Saturday, May 5, 2018

Rampart RF-128 Fighter Illustration

I was laying out a Lightning Class style "race track" Hangar Deck for the geomorph book and decided I needed to model the Rampart Fighter. So here is my version, based mostly on the plan view found in Supplement 5: Lightning Class Cruisers and the box cover illustration by Richard Flory for the Fifth Frontier War game.

From Supplement 5:
    The Rampart RF-128 and RF-128-2 fighters are small streamlined combat craft with stubby wings and limited control surfaces. The wings are semi-retractable, enough to reduce the crafts diameter to 3 meters and allow use in the launch tube.
     Each fighter is a 15-ton craft constructed at tech level 15. The models have two distinct features - weaponry and crew size.
     The Single Place Fighter is laser armed, and has only one position - for a pilot.
     The Dual Place Fighter is missile armed, and has crew positions in its double cockpit. The craft is used for squadron command and control in combat situations. In addition, the dual place configuration is used for training of new pilots or for periodic check-rides for pilots within the squadron.


Of course I decided to ignore that and show a version with both lasers and missiles.

3 comments:

  1. Just saw it. Love it.
    Question: Why TL15? Couldn't they produced at a lower Technology Level? I mean, it's just a 15dTon fighter jet, right?
    Keep the good stuff coming. I keep checking daily.
    mac

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    1. I don't get the TL15 production either. The body design is barely TL6. I didn't see anything in Supplement 5 about other craft TLs, but the Traveller Wiki says the Lightning Class Cruiser is produced at TL14.
      Thanks for the feedback. I hope to post something at least once a month, more if I can.

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  2. If I remember rightly the TL=15 Rampart replaced an earlier class of fighters (built at TL13-14) with which the AHL class were originally equipped. When the AHL class were upgraded to TL=15 the Ramparts replaced the older fighters (can't remember the name of the older class of fighter, but they are out there somewhere in the published material).

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