I managed to do some more work on the trucks today and part of yesterday.
This is the mechanic truck, which is a combination of the standard cab, utility truck bed, extended bumper, outriggers, crane, and compressor/welder/generator module:
The purpose of a mechanic truck is to service other vehicles and equipment, and it carries the necessary tools and equipment to do that.
This is the bucket truck, which combines the standard cab, utility truck bed, bucket lift chassis module, bucket lift, standard work bucket, extended bumper, outriggers, dually rear wheels, and dually side flares:
This is notionally a facilities management vehicle intended for basic structural maintenance and stuff. I did it primarily because the lift arm itself was intended for the de-icing vehicle, but since all I had to do to add a bucket truck to the list was model a bucket, I went ahead and did that.
This is the new heavy-duty truck, shown here as just the cab plus basic chassis:
It started out as an attempt at a more European style light truck, but I gave that up because van-based European work trucks have significantly smaller wheels, and it wasn’t possible to gracefully pull off that look with the bigger wheels on the pickup-based truck. I decided to turn that failed attempt into a heavy duty truck with some judicious polygon pushing, making it larger and beefier.
I plan to use it for the really heavy stuff: refueling truck, deicing truck, lube truck, snowplow, and stuff like that. I’m probably also going to do a flatter-nosed cabover that can share the same rear chassis.
I’ll be doing the same thing with the van that I did with the light duty truck–the full body vehicle will be a standard van in both panel and people carrier versions, and there will also be a cut-down van chassis with various bed options that share the same smaller wheels as the van. Most of the same options/accessories for the pickup should be compatible with both the light truck and the van.
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Visit the project page for more details: Spaceport Set I
I know that it’s not really appropriate for this particular set, but a delivery truck would be nice some day. (I’m thinking of the heavy-duty truck with a big cargo box in back; preferably with a logo to match your crates and shuttles.) While it’s not part of the starport facility, it would look nice next to a pinzgauer that was loading or unloading!
BTW, count me as another one who is glad to see stuff that works for near-future (and superhero) scenarios as well as low-tech sf.
Not related to trucks, but to the Spaceport accessories in general.
I’m currently sitting at Denver International Airport waiting for a flight, and I’m looking around at what’s here and comparing it to your list of items for the set. One thing jumps.out at me immediately that is not on your list. Orange pylons. There are dozens of them scattered around the gates I can see.
I don’t know if you could do simple cones (might be too small), but they’re all over, and make sense.
Less abundant are those concrete traffic barriers, but there are still quite a few of them.
Something else I’m noticing as I write this – in addition to all of the various baggage and airplane moving equipment, each of the airlines has multiple admin vehicles in their own liveries. I’d suggest adding a version of the Zoom and the basic truck in the appropriate liveries to the Pinzgauer shuttle variants.
I’m a little ambivalent about company-liveried delivery trucks and admin vehicles given the peculiarities of this slice of the overall setting (I don’t want things to be too “fancy” or overdeveloped).
I mean, they’re good ideas for huge spaceports on developed worlds, but having all those giant intersystem companies swinging their huge financial and political clout around with local offices and warehouse hubs on fringe colonies would interfere with the atmosphere I want.
For example, it’s no fun being the plucky sheriff or an aspiring Han Solo type if a quiet phone call from the CEO of ConEx is enough to bring in the Colonial Marines or private military contractors to put an end to the fun roleplaying shenanigans that I’m crafting this slice of the overall setting to allow.
The other thing about the delivery trucks–what I actually wanted to do when I got out of the spaceport and into the surrounding areas was a spacey train network connecting the various settlements together. Those settlements would either have a central pickup point for deliveries or their own delivery services depending on their size.
On the subject of pylons and barriers, those would fit better into the structural set rather than the vehicle set, I think.
No worries mate. Just making observations of what I saw while sitting at the airport waiting for mY flight
Although I haven’t built anything yet…I was looking at the pinzgauer, and lurking on the WWG forums.
