Somehow I think many here would prefer something like this from the 1930s.  It is cool.  The Satellite from Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. Artwork by Dick Calkins (1930).




This one too from Modern Mechanics (August 1931).

Jeff has said everything I would have.  I prefer functional and easily printable (and scalable for minis use if needed) over pretty, too.

jeff--thanks for that bryan gibson scout, a great example of a player-ship.  love his work.  

the trek one?  yeah, has potential, but as you say--i'd never print that, what a fucking mess for ink.  unless i wanted to use a printer at work

while i'm familiar with the cygnus trek site (hit or miss there, but the potential is still excellent) i had no idea about a star wars version.  kudos to all posters for this topic!

One More Thing.....

Angelman, if you are serious about producing deckplans for purchase, give this suggestion a thought.

Many gamers use eReaders now for their game needs. Create a set of deckplans that use the advatages of those eReaders and you will probably have a solid competative product on your hands.

Take a look at The Traveller Map website as an example. On the website, you can zoom out so far that 1/64th of a pixel is equal to a parsec (galaxy scale) and zoom in so that 512 pixels is equal to a parsec (system scale). PDFs cannot do that easily, but imagine a set of map deckplans that could for an eReader.

What if you create your deckplans in layers which a customer can choose to view? One could be minimalistic and in B&W (which I recommend) but you could also include full color ones with all of the furniture, textures, and fixtures detailed which the customer can then choose to use.

Make it interactive with a tablet computer and snap on special bases for minis. Set it up so that when you move the mini, the map "floats" so that it always is centered on the mini even though you have travelled further on the map. Include a random dungeon generator and some dice rollers, then market it as a way to play Your Favorite Game solo. Include some method of networking and you have a Skypeable tabletop game.

There is a lot of new technology out that has not been fully utilised by businesses.

Did I mention the possibilities for smartphone apps yet here?

Thank you for all the feedback and suggestions, people. They are very much appreciated. I pass on the technical suggestions to the artists and techies, but I suspect we won't do very complicated products. The idea is to have a good usefulness-to-cost balance, with an emphasis on cheap. Doing 'bigger' products might very well be something we look into, but it would be another kind of product to what we're currently aiming for - but it is very interesting and one needs to stay onboard the tech development wagon