Behold my LEGO CSS Chi-Town!!!!!

[Dead Boy]

While skimming through the CS Navy book I noticed that the CSS Chi-Town's two sister ships (the CVN-2 Arkansas and CVN-3 Iowa) were slated to be build and active by 109 PA in game time. That's NOW! And in spite of this we still have no clue about what the darn things even look like. This has always been a gripe of mine, so last week I set out to do something about it. I bought a Lego Creator program for $1.79, installed it, and went to work.

THIS is what I came up with, (it's on my junk page originally made for my sig pic, so scroll a quarter of the way down). What you see here is a roughly 1:200 scale (measuring a hair under 4-feet, 7-inches!) 3D Lego creation screen-captured in eight shots. The actual design calls for its hull extending down about one more times the visible hull's height. Thus I can assure you that I made sure that everything can fit in there... except the Sky Lifters. Why they went with two Sky Lifter ACP's I'll never understand. As such in concept drawings they were replaced with 12 Death Bringer ACP's.

Either you guys are going to have a geek-gasum over this or give me a resounding, "M'eh". Either way, know the some serious work-hours went into making this brick by brick.

[KLM]

I would go for VLS LRM, but otherwise:

GOOD JOB!

Adios
KLM

[Preacher]

The ship is neat but what is the mosquito looking mecha just above it?

[Mech-Viper Prime]

The ship is neat but what is the mosquito looking mecha just above it?

no joke huh??? is that

[Dead Boy]

The ship is neat but what is the mosquito looking mecha just above it?

no joke *** is that

The one in black and white? That's my Spider Skull Dragon Wasp. A little something I whooped up for my CS State of Missouri world book.

[Mech-Viper Prime]

The ship is neat but what is the mosquito looking mecha just above it?

no joke *** is that

The one in black and white? That's my Spider Skull Dragon Wasp. A little something I whooped up for my CS State of Missouri world book.

nice

[Dustin Fireblade]

Not to bad, certainley appreciate the effort...quick question though. How does the Deathbringer exit out the bow, pass the missile and gun turrets? Wouldn't all the equipment needed to rotate the turrets, reload, etc take up a lot of the below deck space?

[Blight]

That awesome man !

[Shades of Eternity]

great design

only real grumble is more anti-aircraft stuff.

[Mech-Viper Prime]

Nice job mate! Another reason KS should hook up with Lego. Where did you get that program at? Let me know with a PM.

Rifts and Lego togethor??????? why do I see the guy who invented lego rolling over in his grave hehe

[Shades of Eternity]

bah, it's to save humanity, and is therefore a good cause .

[Kelorin]

Nice design, but one question. If the specs call for the ability to deploy support craft from the bow of the ship, why not go for a catamaran hull design? The rest of the upper portion of the ship could remain unchanged.

[cornholioprime]

The ship is neat but what is the mosquito looking mecha just above it?

no joke *** is that

The one in black and white? That's my Spider Skull Dragon Wasp. A little something I whooped up for my CS State of Missouri world book.

Really???

Did Kev squash your Book???

[finn69]

why shouldnt lego and rifts get together? all those insect like looking things called bionicles are by lego and the old line form lego that they dont do war machines is an old out dated line since they make all those star wars fighter crafts and war machines.

[Nxla666]

Thats cool Dead Boy, and need more info about your Missouri book.

[Carl Gleba]

Just awesome Dead Boy...awesome. Two


Carl

[Tweek]

That's pretty kewl, man. I like the samas shown to scale. Definitely shows the size of that behemouth ship.

[The Beast]

Ah, I see you use New Jersey to test your ships' seaworthyness.
Looks nice.

I bought a Lego Creator program for $1.79, installed it, and went to work.

Where did you get that from?

[Warwolf]

Damn you Deadboy... now I want Rifts Legos!

Kudos for your tedious work. A book about my home state... now you have my attention. Though the Dragon Wasp seems a bit ill-concieved (since when do their aircraft look like insects?), the rest of the book might have drastically better stuff. Are you , by chance, a former Missourian yourself? Or would you possibly want a person to bounce ideas off of that has spent his entire life here? Seriously, now you have me interested...

[Alpha 11]

Thats cool Dead Boy, and need more info about your Missouri book.

Love it! Great combo with Lego! And yes more info on the Missouri book please!

[Dead Boy]

Not to bad, certainley appreciate the effort...quick question though. How does the Deathbringer exit out the bow, pass the missile and gun turrets? Wouldn't all the equipment needed to rotate the turrets, reload, etc take up a lot of the below deck space?

Nah. There's a lateral "Well Deck" that runs through much of the bottom level of the ship. I'm working on the interior (complete with the previously unseen portion of the hull that would be under the waterline) which will show all of that. But be patient. Working it all out takes times. Especially since I'm tring to keep everything to scale.

only real grumble is more anti-aircraft stuff.