Stowage. Since the shuttle and all the Spaceport is going to be huge, when you get there, the hangers or other structures could do double duty as storage boxes…
Just a random thought …I can’t wait to see the crash trucks!
A futuristic train? Oh yes please! Me so want.
Seriously that’s something I’ve been browsing for for quite a while. Unless you want to go the retro-gothic-tech way and pimp some HO scale or you can scratch build something there is NOTHING available if you want an high-tech train on your gaming table.
And pretty pretty pretty please make it scalable for 15mm… I mean with the really small parts optional or something.
I can see your point re not having the mega-corps delivery trucks. Not sure that a train makes sense to me on a sparsely-populated frontier world, though. Dirt roads and trucks are a hell of a smaller infrastructure investment! (And, historically, railroads were the original “megacorps”, complete with private armies (Pinkertons) etc.)
Still, robbing a train is bound to be more fun than hijacking a delivery truck!
Chris H: Not a problem.
DBBromley: I was actually thinking more along the lines of making things break down into more storable components easily, rather than making storage boxes. 8.5×11 is a pretty small sheet size, and I’m trying to avoid using “exotic” materials (read: anything that can’t be fed into a printer or hobby cutter) as much as possible. So, I’m leaning more in the direction of some sort of panel and girder setup, but I haven’t done any serious design work along those lines yet.
The Chimp Helmsman: I’ve always had a sort of fascination with the idea of a high tech train, and it’s something I’ve been wanting to do for years.
Carl Fishman: I dunno, a train network isn’t that expensive compared to financing a jumpgate and seeding a colony. Once people are thinking in terms of that sort of operating capital, the kind of numbers being thrown around are on a whole another level entirely, and things like train tracks and roads are comparatively modest expenditures. Besides, one of the original founders is a very wealthy eccentric who *really* likes trains a lot and jumped at the chance to be a real-life railroad tycoon himself.
One of the big appeals of this planet from the perspective of the founders is in being able to get away from the noisy, congested, overdeveloped, and over-regulated nanny state core planets and make a fresh start someplace where the sky is still blue, the air still smells fresh after a rain, and there’s a lot of breathtaking scenery. It’s not quite Wyoming or Montana, but it’s close enough for government work, and large portions of the colony charter are dedicated to keeping things just the way they are, with severe restrictions on air traffic and road development.
For example, there’s one big spaceport in Downport, which is located in the desert where it won’t interfere with the scenic appeal elsewhere, and there is exactly one corridor where orbit-to-ground traffic is allowed. Everywhere else is off limits for transatmospheric spacecraft. Downport is slightly seedy, and is where all the spacer bars, brothels, casinos and other ways of extracting money from spacer wallets are located. (Asteroid mining and orbital industry is the big economic thing in the system, and spacers need someplace to blow through their large paychecks on booze, gambling, and nookie in a single weekend.)
Paved highways are seriously frowned on in the scenic parts of the planet, personal vehicle ownership tends to be limited to whatever vehicles can actually handle rugged terrain on private property, and most people take trains, overland coaches (Sandmasters are fairly close in appearance), or if there’s an airfield at the destination, charter a bush pilot to take them somewhere. Horses and pack animals are also common in areas where vehicles are impractical.
Visitors from offworld are uncommon outside of Downport, and when the almost inevitable complaining about things being so backwards and inefficient compared to the core worlds ensues, the locals will usually respond with either a rude invitation to go back home, a “You ain’t from around here, are you?”, or “Hey, this guy imports his salsa from Earth” teasing, depending on temperament.
When I said in previous posts that this place had a sort of Wild West sensibility to it, I wasn’t kidding. I plan to take the analogy as far as I reasonably can, because I’d like this place to function as both a standalone setting (for a futuristic Western or whatever) and as part of the larger Uppity Robots canon.
