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Space Engineers
Limit: 500
#1
GasBandit
GasBandit
#2
GasBandit
GasBandit
Playing space engineers on public servers has turned me into a Space Pirate. The asteroids on the server I was playing on were few and far between, only one cluster marked on the beacon and it's a death zone with people murdering each other just for another liter of magnesium. It was easier to scavenge the meat from the bones of dead bases and ships floating in the void. Uranium is particularly hard to come by. Some other guy tried to run me over with his ship, I jumped in mine and fired up the drill and rammed his cockpit, going full bore (literally), killing him. But then as I scavenged the remains a meteor shower hit and destroyed my ship, along with all the cargo.
Over time I managed to build a base floating in the void off the beaten path, and through my scavenging managed to equip it with a few gun turret defenses. I heard a team of people bragging how they were laying claim to the central asteroid cluster (the only one with a marked beacon, mentioned above), so I welded a gatling gun to the roof of my drill ship's cockpit and went a-raiding. When I was done I let em know who did it, too.
Late in the evening, I powered down all nonessential base systems to preserve uranium fuel, ammo'd up and then powered up my defense turrets (you have to be careful because there is no friend/foe distinction on turrets these days... they target anything that moves including who built them! So turn them on from a safely obscured control panel). Went to bed.
Checked on it again this morning. Mother. Fucking. Meteor shower. Devastated my base, ship destroyed, lost my refinery and half my armor/structure and even a turret. Other turrets were dry of ammo, so apparently it was a bad night for meteors. At least the cargo bay survived. Gathered up what booty I could carry in a temporary noobship and deposited it in the undefended base of a rival I'm pretty sure I can raid again later. Abandoned the base. Flew around, found a ship seemingly flying in circles loaded with uranium and various expensive parts. Deposited that in the easy-to-raid rival base, too. Hopefully it won't give him such a head start he actually can build defenses.
Now my search is on for a new place to call home. I gotta be smart this time... no space-garages floating in the unknown void, subject to the whim of passing meteors. This time I gotta find an asteroid to build inside/on the leeward side of, sheltering from the storms. Then once I'm established again... back down to business.
Over time I managed to build a base floating in the void off the beaten path, and through my scavenging managed to equip it with a few gun turret defenses. I heard a team of people bragging how they were laying claim to the central asteroid cluster (the only one with a marked beacon, mentioned above), so I welded a gatling gun to the roof of my drill ship's cockpit and went a-raiding. When I was done I let em know who did it, too.
Late in the evening, I powered down all nonessential base systems to preserve uranium fuel, ammo'd up and then powered up my defense turrets (you have to be careful because there is no friend/foe distinction on turrets these days... they target anything that moves including who built them! So turn them on from a safely obscured control panel). Went to bed.
Checked on it again this morning. Mother. Fucking. Meteor shower. Devastated my base, ship destroyed, lost my refinery and half my armor/structure and even a turret. Other turrets were dry of ammo, so apparently it was a bad night for meteors. At least the cargo bay survived. Gathered up what booty I could carry in a temporary noobship and deposited it in the undefended base of a rival I'm pretty sure I can raid again later. Abandoned the base. Flew around, found a ship seemingly flying in circles loaded with uranium and various expensive parts. Deposited that in the easy-to-raid rival base, too. Hopefully it won't give him such a head start he actually can build defenses.
Now my search is on for a new place to call home. I gotta be smart this time... no space-garages floating in the unknown void, subject to the whim of passing meteors. This time I gotta find an asteroid to build inside/on the leeward side of, sheltering from the storms. Then once I'm established again... back down to business.
#3
LordRendar
LordRendar
#4
GasBandit
GasBandit
#5
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#6
ThatNickGuy
ThatNickGuy
#7
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
Well... @GasBandit got me playing Space Engineer too. After a steep learning curve (I'd never played Minecraft and it's kind of like this) , I'm finally getting some progress in my single player training session. Here's my first ship being built.
It's a bit rough and unfinished. It just need cobalt, nickle, and platinum for parts and then some Uranium to run it and I'll be in business. However, gathering those materials is a bit of a pain... I can get the nickle and platinum within my platforms gravity field but I'll have to explore for the cobalt and that means grabbing it in zero-g (it flies everywhere). Uranium is in the same boat as Cobalt but at least I know where it is. But once it's done, I'll have a MUCH easier time of getting minerals, thanks to the drill and mineral finder.
