Continuing on from the Relthoza fleet gallery, here's another set of old images of first-generation Directorate miniatures from Spartan Games' Firestorm Armada range. Spartan is long gone and Warcradle has the rights to the game as of time of writing, and 3rd edition is in active development after lengthy delays. Like most FSA ships they're resin except for the small escort ships, and most are quite large compared to (say) Full Thrust or Brigade models minis.
Sample shot of the various classes for size comparisons. Starting from the largest ship in the upper left and going roughly clockwise, that's a dreadnought, a battleship, a carrier, a cruiser, an escort, a frigate, a destroyer, and a heavy cruiser.
Another group shot with the smaller ships in their respective units. The heavy cruiser (center rear) acts as a leader for a cruiser squadron, and up to three escorts can accompany each large ship to help defend them.
Carrier and escort group. If I remember correctly the carrier was a two- or three-piece metal casting, and by far the heaviest model of the lot. which earned it a metal flight post as well. Might be wrong though, it's been years. No idea what I did with the fighter tokens, which were odd resin castings that had details of the individual fighter craft but sat flat on the table rather than on a flight base.
Same group from the rear. Yes, the carrier is essentially a single-saucer version of a Cylon base star from old school Battlestar Galactica.
The first of many belly views, showing off the carrier's limited weaponry and ventral "runways" mirroring the dorsal ones.
The battleship with its escort group. The big ship is about five inches long, but being resin makes it fairly lightweight. Unlike many Directorate ships it actually has some weapons visible from above.
Same group, moving away from the POV.
And a belly shot showing off how many gun mounts there are on this thing. Almost all Directorate ships have the bulk of their obvious weaponry on the dorsal hull, which is a neat idea in theory but leaves the models looking rather plain when they're actually in use on the table.
Another group shot, this time without the battleship and carrier included. The dreadnought is well over six inches long but again, fairly light thanks to being mostly resin.
Even the "small" ships are pretty big, and in keeping with the game's odd ideas about ship classes, the destroyer (lower right here) is very nearly as big as a cruiser (top right). Firestorm Armada calls for a big table due to the big footprint the minis occupy, despite the fact that many large ships can't move their own hull length in a turn.
Belly shot, and again we see a huge array of weapons that are mostly concealed from above. In addition to all the smaller turrets, the dreadnought has three of those huge weapon arrays, one fixed forward and one on each side in rotating mounts (although you can't see the portside one well here).
There's that portside rotating weapon array just poking out from under the main hull.
Cruiser squadron lead by a heavy cruiser.
As usual, the bellies are covered in turreted weapons, although nowhere near as many as the capital ships.
A destroyer squadron, apparently suffering some navigation issues.
What a shock, more belly guns.
Big squadron of frigates, who wind up being cannon fodder in most games. Unlike teh escorts, these are resin models.
And yes, they do have belly guns of their own.
I think that was all of the Directorate ships I painted back in the day, and it might actually be all of the "first generation" sculpts for the fleet. There was at least one generation beyond this one which shared a similar overall style but was very different in the details.