Hmmm, that means i can buy those tombstone figures from Black scorpion, after all they would use solid slugs they would be easier to maintain on world than Lasers etc, or they could just be fancy retro look weapons.
I think your right about the theme, a frontier world would either turn into a big company planet or would only have small centres of the old world on them, this could have some conflict scenario’s.
Hmmm. I hadn’t actually thought of the people as walking around dressed like literal cowboys and whatnot, but the hats, boots, dusters, and stuff like that wouldn’t be out of place considering their practical roots. Sort of like how you still see those items being worn today, but in a more modern cut. (I basically had modern Western shows in mind when it came to fashion.)
Slugthrowers are still in use in the SOTUR setting because the re-imagined BSG doesn’t have spacey ray guns either. I mean, bullets don’t suddenly stop being lethal just because it’s the future, so slugthrowers are likely to still be around in some form at that point, and there’s just something gritty and realistic about bullets that you don’t get with sparkly lights and tinkly sound effects.
I think six-shooters and wood furnished longarms would fit in just fine because not everyone wants some industrial-looking black bullethose that’s covered in 36 railed flashlights, laser pointers, and chainsaws. A visit to almost any modern gun store will demonstrate that even today, wood furniture is still considered classy and people still like revolvers. I don’t expect that to have changed in the future. Heck, I think they still even sell classic longarms like Winchesters today, which are of modern manufacture but look just like they used to back in the old days, so hunting rifles and stuff like that would still look fairly classical, or at least come in classical flavors for nostalgic types.
Long story short, I think cowboy figures will work just fine, especially the ones that paint up well in modern colors or are otherwise wearing apparel that’s still in use today.
I’d like to throw in my 2 cents to the train on frontier world suggestion. You have a new Frontier World(TM), freshly colonized with a new and shiny space port, the planet waiting to be settled and exploited. As a government I’d like to have a corporation build me some transportation infrastructure, as a corporation I’d like to do it.
- Its easy to make money with a train – just sell tickets for passengers and freight – difficult to do the same with roads. Roads can be used by anyone, but it would be difficult to casually use your rails
.
If you build infrastructure you can influence the way the world will grow – weren’t the early railway stations in the United States growth points for a lot of new towns? With having a monopoly on long distance transportation you could even control the economy a bit or a bit more (“Yes, sure, you can build an ore mine right besides our railway – but we won’t transport you ore. But we might like to buy your mine!”)
- Price of a locomotive is probably roughly proportional to that of a truck if you compare their engine output and pulling power. But a train is a lot more durable as a truck. A normal electrical locomotive today should live to see thirty years of hard work. With an estimated distance per day of 500 miles, doing that on ninety percent of days during her lifetime, she’ll have traveled almost five million miles – don’t see a truck doing that.
- Also they can haul much more cargo – I remember a documentation about Australian ore trains, up to two miles long, carrying 30.000t in one go with three locomotives. Rolling friction of metal wheels on rails is just better than rubber on tarmac or even dirt.
- You can power trains from a remote position, with big power plants (nuclear anyone? or a dam?). Also you could use decentralized, smaller power sources like solar power or windmills – don’t see one of those running a truck. And you could even use ol’ coal directly on the train! Can’t imagine a steam powered truck
So you have a railway, bringing you supplies and taking away your cattle to the space port on the other side of the planet while trucks do the short range, local distribution and market runs.
Yeah, those too. There’s a lot more to highways than just grading and paving some roads, they don’t really offer the same sort of fast return on investment that a railroad would do initially, and they kind of seem…a bit blah to me thematically. Trains, on the other hand, seem more “right” for the setting.
I was also thinking in terms of what player characters would do after being cleared by customs, and it seemed kind of hilariously inappropriate for them to take a cab or go to the Hertz counter to rent a vehicle. I liked the thought of them buying a train ticket, chartering a bush pilot, or taking an overland coach, since those seemed like more flavorful options.
