Source: https://www.artstation.com/theo_bouvier

Source: https://www.thesojournaudiodrama.com/

Historical Notes

The Bumblebee-class was intended to serve as an interdictor, based on lessons learned during the Main Belt Crisis (c. 2493-2521). During the Nova War (2539-2559), a proxy conflict between the Solar Union and Martian Federation over control of the Nova System (links to r/imaginarymaps), Bumblebees excelled in service for the Union Space Self Defense Force by racing in and out of the conflict’s vast areas of operations, where they leveraged their exceptional speed and agility to enable quick hit-and-run strikes.

When the Nova War ended, many of these tried and tested vessels were left high and dry, as their swiftness and biting close-in firepower were suddenly redundant in the postwar era. As a result, most wound up languishing in interplanetary scrap yards, awaiting the fate that comes at the end of all ships’ service lives. This was considered a tragedy by those who served aboard them, almost all of whom held the vessels in high esteem for their abilities as combat implements and as homes away from home.

But some of them were salvaged and given a new lease on life as merchant vessels, salvage & rescue craft, or a variety of other second-life roles. In the case of the Fool’s Errand, its current crew of five, all of them deep space outcasts of the highest order, has repurposed the craft as a long-haul cargo hauler, with its mighty Gungnir Corp. Mk. XXIV nuclear saltwater rocket put to good use rapidly moving goods across Nova space – if they can manage to keep enough nuclear fuel in the tanks to keep her flying, that is...

Author's Notes

This project began thanks to my friendship with u/SkullB0nes on the Tough Sci-Fi server on Discord. In early 2023, B0nes sketched his idea (Image #9) of a warship propelled by a nuclear salt-water rocket (NSWR), a concept originated by Robert Zubrin and explained here by Scott Manley. I took inspiration from B0nes' sketch, and ended up sketching out my own concept in Adobe Illustrator - it can be seen in Image #8.

Things really go interesting due to the fact that I was also experimenting with Blender around that time (repeat after me, kids: NOT EVEN ONCE), and decided to try and make the ship (which I'd named the Fool's Errand by that point) there. That led to the design seen in Image #6 an the render seen in Image #7, which became part of the portfolio of references I sent to my friend Bien Carlos Manzares for him to improve upon.

And improve upon them he did. The renders in Images 1-4 are the results of his work, and I think he went out of the ballpark in capturing my vision. The drawing in the infographic shown in Image #5 is one I did myself using the renders Bien Carlos did as a template, and it shows off the stats I came up with for the Errand (and the Bumblebee-class in general), including my slightly fudged approximation of its specific impulse.

As for why I did all this, the answer is a bit more complicated. I started working on my futuristic military sci-fi setting, The Spacers Saga, about 20 years ago (when I was just 10 years old). It is essentially a distillation and reexamination of every fictional universe I've ever loved (Halo, Stargate, Star Wars and Star Trek, etc...) which I originally used as a source of comfort when I was a lonely, nerdy kid with few friends to play with.

But in the 20 years since I started playing with this universe, though, it's evolved from a setting for a few imaginary friends to a whole future history that encompasses much of our solar system and a few beyond, and which spans from the early 21st century until the mid-26th. The Fool's Errand is from a storyline called INFINITUM, which starts up in 2569 and involves the hero ship's crew on a desperate race to get a warning to the Solar Union before the Martian Federation can enact their plan to win the Nova War after the fact.

If anyone reading this is interested in finding out more about The Spacers Saga, this link will take you to the Substack blog where I've been sharing all of the lore updates about the setting, as well as occasional posts of stories from within the narrative. Please note that there is NO pressure to subscribe at any time - it is of course appreciated, but even just having folks visit the site and check out my content is a major blessing 😄

Additional Note

Before I hit "Post," I also want to make sure I give a shout-out to my friend Megan Miller, who did the nose art for the Fool's Errand (Image #10). This link goes to her LinkTree site, where you can find more of her art. Megan is a very active indie artist from my home state of Indiana, and I highly encourage you to consider commissioning her!

I had a basic design for the engine for awhile. I modified what I had for the original design and built it from the engine to through the length of the ship to the Top of the ship. Clearly influenced by The Expanse ship design as I wanted it symmetrical on at least one plane of the design.

Mods: ASC Taiyo, Cross Heavy Industries, Mattels Hab Cockpits and Accessories, Matilija Aerospace, Better Flips, Micro Modules, Barrage Missile Launchers Ol’ Big and Avontech.

Both MOCs are ships are from The Expanse franchise, one being based on the MCRN Orion-Class Frigate (orange) and an the unknown-class Destroyer (blue).

The bulbous head of the Orion-Class frigates are high-density missile batteries capable of pumping out up to twelve torpedoes at once, allowing this little frigate to punch way above its weight and overwhelm other vessels of similar caliber. It's five Point Defense cannons give it a full sphere of protective coverage against incoming torpedoes and make it a reasonable danger for anything that decides to get too close without a railgun.

The Destroyer is a little less special. It carries four single-tube torpedo magazines and four point-defense cannons. Unfortunately, it's PDC arrangement leaves a large blindspot around the main engine. It is, however, disproportionately small compared to its main engine and is therefore much quicker and nimbler than one would expect for such a cheap production.

Animated in Blender because why not? :D

https://www.deviantart.com/ostapenkoed/art/1370127199?action=published

I guess for me it is Archangel class ship from Hyperion and...
whatever the Belters were flying in the Expanse

It's like 30k PCU

Mods: Cross Heavy Industries, Matilija Aerospace, Ol’ Big X, Mattels Hab Cockpits and Accessories, Barrage missile Launchers, Renegade Specialized Ship Modules, Avontech, Antares Supra, Better Flips, Micro Modules and ASC Deimos.

