Winter Crawler Campaign redux Director's cut

Hey Veeky Forums - a while ago we had 3-4 threads about running a Vehicle-homebase campaign set in a huge tundra-like world, where eerie stuff happens in the month-long nights, and the cozy safety of hot cocoa inside a big Tundra Crawler beckons you home.

Well, I am running it.
I saved a considerable amount of the old threads - I am running this in Only War, because my group had already settled on 40k at the time.

Story is that my players, through their various expertises, have been consulting and helping along a founding on an icy Deathworld, only to get stuck there when the local orbital elevator gets smashed by terrorists.

Now, they themselves on their way to assist the PDF of the planet with resource management and logistics, by manning a great Tundra Crawler, until such time as Imperial Transports can return to the planet.

Questions would be welcome, and suggestions as well. I will be dumping my Blueprints for the Crawler, as a homebase and playable dungeon.
It is heavily inspired by pic related, since Imperium of Man do not like to do things small.

btw, all glory to Rob Watkins, who is the artist behind this.
I recommend looking up his stuff for inspiration for sci-fi settings. (Although I imagine my Imperial Crawler being considerably blockier and with less organic curves)

Here is a sketch of the thing from a few angles.

As a dungeon / homebase, the crawler has 4 internal decks, as well as an external roof-section.
This is the lowest deck, partially wedged between the humongous wheels of the thing.
It mostly has the vehicle bay, the lower part of the engine bay, and some ballast tanks.

This was all done with pencils and the like, on A3 paper of acceptable thickness. I am very undigital.
Sorry for the quality, I am taking photos with my cellphone.

The next deck up from the bottom is the "Main Deck"
It has a load of stuff, but main features are the Medical Bay, the Chapel (Imperium stuff is important, yo), the upper engine bay, and the cargo bay ground floor.

Unlike in the concept art, I have decided to make the cargo space enclosed, with an elevator set into the floor, that can take players to the ground.

The top of the Crawler rides about 15-16 meters off the ground, with the body having a total height of 11-12 meters, and around 4 meter clearance under the belly.

It is 22.5 meter wide (without the wheels) and around 35 with the wheels, at the widest point.
It is a little more than 50 meter in length.

I think I will take a small break from dumping, and check in soon.
Let me know if you want more.

What would really help this is a little tiny side-view on each deck's sheet, showing how it fits vertically. Wouldn't need much detail.

This looks fantastic. MOAR!

Big land vehicles are my thing.

I usually prefer some kind of scouting capability - a small airstrip for drones, a mast you can raise with either sensors or some unlucky bastard with binoculars in it, tethered balloons, or at the very least motorcycle or small vehicle outriders. How does your vehicle handle this, assuming it's set up for extended cruising ops?

also I adore this thing.

>phoneposting

No one gives a fuck, keep posting, i wanna steal it all and i cant steal it if you dont post

Look at some of the big Forge World armoured vehicles if you want a good 40k analogue for a snow crawler.

This deck is the Command Deck.
It had the Bridge, with panoramic (gothic) windows, and an external walkway running most of the way around the front.
It also has habitation (28 bunks in 7 rooms), bathrooms and Mess + Galley.

I spent more than a few hours looking over blueprints from military ships and cruise-liners, to incorporate as much realistic detail as possible, as well as placing rooms and stations in semi-practical and realistic positions.
While it has a walkway leading to the main staircase, it doesn't really access the cargo bay, which is why I have left it out.

That would be great. I should've thought of that. Although, I think I have spent the time I am willing to on this little project by now. Want to actually plan & play some sessions with it.

I am happy there is an audience for this.

The decs are being posted in sequence from lowest to highest, there is a lookout post on the roof.

If you want something smaller (because you're using 15mm or smaller figures) you can make something neat out of that one Baneblade-variant with an infantry fighting platform on the back.

Stormlord, some googling tells me.

Rip off the guns, for starters. You get two sponsons with the kit, put both on one side facing each other, leave off the guns and put a walkway in-between or something. Remove some aquilas if you're not in 40K, and add smaller weapons as necessary. Chuck some cranes on it, here and there. Replace the back panel with a ramp, perhaps? Maybe into an open bay? With cranes. Or extend it out backwards.