Plus, being able to add awesome zorty trains, spacey bush planes, and the rest of the Sandmaster’s relatives into the mix will add a lot more SF flavor and make the spaceport equipment look really old and quaint by comparison, which is exactly what I want. Like that’s what they’ve been using for the past 40 years or whatever and it’s still good, and they don’t feel like they need to buy a whole new vehicle when replacement parts are so easy to fab locally and the equipment works just fine.
By a quirky coincidence my world of NA tribes has one transcontinental railroad!
After all they have to be able to move goods too and from Reservation!
And the Sequoians are not fans of sprawling roads and highways messing with the wilderness and the old ways!
I like the idea of the mixture of old (by comparison) and new; “If it ain’t broke…”
It’s similar to the way that it’s still possible to find fully-functioning Bi-Planes, like the De Havilland Rapide or Tiger Moth, at modern airfields. It’s only logical that this would extend to ground vehicles as well.
Really love these designs. Especially the full truck looks really butch.
I do hope they are easier to put together than the limoën zoom buy the way. Just finished 4 of them and they are by far the most difficult models I ever assembled from you. Although that might say more about your other work than it does about this model of course
Warning; political/philosophical ranting ahead. Read at your own risk.
@DBBromley; Because of trains’ low friction (and corresponding enormous payload/power ratio) they don’t deal with slopes (“grades”) very well. So unless the terrain is really, really flat, you end up with lots of embankments and cuts. Both of which are *far* more disruptive of animal movement/migration than simple dirt roads (which can follow the natural contours of the land) are.
But yes; trains are a natural choice where development is being planned and directed by a central authority. (Whether it’s the Alliance Bureau of Planetary Development or the Council of Elders.) They limit where people can go; they limit where people can develop. They make it much easier to keep track of people’s movements. Authoritarian regimes and statist politicians love them. (Note which countries, and which politicians, push them hardest.)
Thing is; my *personal*, emotional, concept of “the frontier” is based much more around personal freedom. The mountain man who wonders what’s on the other side of the ridge, so he goes and looks. The fellow who isn’t making it where he’s living, so he picks up stakes and goes to where things look better. (And if that doesn’t work out either, he tries again somewhere else. Consider the fathers of A. Lincoln and J. Davis.) So this sort of planned, channelized development isn’t what I’m looking for. I’d much rather play on the planet where pinzgauers (which don’t look to need a real spaceport; just a large clearing that’s reasonably flat, level and firmly surfaced) (OK; it wouldn’t hurt if there was a radio beacon to home in on, and someone to tell them what the weather conditions are like on the surface) touch down next to the local mercantilicum, and the locals drive up in their off-road trucks (or bikes, or horses, or aircars) and trade whatever it is they produce for the off-planet manufactured goods that they need.
And note that central planning, while it’s been quite fashionable with the hipsters for the last century-plus, has an unimpressive record. (Compare eastern and western Europe; or northern and southern Korea.) At best, a rail-based network is going to be slow to respond to new developments. (Say a rich mineral strike is made somewhere off the rail network. It’ll probably take *years* before a new line is laid to the spot, especially if there are snail darters in the way. If the folks who own the already producing mines have enough pull with the central planners it may *never* be built.)
So if I was playing in a game which featured the sort of world that Chris and DBBromley describe, I’d want to be the smuggler who swoops down to where the export goods are produced, and trade with the locals directly, thereby avoiding paying the rail barons their cut. (Better prices for me, and for the locals!) Or, if I had to be a native, I’d be trying to rob and/or sabotage the railroad.
But that’s just me. Obviously there’s a huge range of tastes out there, and the more options that are available, the better it is for everyone.
Tomas: Yeah. I don’t know what it is about the Zoom, but it’s definitely not a popcorn build. You should have seen the first beta unfold, though–it was nearly unbuildable.
