An Epic 3D-Printed Fan Expansion for Last Light

For this design, I wanted to make something that is all sharp pointy edges and malicious force. Interesting tidbit, the Frigate was the first ship I printed and it came up slightly too large compared to the original medium spaceship cardboard token. Second interesting tidbit, the fighter design originally belonged to the Grey designs (see below), but I decided that it’s better to make it part of the shadows as a cohesive whole, and modified its design prompt for the dreadnought.

Of course I wished for a Borg-like brutalist design as a choice as well. The models you see below are actually hand-painted as I run out of grey filament. I had to do a few re-designs for the pyramid in order to appear that it has less of a base (since there’s no ground in space). I would have liked a spherical spaceship to complete this trio, but that doesn’t make for an easy miniature. So I went instead for a hexagonal fighter.

For orange, I went with something that might look like it comes out of Dwarven blacksmiths

I used brown as a darkened version of orange. I felt a fitting theme for this color was a subterranean design.

For red, the best concept I could come up was a volcanic design

Pink is effectively desaturated red so it felt adequate for a secondary color. A fitting design for this color was a organic bioships, taking inspiration from things like Zerg and Tyranids. Initially I wanted the winged mosquito-like ship to be the small version, but through trial and error I couldn’t make a printable version. The wings and base kept breaking off. As a medium version however it’s surprisingly stable.

Yellow gets a more straightforward spaceship design. I tried to make this somewhat long, so hopefully they won’t take too much space.

Gold fits very well as the secondary yellow color as its metallic cousin. This design is meant to give vibes of Croesus or some other gaudy personality. Also unlike their yellow cousins, they tend to be more short and stocky.

For purple I went for a round/centrifugal theme, to keep things interesting. Initially this was supposed to be my white color ships, but I then had a better idea for something to match the white theme (see below), so I decided to turn these purple instead. Unfortunately the fighter and dreadnought prints are not very well balanced, so they tend to tilt on the board, but that doesn’t affect gameplay much.

The secondary purple color was difficult to decide, since purple is a mix or red and blue, so any off-color I chose, would have a chance to look like it belongs as an off-color to either of them. In the end I went for a Fuchsia color, but in practicality I didn’t have a fuchsia filament or acrylic, so when I painted them by hand, I made them more Bordeaux.

Initially my early design were planning to be more celestial-themed, but I quickly found troubles when the GenAI model couldn’t draw spaceships that looked, well, like spaceships. I then came up with the idea for a coral-themed design, and it came out so well, I kept the celestial design only for the fighter ship, given how few print details appear at that size. The medium and large ships have enough area for the coral fractality to actually appear. And they appear quite unique on the board as well!

Green obviously had to be plant based and this was the first color I went outside of the usual metallic spaceship design and generated something more organic. For this theme I went for something plant-like and botanical.

I couldn’t decide on an secondary green color. Initially I was planning to make some sort of jingoistic design in khaki, but then I run into a neon-green filament color on sale and inspiration took me towards a more bioluminescent green color. And what better theme for this, than mushrooms!

Unfortunately the filament itself ended up being too similar in hue to the existing green I used for the Botanical design, but on the other hand, the mycelial designs came out great. The frigate design in fact was the first winged design I printed and it came out so well, that it then gave me confidence to attempt it a second time with the Organic frigates.

After I had my initial spaceships for white, it occurred to me that white would also go well for an energy-based race, and what better way SciFi trope for energy than crystals. Don’t ask me, I didn’t make the rules!

Interestingly enough, it was my 8yo kid that came up with the ship design for this color scheme as he was observing my process and wanted to make some spaceships of his own. The Dreadnought is supposed to be some sort of healing/repair support ship. Given the secondary color for the silver theme I got out of the model, I decided to call this design “Plasma”.

Unfortunately the details of these designs are apparently too fine to be adequately printed and I also tried on a different filament as well, so the actual print barely have any details. I might have to redo these.

For the blue designs, I wanted to go for something chunky and utilitarian, kinda like the firefly-class ships. These generations were I think my very first ones, and they were before I started color coding the prompts themselves, which is why these ships all have the same aluminum look.

Last, but not least, I created an aquatic-creature inspired design and this is the one that convinced me I should go for more weird and organically-inspired designs for my off-color designs. The Jellyfish-themed dreadnought in fact came out so great, even standing stable on the table on its tentacles, that I knew I needed to do more of that. It’s no wonder next ships I designed after this were the mycelial ones. Can you tell what aquatic life-form inspired the frigate and fighter classes?