It's a bit rough and unfinished. It just need cobalt, nickle, and platinum for parts and then some Uranium to run it and I'll be in business. However, gathering those materials is a bit of a pain... I can get the nickle and platinum within my platforms gravity field but I'll have to explore for the cobalt and that means grabbing it in zero-g (it flies everywhere). Uranium is in the same boat as Cobalt but at least I know where it is. But once it's done, I'll have a MUCH easier time of getting minerals, thanks to the drill and mineral finder.
#8
GasBandit
GasBandit
Here's the ship I'm working on in PVP. Heavily armored, turrets... not done yet.
#9
LordRendar
LordRendar
#10
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#11
LordRendar
LordRendar
#12
GasBandit
GasBandit
#13
ThatNickGuy
ThatNickGuy
#14
GasBandit
GasBandit
Here's the more-or-less complete "GasBandit's Battlewagon". I just need to scrounge up grav parts for the gravity generator, and ammo for the weapons. I'm not sure which will pose the bigger problem at this point. I'll probably also be sticking on more engines, because its acceleration is pretty abysmal. It's super-massive because all the armor is heavy armor.
It's got 4 gatling turrets which autotarget any moving object (even me, so I have to remember to turn them off before I get out!), and a conveyor-fed rocket launcher. I wish I could have conveyor-fed the turrets, too, but there was no way to accomplish it in such a small space, and I wanted to keep the ship compact enough to hide behind/inside an asteroid.
It's got 4 gatling turrets which autotarget any moving object (even me, so I have to remember to turn them off before I get out!), and a conveyor-fed rocket launcher. I wish I could have conveyor-fed the turrets, too, but there was no way to accomplish it in such a small space, and I wanted to keep the ship compact enough to hide behind/inside an asteroid.
#15
LordRendar
LordRendar
#16
GasBandit
GasBandit
#17
LordRendar
LordRendar
#18
GasBandit
GasBandit
#19
LordRendar
LordRendar
#20
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
We should probably just make a Space Engineer thread at this point.
This was my second attempt. The drills mysteriously vanished before I get it to drill. I suspect that the reverse thrusters melted them, so I moved them to the bottom. They then proceeded to melt two of my conveyor tubes.
So I moved them to the front and armored a few of the conveyor tubes in case the thrusters weren't the problem. I then went out to try again...
Success this time! The only problem is that the ship is a bit bigger than the area that the drills cover so I can't go too deep without backing out and expanding the hole a bit. Still, I came back with several tons of uranium and silicon, so I'll take the success.
So my options now are:
- Try building a large style ship.
- Building a gunship.
- Go straight to multiplayer.
This was my second attempt. The drills mysteriously vanished before I get it to drill. I suspect that the reverse thrusters melted them, so I moved them to the bottom. They then proceeded to melt two of my conveyor tubes.
So I moved them to the front and armored a few of the conveyor tubes in case the thrusters weren't the problem. I then went out to try again...
Success this time! The only problem is that the ship is a bit bigger than the area that the drills cover so I can't go too deep without backing out and expanding the hole a bit. Still, I came back with several tons of uranium and silicon, so I'll take the success.
So my options now are:
- Try building a large style ship.
- Building a gunship.
- Go straight to multiplayer.
#21
bhamv3
bhamv3
#22
drifter
drifter
#23
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#24
bhamv3
bhamv3
Psht, everyone knows Minecraft is for people who lack the imagination to play Dwarf Fortress.
#25
GasBandit
So here is the finished battlewagon. I had to ditch the side turrets for the same "reverse thrusters" problem Ashburner was having. But I managed to figure out a way to get a conveyor feed to the dorsal turret, so now it can load itself forever and I only have to manually load the ventral turret. It also has a rocket launcher mounted pointing forward. So, having completed my pirate monstrosity, I went hunting.
It was surprisingly slim pickings tonight. Everybody was keeping to themselves. Then some poor fool turned on his ship's beacon, and it was right next to a "private sail" npc craft. Obviously, he was jumping out of his ship to try to board the Sail and wanted to be able to find his way to his ship again. I'd done that a few times myself, with Commercial Shipment vessels. Ironically enough, I usually score 50 or so extremely redundant hand drills for my trouble, but that's another story. So I traveled there... and watched him kill himself Just as I arrived. DOH.