Carl: Well, from my perspective, it was just one of those times where realism needed to take a backseat. I like trains, I want trains. I like the idea of spacey stagecoaches, I want spacey stagecoaches. Being the capricious, fickle, and occasionally confusing deity of this imaginary world, I say Let There Be Zorty Trains And Spacey Stagecoaches. And lo, there were zorty trains and spacey stagecoaches, and I saw that it was good.
Tongue outside of cheek for a moment, the simplest way to reconcile those desires was to plant them on a frontier planet where the people wanted things to be that way, so that’s how it turned out.
..and as far as my world…it IS about control!
With untapped natural resources, exotic game, forbidden territory, and a sparse rustic society…the Sequoia scouts will without a doubt find many opportunists …which is great for a wargame! 
No outsiders beyond Reservation city!
The tracks may have cuts and fills, but diesels are getting better all the time, as they only power the generator which powers the engine. Future trains would probably benefit from more powerful batteries anyway. The tracks themselves are not so bad for migration, but also move bulk quantities faster to other hubs for the tribes to collect needed goods. From the hubs they can move the goods via whatever means….old school, off-road vicks, or by air.
Its just a means to keep outsiders out …the tribes and tribal police can handle the interloper, poachers, and smugglers considering the ones who land undetected!
The number one export are the premier reconnaissance teams from Sequoia, and they have to practice somewhere!
Lol I see mention of a train and absolutely have to give my two cents. I definitely would want a space train. I’ve always liked trains (hence my screen name). I would definitely jump on the space port band wagon just for a train and cars to go with lol. Will we see a train for the space port by chance, lol?
Well, no. Trains need too much stuff to just be rolled into the spaceport, like tracks, station stuff, a zillion different kinds of cars, et cetera, so on, and so forth. It makes more sense to do them as a separate set, and besides, I’m already exceeding the original planned content list for the spaceport sets with lots of unanticipated bonus content.
DBBromley’s world is already spoken for. (It’s good to see you around here, my friend.)
Now that I can get back on topic, DUALLIES!!!!!!! Nothing like a diesel dually to show how much of a man you are/aren’t. Someone (might even be Chris H, if he’s who I’m thinking he might be) said before that the truck(s) alone make this set worth the support price, and you keep making that more and more of a true statement. It looks like it’s time to give you a plug in a few more visible places.
Another train comment. (Be aware; I have nothing against the idea of a zorty, futuristic train. I just won’t use it on a frontier world!)
It occurred to me that one way to lower the environmental impact of a rail line through the wilderness would be to elevate it. Stick it up on pylons, so that the migrating herds of neo-bison can wander freely beneath it! This avoids the whole grade problem, and lends itself to some (IMHO) cool visuals. Imagine the rail striding across a valley, from crest to crest, like an old Roman aqueduct. (But with modern materials the pylons can be further apart and skinnier!)
This seems particularly appropriate to me if the train is a streamlined, mag-lev monorail. (OK; I was taken to the New York World’s Fair as a small child. Streamlined, elevated, mag-lev monorail has been my default concept of a zorty futuristic train ever since.)
Sure; you’d have to put a bit of work into building an elevated rail in cardstock (instead of just using a tile with rails on it) but it doesn’t seem all that difficult to me. And such a train would be a lot easier to do in cardstock than a modern one would! (Being streamlined would eliminate all the fiddly bits a modern train has, and wrapping around the track means you don’t have to build any evil wheels! Hurray!)
AoM: Thanks!
Carl: It’s a really cool idea, but I have some reservations about it.
From a gameplay standpoint, I would prefer instead to just have quick-building track sections that can be overlaid over anybody’s tiles. I can put the train anywhere on the table if it’s on the ground, but once it’s raised, it’ll just get in my way during a game unless it’s on an edge or along the middle of the table.
From a design standpoint, raised trackage is a pain. If I make the pylons sleek and elegant, they’ll fall over unless anchored to the tiles, and that begs the question of whether or not I want to force people to build my special ground tiles or kitbash whatever existing tiles they already had. Since I dislike printed tiles for general table coverage, I wouldn’t want to build something like that myself.
