ShimmeringSword

Union Concept

Added 2025-07-30 06:06:03 +0000 UTC

Now onto the drop ships! The Union.

Along with the Leopard, it was really important to get this one right, being so prolific, popular, and appearing a lot in art already. I have always been bothered with how rare (almost never) the weapons and external equipment listed for dropships and warships actually matches on the art. Part of this comes from the FASA era where artists didn't always know what the stats would be for a unit they're working on. I also know understanding dropship recordsheets isn't the easiest thing with all the different weapons arcs and how they present themselves in spheroids vs aerodynes.

So I HOPE I've done this one right, catching every weapons pod, bay door, and escape pod. Considering all the shape repetition I started with a basic 3D model before drawing over.

I also wanted to balance the existing depiction styles where some shot the Union fully spherical, while others give it a flatter sided coned bottom half. There are some really cool squashed sphere shapes I'd have loved to go with to make it look really interesting, but I knew that'd break away from what people are expecting. I hope we get to more dropship where we can make others into interesting shapes.

Hopefully it's not too long a road to introduce this as a map scale miniature to replace the existing lower detailed Union.