The lag in multiplayer, even on a dedicated server, makes boarding any vessel at speed almost impossible. I decided I'd take the ship, but I had to find a way to stop it (Sails travel much faster than the fat, slow, defenseless Business Shipment vessels). Well, here I sat in probably one of the most heavily armored ships in the system, so I carefully pulled ahead into the Sail's path, and turned the inertial dampeners back on.
In retrospect, although using my cockpit's crosshairs to verify alignment helped get it right, I should have turned at the last moment to avoid the point of impact being my cockpit window. The nose of the sail lanced through the bulletproof glass like... well, a lance, and smashed me to flash-frozen paste, destroying my control chair.
Fortunately, my medbay is inside the ship too (it's a wonder of efficient useage of space in there, I tell ya), so I respawned immediately still within my ship. Someone in the chat window said, "Well, that's one way to do it" and I realized my intended prey had come back and had been watching my attempt. Quickly, not trusting him around my now crippled and rudderless battlewagon, I accessed the ship systems through the reactor control panel and activated my turrets. I heard the turrets fire, but knew he wasn't dead, I saw him through the ruins of my cockpit window that he had scurried behind cover. Unfortunately I had been carrying my assault rifle on me when I died, so it had disappeared, and I didn't have a spare on board (I'll have to remember to fix that next time), so I jabbed open my door hatch, readied my tools, and started to creep around my ship slowly, making sure to keep out of line of sight of the turrets.
As I came outside, I saw the devastation. Aside from the cockpit, my ship was merely dented and completely intact. However, almost the entire front half of the Private Sail had been destroyed against my armor, and the remains were twisted up with me, solar panels and other debris warped around my battlewagon's pill-shaped hull. I moved carefully around to the aft of the Sail wreckage and found my quarry trying to work his way through the rear entry of the sail to what used to be its interior (but was now very much exterior. The fool was trying to grind his way through the door instead of opening it, or perhaps it wouldn't open from damage. In any case, he never saw me sneaking up behind him with my own angle grinder... and before he knew what happened, I had sliced him as thoroughly as a christmas ham.
I decided to leave the turrets active to dissuade any other looky-loo types who might wander by, and also to shoot down incoming meteors (the meteors on this server as previously mentioned are frequent and frickin laser-guided). I finished grinding through the door and made my way into the not-so-interior.
Unfortunately, it looked like the cargo bay must have been in the fore part of the craft, as it was nowhere to be found. The reactor was intact, however, so I took all the uranium from it and ground down the nearby gyroscope to score a sweet thousand steel plate. Then I used the reactor's control panel to edit the title of the ship's beacon to "Wreckage of the Private Sail that GasBandit trashed" - it was continuing to function because enough solar panels had survived to keep it going.
Not wanting to press my luck with any further meteor showers (and I'm still not made of magnesium, you know, so ammo must be husbanded), I returned to my ship and got spare parts out of the cargo bay enough to rebuild the command chair. Unfortunately, I had not stocked any bulletproof glass, so I had the interesting experience of flying back to my secret construction site exposed to the void.
The battlewagon is patched up once more, and ready for action, but that was enough for one night for me. The cat was also getting irritated at being ignored so much lately.
GasBandit
So here is the finished battlewagon. I had to ditch the side turrets for the same "reverse thrusters" problem Ashburner was having. But I managed to figure out a way to get a conveyor feed to the dorsal turret, so now it can load itself forever and I only have to manually load the ventral turret. It also has a rocket launcher mounted pointing forward. So, having completed my pirate monstrosity, I went hunting.
It was surprisingly slim pickings tonight. Everybody was keeping to themselves. Then some poor fool turned on his ship's beacon, and it was right next to a "private sail" npc craft. Obviously, he was jumping out of his ship to try to board the Sail and wanted to be able to find his way to his ship again. I'd done that a few times myself, with Commercial Shipment vessels. Ironically enough, I usually score 50 or so extremely redundant hand drills for my trouble, but that's another story. So I traveled there... and watched him kill himself Just as I arrived. DOH.
The lag in multiplayer, even on a dedicated server, makes boarding any vessel at speed almost impossible. I decided I'd take the ship, but I had to find a way to stop it (Sails travel much faster than the fat, slow, defenseless Business Shipment vessels). Well, here I sat in probably one of the most heavily armored ships in the system, so I carefully pulled ahead into the Sail's path, and turned the inertial dampeners back on.
