More FASA Federation ships: Star Trek starship parts kit expansion #13

[This kit can also be found on my Google Drive mirror.]

This is the thirteenth expansion parts kit meant to complement my original Star Trek Constitution Class Parts Kit. This is the second kit covering ships from the FASA Federation Ship Recognition Manual for the old FASA Star Trek tactical combat board game. The first FASA Federation kit can be found here: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3704638

See my Cults3d Profile for the full list of parts kits I’ve released so far. All parts are meant to be cross-compatible between kits for your kitbashing enjoyment.

Update 2024-11-19: Another update to the Constitution and Miranda kits leads to another update for this kit. Windows are included and details added to support larger scale prints. Previous version here.

Update 2023-03-30: I’ve updated to take advantage of the new higher quality parts from my recently revamped Constitution and Miranda class kits. Primary differences are more detailed saucers, and more screen-accurate command modules, impulse engines and nacelles. There are also a number of new design variants included. The previous version of the kit can still be found here.

Update 2021-04-08: In keeping with the recent updates I’ve made to My Constitution, Miranda, and first FASA Federation kits, I’ve given this kit a major overhaul. This includes fewer mesh quality improvements than those previous kits, as I original released this kit fairly recently. However, I have included many detail level improvements and added a number of additional ship variants based on previous requests. If you’re looking for the old version, it’s been archived at the old Google drive location.

Contents of this kit are broken into three zip files:

• Fed2V4-blender-files-part1.zip, Fed2V4-blender-files-part2.zip - The Blender source files used to generate the STL files.
• Fed2V4-ship-stls.zip - Complete ship STL files.
• Fed2V4-parts-stls.zip - Individual part STL files used to build the complete ships.

This kit supports the following FASA ship classes:

Anton class cruiser

The FASA version of a TOS Miranda.

Kit supports several variants:

• The Pre-TOS era version as might have been seen during the Four Year’s way.
• The TOS version.
• A later version incorporating several motion picture era parts.
• Alternate TMP era version with command module integrated torpedo tubes.

Bader class scout

To be honest, I kinda hate this one, but it is FASA canon, and was requested by my friend Steve Stevenson over on Facebook. It’s essentially Starfleet’s Volkswagen Bus.

Brenton class cruiser

A cheaper cruiser designed to supplement the refit constitutions, this is one of the most controversial of the FASA designs, due to it’s inexplicable “stretched” saucer seeming pasted on top of a larger hull section.

Another included variant is a “transport” conversion of the Brenton. This was an idea from my friend Art Braune, finding a potential use for all that horizontal hull real estate after the ships were retired from front line service.

Durrett class cruiser

A light cruiser with a single nacelle, a goofy long neck and a truncated Miranda body.

Kiev class frigate

Another shortened Miranda-ish hull with a top-mounted weapons pod.

Lenthal class destroyer

In FASA Trek, Andorians had a thing for protected center mounted nacelles, and ships they had a hand in designing showed this. The Lenthal features a strange teardrop shaped extended hull.

Nelson class scout

FASA’s version of Franz Joseph’s single nacelle Saladin class scout. The only difference being the Nelson has two necks connecting the saucer and nacelle instead of the single one.

This kit supports several variants.

• The Pre-TOS era version as might have been seen during the Four Year’s way:
• The TOS version.
• A later version incorporating several motion picture era parts.

Ranger class scout

One of my favorite FASA designs, the Ranger is a small scout with a simple and unique saucer not used in other designs.

I’ve included two versions of this ship:

• The FASA canon version uses completely out of scale Constitution refit nacelles.
• The Brad Torgersen redraw (my preferred version), which provides the ship with redesigned and scale appropriate nacelles.

Remora class escort / Charger class destroyer

The Remora class features large pontoons that are not given a reason for in the game. This ship was the cover girl of the FASA Ship Recognition Manual.

The Charger is an uprated destroyer version of the Remora space frame.

Thufir class destroyer

Another Andorian design, the Thufir features two outboard pontoons protecting the nacelles. The original FASA artwork for this ship is completely non-sensical, so my default model for this design is based on Brad Torgersen’s rationalized redraw.

Also included is a variant that uses a more traditional TMP era saucer, more closely matching the original FASA art.

Wilkerson class destroyer

A fairly basic two-nacelle variant with no secondary hull. Again, this model is largely based on Torgersen’s redraw with the front saucer notch for the torpedo tubes.

I suspect those not already familiar with FASA Trek may get their mellow a little harshed by some of these designs. To be honest, I’m not really 100% with some of them, but I did want to try and reproduce them relatively faithfully to the original designs when possible. That said, several of these models rely heavily on Brad Torgerson’s redraws to fix many of the major issues with the oft-questionable original FASA source art. You can find these redraws, as well as additional information about the FASA game, at his site: the Star Trek Starship Tactical Combat Simulator On-Line Database & Archive.

The FASA Star Trek RPG was very popular among us older Star Trek fans who came of age in the '80s and '90s. It lost its license to produce Star Trek in 1988, seemingly because Gene Rodenberry, hot off of the success of TNG season 1, wanted to de-emphasize the military aspect of Starfleet, despite the abundance of uniforms, ranks, and 50-megaton matter-antimatter warheads that all his shows were chocked full of.

FASA Trek provided a tremendous amount of background on a Trek universe that was, in many ways, more realistic and interesting than what Rodenberry and company wanted in TNG and later shows. Although much of this background has been supplanted by later official canon, the ships from this game remain popular among old-school fans, and some have made their way into later expanded universe content, notably video games.

Notes on scaling and working with Blender

My target scale for all source files and output STL files is 1:1000. Although these files have not been extensively tested through printing, they are intended to be resized to match common modelling and miniatures scales.

Blender is free, which to be honest was the primary factor in my decision to learn it. There are many fine video and text tutorials available online if you're interested in learning more. See the Blender fundamentals tutorials playlist to get started.

You can use File -> Import -> Stl (.stl) and File -> Export -> Stl (.stl) to load or save STL files in blender.

Note: These kits were built using Blender 3.5.

Post-processing STL output

Although all of the STL files included have been tested as valid watertight meshes, joining the parts together and exporting new STL files can introduce small errors that may cause issues with slicing programs. I recommend any STL files you create are checked using a program like Netfabb Basic free edition. Doing a simple "Close All Holes" repair has fixed most of the issues I've run into so far. If you do run into issues with mesh quality, please let me know.

Parts list

Unlike in the Thingiverse version, I’ve posted a separate zip file for each ship containing the Blender files, part and ship STL files for the design. You can find these zip files in the same folder as this readme.

The following lists provide a summary of the included parts form all the zip files. For the majority of items, the mesh origin has been set so that when you import these objects into your 3D editor of choice, they are positioned as they would be on the sample ships provided.

Parts

For detailed listing of included parts, see the Readme file on the Google Drive mirror.

Combined ship STLs

These files provide sample ships generated using the parts included in this kit.

Blender files

Each ship ZIP file contains two blender files for each design: a parts file, containing the STL parts arranged as used in the sample ship designs, and a parts source file, containing the raw blender objects used to create the parts.

License

I'm releasing this under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license. You're free to distribute and modify these files (even for commercial use), provided you attribute the creator and distribute your contributions under the same license.