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  • #82611
    Avatar photoDarkest Star Games
    Participant

    How often do you find your 6mm games taking place in cities?  (like, true urban cities with buildings more than 3 stories tall)

    "I saw this in a cartoon once, but I'm pretty sure I can do it..."

    #82612
    Avatar photoMike
    Keymaster

    Never.  Partly due to the possibility of high models getting in the way of clumsy hands. Mostly as I would want monster huge buildings that scream sci-fi and are as big as shoe boxes. This is too impractical for me in terms of both making and then painting to a standard I would be happy with.

    #82613
    Avatar photoRhoderic
    Member

    Short answer that leaves much unsaid: Never.

    Long answer: I intended to do proper cityscapes when I first took up 6mm sci-fi, especially with the Old Crow buildings. Some ten years back I even had grand plans for modelling a specific city with a kind of Latin American, African and South and Southeast Asian flair for a homebrew Cowboy Bebop-inspired setting where Venus had been ultra-rapidly terraformed and settled mainly by people from third world / emerging market / newly industrialised countries. Oh, it would have been glorious! 

    …but then I became increasingly unhappy with the dimensions of nearly all urban-type 6mm sci-fi buildings on the market. They just don’t look to me like they could accommodate reasonably-sized apartments, offices, commercial premises and the like. They’re also often modelled with undersized doors. Fact is, many nominal 6mm buildings are really more like 4-5mm scale (and it doesn’t help that many nominal 6mm figures and models are really more like 7mm). So, I’ve adjusted my expectations and am now aiming for representing colony settlements and other more outlying patches of BUA where it might make more sense for buildings to be rather dinky (think light industrial type workshops, garages and the like).

    As an aside, some of my 6mm sci-fi buildings I now intend to repurpose for 3mm sci-fi with some converting of doors and windows. Maybe someday I’ll do a proper city in that scale but it’s not a set goal for me.

    #82615
    Avatar photoAngel Barracks
    Moderator

    ^^ this.
    I have bleated on about it before so feel the need to go on about it again.
    😀

    6mm vehicles and buildings may well be say 1/300th.
    6mm people are not, if they were then their arms and so on would simply be too small to cast.
    My arm is about 100mm wide. In 6mm figure terms that would be 0.33mm thick.
    No way anyone is casting a figure with limbs that thin.

    So we have cars that are say in game terms perfectly to scale in say 1/300, but as soon as you put a 6mm figure next to it then it looks like a toy car being too short/long/wide etc.
    Then when you consider a 6mm figure often has 2mm of base under it a 6mm tall doorway which should be fine is suddenly much too small for a figure to pass through it.
    So I would actually argue the fact is that the buildings and vehicles are perfectly to size, it is the figures that are the issue.
    Go ahead and take a 6mm building, measure it and multiply those measurements by 300 I bet you will find they actually make sense.
    Or roughly measure the mm and convert that to feet.

    With my 6mm buildings, I make 6mm buildings rather than 1/300th buildings.
    Everything about them is oversized in terms of actual scale, they are designed to look right with 6mm based figures.
    Same with my vehicles, my small trucks are bigger than many 6mm companies tanks, due to them being designed to look right with 6mm figures, rather than actually being designed to scale/accurate.

    This is what I was alluding to above, were I to make 6mm buildings they would not be to scale as buildings to scale don’t look right when placed next to a 6mm figure.

    Something I touched upon way back WHEN

    #82616
    Avatar photocmnash
    Participant

    I’ve created a card 6mm city for the 2HW game Mass Hysteria (there is a 28mm figure & 6mm element circled at the front for height reference)

    .

    #82618
    Avatar photoOldBen1
    Participant

    I always use smaller buildings than I should, especially for 15mm games.  Realistically I know they are too small but Skirmish battles need few buildings anyways.  I figure if I can imagine a tiny piece of lead represents Boba Fett, then I can take some liberties with the buildings.  I used to game in 28mm and even thought the buildings were monstrous, they would never really support all the rooms needed like hallways and bathrooms.  I actually make separate interiors for my buildings now so this isn’t as much of a problem.  I appreciate large buildings, but storing them-no thanks.