In retrospect, although using my cockpit's crosshairs to verify alignment helped get it right, I should have turned at the last moment to avoid the point of impact being my cockpit window. The nose of the sail lanced through the bulletproof glass like... well, a lance, and smashed me to flash-frozen paste, destroying my control chair.
Fortunately, my medbay is inside the ship too (it's a wonder of efficient useage of space in there, I tell ya), so I respawned immediately still within my ship. Someone in the chat window said, "Well, that's one way to do it" and I realized my intended prey had come back and had been watching my attempt. Quickly, not trusting him around my now crippled and rudderless battlewagon, I accessed the ship systems through the reactor control panel and activated my turrets. I heard the turrets fire, but knew he wasn't dead, I saw him through the ruins of my cockpit window that he had scurried behind cover. Unfortunately I had been carrying my assault rifle on me when I died, so it had disappeared, and I didn't have a spare on board (I'll have to remember to fix that next time), so I jabbed open my door hatch, readied my tools, and started to creep around my ship slowly, making sure to keep out of line of sight of the turrets.
As I came outside, I saw the devastation. Aside from the cockpit, my ship was merely dented and completely intact. However, almost the entire front half of the Private Sail had been destroyed against my armor, and the remains were twisted up with me, solar panels and other debris warped around my battlewagon's pill-shaped hull. I moved carefully around to the aft of the Sail wreckage and found my quarry trying to work his way through the rear entry of the sail to what used to be its interior (but was now very much exterior. The fool was trying to grind his way through the door instead of opening it, or perhaps it wouldn't open from damage. In any case, he never saw me sneaking up behind him with my own angle grinder... and before he knew what happened, I had sliced him as thoroughly as a christmas ham.
I decided to leave the turrets active to dissuade any other looky-loo types who might wander by, and also to shoot down incoming meteors (the meteors on this server as previously mentioned are frequent and frickin laser-guided). I finished grinding through the door and made my way into the not-so-interior.
Unfortunately, it looked like the cargo bay must have been in the fore part of the craft, as it was nowhere to be found. The reactor was intact, however, so I took all the uranium from it and ground down the nearby gyroscope to score a sweet thousand steel plate. Then I used the reactor's control panel to edit the title of the ship's beacon to "Wreckage of the Private Sail that GasBandit trashed" - it was continuing to function because enough solar panels had survived to keep it going.
Not wanting to press my luck with any further meteor showers (and I'm still not made of magnesium, you know, so ammo must be husbanded), I returned to my ship and got spare parts out of the cargo bay enough to rebuild the command chair. Unfortunately, I had not stocked any bulletproof glass, so I had the interesting experience of flying back to my secret construction site exposed to the void.
The battlewagon is patched up once more, and ready for action, but that was enough for one night for me. The cat was also getting irritated at being ignored so much lately.
#26
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
Did some experimenting tonight in Space Engineer. Here's the ship I built for it and the target I used.
So the idea was to build a fast, heavily armored fighter. Well I got the heavily armored part down. Because the entire outer hull is heavy armor, the mass is enormous. As such, it gets to speed VERY SLOWLY and can't stop very well ether. This tells me that I'll want bigger engines on any fighters I build because the small ones just don't do the job with heavy armor. Also, I had a connector on the bottom which was part of a conveyor network but it refused to connect to my refinery connector. Not sure what that means... are connectors aware of what they are networked to?
Anyway, I was testing weapons tonight. The target is Large Light Armor. First up was the missile launcher.
A single missile was able to destroy 3 blocks and heavily damage all but one of the rest. Not too shabby. Next up is the Gatling guns.
Not quite as effective. 700 rounds (5 boxes) was able to completely destroy 3 boxes and mildly annoy the surrounding ones. Gatling guns are NOT good anti-ship weapons unless you have a lot of them and a lot of ammo.
Still a productive night. I might need to join Gasbandit soon though... I'm quickly running out of things to do by myself that don't involve me welding for an hour.
So the idea was to build a fast, heavily armored fighter. Well I got the heavily armored part down. Because the entire outer hull is heavy armor, the mass is enormous. As such, it gets to speed VERY SLOWLY and can't stop very well ether. This tells me that I'll want bigger engines on any fighters I build because the small ones just don't do the job with heavy armor. Also, I had a connector on the bottom which was part of a conveyor network but it refused to connect to my refinery connector. Not sure what that means... are connectors aware of what they are networked to?
Anyway, I was testing weapons tonight. The target is Large Light Armor. First up was the missile launcher.
