Errhile wrote:Well, I've worked in cargo forwarding for a while.
Container depots are basically loads of shipping containers, some buildings (offices for the clerks and off-duty rooms for workers) and some pieces of cargo-handling equipment. Be it gantry cranes (the one above is good for moving containers from train to truck, but not going to work with ships. You'd better look for something
like this), regular cranes,
reach stackers or big forklift trucks (big enough to handle an almost 30-ton 20' container). Also, vehicles capable of transporting containers - flatbed railway cars, container trucks, or however these low trailers meant for ship transport were.
Container ships themselves I consider to be impractical for tabletop purposes: they're damn big, even the feeders (small ships that take 160-200 containers...).
Thanks for these comments... you raise some excellent points.
The first thing we thought of initially was a container terminal at a port but as you say, the scale of things quickly gets away from you. The cranes meant for loading ships, the ships themselves, these are huge, even at 28mm scale.
There are also several other points that we always have to consider for any of our pieces.
Can it be made cheaply? Scenery is not like the the rest of people's armies. It is almost a grudge purchase. So can we make it in such a way that it is not too much of an investment?
Can it be made to weigh under 300g and fit into a C5 envelope?We ship all our products as flatpacks and they go in normal brown business envelopes. Because of this, they are classified as letters, not parcels and the postage is a lot cheaper. That's why our three postage rates are $1, $2 and $4 per package ($4 for a C4 envelope weighing under 300g)
As soon as we go over that, we have to either split the order in to two or more envelopes, or ship it as a parcel. The parcel shipping is $3 per 100g - substantially more. Thus far, every single one of our products is under 300g and we will think long and hard about going over that limit. It's fine to split a large order into several envelopes (we do that all the time) but we would not really like to split a single product into two envelopes.
Can it be made in such a way that it will last a long time, given that the tabletop environment is a rough place?We have a very scientific way of testing the durability of our products.
Stage 1 is, the prototypes are given to my two daughters as accessories for their My Little Pony toys. The five year old is particularly rough. They always break but it is interesting to see WHERE they break.
Stage 2 is, after they are painted, they are donated to my FLGS. It's interesting to see how rough people are with scenery that is not their own. All the stuff on our site has been in use at a game store, getting table time once or twice a week, for six months. Some of it has broken and needed to be repaired and how it breaks feeds into how the new stuff is designed.
The point here is, can that crane be made in such a way that when some ham-fisted troglodyte whirls around and smacks it off the table onto the floor, it will be fine.
We have also considered the forklift and even have a cad for it somewhere. We can easily make it - we make a whole range of vehicles:
http://www.lasercutcard.co.za/shop/vehiclesBut it's one thing to make a vehicle that costs $19 when that vehicle is going to be driving around winning you the game and another when it is going to be a piece of scenery. So we would need to look at how to make it as a simpler model so that it looks good but is less detailed and cheaper to make.
After all of this, the crane: we'll probably make anyway. Some ideas are just too cool not to happen. Even if it ends up only on our table, it will be worth it