Keeping up with the Soviet narrative, here are a few ideas. Assuming if they only get 3 slots and we stick to histroical units
SU-2 Cheap early war bomber that was sometimes used as an emergency fighter. Lembit Survived an barrage of 50 depth charges. Dubbed the Immortal Submarine Komintern or Marte Last 'large' ships that fought in the war. Very unglamorous, slow 1 minelayers.
If the Soviets get more than 3.
IL-10 Late war dive bomber. L-3 Very Successful mine laying submarine.
And for straight fantasy.
UP-41 Battleship. Designed for by the Italians, similar to the Roma Class. Frunze 4th Gangut class Battleship. Gutted by fire in the 1920s, was considered to be rebuilt as a 'fast' battlecruiser. One of the turrets would have been removed. Either the Fruze or Izmail Carrier Conversions. Su-2 and LL hurricane operations.
You heard it here folks, the nice guys of at XP Forge have agreed to list my designs on their site. I am very happy to trust my models with them. I know they offer an excellent product and we won't have to deal with Shapeway's shenanigans.
Right now I only have the big 7 transferred over. I will be working on getting the minors listed over the next few weeks. As always, send any suggestions new subjects my way.
I will still be uploading new designs to Shapeways, but that is mainly for colored prints.
Thanks to all of you that have been customers of mine at Shapeways and if you have never purchased from XP Forge before, give them a try.
Early in the war, the Kirov would take the lead when they would sortie together. Until Gorky lost her bow. If either were to get a flag, it would be Kirov. But, while not a full flotilla leader, she was often paired with a few destroyers. So when she took the mine hit in, the Gnevny struck one too but was sunk.
Really, aside from hitting the mine, all she really did of note was protecting mile laying operations.
Sorry about coming in late on this. But how about giving it the Silnyi's Hit and Run SA. Charging in, firing a few barrages, then steaming away before the enemy could return fire was a Soviet naval doctrine for Destroyers. Might be redundant, but add in HSR for her speed.
Not to quibble, but Tashkent got range 2 torps with 9 tubes, why not the same here with 10?
Let me know which of my ships you would like to see colored. Add pictures if you have an idea of what it should look like. Camo patterns are difficult, but I will try my best.
Recently Shapeways added a second colored material. I have shared some prints of the High Definition Full Color. Here is the Full Color Nylon of the Tayio and USS Arkansas.
Like Before, the Pros and Cons
Pros
-Much less expensive then the Hight Def Color. High Def is $35.40, the new Color Nylon is $16.21. About half the cost. As reference, WSF is $9.50, High Detail Plastics $15.92 -Color boundaries are sharp, not a lot of color bleed. -Detail not too bad, a lot like WSF
Cons -The material is not smooth, again very similar to WSF. -Colors are not very vibrant. The flight deck of the Tayio looks faded. -The Arkansas arrive with a bit of warp. But a dip in hot water straightened it out.
All in all, not a bad option if you don't want to paint your models and don't mind spending an extra $7 or so for each one.
I will have the few models I have already uploaded with color able to be purchased in both color materials.
BTW, Shapeways have their Cyber Monday sale going on. Here are the promo codes.
Starting next week I should be back to modeling and open to any suggestions. I won't be able to color some of the older models I have done. But I intend to get some of my more popular ones colored up.
I remember asking about this back in April of '21. I'm happy one of our model makers has continued working on this. These look great! For a painter like myself, maybe not really necessary, but many collectors aren't painters so an option for them is great.
Do you have a list of models you'll be setting up? As I recall, it isn't a simple thing to setup the coloration.
When I tired it for the first time, about 5 years ago, the results were disastrous. The colors were way off and bled badly into one another. It wasn't until some friends showed me there Heroforge minis that I decided to give it a second try.
On my Shapeways Shop I have set up a category for full color. From here on out, I will probably do a basic color option on all new designs going forward. I lost my old PC a few months ago and I am finally up and running again.