A single missile was able to destroy 3 blocks and heavily damage all but one of the rest. Not too shabby. Next up is the Gatling guns.
Not quite as effective. 700 rounds (5 boxes) was able to completely destroy 3 boxes and mildly annoy the surrounding ones. Gatling guns are NOT good anti-ship weapons unless you have a lot of them and a lot of ammo.
Still a productive night. I might need to join Gasbandit soon though... I'm quickly running out of things to do by myself that don't involve me welding for an hour.
#27
LordRendar
LordRendar
#28
GasBandit
GasBandit
#29
Gared
Gared
#30
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#31
LordRendar
LordRendar
#32
GasBandit
GasBandit
#33
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
More testing in Space Engineer!
So I figured I'd try ramming tonight. This is what that grey fighter I made did to the target at about 30 m/s at a mass of 16 tons. And what do you get? More damage than a rocket and only superficial damage to the ship. I lost my reverse engines and front landing gear but still impressive. So I figured "Hey... why not toss in a large generator and bigger engines to see what THAT'LL do?" So I did that and tossed on some heavy armor to protect the jutting gen.
The results were slightly better... except one thing: my ship exploded because the large gen took damage. Apparently armor works by depending on re-enforcement from surrounding armor blocks. If you only have one layer and try to ram... boom.
So I figured I'd try ramming tonight. This is what that grey fighter I made did to the target at about 30 m/s at a mass of 16 tons. And what do you get? More damage than a rocket and only superficial damage to the ship. I lost my reverse engines and front landing gear but still impressive. So I figured "Hey... why not toss in a large generator and bigger engines to see what THAT'LL do?" So I did that and tossed on some heavy armor to protect the jutting gen.
The results were slightly better... except one thing: my ship exploded because the large gen took damage. Apparently armor works by depending on re-enforcement from surrounding armor blocks. If you only have one layer and try to ram... boom.
#34
LordRendar
LordRendar
#35
Dei
Dei
#36
GasBandit
GasBandit
#37
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#38
GasBandit
GasBandit
#39
Hailey Knight
Hailey Knight
#40
Dei
Dei
#41
Hailey Knight
Hailey Knight
#42
Yoshimickster
Yoshimickster
#43
LordRendar
LordRendar
#44
GasBandit
GasBandit
#45
GasBandit
GasBandit
Check out this digger. That's me, using the 49 drill digger I told you guys about. Taking advantage of the beacons all being offline to fortify a magnesium-rich asteroid by completely encasing it in base. Sort of like a dyson sphere... but with gun turrets all over the outside. It's gonna be our own personal space-tortuga.
#46
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#47
GasBandit
GasBandit
The cynic in me says beacons won't be til thursday, if then. We'll see if these guys are still down for this crazy plan that long. I may just pitch them on building mines around the perimeter (small turret stations).[DOUBLEPOST=1404654991,1404654637][/DOUBLEPOST]LOL WELL SO MUCH FOR THAT. Somebody on the pirate crew had a busy night! I guess this is what we're doing!
#48
GasBandit
GasBandit
We're gonna need a super assload of iron.. so I went iron digging at a nearby asteroid.
In one end...
And out the other. .... and out the other.
In one end...
And out the other. .... and out the other.
#49
PatrThom
PatrThom
#50
GasBandit
GasBandit
Welding welding welding...
WELDING WELDING WELDING....
WELDING WELDING WELDING..... RAWHIDE...
WELDING WELDING WELDING....
WELDING WELDING WELDING..... RAWHIDE...
#51
Hailey Knight
Hailey Knight
#52
PatrThom
PatrThom
#53
GasBandit
GasBandit
#54
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#55
GasBandit
GasBandit
#56
figmentPez
figmentPez
#57
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#58
GasBandit
GasBandit
#59
LordRendar
LordRendar
#60
Terrik
Terrik
#61
GasBandit
GasBandit
#62
GasBandit
GasBandit
#63
Terrik
Terrik
#64
GasBandit
GasBandit
#65
GasBandit
GasBandit
Uh, so yeah. About that base..
Dumbass sys admin got all butthurt about how his server was showing up in both the "updated" and "not updated" server lists and decided to take the server down for maintenance at 8 stupid pm. What kind of server admin does maintenance in prime time? So because of that we all took a couple hour break to get something to eat, etc, and I'm the first one back.
