by Jan Pieter Vrolijk

"Oooh, she's beautiful isn't she? And so much nicer for a spot of colour!" -- Quartermaster Colin McDuff

I-War (Re-released as Independence War in the US) has always been my favorite Space-sim and one of my favorite games period. By 1997 standards, the amazing 13 minute (!) CG-animation prologue was epic in it's own right, and the introduction of the game's "villain", the Under New Ownership impressed me more than anything. The Under New Ownership (affectionately called UNO) is definately too cool a ship for the good guys to fly.

In case you're not familiar with the Independence War game series, it's about the seemingly endless war between the Commonwealth Navy, who keep the peace in all of known human space, and the fiercely anarchistic Independent Fleet AKA the "Indies", a rag-tag group of pirates, rebels and terrorists fighting for the independence of their colonies. A war that drew to a close by a series of events starting with the capture of the Navy's Bastille class destroyer "CNV-222 Harvard"

The AWESOME introduction CG-movie is available here in crappy youtube quality, should you want some references to compare my model against, or if you just like to watch cool space battles.

I've been planning to build this ship for a loooong time, and this contest was the perfect excuse to get off my butt and do it. That and I thought it might be interesting to enter an accurate model of an already "pimped" ship from an existing fictional universe rather then coming up with one myself, or pimping a stock kit.

Some interesting facts about my model:

The model is completely scratchbuilt out of polyurethane foam, ABS plastic, Polyesther putty, coffee stirrers and the remains of my credit card that, through circumstances beyond my control, got cut up a while back (rest in peace Goldy, you will be dearly missed) ...basically anything I could find lying around.

For reference I used the original computer models and textures from the game, and some pics I got from the internet and the guys at the Atari forum. I sprayed it first with primer, then with an airbrush and then put the graffiti on it with a single tiny, tiny brush. The word "painstakingly" comes to mind. I traced them onto the hull from images I resized and printed out. Note that the tags on top of the ship are repeated on the bottom, in different sizes. I guess the game's texturer was on a deadline, huh? Well, it's not my place to complain, only to reproduce as accurately as I can. Interesting (?) UNO trivia: The 6 names in the graffiti: Mike, Andy, Todd, Richi, Matt and Glyn supposedly belong to the ship's bridge officers, but are in reality Independence War's developers/programmers.

The whole thing is lighted (at least the parts that light up in the game) with LEDs I scavenged from christmas tree and by bicycle lights. The red "emergency" lighting in the bridge viewport and the blue/white engine lights stay on all the time, while the yellow LEDs in the Gatling PBC turrets under the wings fire in two-shot bursts (read: blink quickly twice) while the forward PBC cannon fires only once as follows: port, port, forward, starbord, starbord, forward, port, port, etc. The "cargo bay" below the ship can be slid off to turn the lighting on and off and replace the batteries.

The turrets are fully articulated and swivel 360 degrees horizontally and about 45 vertically. No (or hardly) visible wires because I soldered the wires to both sides of the metal bearing the gun-pod hinges on.

The "base" is just some thick wire I soldered together. the pins fit snugly into the torpedo tubes as to avoid any unsightly, unnessessary and altogether uncanonical cavities in the beast's underbelly.

• Class: Bastille-class Destroyer
• Mass: 22000t
• Length: 626m
• Crew: 250+8
• Armaments: 2x2 gatling Particle Beam Cannon (turret mounted), 2x long range Particle Beam Cannon, 2x variable missile tube (internal configuration)
• Shields: 3x rapid-tracking Linear Displacement Shields.
• Acceleration: 2m/s

Image: Port side view

Image: Bow

Image: Top

Image: Underneath

Image: Under the bow

Image: Stern

Image: Engines aglow

Image: Darn taggers!

Image: More

Image: More

Image: More

Image: Turret detail