Length: 1658 m

Height: 410 m

Width: 483 m

When The Great Insectoid War emerged, Galactic Federation faced severe lacking of modern big battlecruiser/carrier type capital ships that were much needed to the war effort. Existing battlecruisers, such as Brutus-class, although were cheap to build, but also obsolete and was too highly specialized as artillery ships, while light spacecraft played a huge role in combat; dedicated spacecraft carriers also had flaws, being underarmed, underarmored and straight up too small to manage combat without a support group, which is a big issue when whole fleet experience a huge lack of vessels.

So engineers rolled up their sleeves and started to design new multipurpose capital ship class, that would serve roles of both battlecruiser and spacecraft carrier. In its development designers used the experience of their colleagues to the fullest: new vessel featured a hull that partly consisted of large sections - much like in Brutus and a plethora of earlier designed cargo vessels; design team also actively used pre-war battleship projects to reduce the overall cost and fasten the development.

Most difficult part was in creating engines that will provide this behemoth with enough speed and agility. In original project Sarissa ought to be driven by two colossal engines that also feature thrust-vectoring for maneuverability, and although those motors were an engineering marvel, but two of them wasn't enough for certain scenarios, so design team added 4 more engines, much smaller though, that gave Sarissa additional trust and served as back-up engines.

Although this vessel meant to be sort of a blend of battlecruiser and a carrier, it featured solid armament, which would be the envy of any other battleship. It had numerous heavy rapid-firing turbolaser batteries, a plethora lighter plasma cannons, rocket launchers and anti-spacecraft guns and dozens of torpedoes and ballistic missiles, all of which would be more than enough for a ship of its type... But it also mounted 4 artillery pieces originally designed for planetary defense systems that could destroy in one shot vessels of up to a frigate size. Even navy officials rated all this weaponry as a bit overkill for such ship.

Even though many vessels from first production series came into service underarmed and sometimes even lacking four additional engines due to logistic issues, their combat performance was excellent and they swiftly became flagships in many fleets. In conditions where warships often had to operate in very small groups due to a general shortage of vessels, these multi-functional battleships came in very handy, providing both overwhelming firepower and good protection as well as a considerable spacecraft group.

However, it was not without drawbacks: the huge firepower required an incredible amount of energy, just like the engines, and this created a lot of problems. For example, heavy fire from all the guns overheated the reactors very quickly, and if the ship maneuvered at the same time, then overheating could occur in a matter of minutes. Because of this, the captains tried to use weapons quite sparingly, and the four main guns were hardly used at all, with rare exceptions.

Also, despite the high degree of automation of processes on board, there was hardly enough space for supplies and personnel on board - most of the space inside was occupied by weaponry and spacecraft. All this led to the fact that at the beginning of the Sarissa-class operational use the crews either had to constantly replenish their supplies by entering ports or intersecting with supply ships, wasting time, or abandoning part of the ammunition, spacecraft groups or even rescue capsules. Because of this, very often ships of this type were not on long-range combat missions where they were sometimes needed the most.

However, when the situation for the fleet ceased to be so deplorable and the Federation fully established the production of ships in the required quantity, small groups of supply ships were assigned to the Sarissa's, which provided their crews with ammunition, supplies and fuel during long patrols, and during the battle went to the rear, which fully revealed the potential of Sarissa-class.

Despite the fact that until the second half of the war there was no more than one Sarissa in a single fleet, their combat use as flagships was extremely successful. As the fighting took on a larger scale, the Federation fleet received more and more ships of this type, and subsequently they became the basis of the fleet. Even though these ships were expensive to manufacture and repeatedly tried to replace them with newer vessels, Sarissa-class became the most numerous battlecruiser of the entire war.

///

So I decided to try posting my stuff here on Reddit. Usually I post only on my Flickr page but it feels like it is slowly dying. We'll see how it goes. May post more of my previous builds later.

It is Stepola's unpublished build that I tweaked to my taste, mostly by reducing number of artillery points and designing completely new set of engines.

The voxel version of the Star Wars Assault Frigate Mark II is here. In the lore, it was a versatile Rendili StarDrive warship used by the Rebel Alliance as an escort, command ship, base defender, and fast attack vessel. It was developed from older Dreadnought-class cruisers, trading some durability for better speed, maneuverability, and a much smaller crew requirement while retaining serious capital-ship firepower. Many fans will recognize it from Star Wars: Empire at War, where it appeared as a major Rebel fleet unit. I corrected its nose-down import, placed it in a normal horizontal flight pose, and converted its surface into 900k blocks. The hardest part was rebuilding the symmetrical broad-to-narrow red nose marking and correctly separating the four lower pods and the navy ventral bridge.

In Space Battleship Yamato 2199, Earth is only a year away from extinction after the devastating attacks of Garmillas. Yamato launches as humanity’s last hope, crossing the galaxy toward Iscandar to retrieve the technology that could restore the planet.

That history makes Yamato much more than another battleship. It is a warship, an exploration vessel, and a symbol of survival and hope.

For this build, I wanted to capture the features that make the 2199 Yamato instantly recognizable: its long battleship silhouette, gray upper armor, deep-red lower hull, massive gun turrets, stacked bridge, bow-mounted Wave Motion Gun, and powerful rear engine section. The colors and surface details were recreated as closely as possible with the game’s Block system.

The finished ship uses around 1.3 million Blocks. Its hull, decks, weapons, towers, engines, and color separation all come together block by block.