Just a quick gallery post today showcasing some of Ground Zero Games' civilian merchant starship figures, with all five variants of the Tradewind II-class space freighters and a customized Luxury-class space yacht. No, really, Rolls-Royce Aerospace named their yacht the Luxury class. Subtle, eh?
These minis are available (along with many other civilian ships) unpainted through GZG's web store here (although the yacht has been customized quite a bit and her cutter is a drone from the 15mm Stargrunt range):
This particular batch has been painted up in the livery of Shamrock Stellar Shipping Services, a mid-sized transport company based on the frontier world of New Ireland. Like many shipping firms they find the Tradewind II combines reasonable purchase and operating costs with excellent reliability. While fairly small by cargo hauler standards, their capacity and operational range is a good fit for the needs of many frontier zone trade routes.
The Tradewinds are theoretically modular with several standard variations of swappable transport and tank containers. Their versatility is further expanded by the "boxcar" design which is specifically made to be easily customized to suit needs from livestock haulage to delicate cargo transport to passenger duties. Changing a ship's module fit is a time-consuming process that requires proper orbital shipyard facilities, so most ships are left with their original fittings for most or all of their service life.
Shamrock Shipping (or S4 as they're sometimes referred to) recently added a secondhand Luxury-class yacht to their fleet as a corporate flagship. The vessel (like many yachts) was modified by the original private owner, removing the dorsal observation lounge and moving the owner's suite down into the hull so that the space could be used for docking and upkeep facilities for a Luna Yards Ardent-class ship's cutter. Ardents are a popular heavy landing craft widely used by the UNSC Exploratory Division as well as many civilian research organizations. A high-performance design with excellent atmospheric handling, a full grav re-entry rig (for airless worlds), and significant cargo and personnel transport capability, S4 uses the cutter to conduct inspections of their far-flung surface facilities and to explore new markets across the frontier.
The yacht has been registered to S4 under the name Lady Luck, but the crew tends to call her the Green-Eyed Lass. While no longer quite as luxuriously fitted as she was in private hands, the vessel is still a very comfortable posting for her crew as the corporate executives that travel on her do feel the need to keep up appearances for potential customers and new business partners.
Very cool, I kind of wish the GZGs background was more widely known and distributed then in us niche sci-fi fans. I think it is every bit as interesting any of the other big companies universes.
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