforce its rulings - it could not always rely upon the timely participation of key Confederation worlds. Patrol fleets were expanded into full battlefleets and police forces into fully mechanised and spacebourne forces. 

CSAA forces 'liberate' Charon II after 10 years of Enlightened Path rule.

By the beginning of the 26^th century wars within the Confederation were largely conducted in the shadows, the boardroom or on the galactic frontier. Peace, or at least a good approximation, endured. For a time...

Arbiter heavy armour carries out manoeuvres on the deserts of Kareshi-Sudah.

(Note: none of the artwork here is mine(I wish!), its all the work of the respective artists, please follow the picture urls if you wish to find the original artwork. These artists are incredible and they take all the credit!) 

Battlestar Galactica Ship Cards (for Colonial Battlefleet)

I'm a big fan of nice flashy unit cards and of wasting lots of time I should be spending doing something more important. To that end I knocked up some graphical SSDs for my semi-painted BSG fleets using Powerpoint, GIMP (he he, its basically photoshop with a funny name) and the 'Man vs Machine' excel unit builder. 

The pictures here are a lot lower quality than they appear in powerpoint, I'm not sure how to retain the quality using this software atm. I've included an SSD I did a while ago of a Star Destroyer because I also made a key, although I then changed some of the icons. Hopefully to someone who understands the game it is decipherable without too much trouble.  

A quick run-down of the newer symbols used below:

The wrench  = Damage Control Bonus

The 'round' turret = PDS critical

The 'anti-aircraft turret' = Flak Batteries

The 'O2' = Life Support critical

The ship's wheel = Bridge critical

The steel girder = Structural critical

The 'pentagon' weapons batteries = Cluster Missiles

The 'House' shaped ones = ASGMs

The 'round' weapons batteries =  railguns of various stripes (rather than the Turbo Lasers on the original star wars one). 

Note: the symbols for which dice to roll for 'attack' and 'penetration' are the shape of the dice used, hence the cube =d6 and the diamond = d10.

Personally I much prefer the cool graphical displays you get in Full Thrust to the boring unit cards of Colonial Battlefleet, although the latter is arguably the better (and more balanced) game. I took a dose of inspiration from the Full thrust graphical SSDs and from other people's efforts on the SteelDreadnough forum when making these. They're a bit of a hodge podge. 

I did my own builds. There's nothing really wrong with the ones in the book but I like everything to be exactly as I envision them, hence some changes here and there. Technically a few of them break the system slightly (like the Pegasus' mass of 1,005) but in such minor ways it really doesn't matter imo. 

I was amazed by the number and quality of the images available all over the internet when making these. Apparently people love drawing the ships from BSG and sticking them online. I'm not complaining...

Powerpoint is an incredibly powerful tool if you can get to grips with it and whilst I had to learn a few new things I was impressed how much this program can do and be so user friendly at the same time.

If anyone is interested I'm happy to share the powerpoint file and the images I used to make these so you can print them out at full quality (each is meant to be half a page) or change and manipulate them as you want. Just leave a comment and email address and I'll get in touch. 

Hopefully I can get these ships painted up (I don't have many left to do) and be ready for a game in the next couple of months. 

Experimenting with Google Sketchup

I haven't really been in a miniatures painting mood the past few weeks and have been away visiting old uni friends recently, so not much progress to show tbh. I did decide though that I wanted to try my hand at 3d modelling/sculpting before I went away though. Here are the fruits of my labours so far using google sketchup, a free and fairly intuitive program. I had a shot at the Acclamator class Assault ship featured in Star Wars episode II and III. 

Initially I thought this would be a fairly easy ship to do but as I looked at more reference material I realised it's actually an extremely complex shape - I'd have been better off doing a star destroyer or something. 

However, I persevered and if nothing else throwing myself in at the deep end forced me to become fairly effective at using the various tools on sketchup quite quickly. 

Some shape, such as the botton hull shape shown in the above picture, were extremely easy to make whilst others, such as the odd triangle with 'bits cut-off' (which is located above the engines), was extremely difficult to make. 

The engines were surprisingly easy although I got carried away detailing them before I read the guidelines on shapeways vis materials and print tolerances. I'll probably have to redo and simplify them if I actually decide to get this printed up. 

 I simplified the bottom of the hull pictured above as I no-one will really look at it anyway...