    #82621
    Avatar photoRhoderic
    Member

    Go ahead and take a 6mm building, measure it and multiply those measurements by 300 I bet you will find they actually make sense.

    Ooh, I just won a bet, what do I get? 

    That is to say, I have previously measured buildings that are nominally 6mm (including Old Crow and Battletech, but I wouldn’t single those out as being special in that respect), multiplied the measurements by 300 and compared them to typical standards for the height of a storey, the footprint of a modestly sized but functional room, the size of a door, etc. They’re still too small, even by the standards of, say, downtown Tokyo. I mean, sure, in reality some floors are exceptionally low, some doors exceptionally small, and so on, but as for their nominally 6mm counterparts, the aggregate, in-context whole just doesn’t make sense. A commercial establishment wouldn’t have a front entrance as small as the door on a garden shed. A swanky airfoil-shaped tower, one that looks aesthetically like it might be a luxury hotel or the headquarters of a corporation, wouldn’t have a footprint so small that each storey could fit barely more than one or two student apartments.

    This is for resin buildings, mind. I don’t have any laser-cut 6mm buildings yet (such as the rather neat-looking ones from Gamecraft) so I don’t know about them. I don’t do paper/card terrain, nor “mixed-media” 2.5D stuff.

    #82626
    Avatar photoMr. Average
    Participant

    How timely! I’m actually about to start assembling the city of Megasaki for what I hope will be a campaign game of Samurai Robits Battle Royale and Mighty Monsters. My answer is yes, I love urban terrain and am always trying to come up with new ways to represent it in a way that looks good and is not going to require me to tax my vassals to pay for it.

    I’ve also found that terrain for cities is usually a scale removed from its “ticket” scale. Gamecraft’s 6mm scale ruins, for example, play way better to my eye against 3mm scale figures. Likewise the nominal 10mm cityscapes from Dropzone Commander, which I find are better at 6mm scale.

    Model urban terrain is routinely undersized for some reason, possibly because people making it scale it based on rooms in their houses, rather than on actual urban buildings, or perhaps due to the limitations imposed by the materials they’re using, cutting, or moulding with. A not terribly tall skyscraper could be, say, 250 feet tall, which would be close to 10” at 6mm scale. An entry door could be 12 or 14’ tall or more! Most entrances are no LESS thn 9’-0” high. Moreover, a typical city block in Manhattan would scale to about 11” x 36” easily, and a normal street could be as wide as 50’-0” or something approaching 2” at scale, or wider, plus another inch when you account for a 6’-0” sidewalk on each side of the street. Make it a wide boulevard like Park Avenue and you’re even bigger.

    So my preference is to build big and game small. I do love cities for gaming – the rules are easy enough but the terrain becomes satisfyingly complex, and it just looks good. I’m awful at painting buildings, so I like paper ones, even though they give out after a year or two. Cheap and relatively good looking, easy to build in the large numbers an urban game is likely to require and easy to replace.

    #82627
    Avatar photoDarkest Star Games
    Participant

    I’ve created a card 6mm city for the 2HW game Mass Hysteria

    Great looking town you have there.  I have some of the DZC buildings and though they are intended for 10mm they do look great for 6mm!  Another thing I like is that the streets are actually realistically large enough, and you can even fit your hands in there to move minis!

    6mm vehicles and buildings may well be say 1/300th. 6mm people are not,

    the aggregate, in-context whole just doesn’t make sense

    Moreover, a typical city block in Manhattan would scale to about 11” x 36” easily, and a normal street could be as wide as 50’-0” or something approaching 2” at scale, or wider, plus another inch when you account for a 6’-0” sidewalk on each side of the street. Make it a wide boulevard like Park Avenue and you’re even bigger.