Turns out some other guy must have been waiting with bated breath for the server to come back up, and when it did, managed to sneak into our base and hack the controls and turn it against itself, then did so on all the ships parked around it and rammed them into each other and the base.
By the time I got on, my blue ship was already beyond repair from the turrets shooting it. Eventually someone managed to patch it together enough to set it drifting into space, and I couldn't catch it because I had other things to worry about... so it's long gone. I managed to counter-hijack this tie fighter looking thing and fly it in circles while spamming our steam chat to ignore their stupid ass children and spouses and come back and take care of IMPORTANT matters instead.
Long story short, it's pretty much all gone. The wreckage fill float near the asteroid until somebody grinds it down (which might not happen given how hard it is to grind a moving object, and every bump will only make it move/rotate more), and the only ship to survive the raid was the Tie fighter I stole back and kept burning around, fighting off hijackers with spins and engine wash. I myself managed to destroy two ships that were being stolen - our big welder was being hijacked, so I sent a rocket to its cockpit, killing the hijacker but also splitting it in half, the welder section from the engines section, so it was pretty well permanently disabled for the rest of the fight. Lost my rocket launcher to a counterattack soon after that, and had to get my second kill by ramming - I learned my lesson this time though and turned sharply at the last second, taking the brunt on the armored sides.
I think we have enough resources still at the George Dub to rebuild the big drill (it was utterly destroyed in the melee), but if not we'll just raid hapless bozos for the parts we need and rebuild. This isn't over by a long shot.
Did learn some interesting things though - Gatling turrets do great damage to ships and missiles, but do zero damage to astronauts outside in just their spacesuits. Alpha game. So basically, there's no effective defense when you're offline, and you have to rely on security through obscurity, currently. Buggy as hell, but that's early access for you.
Dumbass sys admin got all butthurt about how his server was showing up in both the "updated" and "not updated" server lists and decided to take the server down for maintenance at 8 stupid pm. What kind of server admin does maintenance in prime time? So because of that we all took a couple hour break to get something to eat, etc, and I'm the first one back.
Turns out some other guy must have been waiting with bated breath for the server to come back up, and when it did, managed to sneak into our base and hack the controls and turn it against itself, then did so on all the ships parked around it and rammed them into each other and the base.
By the time I got on, my blue ship was already beyond repair from the turrets shooting it. Eventually someone managed to patch it together enough to set it drifting into space, and I couldn't catch it because I had other things to worry about... so it's long gone. I managed to counter-hijack this tie fighter looking thing and fly it in circles while spamming our steam chat to ignore their stupid ass children and spouses and come back and take care of IMPORTANT matters instead.
Long story short, it's pretty much all gone. The wreckage fill float near the asteroid until somebody grinds it down (which might not happen given how hard it is to grind a moving object, and every bump will only make it move/rotate more), and the only ship to survive the raid was the Tie fighter I stole back and kept burning around, fighting off hijackers with spins and engine wash. I myself managed to destroy two ships that were being stolen - our big welder was being hijacked, so I sent a rocket to its cockpit, killing the hijacker but also splitting it in half, the welder section from the engines section, so it was pretty well permanently disabled for the rest of the fight. Lost my rocket launcher to a counterattack soon after that, and had to get my second kill by ramming - I learned my lesson this time though and turned sharply at the last second, taking the brunt on the armored sides.
I think we have enough resources still at the George Dub to rebuild the big drill (it was utterly destroyed in the melee), but if not we'll just raid hapless bozos for the parts we need and rebuild. This isn't over by a long shot.
Did learn some interesting things though - Gatling turrets do great damage to ships and missiles, but do zero damage to astronauts outside in just their spacesuits. Alpha game. So basically, there's no effective defense when you're offline, and you have to rely on security through obscurity, currently. Buggy as hell, but that's early access for you.
#66
figmentPez
figmentPez
#67
GasBandit
GasBandit
#68
Ravenpoe
Ravenpoe
#69
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#70
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
Alright, redesigned the pontoon ship and scaled it up to accommodate the larger engines it needs for it's mass. Took about 5 hours to place and weld it all together.
Changes include...
- Large power core. I never seem to go higher than 60% so there is probably room for more drain.
- Quad Chain guns. They still sucked though. Chain guns might only be good as turrets because it's impossible to focus fire with the straight shooting ones.
