Colonial Marines

[hawkman67]

I agree totally!! thing looks wicked sweet and will go so good with the drop ship.:D
Jeff

[Millenniumfalsehood]

I would suggest working with someone who builds small and has designed a kit before. This way, you can know that the model is suitable for small-model-junkies and it'll save you the headache of redesign.

[kjev]

I think it looks great. My only question is, "Why a 4-man crew?"

K'Jev

[Gearz]

yeah... it's getting there.. sorta... I'm probably being pedantic, but i want it to be an easy/fun build for everyone, so if my fat fingers can assemble it (without throwing things) i'll be a happy camper. Its my own dumb fault for straying from my usual methods. At any rate i think a solution is at hand, I'd prefer the fuselage to be in one piece, however, breaking it in two will solve several problems ~ just a re-arrangement of parts.

hey K'Jev, why 4? long answer shortR. I'm aiming for the model to be in scale (approx) with Jan Rukr's smaller drop ship, which from memory is around 1/150 give or take?. I'd like to retain the look & feel of the Cobra AH's canopy/forward fuselage, so I'm using the canopy of both models as a visual cue for scale. To retain that look and keep it in scale, I can either shrink the model, or shrink the crew and say it a larger vessel. uuummm ... clear as mud.?

Actually, saying its a larger vessel will suit many purposes. Part of the vessel background / history suits a larger fighter / four man crew. I'm sadly behind the eight ball when it comes to concocting expanded info, however, I don't believe there's any mention in the franchise of protagonists, other than the Aliens themselves, and i'm reluctant to invent any.. apart from the obligatory renegade mining guild maybe lol. So the Cobra's all dressed up with no place to go. Its primary deployment would be that of Escort to provide protection against ( insert bad guys) or perhaps long range patrol and policing action [sigh] where are all the bad guys when you need them. ~ A four man crew / larger vessel would be more practical for extended long range missions.

btb.. Just a point on the canopy / scale reference

Its all Hollywood physics of course, and this is just IMHO without doing exact calculations, but the movie dropship design seemed out of scale with APC or vise versa. The scale or the interior of the APC (crew) made it look a lot bigger than the comparative size of the Drop ship's cockpit, so i recon the Drop ship's cockpit is to large for the supposed size of the vessel. ( using the APC & Marines as reference)

[Millenniumfalsehood]

Actually, the Xenomorphs are the antagonists. Hey, you get to be pedantic, so do I! Nyah! :p

I like how you're basing your cockpit off a real-world design. It lends realism and gives people a subconscious visual link to the real world quite nicely. So just how big will this sucker be when built?

[Gearz]

MF ~ Ouch!... got me.:o. lol. Yeeaaahh... who would have seen that coming.. 'Ripley versus the Marines'. I'd better pass any extended info past you guys for proof reading lol. ~ antagonists.... How big..? bout 28 ~ 30 cm, just a little larger than the dropship at this stage.


Cobbling together a believable niche within the Aliens universe, for the Cobra to slot into, is proving ...difficult. The Colonial Marine Tech manual aside, there seems to be lots of conflicting info online regarding the USCM's. By the looks of it, some of it may have been generated for table gaming etc. To cut it shortR i need a parent vessel for the Cobra to call home, and for obvious reasons the Sulaco out. I found a reference to a Bougainville class attack starship, the Conestoga Class starship (Sulaco ) replacement ~ whether the Bougainville class is 'cannon' i couldn't determine..?

One reference to a likely candidate for a Cobra's nest, was the 'Okinawa' class assault carrier 'The Shirow'. Sadly it was from a single page I'd saved way back and the URL is dead now, so i can't establish if it was just some fan fiction or what.

Sooo.. a question for any Aliens Techsperts that may be following along here. Does anyone recognise this pic, and is it cannon from an established tech manual or game..? the author / creator..?

The following text accompanied the picture. * I'm a little foggy on the time lines, however i think the dates quoted at the end, place this vessel + action around the same time as the Sulaco was in service.. 'Aliens' or shortly after ?

The Shirow is more than a ship, it's a force unto itself.
At the outset of the Linna campaign, we hauled into low orbit while the interdiction ships were still deploying the surface-detection sats. We kept the Shirow on an active defense state; its sensors are wide enough to protect itself and any other vessels in a compatible orbit for 5000 clicks. That means the ship will react to deflect or destroy projectiles as soon as the enemy aerospace launches are detected, regardless of the trajectory. The thing is, it's not supposed to retaliate against the installations themselves without confirmation or intervention from us, otherwise it could saturate our own groundware when the enemy fires on a shallow track.
We picked up the launch of an eightfold MAGNAlance pattern far south of the principal population centre, their active homing screaming as they reached the stratosphere and all of them heading for the Shirow due to its larger EM profile from the ventral antenna. The Shirow took this rather personally. It instantly powered the particle beam cannons and directed fire at the warheads, frying all eight in rapid succession and turning two into 'deadheads' before they made atmospheric break. But that wasn't enough for the Shirow - according to StratCom our own divisions were deployed half a continent away, and weren't expected to engage the rebels until aerospace superiority had been achieved. The Shirow considered that safe enough: it armed two strike nukes and dropped them on the position of the launch, much closer together than is usual. Even from orbit, the detonation looked like the fires of hell.
Several days later, we got the word from surface command that they'd reached ground zero, and tried to confirm the remains of an ASAT installation; there was nothing left - nothing. They had to redraw the territory maps for that one.
Seems the Shirow was dead on.
Sometimes, I think its AI enjoys playing god.
- Admiral D. Yates, USASF '62 - '78

[ElectricMonk]

If anyone is still paying attention.

The Shirow and Ohio (Okinawa and Conrad classes, respectively) can be seen here: Aliens Starships

Neither are canon in design (the Okinawa is mentioned in the technical manual), but both are pretty cool.


Named ships in the Technical Manual:

STRIKESHIPS

strikeships
AD-17A Cougar
AD-19C/D Bearcat

gunship
UD-22 Navaho
UD-4C Cheyenne
—C = gunship, adding gatling + secondary weapon bays, losing storage space

tactical transport
UD-4 Cheyenne
—H = refit, 1.5m longer (C + E)
—J = "B" models upgraded to "H" standard
—L = "H" upgrade (movie model)

transports
UD-4B, UD-4E Cheyenne
—E = extended range
CS-14 Briareos (heavy lift shuttle)
UD-24 dropship (proposed), capable of carrying the M40 Ridgeway heavy tank


GROUND FORCES

M577 APC (movie APC)
A = twin 20mW Boyars PARS 150 phased plasma cannons
B = twin Republic Dynamics M2025 40mW free-electron lasers
C = twin 20 MeV charged particle beams

M34A2 Longstreet light tank

M22A3 Jackson medium tank

M40 Ridgeway heavy tank

(Various self-propelled or carried weapons, such as HIM-122 Lancer ABMs)


SPACE FORCES

Conestoga class light assault transports (as of Block '74 revisions, prior to that straight up transports) (the Sulaco)
-27 of 36 built in service
-considered a light armament = 8 missiles, two neutral particle beam cannons, two twin railguns, two laser point defense turrets, 60 orbital fragmentation mines, 80 ground attack missiles.

Bougainville class attack transports
-will replace Conestoga class
-both replacement and "attack" implies more weapons and perhaps more troops/equipment/vehicles

Valley Forge class
-unknown role (frigate/destroyer/cruiser?)

Henderson Field class transports
-presumably heavy transports, if the Conestoga class was turned from light/medium transports into assault transports.

Okinawa class assault carriers

[Vorcha]

Very impressive!!!