Lycan Corvette Rakasha

The Rakasha is a Lycan corvette. Occupancy can vary from 1 to 10 beings. It is unusual in that the stardrive is not located in the aft engineering section but in the nose of the ship, accessible for maintenance via a tube along the starboard side. It is a fly-by-wire ship to the degree that there are no windows in the cockpit area, just large screens. It features a main weapons turret atop the power generator above the engines, and a small turret beneath the also-unusual observation blister to the left of the command deck. Access to the ship is via airlocks (and ladders) amidships and a small ramp between the landing gear.

In Wolftrap this vessel is crewed by three Lycans who adjust the communications system to emit diplomatic codes and the appearance of a human crew. It destroys Megros Station, is pursued by the Scorpio which manages to damage the stardrive, thus causing it to be captured by a nearby derelict-but-automated spacestation.

Like the Scorpio, the basic hull was built a long time ago (25 years!) and abandoned. It was originally set to be a more Millenium Falcon-y vessel to go along with my Rebel Blockade Runner-esque ship. I even built hinged landing gear! Again, this one caught the eye of the Wolftrap producer who then went to the trouble of rearranging his set layout to match the model, putting the stardrive in the front, which would have blocked the view from the cockpit, forcing him to envision large monitors instead of actual windows. Which, cleverly, left more reason to have an observation blister in an otherwise claustrophobic windowless ship.

Of course, I had to make a few adjustmenets, too, building-out the area beside the observation dome, adding a dummy cockpit to help sell the idea that it was really there, replacing it because I made it narrow at the top when it needed to be narrow at the bottom to match liveaction set, and putting-in a ramp, new landing gear, along with several places for a mounting bolt.

Detailing naturally came next. I could have greeblied the entire fusalge, but I though that might destroy the sense of scale, that this was really a fairly small vessel. The space between the engines didn't need much as, in flight, you wouldn't be able to see much for the glow of the engines. I put alot on the rear deck to help blend-in with turret details. The nose had to get alot of detailing to help it look like a delicate engine part. The rest of the fuselage could have had panelling scratched into it, but the combination of hard plastic, the earlier clear structure, with the subsequent softer styrene sheeting, would have made it difficult to inscribe panel lines of uniform depth and thickness. In other words, I was too lazy. But, the mostly flat surfaces left room for a really unusual paint scheme.

I've always liked garish paint jobs, especially ones involving stripes and purple, but this one had to be sophisticated as it had to go on a ship that could belieavably masquerade as a diplomatic courier. The producer liked black - Undoubtedly he had some scheme to light it well enough so that it wasn't space camouflage - And I'd just watched Tora! Tora! Tora!. Hence, the purple partial Japanese battleflag scheme. I made sure not to hide it under a lot of [time consuming] weathering.

I'd bult a lot of Lycan ships over the years, such as a Heavy Fighter, a Scout and a Destroyer, and even a Station, but a ship I didn't much care for turned out to be one of my most attractive.