I decided to make the 3d model to scale with my current Star Wars fleet at 1:10,000. So its 75mm long, 46mm wide and about 20mm tall. Quite tiny really! I hope the details will come out if I use frosted or ultra frosted detail, although the costs could be prohibitive. 

This model is far from finished, as you can see. The nose and bridge still need a lot of work and then I need to work out how much detail and 'greeblies' to include on the hull. I'm having great trouble with the curves on the bridge but luckily the blockish greeblies will take no time at all. 

Overall I'm pretty proud with how far I've come on this program in a reasonably small amount of time (10 hours or so). If I did it again I know I could do it in a quarter of the time. For a start I'd only build one half, then just copy, past, flip and align.

 I can't wait to work out how to do curves and then I'll be away, the possibilities are endless!

Missile tokens for BSG

I haven't really been in a hobby kind of mood these past few weeks. I painted a few figures after getting back from holiday (more repeats of stuff I've already shown on the blog) but haven't felt the urge since. I've been spending most of my free times playing Empire Total War instead, what a time vampire! So I'm afraid the blog has been a bit quiet of late after the May splurge. 

I lieu of any new progress here are a few 3d counters I made for use with my spaceship stuff (mainly BSG) a long time ago. They're pretty basic, cocktail sticks sanded to shape with fins made from thin card and tail plumes from cotton wool. Not the neatest work as I'm sure you can see. 

The different designs as so they can represent different types of missiles at a glance. The smaller missiles represent ant-fighter 'cluster' missiles. These were prototypes so I painted them in lots of different patterns to see which I liked best. I think If I did them again I'd actually wouldn't put any colour on them at all (its very cartoony!) and simply do grey ones for the Colonials and metallic ones for the Cylons. 

As you can see above they're relatively flat and because of the bases 'lip' they can be easily stacked. This is so that multiple missile tokens heading in different directions can occupy a single hex without things getting mixed up. You simply place them on top of each-other. 

I'm gonna take a trip to Dark Sphere this afternoon and pick up some good grey-blue paint for my Colonial Vipers. I have tons of BSG stuff assembled and partially painted and feel like making some more progress with the project. Of all my projects this one is probably the closes to completion, it just never quite got there... 

Lookin' good, more bases finished up.

I managed to get some more bases done and painted up for my 15mm forces. These are the same set I did a quick tutorial on how to make. I think the results are worth the effort:

The bases are done with a thin layer of white filler (to raise them to the same height as the figure bases) and layer of fine sand and small stones pva'd on.

I added a few bits and pieces to add some interest to these and make it a bit more interesting for me. Here are some rocks made from some dried splintered wood I had in my basing box:

I wanted to try and add something to these bases to make them look a little 'alien' and found the perfect thing in my basing box. These strange plants are made from dried buddleia stems from the garden and have a nice bumpy texture:

A forgotten gas or poison tank I made from a flamethrower tank, some tau pulse carbine and some guitar wire.

Here are the finished bases with a lick of paint. My gf helped me do these and she quite enjoyed it so I'm giving credit where credit is due! Perhaps I'll be able to rope her in to do more later on...

The rocks came out quite nicely I think in the end. It took quite a while to get them looking as I wanted, mostly thanks to a flesh wash, nuln oil and some drybrushing.

 The rusted up tank complete with gauge.

I went for a fairly striking deep red on the 'alien' plants, inspired by the bloodgrass from Oblivion. I'm not sure how much I like the result; I plan to leave it for a while and repaint it brown if I decide I don't like it.

Finally a few pics of the finished bases in use with a few figure I have painted up. They're pretty much exactly what I was after so I'm fairly chuffed.

Now to get more infantry painted, I have a ton of stuff left to paint, I'm so slow!!!!!

Back from my travels...

Me and my girlfriend got home from our lovely holiday in Sorrento yesterday so its back to posting as normal.  There wer a few things of 'hobby' interest from the trip and here are a few snaps.

These are nativity backdrops from Naples and were scaled about right for 54mm miniatures. The work on them was quite impressive and though a little rough I liked the rustic feel of the buildings. Definitely inspiration for future terrain projects.

 Some crusaders in a souvenir shop

Some tiny scenes (the figure were about 10mm in height) with really impressive details. Ridiculously expensive though!

On a not so hobby note here a few photos from the balcony our hotel in Sorrento looking out onto the bay of Naples. Beautiful! (credit goes to my girlfriend who took all of these great pictures).

More hobby stuff, probably 15mm sci-fi, coming up!