I’m finally building a modular system to make rack storage of starfighters work. I wanted to build one to handle all the fighters, and as you can see, I mean ALL the fighters, even the Defender. The system is fully modular and the same arm articulates to work with a wide variety of rackmount craft (with varying levels of awkwardness when it gets to huge stuff like the gunboat). The whole system rotates around the rail and so can cycle into the interior of the hangar. Access or maintenance gantries can be built around the rail, or the rail is just a track and leads the fighters into a boarding/maintenance area.
A lot of detail engineering here, but worth it.
I love it! My only question is how do you get the arms to face the other direction, like on the Mangler, Scimitar and missleboat? Is it just put on that way or are they supposed to be reversible? It looks like the elbow joint only goes one way.
In the current layout you’d need a backwards-facing arm and a front-facing arm. If I got rid of the hydraulic at the elbow it’d be fully reversible.
Cool, that’s what I was thinking. I really love this design and all your other work too! Keep ’em coming and thank you!
What was that last starfighter? Custom?
TIE Mangler, designed as a heavy strike element for killing rebel corvettes and such iirc.
Link here: https://fractalsponge.net/?p=2507
Great rigging!
Quick question! The fighter in the first image, what is it? Its not an Interceptor, its not a Hunter or an Avenger by the looks of it! Any ideas?
TIE Hunter with the wings folded.
Awesome! Rebel fighters have landing gear, and thus need an open hanger. Larger Imperial vessels probably have at least a couple of these racks, which clearly increase fighter capacity and, as your render shows, also allow for versatility. Definitely an advantage.
What about the TIE advanced x1?
OR.. the v1
Would a blastboat be able to fit in this?
Haven’t tried but my guess is absolutely not.
One *might* fit with the wings set horizontally-the problem would be fitting anything else on the racks behind & adjacent, given that design’s rather broad footprint.
You could space the rails farther apart, and it would probably take 6 arms and a custom grapple attachment. It’s doable, but not seamlessly. It is also a ship with a dedicated landing gear mechanism, and that sort of puts it (appropriately) with shuttlecraft landing on platforms rather than racked.
A little ‘bonus’ to this system that no one has mentioned yet – It gives you an easy way to calculate capacity of a ship based on how many ‘pairs of arms’ they. For example: An ISD carries 72 TIEs, (six squadrons), thus meaning it would have 72 ‘pairs’ of these arms (1 pair for each fighter). Now you can convert that number to any combination of TIEs or Gun/missile-boats – 1 Gunboat for every 2 TIEs means that the ISDs TIE capacity of 72, if dedicated solely to Gunboats would be able to carry 36, enough for three full squadrons.
This same sort of thinking can of course be used for ALL combinations – Maybe even up to extra-long ‘super-heavy fighter’ type ships that require 6 arms to ‘hold’ (rather than 2 or 4). Whatever you can imagine really…
~JD
Interesting~
I did not realize the Assault Gunboat was that big and the TIE Punisher and Tie Defender were that relatively small.
Honestly I would say the TIE Defender is a tad too small in here, or at least it’s cockpit section.. Might just be a trick of the angle though
In what way? You’d prefer it bigger? The cockpit is a standard module.
Not sure, in the 4th pic it looks kinda smaller, I know its one of the farther ones in the row, but compared to the TIE Avenger’s cockpit module it sorta looks smaller.. Like I said earlier, it might just be me though.
Probably angle – I can confirm the module is identical in diameter.
Oh I see, I’m rather curious about the Scimitar-style modules, those do seem larger in diameter, are they?
They aren’t. Imagine if you cut a TIE/ln ball in half, moved them apart, then filled in the gap – that’s pretty much what they are. Basically same cross section but longer.
I bet that it’ll probably be rather expensive… But ever thought of making full scale animations? I think it would be awesome to see something like the Impellor or Secutor deploying waves of starfighters using this handy rack system!
Pretty neat! The third picture strikes me as kind of funny though when my brain tries to personify the shuttlecraft as being want to be put down on the ground but the grabber wouldn’t let it.
Yeah the gunboat is really designed around just landing rather than being racked. Legacy of its shuttlecraft design ancestry perhaps. The Missile Boat fits much better into the system.
Huh no Racked TIE Demolisher, hope you do that soon.
Neat! Love the approach to detail and functionality!
Maybe you can reduce the awkwardness with bigger craft by having the arms grab some sort of adaptation frame (of course sacrificing some of the universality). But solid anchor points on the wings should also do the job.
The bigger craft I think are really shuttlecraft class things, and are more going to launch from platforms than the rack. I just wanted to see if it would fit without having to build a new arm for it, and it does, but awkwardly. It can easily fit the system with a new longer lower arm and bigger grappling claws grasping the fuselage, but then that requires some more detail engineering to make sure it all retracts properly and can cycle over the top of the rail.
The missile boat fits well, but it’s a newer generation from the originals, which are probably based on shuttlecraft more than fighters.
Cool! Looking forward to seeing the finished product.
Hey, boss, can we see updated Mangler renders some time? We never saw the final form with the targeting “eye”. Other than in Howard’s animation, that is.
Yeah, keep meaning to do it and putting it off. Will get to it eventually.
Excellent, and thanks too.
Hot *damn* is this clever-and not particularly vertical-space-demanding compared to a given ship’s walker storage.
This is amazing. How do you see this getting mounted into a vessel–and by modular, do you mean the whole thing is able to gimbal around (potentially extending out into a service/launch bay for example) to facilitate access or launches? Are the arms clipping in the animation or do the ‘elbows’ snap outboard during the rotation?
Overall, I like the biomimicry, versatility, and general mechanics of the system–especially the options for combining two or more sets together to handle different vehicles. Would this (or a similar frame work) be used for walkers? This is far better than that generic clamp depicted in the X-Wing/TIE series that never really made sense.
I do think, though, that this presents two complications:
1) it illustrates the impracticality of the Star Wings (or, really, any Cygnus Spaceworks product I guess) as a compatible service piece for general fleet use in this particular rack system–those grab points really have to tie into a structural element or spars like the TIE units–the wings just aren’t going to cut it; and
2) the mounting and clearance requirements of the rack system would further complicate service units.
It’s not designed for walkers, though the articulation system could be adapted with a new claw/grapple. For walkers it’d probably be more like a magnetic pad grip. By modular I mean with the same rail, you can accommodate almost any fighter of this approximate scale by using combinations of the same arm. All of the arms in these renders are identical – they are just articulated to accommodate all the fighters and spaced differently along the rail. I imagine the rails would be attached to modular points in the ceiling (so you can alter the width between the rails), with the frames to the sides of each rail with a gap in between to allow the arms to cycle up and over, and the rail track would lead into an internal service area.
Speaking of walkers, don’t be surprised if this basic arm mechanism makes its way with different window dressing onto a light walker…
AT-DP? Or some flavor there of? 😊
One time on a Mechwarrior forum, I asked why Mechs have hands. The first reply was “because there are no girl mechs.”
But seriously, arms like this would make plenty of sense for combat engineering walkers for the clearing of debris, or for commercial walker vehicles for loading/unloading cargo. There’s probably plenty of other applications.
Are we talking about giving walkers hands or the system grappling and holding walkers? Because I meant the latter.
Could go either way, really. If your grapplers are as versatile as they seem, there could be all sorts of applications. A SW version of the power loader from Aliens comes to mind, too.
And here I was thinking you already made this. It’s certainly a nice way to increase that polygon count.