I know, I know. It's been less than a month since I first posted the A209 Mobile Command Fortress design. How can it be time for a full refit design already? The fact of the matter is that I've been tinkering with this thing non-stop since December, even significantly changing the A209 design and re-shooting its photos after initially posting it. It's come far enough, by now, that I want to be able to showcase what it now is without wiping out all record of what it then was. A new page and designation seemed appropriate, as a result.
Floors 4 and 5 have changed significantly, and so has the roof, but the first three levels remain mostly unchanged, so I didn't feel it would be fair to call this the "A210" just yet. However, starting an A209-R page reserves space for me to continue to tinker with and update this design with the hope of arriving at something entirely new, different, and worthy of the name "A210" sometime down the road. For now, this is where I'll play and (hopefully) update often.
As you can see, the first major change to the A209 design is the fact that it's somehow managed to get bigger AGAIN. I stretched and creatively cheated everywhere I could to get parts for that extra height in the wings, and I think the end product looks remarkably better as a result.
A glimpse of the new roof. Rather than having the turbo lifts awkwardly extend all the way out onto the roof, there are now much shorter, unobtrusive access hatches that connect directly to the turbolifts below. The guns here were also on the original A209 design, though they were hard to see in the pictures. They use the same swivel system as the gunner stations on the A208, giving them a tremendous range of movement 360 degrees horizontal and about 120 degrees vertical.
The new interior from a distance.
The first significant change occurs in the detention facility, Level 3, left wing. Instead of crowding the cell into a small portion of the room, I've expanded the cell to include nearly the entire room, with only the smallest fore section devoted to visitors.
This allows the detention facility to become a more exciting play space and also makes it possible to have more than one prisoner at a time.
A guard enters the cell via the standard retractable laser bars.
The next significant change occurs on Level 4, Left wing. The mess hall may look mostly the same, but I've worked far harder than one would expect to create more space between the chairs and table in order to make it easier to slide figures in and out. This was MUCH more complex than it looks.
Level 5, left wing. There was no such room before! Now the White Room has been moved here in order to allow for something else to take its place on Level 4, right wing. This space is a bit smaller than the previous location, but I think it's all the crew would really need.
The new Level 4/5, right wing. This general storage area can be used to store people and/or materials for transport or evacuation, but when it's not being used (which is most of the time) it doubles as the crew gym/rec room where restless crewmen can work off a little stress.
The Transporter Core on Level 5 has also changed slightly. Now that there are adjacent rooms to the left and right, I felt it was important to wall off this area, partially because you don't want off duty crewmen wandering into an active transporter beam, and partially to maintain the potential for stow-aways and secrets in this automated area.
Creating workable doors is one of the more creative challenges when working with Construx. In this case, I needed one that could work in an extremely confined area without sticking out too much and taking up valuable space. It looks a little funny when open.
Here's the new hatch leading up to the roof from the turbolifts.
As usual, there are two landing strips for air-bikes, though lack of available pieces forced me shorten their lengths this time.