Friday, March 30, 2012

Bio-Tech Research Facility Revisited

A few weeks ago when I revealed my super-secret underground bio-tech research facility, I didn't have any pictures that showed the full scope of it.  I promised I'd put some up and in lieu of getting a game in towards my campaign recently, here are the pics of the facility with an explanation. 

The bases for each level are foam core board - green for ground level with it's nice grassy surface; white for the sterile floors in the lab itself.  The walls were built of 1/16" x 1" balsa with doors cut into them where needed.  I built the major walls first - that would be the outside and long interior walls.  Then I cut the smaller interior walls to fit it all together.  I didn't draw any "blueprints" first.  I had an idea in my head of what I wanted and just went for it.  In planning it and laying it out, I was operating on a 1" = 10' basis.  Actually, I think 15mm should be slightly larger than that, but this kept room size calculations simple.

Here's the ground floor.  The grey paper square is the parking lot.  Of course, every super-secret underground bio-tech research facility needs a parking lot!  Where are those scientists and administrators going to park otherwise?  I thought about putting the little yellow lines on it, but that would have been a couple of hours of work just for aesthetics.  Maybe I'll add them someday.  To the left is the furnace room with the chimney for the crematorium.  On the right is the main entrance - a small foyer with elevator at the top of the building and stairs underneath (in case the electricity goes out and the elevator doesn't work, of course!).  At the bottom is the ventilation building with the a/c unit and duct work.  The buildings are all painted green and brown for camoflage so that no one will notice them standing around this parking lot out in the middle of some Nebraska cornfield.  I should have added a generator building so that the electricity won't go out, but didn't think of it at the time.


Next is the first subfloor.  (The pictures are all oriented the same as the first so you should be able to pick out the stairs/elevator and the crematorium chimney, and we'll go from there.)  Immediately upon exiting the vestibule by the stairs/elevator, you enter the lobby where there is a security desk with 24/7 security.  The rooms adjoining this one are the president's secretary's office, which gives on to the president's office, at the top.  At the bottom of the pic is the security office.  Once you gain access to the building proper, there are two corridors.  At the top of the pic are offices, between the corridors are two conference rooms, and at the bottom are the offices of the division heads and the lunchroom.  Yes, even eggheads have to eat sometime!


The second subfloor contains the labs with a central corridor.  At either end of the row of labs at the top are small storage spaces/offices and there is one at the left of the bottom row of labs as well.


That brings us to the third subfloor.  This level houses (from the right) the containment units, the morgue/autopsy rooms, and the crematorium.  I did a little finagling with wood to make the cremation units looks like cremation units, rather than just a wall or block of some kind.  I used 1/4" x 1/2" square balsa for the base of the cremation units, then built an upright to divide it into two units, with a crosspiece at the top front.  The sharp-eyed among you will notice that there are two rooms at the end of the containment rooms without doors.  I don't remember now what I meant those to be - I think they were where the machinery for the containment units are located and the pipes/lines for the cremation units.


So there you have one super-secret underground bio-tech research facility.  Now go build one yourself and let me get back to gaming and painting!  ;o)