If I dispense with an anchoring system, they’ll then end up resembling unsightly “flight bases” that likely won’t match anybody’s terrain without kitbashing and would also be a bit more awkward to store. Going the other way with chunky and self-stabilizing structural designs would result in the things either looking goofy or being more of a pain to build than they’re worth.
Both options above would also require me to elevate platforms, stations, and cargo handling equipment. I can’t speak for myself, but I kinda don’t want to build all those extra pylons, stilts, or whatever just to put a train platform or a container crane on the table. If the trackage was simply laid onto the ground, I could then do them as very simple 3 piece interlocking constructs consisting of a flat base with 2 prisms along the sides. If they’re done with lengths that are a multiple of two inches, they’ll fit on anybody’s tiles.
From a storytelling standpoint, flat trackage means characters would actually be able to ride up to a train or jump off the thing without dying ignominiously in a 40-foot fall.
Hadn’t thought about the problems with anchoring the pylons, but I do see your point. (As I also don’t use tiles much.)
The station could be at ground level even if most of the line was elevated. It could be assumed that it gradually goes up as it leaves the station. (Neither in your set-up nor Bromley’s, or my own ideas, are the stations likely to be at all close together, so there’s plenty of space to gain altitude and speed.)
I tend to think of the elevated line as being an interesting challenge, rather than a game-ender. (Also; think how cool it would be to have an Uppity Robot tripod looking the passengers in the eye as they whizzed past!)
Quite a few years ago a friend bought a pre-printed (and, I think, die-cut) kit that built up as an elevated rail line and station with steps up to the rails. (I think it came from Spain or Italy. Our local hobby store carried a number of kits from that company, but only briefly.) It was designed to be an urban elevated railway, with kind of a Blade Runner feel to it. So the pillars were only two or three inches high, and quite chunky. We never had any problems with stability, and it made for many entertaining sessions. (Too often things get really two-dimensional; with that set we had lots of chases up and down stairs; people leaping (or being knocked) off the elevated line; lots of fun stuff.) I’ve always regretted not buying that kit myself, during the brief time it was available. So maybe that’s motivating me here. And yes; I do agree that the preferred design aesthetic for the inter-urban elevated monorail would be a lot less stable than for an intra-urban “el”.
On an altogether other topic. I’ve only built one and a half “Zooms” so far, and what’s been giving me trouble are the wheel wells. In particular the ones on the right side of the model. Is it possible that the part numbers are switched around there? Or am I just being a bit dense? (The one I finished doesn’t look at all bad from a slight distance; it’s definitely a cute little car. But up close it’s obvious that I didn’t do a very good job with it!)
Looking forward to the trucks!
I know the train sets you’re referring to–they were done by an European company and were quite well-done. I never had the opportunity to acquire some, since I learned of their existence years after they went out of production.
The rest of the train stuff I guess we’ll revisit when I start working on it for real.
As for the Zoom, I didn’t see any particular issues with one side versus the other when building them. The only real problem I have building them is that they’re a bit unforgiving if I rush or don’t pay attention, and the wheel wells didn’t really stand out as a consistent cause during my builds, especially after redoing them from the much fiddlier flower-petal style to the current curved-strip style.
The one thing I have to pay attention to with the wheel wells is making sure I glue them in facing the correct direction. That would be with the 45 degree slope facing forward for the front wells and rearward for the rear wells. I was planning to build a pilot car next, and this time I was going to see what happened if I glued the wheel wells in as the second-to-last step. I need to cut the glue flaps off the wheel well pieces, hand cut some flaps onto the belly plate, and then see what happens from there.
RE: Trains and frontier worlds.