    And there’s the rub: what looks right.  You’ve seen me go on about the possibility of using indoor/outdoor ground scaling, and this is one of the reasons.  Y’all know I do architecture and have made tons of model buildings over the years, but REAL buildings are not suitable for gaming at all.  If properly scaled and built for 6mm, your average office building would take up a huge amount of space on the table, and then you’d have to get into the whole thing of weapons ranges and movement distances and it all becomes a huge muck and more simulation than game…

     

    But then again, it’s all in how you use the buildings and what their design intent is.  Modern buildings are huge mostly because lots and lots of people work in them for part of the day and there currently is very little automation.  Our cities are also cram-packed with bodies…

     

    I am intending to make some sci-fi buildings, spanning from suburban to true urban and commercial and industrial.  BUT, these will be done with an eye to being on extra-solar planets where there is more room and fewer people,  as well as future developments, like more telecommuting to work, smaller automated factories, and lighter/stronger materials.  So the buildings will be smaller but varied.  Some will have stack-able floors so you can make them taller if you want to.  I am going to try to combine 1/300 and 6mm so they fit in with my 6mm line and offer them in both .stl* file for print at home as well as resin (or maybe rigid foam).  I know they won’t float everyone’s boat, but I’ve been holding off on doing these for far too long and need to get them out so they will stop filling up my headspace!

     

    *hopefully I’ll be able to design them so they can be printed larger for 15mm…

    "I saw this in a cartoon once, but I'm pretty sure I can do it..."

    #82631
    Avatar photoAngel Barracks
    Moderator

    Ooh, I just won a bet, what do I get?

    A sulky selfie?
    😀

    I would be curious to know the actual sizes if the inclination gets you?

    In my defence (I don’t want to be wrong!!  😛 )
    I was actually not giving the right answer.
    I was thinking about the more ‘normal sized’ sci-fi dwellings like the adobes and so on, typical ones at 25mm by 25mm seem perfectly fine if we assume that is 25′ x 25′.
    Though of course, that is a large house over here…

    #82633
    Avatar photoRhoderic
    Member

    Y’all know I do architecture and have made tons of model buildings over the years, but REAL buildings are not suitable for gaming at all.

    I think you’re right if the buildings are to be uncompromisingly real. Still, I choose to believe that a better balance can be struck between believability (not necessary realism as such, just suspension of disbelief) and practicality than what most manufacturers of 6mm urban sci-fi buildings are doing now. Just sliding the scale farther in the direction of reality without sliding it all the way to the end.

    I know they won’t float everyone’s boat

    One thing that might help is if the buildings can be interpreted to be several different “scopes”, if that makes any sense. For instance, you might want to interpret some specific industrial structure as a small factory that accommodates 20 workers. I might want to interpret the same structure as merely a workshop that accommodates 5 workers. If the structure lends itself well to either interpretation, it could be a plus. (I won’t go so far as to say “it’ll sell better”, because I really have no idea).

    I would be curious to know the actual sizes if the inclination gets you? In my defence (I don’t want to be wrong!! 😛 ) I was actually not giving the right answer. I was thinking about the more ‘normal sized’ sci-fi dwellings like the adobes and so on, typical ones at 25mm by 25mm seem perfectly fine if we assume that is 25′ x 25′. Though of course, that is a large house over here…

    The buildings I’m thinking of are mainly urban mid-rise and high-rise ones. Two specific ones that I’ve measured in the past are the Old Crow “airfoil” tower (which I love in terms of design, but not size – I really want to repurpose this one as 3mm) and a more traditional-looking apartment/office block that I think is originally Battletech (therefore nominally 1/285?) but I don’t remember where I got it. I might dig them out and re-measure them for you, but no promises.

    As I mentioned earlier, I tend to find frontier colony type buildings less problematic, especially the smaller dwellings which I can tolerate being small as their size is easier to “explain away” in the context of some dingy backwater (unlike urban buildings which make me think of Floor 7 1/2 from Being John Malkovich), and that’s why I’ve settled for only trying to represent BUAs that aren’t “properly” urban in 6mm.

    #82634
    Avatar photoMr. Average
    Participant

    Another architect in the gaming… er, game? We are brothers!

