Roberto wrote: Tue Jan 13, 2026 9:27 am
Well, SSmodels released a bunch of WWII and post WWII Italian subjects in scales including 1/350
WWII heavy cruisers Trento and Bolzano plus the previous smaller classes and is now releasing post war DDs like the Indomito Class.
Quite a bit more affordable than anything output by 3DWild.
Considering all the people I've talked to have far from praised the printing quality of SSModels, besides their very obvious and shady practice of uploading material that's clearly from a completely different source, that doesn't speak volumes in their favour if you want to order from them, but you do you.
I do however understand the pricing concern, but all of this is beside the point.
We can have all of the resources in the world and still get it wrong. Not out of any incompetence, it's just because of how difficult it is sometimes to implement a physical feature without having seen it with your own two eyes. - the Chieftain
Well, SS Model printing quality is not always a top level one, but they clearly offer a great amount of kits. Furthermore, The Chinese offer also the "orange kits" (I do not know the name of the brand but this is not SS Model), which are finer but more expensive. These people are very adaptative and design many kits you ask them to do. This is an asset. For instance I asked them the French battleship Gascogne which shoule be released in the coming months.
To answer to the question : what else would you like to see, my answer would be, taking into account the offers of "orange kits" and SS Model : Hiei, French and Italian FREMM, German future destroyers F127, German F126, British F26 frigates (but all these kits not with everything already on the hull, kits with a certain amount of work to perform by us), the Japanese Izumo, and the 7 funnels original Lexington battlecruiser, all these at 1/350.
The currently a lot of uncertainties with the German frigates of the Types F126 and F127. The Dutch shipyard Damen, which is responsible for F126, has severe problems to implement the program and therefore there are also ideas to cancel and replace it with something else. The F127 design is not yet completed - it was recently decided to increase the number of VLS cells from 64 to 96, which has likely other consequences on the design. Therefore I would not recommended to design a kit before the situation how these ships will look like is clear.
And this part of the thread should be moved elsewhere, because it is a different topic.
This is my take on an SSC models kit. I'm not sure if this is the same as SS models. Not that this is a kit, not a single 3D print. It has boxart and instructions. I also have the 'orange' Canterbury which was simply a print in a box. Still waiting for the Devastation to show up. viewtopic.php?t=414801
pascalemod wrote: Mon Jan 12, 2026 4:24 pm
I actually was admiring that they go after opportunity like this, and if not a scam - all the power to them. With 3d printing we get so many more cool kits out, its unreal. There are so many never released European designs for ships, frankly its sad no body in europe makes the effort to monetise it. I know we all love heller/airfix/revell releases of the same kits from 30 years ago but little more fresh kits wouldnt hurt.
Mind sharing some examples? Aside from the obligatory Nelson class that everybody wants (and a brand new one has just been released by 3D-Wild), I would really be interested to know in what the modellers here would like to see.
I do already have a rough idea myself of what's needed, but aside from a few obvious picks like the Town class or HMS Furious, I'm genuinely curious to know what you'd expect to see vs what we think would be most commercially viable.
For the mods/admins: if this is not the place to pose such a question I apologize, I will make a separate thread if that is the case. I felt the question needed to be asked here.
My personal preference is with pre-dreanoughts and ironclads in full hull, I really doubt that this is commercially viable. You probably have a much better of what people like to build. May be taking kits that already exist in low quality in plastic and redoing them better (where existing aftermarket could be applied - so you can offer things at lower price point) would be better idea.
I really like to have models built that are either in same time period (so you got a battelship of every major nation) or a same type of a warship that spans many generations (so HMS Warrior to HMS Devastation to HMS Dreadnought to HMS Vangguard and all in between) for example.
Morever, some navies are not represented usually, like French or Italalian or Austro-Hungarian or Prussian, or Spanish or Turkish. And I think for comparison stake and visual interest, they are interesting, esp full hull 1/700 for me personally, or 1/700. Id love a 1/200 ironclad like Gloire or Magenta, or Redoutable for example. But Im sure there is 4 more people like me and thats it. Hardly a market!
@pascalemod I would too love to see more of such kinds of subjects, and I doubt you and I are the only ones to feel this way. After all, there's already a few on the plastic market - HobbyBoss' Lord Nelson and three Dantons by Trumpeter, to name a few - so, while I would agree that's not probably what the majority of the modellers are actually interested in, I'm sure more than a couple of people would see such subjects. We made HMVS Cerberus a couple of years ago, and while it didn't turn an insane amount of profit, we sold a fair share - a couple of dozen, actually. And we're still selling like one every couple of months.
Personally, I think some of the most interesting examples from the pre-dreadnought era are the armoured cruisers, as much as the battleships themselves. Also the early ironclads like the Warrior and Gloire classes. I will definitely work on more in the future, but as you said, the main focus/period of interest for the vast majority has always been WW2.
There's certainly so much more choice in the smaller scales since manufacturers now seem to appreciate the value of diversify their product range in terms of periods of reference, as @maxim has rightly pointed out above.
We can have all of the resources in the world and still get it wrong. Not out of any incompetence, it's just because of how difficult it is sometimes to implement a physical feature without having seen it with your own two eyes. - the Chieftain
maxim wrote: Fri Jan 16, 2026 3:25 pm
He was asking for 1/700
You're right, my bad; still, the point stands. There's definitely much more choice now than it used to be, but things could be improved.
We can have all of the resources in the world and still get it wrong. Not out of any incompetence, it's just because of how difficult it is sometimes to implement a physical feature without having seen it with your own two eyes. - the Chieftain
Foch can be quite easily modified from a Dupleix. Good to have Suffren which is quite impossible to build from a Dupleix, due to the different superstructure.
Ah, and SSModels is making the Suffren too. Yes, there were already Colbert and Dupleix kits, but not Suffren (and still not Foch). These four ships were all very different from each other.
We can have all of the resources in the world and still get it wrong. Not out of any incompetence, it's just because of how difficult it is sometimes to implement a physical feature without having seen it with your own two eyes. - the Chieftain
New from Brown Water Navy Miniatures in various scales, e.g. 1/700 and 1/1250, both printed and as stl files (available at brown.water.miniatures@gmail.com):
Blockade runner CSS Alliance
Paddle steamer USS Commodore Morris
Chilean tugboat Yelcho (1906, rescued the crew of the Endurance from Elephant Island)
Spanish protected cruiser Isla de Luzón (1886)
Protected cruiser USS Isla de Luzon (1898)
Protected cruiser USS Isla de Luzon (1912)
Spanish minelayer Júpiter (V2 = in the Spanish Civil War)
According to the January 2026 monthly flyer from Squadron, the following 1/350 scale kits that were formerly or planned Iron Shipwrights offerings will be 3D printed kits under the Squadron label:
HNMLS Potvis - Potvis class submarine
INS Drakon - Dolphin class submarine
USS Indiana SSN-789 - Block 3 Virginia Class submarine
USS Arizona SSN-803 - Block V Virginia Class submarine
SS Edmund Fitzgerald
Some kits will have photoetch while others none, with decals and turned brass/CNC parts.
Looking forward to these. No release date as of yet.