But as far as what color on my older models, anyone can drop me a message on what they are interested seeing. Doing a simple, deck, hull, detail color pattern does not take too long to do. Camo like what is on the Independence is much more difficult. Some of my real old models might not color up well, but most should be fine. Sending RGB or HEX codes would make the process even simpler for me.
After the success of the last batch of colored prints I got from Shapeways, I wanted to do a second test and bump of the color a bit. What I finally got proves that the technology for colored naval units is there. It just might not be 100% customer friendly yet. I give you the USS Princeton, Francesco Caracciolo and Saint Louis.
The Good.
As you can see, the colors are very vivid and crisp. As impertinently, they look like they should. The colors were very nearly the exact ones that I put on the models. And they didn't bleed into one another or wash out the finer colors. The dash marks on the deck were only .6mm thick on the model, and yet they showed up. And I can't say how great the St. Louis's turrets look.
The print detail is great, far better that than WSF. It may be a bit less than the Frosted Details, but it is so much more durable. You feel really comfortable handling them, not constantly worried about breaking pieces off.
The Bad.
The biggest obstacle will be the price. The minimum, or set up fee, that Shapeways charges in $25 per item. The St. Louis will cost about that. They then charge by volume after that, the Princeton coming in at over $40. Which on the surface seems really high compared to WSF and paint it yourself. But I had a guy once ask me to scale up my USS Midway to 1/700 and paid over $100 for it. So what do I know.
The other Bads
You can see that the sides of the Princeton are rough. It isn't horrible, but you will be able to see the layers on vertical surfaces. They are a bit glossy. But there is a Matte version that I will order next time. They did banana up a bit, but I have seen WSF do it just as badly. I have not tired the hot water trick to straighten them out yet. In the future I may fill in the bottom to strengthen it up some. But that means more volume, so more cost. It took several weeks to print, no quick turn around on them.
Ohh, I am not an naval historian and I did my best guess on colors based on pictures and paint sets. So they might not be historically accurate.
The Ugly,
This was not the first time I ordered these. You can see the results of the first set were not good. Needless to say I was less than happy when I received them. Thankfully Shapeways admitted that the machine wasn't set up right and agreed to reprint them for me.
But I have to wonder, was it a rare mistake and normally everting prints fine? Or does it happen with more frequency? In Shapeways defense, they do all the printing for Hero Forge Miniatures. I know plenty of people who have gotten DnD characters printed with no issues. I hope it is a one time thing, but for the cost it better be.
Verdict.
I think look great, and if there are one or two ships that you just have to have, it is a great option. Not sure if anyone wants to replace their entire fleets though. Coloring them isn't too bad. The camo on the Princeton did take a few hours, but the others took less than half that long.
I will be doing a third test print here shortly and would like some suggestions on what I should color.
So I went ahead and colored two of my models (Chapayev and Constanzo Ciano) and sent them off to be printed in full color by Shapeways. And what I go back were surprisingly decent. Fully admit I needed to go darker with the greys and coloring the barrels on the Chapayev was a mistake. But I was impressed with how well the colors remained separate and didn't bleed into one another. (The Candy Canes are much crisper than my phone camera shows) On both I colored the windows on the superstructure and you can see how well they turned. out.
The print itself was quite good. It is much smoother then WSF, you can even see how much shine there is off the deck. They do offer a matte option, so I will try that next time. They also feel more substantial and rugged than the frosted detail. But there is a slight banana boat effect with the Chapayev. Honestly, if these were just one color prints, I would pick this over WSF and Frosted. The real downside is cost. These two would be $8 in WSF or $15ish in Frosted. It will be $30 in full color. That might double for some of the bigger carries. It does seem a bit steep, but I know there are some that will be glad to pay it for pre colored minis.
I will be coloring up a few more to test and see if I can zero in on how to best color them. Going to work on adding color to the lifeboats and other details. But I would like some suggestions on which ships of mine people would be the most interested in seeing in a colores option. And even more so, what colors should they be. On my design program, I can only add colors using their RBG numbers. Does anyone know if there is a way to translate historical colors to that format? It would be a lot easier than spinning the color wheel and hoping they turn out about right.