MOC-84194 Tj's YT-985 Ship

And we’re back, visiting one of my old mocs that has been in instruction limbo for a very, very long time. The reason? It actually doesn’t work in Stud.io.  It was so difficult to get this to work, that I almost gave up, and took several breaks in the middle. But finally, It’s done! And you can find the instructions for this, as well as a couple of the containers on Rebrickable.com right now! But it’s time to go over some of the details and updates for this fun build!

To me, there are several key points of the Moc that I’m very proud of.  First, we’ll start with the forks.  One of my main goals with this build was to make it defy gravity a little bit.  The forks needed to be super long, perfectly straight, and have little to no visible support structures.  If anything I actually weakened it by having these giant turbines on here! But by building the center of the forks with the bricks going sideways and reinforcing that with a locking technique, it really kept it from sagging.

So, If you’ve seen my old video, you know that that particular ship was given a pretty simple designation, the 76.  This one however I designated the 85, but you can designate it any way you want!  Included in the instructions are pieces that can be configured into any 2 digit number in Aurebesh, and I even included a Lego-fied version of each number at the end so you can get an idea of what it could look like!

On the top of the ship I reconfigured the bubble to work more like an observation point than a weapons hardpoint, which seemed to fit the purpose better. The controls there operate the connections for docking the cargo. I then switched the defensive cannons to automated/droid controlled, freeing up the crew to handle the business side of things.

Speaking of cargo, I think that’s probably the biggest draw for this ship. It really embodies everything I want to include in a design.  Shape, function, and there’s really no other way to say it, coolness. It’s got to have all of those to really be a design I can get behind. The cargo containers help give it that classic round corellian shape, but even without them, or with different cargo attachments, the shape is quite unique, and I think it still fits quite well in Star Wars.

Of course one of my favorite parts to work on were the vertical engines in the back.  I am really still in love with these things, and I finally got a functioning mount to easily get them on and off.  The first successful mount tended to get caught on different edges as you took it off, tweaking the pieces and wearing them out way to fast, but with this configuration and using the cheese slopes to guide the engine into place, it really makes it smooth and very easy to do!

As far as the internals, the only changes were structural.  Still includes the bathroom, or vac-tube as it were, kitchen, single bed, roomy cockpit and disembarking area, and the engine access area. Of course, there are also a couple of sneaky cargo areas for the occasional discreet transport of personal items.

And that’s about it for the YT-985. I hope you get to enjoy the build as much as I do!