Yea, there's tons of room on the deck for more AA. But I only used what was in the book; 2 defensive missile batteries 4 rail guns, and 6 Phalanx cannons. But that could easily be trippled or better.

If the specs call for the ability to deploy support craft from the bow of the ship, why not go for a catamaran hull design? The rest of the upper portion of the ship could remain unchanged.

I though about doing just that, but the the text in the book also says the ship was also designed to land troops directly on the beach. With that as a criterion I opted to go with a bow design similar to one of the landing ships used in World War 2 that has a prow that opens in a similar way.

Did Kev squash your Book???

With the Rifts submissions blackout in effect (I think it recently was lifted) Kev hasn't even had a chance to see it yet.

I bought a Lego Creator program for $1.79, installed it, and went to work.

Where did you get that from?

Amazon.com (LINK But be fore warned. The program has serious limitations that you have to work around, and it doesn't have all the parts you'd think such software would include. I had to make my ship in five major separate modular sections designed to be assembled on a fresh page (and not saved there together) for each of those screen captures you see.

[Dead Boy]

Thats cool Dead Boy, and need more info about your Missouri book.

Love it! Great combo with Lego! And yes more info on the Missouri book please!

The way things are going, I don't know if the book will ever see print since much of it deals with events in the shadow of the Tokleen War. Things that are almost contradicory with what was put in the Aftermath book. Like for instance, I had the CS begin construction of a new fortress city called Cross in the disputed portion of Missouri, right between Whykin and Kingsdale. It's intended function was to serve as home for the million plus new CS citizens, stemming from the Coalition's agreement to citizenize the burb-trash that enlisted to fight in the war and their familes. Cross takes up about a fifth of the book alone, but Aftermath outright says that, officially, the CS dishonored that agreement. Another section is about the people and government of Whykin where I took the bold step in making their Darven population larger and more publically accepted than previously thought, making their future prospect of joining the CS a but more ardious than it would have been before, even though they are all for it... the Dwarves included! The reason for this is told in a story about the city's origins, and would be a spoiler if I said any more on it. There are other things as well, like the CS equivelent to an Area 51, called Sector Zeta, as well as some details on a few small towns, but that's where some of the fluff material begins.

[Dead Boy]

BTW just how long did that take?

The CSS Chi-Town: 10 days and counting. Working in the interior now.

The Missouri world book: 5 years and counting. Everytime something comes out that requires an update, (like a new book), I make a minor modification. Right now I need to get in and make a few changes to some of the skills of the NPC's due to RUE.

[R Ditto]

Wow, nice job...

Makes me want to pound my computer.
I had the Lego program at one time and tried to relive some childhood memories, then uninstalled it at one point while trying to free up disk space for a game that hogged up a lot of HDD space...
Now the thing won't reinstall, because the stupid thing apparently thinks it wasn't uninstalled in the first place.
It now collects dust in a drawer with a bunch of old PC games I don't really play anymore.

Nothing like having inspiration strike, to grab it firm and run with it, just to run face first into a proverbial wall.

[RainOfSteel]

I bought a Lego Creator program for $1.79, installed it, and went to work.

Youre design is fantastic . . . but it is so sad you are using Lego Creator instead of: Lego Digital Designer. Download the software. Build your design. When you finish a design in it, you can upload it to Lego, and they'll tell you what the price is to ship you a box with the bricks in it. A customized box will be shipped to your address with a picture of your design on the front.

[Shades of Eternity]

BTW just how long did that take?

The CSS Chi-Town: 10 days and counting. Working in the interior now.

The Missouri world book: 5 years and counting. Everytime something comes out that requires an update, (like a new book), I make a minor modification. Right now I need to get in and make a few changes to some of the skills of the NPC's due to RUE.

Dude, with your military background and extensive knowledge of the game environment, I think I can speak for us all here when I say...GET IT IN ALREADY!!

[RainOfSteel]

Youre design is fantastic . . . but it is so sad you are using Lego Creator instead of: Lego Digital Designer. Download the software. Build your design. When you finish a design in it, you can upload it to Lego, and they'll tell you what the price is to ship you a box with the bricks in it. A customized box will be shipped to your address with a picture of your design on the front.

Lego Digital Designer only allows you to use a limited number of "special" pieces, though.

Really? They don't advertise that one so well.

[RainOfSteel]

Lego Digital Designer only allows you to use a limited number of "special" pieces, though.

Really? They don't advertise that one so well.

Yeah... all the plain old bricks you could desire, but it only lets you select one "theme" set of bricks at a time. Thus, you can't use the "My Airplane" set at the same time as the "My Robot" set. Nor can you use two "My Airplane" sets, but you can double up on standard bricks.

Hmm, time to go off and find a lego forum and see if I can't find what the official explanation for producing a crippled piece of software is.

[Prince Cherico]

I have never been this impressed before