    And yes, like a pure 1:1 rendition of architecture to gaming is impractical simply because it means ranges will be off the table just for starters. But like Rhoderic says it can definitely go some of the way without having to go all the way and land you with a more visually “believable” result.

    Urban buildings are super gigantic things. Cities likewise. And then there’s an issue of whether you’re doing a city fight at close quarters or modeling “urban terrain” to just indicate an undifferentiated built-up area, which is a whole different challenge. A scale skip is about the best happy medium I’ve found so far. Use 6mm buildings for 3mm figures, or 10mm for 6mm figures, 15mm for 10mm figures and so on.

    #82637
    Avatar photoThuseld
    Participant

    I want so badly to make cities with multistory buildings, but I don’t know where to start. Card buildings seem like a good idea, but I don’t know if I want to do that. Resin buildings seem so tiny. My homemade stuff is still in the idea stage, with fear stopping me from evolving beyond upturned yoghurt pots and packaging, although I did buy a bunch of wooden stacking blocks with the intention of turning those into buildings.

    I don’t want my games to be limited to small, fringe planets, or small townships on more established colony worlds. I want to pull off a heist in an inner-city hospital. I want to drop my companion off in a crowded city. I am sick of backwater moons run by women who once tried to shoot me.

    #82638
    Avatar photoAngel Barracks
    Moderator

    I smell a crowdfunder   😀

    #82641
    Avatar photoDarkest Star Games
    Participant

    Another architect in the gaming… er, game? We are brothers!

    Still not licensed, even after all these years, but I’m working on it!

    I smell a crowdfunder

    Been thinking about that.  Might have to in order to get as many different buildings as I’m thinking of doing…

    Size-to-figures and building dimensions are the balancing act that I’m going to have to work with.  I know what I want to see, and i know not a single person has the same vision so best I can do is continue on with my M.O. : make the toys I want to play with and hope others are willing to join in my madness!  😀

    "I saw this in a cartoon once, but I'm pretty sure I can do it..."

    #82705
    Avatar photoRhoderic
    Member

    One thing that has crystallised in my mind with this thread (however obvious it may seem in hindsight) is that “nominal 6mm” can really be gamed and collected as two or more different scales that, to the purist, are for the most part not compatible.

    On the one hand, there’s a lot of new, interesting infantry that’s really more like 7mm (practically even 8mm in rare cases, as with the Vanguard Defeat In Detail figures I have). Suitably beefy vehicles can also be found in this scale nowadays.

    On the other hand, many vehicles, especially older ones, are more like 5.5mm scale or thereabouts. There’s some infantry in this scale as well – not an awful lot, but if one is gaming very vehicle-centric “nominal 6mm” (what might be referred to as “microtanks”) and one doesn’t have very specific requirements as to the aesthetic of the infantry, there’s enough.

    My 6mm sci-fi projects have been on the backburner for a long while, but when I get back to them I’m going to bring them in line with this new division. Effectively, I’ll divide most of my figures, models and terrain into one “small 6mm” project and one or several “big 6mm” projects. The former will be a microtanks-style project that leans toward relatively hard military sci-fi a la Dirtside, and possibly also mechs (although I acknowledge there’s some potential for proxy-Epic 40K as well because the Onslaught figures are exceptionally small). The latter, by contrast, will lean more toward sci-fantasy and space opera and have a more divided focus on both infantry and vehicles, possibly even with individually based figures the way several people here on TWW are doing it.

    The critical difference from my old line of thinking is that I used to think that 6mm sci-fi has really just become 7mm these days, and all the old “true” 6mm or 5.5mm stuff is just vestigial, undesirable chaff. Now that I think of the smaller stuff as something that can be set apart with worth of its own, many commercially available resin buildings – the ones that I think of as no larger than 5-5.5mm – get a new lease on life for me. That’s gratifying especially because I already own a lot of them. To bring my ramblings back on topic, I might return to trying to model a proper urban battlefield in the smaller 6mm scale, while the larger one will stick more to frontier outposts and suchlike.

