I test-built a security Zoom the other day and it was kind of a scary build in a couple of spots, so I had to tweak things a little bit. The one change that’s actually visible is the light bar’s increased height. I was a little bummed to lose the low-profile look, but the folds were too closely spaced on the original lightbar. I doubled the lightbar’s height to fix that.
Also, bonus content!
I did a Customs scheme (to make life a little more interesting for smugglers/adventurers) and a follow-me car scheme:
That second scheme was inspired by photos of real-life follow-me cars.
I’m also toying with throwing in a plain white general purpose scheme for administrative use. The way I figure it, if the facility vehicles are sourced by contract and in fleet quantities, then they’d likely simply buy a bunch of white Zooms and then slap on the appropriate decal kits, and the admin cars would just be leftover, unadorned white Zooms that have only had their bumper codes applied.
UPDATE: Changed up the customs scheme. Tomas mentioned the Dutch customs vehicles used the same basic paint patterning as their police cars, but in a different color, so I hit up Google for images of the Douane vehicles he was talking about, and modified the oblique Battenburg of the security car to resemble it.
Here it is:
It’s basically the same retroreflective white side decaling as the standard security scheme, with green and golden-yellow oblique checks instead of blue, and the text is now green bordered with golden yellow instead of blue bordered with white. I like it, and I think it ties in better with the rest of the vehicles like this.
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Glad to see the Customs version! I was even thinking of suggesting it. Something to drive out to the just-landed spaceship and ask to see passports, medical certificates, etc. But now you’ve got that angle covered.
I’m really looking forward to this one. (Especially because it will give me a good excuse to take a break from doing the three million half-tires on the ground handling unit!)
Nice customs scheme! Is there a reason why you didn’t use the same striping as on the security vehicle, but in a different color? That’s the way it is done in Holland for example. Following the idea of a same motive, but with different colors for different emergency vehicles.
Carl:
Tomas: Oh, I was kind of futzing around with the chevron layers when it came to mind to do a customs version, just to see if I could salvage something out of them. However, once I did a Google image search for “dutch douane” (I hadn’t thought to look there until you mentioned it), I can see how the same striping would work. I’m gonna go play with it now because I think it’ll look better than the chevrons.
Oh, yeah. Just tried it. That works for me. I left the underlayer white, but did the upper row of strips in green and the lower row of stripes in gold so it looks very similar to the patterning the Dutch use on their cars. I’ll post a screencap on the next update. Thanks for pointing me in that direction!
Tomas beat me to it, I was going to Belgian Customs having the same patern as Police cars (well not anymore since Police changed their pattern a few years back) but in Yellow on White instead of Blue on White.
Not sure if it’s a effect of the Navy’s crappy computer but the green seems very brownish to me… And the ‘customs’ writing seems to have a yellow border/haze around that’s sort of make it less readable.
I like the idea of white vehicles being purchased in familly size package and customized vor various duty. How come the follow me car base collor is yellow then?
And while the concept private security just make sense I’m not so sure about private customs… How come their vehicles come from the same fleet then?
Playing the devil’s advocate here… I do love what I see so far.
Out of plain curiosity does the numbering has any rationa? What does D and C stand for? How come the follow me cars doesn’t have a letter?
Speaking of wich at Brussels Airport most of the non specialized or emergency vehicles that drive on the appron are indeed plain white but still do have a number.
Another idea. What about a fire chief Limoen Zoom with the same pattern as the fire truck that is red and green-yellow but on the basic white vehicle… Same rationa as all the other Zooms but tied to the fire truck.
The green being brownish: It’s one of my standard Ebbles colors, but I can go to a lighter green. The haze is actually a thin gold border around the letters, and the unreadability has more to do with the fact that Metasequoia’s realtime renderer is not “pretty”, so screenshots always look rougher/blurrier than the actual output.
The follow-me car is yellow because I like yellow/black follow-me cars. In-universe, it’s likely a full body vinyl wrap or they had a couple of yellow ones thrown in with the rest of the fleet order. If you do a Google search for “follow me car”, you’ll see where all the influences came from.
Private customs: In this case, “Customs” is just a fancy label for making sure landing fees and taxes are collected and nobody’s stealing stuff or smuggling in contraband.
The equipment is owned/provided by the spaceport itself, but the staff is a mixture of permanent, temp, and outsourced employees. I used to work for Kelly Services (a temp staffing agency) as a temp back in the early 2000s, and they had a little office inside the huge Sallie Mae building where I was temping as a file clerk. I was a Kelly employee but used Sallie Mae’s equipment and wore a Sallie Mae nametag.
Eyesore (the planet the spaceport is located on) is sort of the extrasolar colony equivalent of a Wild West boom town, and when most of the colonists flocking there are doing so because of a “gold rush” and most of their skills are geared towards occupations revolving around same, there’s an amazing amount of infrastructural stuff that’s just easier to temporarily outsource to companies that already have the experience.
Decurion SCS provides experienced personnel and training for many of those specialist roles, and some of their packages provide for a transitional role from staffing to training locals to take over completely by the end of some specified duration. In this case, they’re in a contract to provide security, rescue, and customs personnel for Eyesore’s main spaceport while training their own local replacements. So, Decurion doesn’t own the equipment, they’re just providing the personnel and expertise on contract.
The numbering: Just basic bumper codes to simplify maintenance and logging. Letter code indicates the use group (admin, security, customs, rescue, ground support, etc), the numerical code after the dash is the vehicle number. This is repeated on the roof for security, customs, and rescue vehicles for easier aerial ID.
The follow-me cars do have those codes, I just forgot to unhide the bumper code layer before exporting the textures. I left off the letter on the sides and roof because there are only 5 follow-me cars in the fleet, they only do one very specific job every once in a while (guide new spacecraft around an unfamiliar facility), and it’s really hard to visually confuse them for any other vehicle type.
The fire chief car–actually, I was going to give him a more trucklike incident commander vehicle. I don’t want to fall into the pattern of using one vehicle body for too many roles because I like to see geometric variety on the table. Admin, security patrol, customs, and follow-me seem plenty for one vehicle type. I’m also doing a light duty van and a truck–the van for security and customs, the truck for general purpose and rescue use as an incident commander vehicle/fly car.
Well it all makes sense. I was aware of the follow-me car traditional colour, just wondering how it fitted the whole ‘buy a bunch of white cars and slap various stickers on the door’ scheme. I JUST LOVE the rationa behind the follow me car not having a letter. It strikes just the right cord of silly exception that just happen evertimes in real life.
An alternative to the Wild West analogy is the Colonial Outpost; I mention this merely so I can shoehorn a barely on topic reference to vehicle numbering. The BBC TV series “Death in Paradise” is set on a Caribbean Island and the Land Rover used by the Police Force has the call sign “Car One” even thought the only other vehicle they have is a Motorbike and side-car.
The Chimp Helmsman: Oops. I wish I’d checked the comments again before I went and fixed the numbering on the follow-me car.
I have a tug/towbar on the top shelf of my workstation and the tug has the full code (M is the letter code for self-propelled ground support equipment), so I’d updated the follow-me car with the full code and changed the font to match that of the tug. I’ll go ahead and post a shot of it as-is anyway.
Sithcundman:
Like the idea of a chunky vehicle for the fire boss
Just as a note the police vehicles in the UK only went to silver because the carmakers were going to charge extra for the white paint work.
Oh? That’s a neat bit of trivia!