- Triple Missile Launcher. Apparently explosions aren't additive, so putting them together is a waste. Yes, anything they hit is toast but it's a tiny area. You need to spread these out apparently. Also, how do you do conveyors for these things? They don't have a slot.
- Excessive storage capacity for ammo and fuel, tied into conveyor system. This is great for the chain guns but it hardly helps. Even with 7k rounds I barely scratched the target.
- Larger engines. Front, Back, and Side have large engines now. Top and bottom have the equivalent in small engines (8 each way) to not mess with the lines. They more than make up for the mass (30 tons) and the heavy fighter is much more agile. I even have room for more engines if I REALLY want to make this thing scream.
Questions:
- Can you do conveyors for small ship missile launchers?
- What does the Antenna do?
Next project: Maybe a tank? I haven't tried the wheeled stuff yet.
Changes include...
- Large power core. I never seem to go higher than 60% so there is probably room for more drain.
- Quad Chain guns. They still sucked though. Chain guns might only be good as turrets because it's impossible to focus fire with the straight shooting ones.
- Triple Missile Launcher. Apparently explosions aren't additive, so putting them together is a waste. Yes, anything they hit is toast but it's a tiny area. You need to spread these out apparently. Also, how do you do conveyors for these things? They don't have a slot.
- Excessive storage capacity for ammo and fuel, tied into conveyor system. This is great for the chain guns but it hardly helps. Even with 7k rounds I barely scratched the target.
- Larger engines. Front, Back, and Side have large engines now. Top and bottom have the equivalent in small engines (8 each way) to not mess with the lines. They more than make up for the mass (30 tons) and the heavy fighter is much more agile. I even have room for more engines if I REALLY want to make this thing scream.
Questions:
- Can you do conveyors for small ship missile launchers?
- What does the Antenna do?
Next project: Maybe a tank? I haven't tried the wheeled stuff yet.
#71
GasBandit
GasBandit
#72
Tinwhistler
Tinwhistler
#73
GasBandit
GasBandit
#74
Tinwhistler
Tinwhistler
#75
GasBandit
GasBandit
#76
LordRendar
LordRendar
Second server I play on went down yesterday. Still not up. This is really frustrating. I want a persistent server. 
#77
LordRendar
LordRendar
#78
GasBandit
GasBandit
They fixed beacons in multiplayer Space Engineers. Also fixed turrets. If that fix had come a week earlier it'd have saved my asteroid base 
#79
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
Good to hear! I should have some free time eventually... *goes back to his book reports and sighs*They fixed beacons in multiplayer Space Engineers. Also fixed turrets. If that fix had come a week earlier it'd have saved my asteroid base
#80
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
More Space Engineers experiments! This time, I tried using wheels!
Alright... 4 wheels with suspension. Two Artificial masses to keep me on the ground. Let's GO! Except it doesn't work that way. Wheels don't move on their own, they have to be acted on by an outside force to make it roll. Some thrusters and now it rolls back and forth pretty good. Maybe it needs rotors to turn?
That's not helping things at all. Rotors slowly rotate one of two ways... but you can't control them quickly enough to make this work as an axle. Buggys are a no go. About the only thing I can think of using wheels for right now are as landing gear (but requiring an artificial mass to keep you on your landing spot) or as rollers... like if you wanted opening doors for your base, you could make some large ships on rollers and just run them up and down a trench to slide the doors open (but you could do it much easier with a rotor). Oh and Gas? They fixed rotors for multi-player. I've seen someone make a giant ship eater using drills and a rotor. It was great.
So after that, I got fed up with how long it took to make stuff and made this.
MAKE ONE OF THESE. The welders on the front build stuff much faster. It should be one of the first things you do, after building a mining ship.
Alright... 4 wheels with suspension. Two Artificial masses to keep me on the ground. Let's GO! Except it doesn't work that way. Wheels don't move on their own, they have to be acted on by an outside force to make it roll. Some thrusters and now it rolls back and forth pretty good. Maybe it needs rotors to turn?
That's not helping things at all. Rotors slowly rotate one of two ways... but you can't control them quickly enough to make this work as an axle. Buggys are a no go. About the only thing I can think of using wheels for right now are as landing gear (but requiring an artificial mass to keep you on your landing spot) or as rollers... like if you wanted opening doors for your base, you could make some large ships on rollers and just run them up and down a trench to slide the doors open (but you could do it much easier with a rotor). Oh and Gas? They fixed rotors for multi-player. I've seen someone make a giant ship eater using drills and a rotor. It was great.