    For some buildings, specifically the more futuristic ones without many discrete windows (where it’s mainly just the doors that define the scale), I’m even thinking of making separate, interchangeable ground-level front/side/back pieces that cover up the original doors and enable me to use the buildings variably as 3mm, small 6mm and large 6mm as needed. It might be too ambitious and fiddly, but I’d like to try.

    #82708
    Avatar photoMr. Average
    Participant

    I think that’s probably an accurate assessment, and is also probably why I’m finding that “true” 6mm (ie, Microtanks/traditional 1:285 scale) work so well with the “Legionary” 3mm scale that Vanguard is making for Defeat in Detail. They all seem broadly compatible on the 3mm to 1:285 scale range, while modern “Nominal” 6mm scale feels too big and scales up better against 10mm buildings.

    Scale is really not a clear cut thing in gaming anymore, if it ever even was in the first place. But the good thing about that as you say is that it gives you more flexibility to revive and repurpose older models according to good visual aspect, instead of trying to “force” it.

    #82714
    Avatar photowillz
    Participant

    I’ve created a card 6mm city for the 2HW game Mass Hysteria (there is a 28mm figure & 6mm element circled at the front for height reference)

    I bought this last week to use on my Adeptus Titanicus game.

    #82717
    Avatar photoDarkest Star Games
    Participant

    One thing that has crystallised in my mind with this thread (however obvious it may seem in hindsight) is that “nominal 6mm” can really be gamed and collected as two or more different scales that, to the purist, are for the most part not compatible.

    There are definitely size differences between 1/285 and 1/300 scale.  I have some of the old plastic and metal Renegade Legion tanks and they are waaaaay small compared to my Dark Star line.   They are so small that one of my infantry troops’ heads wouldn’t even fit into their hatches, and the DS infantry are now heroic in proportion at all!  I really can’t mix the RL stuff in with DS stuff, just too apparent.

    Now I’ve noticed that I do not mind scale differences in buildings at smaller scales like 6mm-ish, but there is no way I would put a 1/144 building in with 1/100 buildings!  Just too far off!  I have some really neat Japanese buildings that are basically 1/144 and their dorrways come to the chins of most troops, if not lower.  Just doesn’t jive, man!  What’s funny though is I see John Treadaway using them all of the time and they look great in his photos.  Maybe it’s just a case of “en vivo” where they look odd…?

    "I saw this in a cartoon once, but I'm pretty sure I can do it..."

    #82721
    Avatar photoRhoderic
    Member

    Now I’ve noticed that I do not mind scale differences in buildings at smaller scales like 6mm-ish, but there is no way I would put a 1/144 building in with 1/100 buildings! Just too far off! I have some really neat Japanese buildings that are basically 1/144 and their dorrways come to the chins of most troops, if not lower. Just doesn’t jive, man! What’s funny though is I see John Treadaway using them all of the time and they look great in his photos. Maybe it’s just a case of “en vivo” where they look odd…?

    Hey, I won’t even use Japanese 1/160 buildings with Heavy Gear 1/144 figures! 

    #82753
    Avatar photowillz
    Participant

    Using the city bases from “Dropship Commander” glued unto the rubber side of carpet tiles I have made this base for my “Adeptus Titanicus” game.  I will use the buildings that came with the pack but I find them a bit thin so I will be adding thick card inside to make the stronger.

    That’s is not the flash from my camera but a mini nuke that missed its target.

     

    #82775
    Avatar photoirishserb
    Participant

    I used to do 6mm (well, 1/285th), using buildings with removable roofs and floors, originally made from Bristol board and then styrene.  The buildings ranged up to about 6 stories at the tallest, and were all based on actual structures, with consideration of overall size vs. game scale distortions figuring heavily in the selection of those buildings for construction.  I was quite concerned with making realistically scale buildings as opposed to the “looks right” approach , which often does not look right to me.

    My approach was that I wanted to fight in and amongst the buildings, using individually mounted figs (mostly C in C at the time, so fairly thin), mounted on .02″ styrene or ABS about .2″ square, so as to allow the figs to fit in the buildings between floors.

