The Plankwell-class dreadnought from the official Traveller Role-PlaYing Game universe (OTU) and is a 200,000 displacement ton behemoth of a ship, and one of the largest warships produced by the Third Imperium. It is only dwarfed by the massive and far more expensive Tigress-class. These ships were produced in far greater numbers and in far less time than conventional ships of its class because it is a modular hull that results in the ship's rather simple, blocky appearance. The front and middle sections can be removed easily from the spine of the ship and swapped out with other modules for specific missions as needed.
The class was named after Grand Admiral Olav hault-Plankwell, a sector admiral of the Spinward Marches and led the defeat of the Outworld Coalition in the First Frontier War. This set up here has a large hangar module for the launch and recovery of fighters and small auxiliary ships. The bow module is fitted with missile and torpedo tubes. The rest of the ship is covered with various weapon batteries including meson gun turrets, particle beam cannon turrets and point-defense laser turrets. The primary weapon is a spinal mount particle beam cannon. The ship is protected by both nuclear dampeners and meson screen projectors.
I molded this ship in SketchUp and used Blender to help UV wrap the texture around the cowling near the bridge tower. I imagined this tower by the way, being able to rise up from the hull during battle and perhaps lowering during jump space travel. The other textures were simply projected on the hull in various parts and detailed in Photoshop.
Background image From Nothing created by cosmicspark (cosmicspark.deviantart.com) and used with permission.
The Plankwell was originally designed by Paul Jaquays in 1981 for the Classic Traveller Supplement #9: Fighting Ships. I only modified the design somewhat - in Paul's version the very bow of the ship is completely flat, but I angled it slightly inward at the bottom. I also added a pod-like structure in the lower middle of the bow, where as Paul's was flat - almost appearing the the bumper of a car. I also think Paul's design just screams "1980s" with it's squarish appearance and weird angles.
You can view Paul's original drawing here:
http://i114.photobucket.com/albums/n244/cyberia23/Plankwell%20200k.png
Check out my other models and art at my DeviantArt page:
http://jaythurman.deviantart.com
#classic #dreadnought #Far_Future_Enterprises #OTU #roleplaying #RPG #scifi #spaceship #starship #Third_Imperium #Traveller #warship
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