Carl: While I see your point about grades, cuts and elevation changes, don’t forget that just because the world in general is “backwards”, it doesn’t necessarily mean that everything is backwards. FREX, the American Transcontinental railroad was quite difficult to build and took years because of the technology available in the 19th century during it’s construction. Most grades and cuts were dug primarily by hand, at least until they could get the first steam shovels and such in place. But if the undertaking of that railroad were taken today, it might still take years to build, but would probably involve a lot more tunnels, simply because tunnel drills have gotten big and powerful. Fast forward to a society capable of crossing the stars, and we might be talking about massive laser plasma drills that cut a mile a day.
When building a ground transportation system on a world with a pristine wilderness, the investment in some sort of high tech drilling/grading equipment is going to be well worth the investment, whether you’re building roads or railways. But with railways you’re going to be able to earn your investment back sooner, because of the previously mentioned ability to easier control charge for usage.
Chris: When you first mentioned futuristic trains, I automatically assumed you meant monorails. Probably because I’m a big fan of monorails, and monorails scream “futuristic”. While you have some good points about the stability of the support pylons and paper builds, I still hope at some point you consider them, particularly if you do a more high tech version of the spaceport sets. Carl makes some excellent points about grades and elevated railway systems being more suitable for the wilderness of frontier world being newly settled – and he doesn’t even take into account the construction effort. With proper aerial equipment haulers – think futuristic helicopters (maybe the Valkyrie could have a construction variant) – you don’t even have to clear more than the area your pylons are going to be placed at. Lift your personnel into clear the support area(s), dig a hole, lift/pour your pylon in place, then lift your track sections to set between pylons.
From a game table perspective, I think my best friend and I would find it easier to actually put an elevated train set on our game tables than we would some flat track sections. See, we both use Geo-Hex, so our game tables are rarely flat. Getting a flat track section to lay out properly on our game tables would take some work as they go up and down hills. Pylons of differing heights, however, would be easy to place where needed for the track sections suspended between them. We may not be typical, though. I just wanted to mention it for your consideration.
And elevated trains come in a lot of different varieties. FREX, when most Americans hear the word “Monorail”, they automatically think of the Disney, Seattle or Vegas ones, which are widely known about. But there are some really cool ones out there, including some systems where the train cars actually hang down from the overhead rail. If/when you ever get some time to just browse, head over to http://www.monorails.org/ and look around.
I’m just throwing those thoughts out there for consideration. You do seem to have a vision with this set, and a driving vision is important – so if elevated trains/monorails don’t fit your vision, I can understand.
Finally, I think that given your vision for this Spaceport set, you might be better off overall giving it a more descriptive name like “Frontier Spaceport Set”. Especially if you intend to/ever get around to doing a more futuristic version. Just my $0.02
whoops – I meant Percheron when I said Valkyrie
Trains: The real-world reason I favor flat tracks and non-suspended trains is because that has the lowest build load and is the most practical way to provide functional interiors, and has far fewer cascading consequences. Trust me, I’ve thought the train bit all the way through.
Spaceport: I’m not really worried about the name. It’ll all work out visually once everything’s completed. I mean, most of this stuff is background ambience stuff anyway–it’s the kind of stuff that the camera pans across quickly or which remains in the background of a shot that’s focused on something zortier. It doesn’t feel that way because you guys are seeing each item one at a time, front-and-center, and none of it has actually been shown in a fuller context yet.
The reason I keep mentioning the term “frontier planet” is because it’s a gaming fig leaf more than anything else (you can get away with stuff on a frontier world that you couldn’t on a far more developed nanny state world). The spaceport itself would fit into an episode of Caprica or the re-imagined Galactica series seamlessly because it follows their “aesthetic bible”, which is basically that everything besides architecture, spaceships, and some consumer electronics has a fairly contemporary/modern appearance.
I’m not completely limiting myself to that aesthetic across the board, however, and in order for me to justify the presence of far slicker and more futuristic vehicles in the same setting, I’m handwaving the quaintly modern appearance of the spaceport vehicles as an artifact of their relatively old age and the spaceport being located on a frontier world. In practice, though, it’s perfectly state of the art if you’re sticking to the re-imagined Galactica canon.