    I never had interest in high-rise city centers, figuring that those are pretty rare, and would just get nuked in future wars.  At least that was my excuse I used to avoid building city block sized buildings, with 6000 individually cut windows.  I tried this for about three years, but gave up as most people had a problem handling the figs and buildings, eventually moving to 15mm and 28mm instead.

    #82782
    Avatar photoDarkest Star Games
    Participant

    Wow dude, that’s a lot of work!  I sort of enjoy building clearing games, though sometimes for me it just gets too fiddly to do inside the game buildings, which is why I’ll use a dry-erase map off to the side to play on when that sort of combat occurs during on-table games, can make the building alrger that way too if using the “looks right” as opposed to scaled models.

    "I saw this in a cartoon once, but I'm pretty sure I can do it..."

    #82797
    Avatar photoStroezie
    Participant

    I went with Mega/Duplo blocks for my inner city buildings.

     

    They’re not really sky scrapers but they have the right vibe for me.

    If the action moves inside I move it off table to a different indoor board, if it’s simply troops occupying a building shooting at things outside I put a marker on the building. It works well enough for me but of course ymmv.

    Cheers,

    Stroezie.

     

    #82799
    Avatar photoMike
    Keymaster

    Cherry Blossom Heights was it?

    #82811
    Avatar photoDarkest Star Games
    Participant

    If the action moves inside I move it off table to a different indoor board, if it’s simply troops occupying a building shooting at things outside I put a marker on the building.

    At this scale, exactly what I do (unless playing a more abstract game like DS2 where it doesn’t matter as much).

    Those duplo do sort of work.  Could be easy to glue on some plasticard and whatnot to create depth and detail quite easily.  Might have to give this a try…

    "I saw this in a cartoon once, but I'm pretty sure I can do it..."

    #82863
    Avatar photoMr. Average
    Participant

    A scale example: this is a nominal 1:285 scale building (in card, laser-printed cut-and-assemble) from Wargame Prints via Wargamevault.com.  The figures are 3mm scale.  They work very well together.

    #82892
    Avatar photogreg954
    Participant

    How often do you find your 6mm games taking place in cities?

    Not at all is the short answer. I’ve often looked at the 10mm cardboard city which Hawk WG does. I do fancy building a war game around a city complex. I like Stroeize’s set up, also the building which Mr Average posted above is very inspiring.

    For me cardboard is appealing, since you don’t have to paint it. Plus once finished with it, flat pack it. I’m not sure if I fancy paint skyscrapers. Being quite lazy and having to paint all those ruddy windows. Doesn’t do it for me.

    #82945
    Avatar photoMr. Average
    Participant

    Being quite lazy and having to paint all those ruddy windows. Doesn’t do it for me.

    Oh man, my great weakness.  Probably because it’s what I do in my day job, I can’t stand doing model buildings in my hobbies.  Whatever gets the job done fastest and without painting is my go-to, definitely.

    #82970
    Avatar photoOldBen1
    Participant

    I agree, I use frosted plastic.  Painting individual windows is agonizing.

    #83001
    Avatar photoirishserb
    Participant

    I don’t mind painting the windows so much, but get bogged down building all of the individual window frames

    #83027
    Avatar photoDarkest Star Games
    Participant

    Oh man, my great weakness.  Probably because it’s what I do in my day job, I can’t stand doing model buildings in my hobbies.

    Now, see, it doesn’t bother me to do so.  BUT, what I have most trouble with is shutting off “architecture me” and just making things that look cool!  I get too wrapped up in “well, if there’s a 5′ wide hallway and then a pair of 1,400sqft condos on each side and the floor-to-floor height is this then the building should be this big in foot print, and this is where the mechanical room will be and the elevator machine room, and plumbing vents….and now this looks way too big to be used on the gaming table…” kind of thing.  It can be really hard to lock down and just get on with it.  Drives me nuts sometimes.

    "I saw this in a cartoon once, but I'm pretty sure I can do it..."

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