I did this with a 15mm one, but it got trashed when I moved. Then I decided 15mm wasn't for me, so if I did it again it would be for 6mm, and at that scale it's more of a slowly-moving terrain piece than a vehicle.

Needs more rivets.

This is the topmost, and last of the internal decks.
It has the potable & grey water supply, as well as officers quarters, a secure comms station, and an internal walkway around the cargo bay area, with a control pod for the cargo hoist & crane.
I can see our commisar already, wistfully staring out at the endless snow vista rolling out behind him, only broken by the huge churned-up grooves left behind by our crawlers wheels.
Sipping a nice glass of port, and listening to a quiet imperial hymn.

The top deck does not extend forward fully, because the prow section slopes down towards the front.

I did consider it.
I rejected it for two reasons:
>1. I'm poor, so I rarely invest in miniatures, I usually use cardboard cutouts of really "big things" or use miniatures me or my friends already have, for our gaming nights.
>2. Even though Baneblades are huge for tanks, this thing is so much larger than a Baneblade that it isn't even funny. It is basically a container ship on wheels.

My conclusions so far, from DMing Only War, has been that regular-sized miniatures are way too big for my battle-maps, if I ever want battles that actually utilize the semi-realistic ranges on the rifles / pistols that Only War has.
The last few battles, I have recruited my collection of Micro Machines figures from my childhood, because they sorta, almost make sense for the scale of muh maps.

Yeah, I wasn't really suggesting it to you, just expanding on the other suggestion.

I tried to figure out how big a Deserts of Kharak carrier would be in various scales, once. Think I decided even 1:600/3mm would be totally impractical. :(

>port and stern
Do you bychance mean "port and starboard"?

Last level is the Roof Section.

It has a Lookout Tower, a Comm array that can probably be collapsed, but I didn't exactly incorporate any specific clear mechanism in the drawings.
Also, a shed for roof guard-duty, presumably built from flakboard, against the side of the heat exhaust, so it's nice and toasty, if drafty and rustic.

A sensor array, and access to the stern turrets.
Also, some enterprising soul has welded metal spars to the roof, and strung out rope between them. I wonder how many PDF-troopers skated to their deaths before that idea was implemented?

Also, there are sandbag emplacements on the roof, because defending this baby against tundra-pirates is probably an everyday occurence, and obviously you will run out of ammo for the point defence cannons.

My poopy brain has betrayed me. It must've been late, and english is not my first language, so I probably got my nautical terms mixed up.

It's okay. My friends speak English as their first language and always get mad at me for using proper ship directions.

1:600
>"These grains of salt will represent your characters, guys."
That is... some scale.

I have been playing a lot of battle maps in our campaign at 1:300
At that scale (in Only War) most lasrifles are within their "short range" increment out to 17 cm, and within their "regular range" out to 67 cm.
For pistols it means short range is usually >=5 cm, and long range penalties begin at 20 cm.
That is workable, for battlemaps, I think, and it means those game mechanics get utilized, and you get the feeling that military rifles / equipment actually have significant advantages to pistols and melee weapons.
But also means your characters movement on the map, pr. turn, is very insignificant.
(Half move is 1 cm, full is 2, and a run action takes you 4 cm, on a turn) - If you have a regular agility-score at any rate.

Other times, I have used 1:150, like these maps are.
I just feel the game gets incredibly lethal at very close ranges, and also that it seems retarded that military engagements should happen that up-close, unless it is inside a building.

test

...

Nah, 3mm has surprising amounts of detail. It's shitty old 2mm that's grains of rice. picoarmor.com is the main us distributor for the oddzial osmy stuff that's top of the class, and they conveniently have a nice pretty website with a lot of photos. It's mostly a vehicle scale, though.

Is posting messed up for anyone else?

Easiest way I remember it is "port" is the same number of letters as "left"

There's also mnemonic stuff like "there's no port left"

Starboard being much longer than Port is so you can tell the difference even when your hearing is compromised by a storm or a battle or what have you

Well, I hope you all enjoyed this.
If nothing else, I now have digital pics of my battle maps.

Might post a few tracked vehicles just to keep the thread alive for a while, but I have no more battlemaps for now.

I remember those threads! Glad to hear someone picked up on the ideas.

That's pretty awesome user