So after that, I got fed up with how long it took to make stuff and made this.
MAKE ONE OF THESE. The welders on the front build stuff much faster. It should be one of the first things you do, after building a mining ship.
#81
LordRendar
LordRendar
So I finaly found a stable server. Have been building on a large ship. All heavy steel armor.
3 Gatling Turrets on each side, 3 missle turrets on top. gonna add 2 gatling and 1 missle turret at the bottom.
It is quite large and will be the first module of a 3 part ship.
Using mergeblocks and connectors i am gonna build a mining and a hangar module which can be attached/detached from the mothership and function on its own.
It aint pretty, but I am on a survival server and building all of that on my own.
3 Gatling Turrets on each side, 3 missle turrets on top. gonna add 2 gatling and 1 missle turret at the bottom.
It is quite large and will be the first module of a 3 part ship.
Using mergeblocks and connectors i am gonna build a mining and a hangar module which can be attached/detached from the mothership and function on its own.
It aint pretty, but I am on a survival server and building all of that on my own.
#82
GasBandit
GasBandit
I've mostly been helping my pirate faction get rearmed and back on its feet since the loss of our asteroid base. Our space base is mighty and large, but we expended a lot of ammunition in the fight and lost a lot of fighting vehicles. But we're back up to strength now, and have started raiding other bases again.
I did want to show @AshburnerX this though: "Bob the Builder." Our one-stop build/tear down machine. Very useful.
And @LordRendar just a quick tip, when you use merge blocks to combine two ship segements into one, you can then reaffirm the connection by building more armor somewhere else, then grind down the merge blocks and replace them with armor if you want the ship to look seamless.
I did want to show @AshburnerX this though: "Bob the Builder." Our one-stop build/tear down machine. Very useful.
And @LordRendar just a quick tip, when you use merge blocks to combine two ship segements into one, you can then reaffirm the connection by building more armor somewhere else, then grind down the merge blocks and replace them with armor if you want the ship to look seamless.
#83
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#84
GasBandit
GasBandit
#85
ThatNickGuy
ThatNickGuy
#86
GasBandit
GasBandit
My fellow pirates and I went on a mineral run today to restock. Here's my small utility warship towing the drilling rig. Below that, I keep overwatch while a fellow pirate drills. Funnily enough, this is an entirely different donut-shaped asteroid from the one we tried to build a base at.
[DOUBLEPOST=1405280043,1405280009][/DOUBLEPOST]
You're probably right. I'll make up a list of posts and send em to dave to get moved.
#87
GasBandit
GasBandit
#88
GasBandit
GasBandit
#89
GasBandit
GasBandit
#90
ThatNickGuy
ThatNickGuy
#91
Hailey Knight
Hailey Knight
#92
PatrThom
PatrThom
#93
LordRendar
LordRendar
#94
GasBandit
GasBandit
This is enemy number one right now... the Anti-Piracy Coalition's Battlecube.
It'd be dicey for my ship to take it on in a dogfight, but if I can sneak up to it, I think I can overwhelm it with missiles.[DOUBLEPOST=1405399381,1405399213][/DOUBLEPOST]My newly rebuilt and refitted ship, the Infernvm III.
(Mine's the blue one in on the left, obviously). More powerful engines, 9 turrets instead of 4, more power generators, all the amenities to serve as a base (Medbay, assembler, refinery, gravity, chairs, etc etc etc), tons more cargo capacity, and all for only a 100,000 kg increase in mass (from 750 to 850).
It'd be dicey for my ship to take it on in a dogfight, but if I can sneak up to it, I think I can overwhelm it with missiles.[DOUBLEPOST=1405399381,1405399213][/DOUBLEPOST]My newly rebuilt and refitted ship, the Infernvm III.
(Mine's the blue one in on the left, obviously). More powerful engines, 9 turrets instead of 4, more power generators, all the amenities to serve as a base (Medbay, assembler, refinery, gravity, chairs, etc etc etc), tons more cargo capacity, and all for only a 100,000 kg increase in mass (from 750 to 850).
#95
Dave
Dave
#96
GasBandit
GasBandit
#97
Dave
Dave
#98
GasBandit
GasBandit
#99
GasBandit
GasBandit
#100
Dave
Dave
#101
GasBandit
GasBandit
#103
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#104
GasBandit
GasBandit
#105
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#106
GasBandit
GasBandit
#107
Dave
Dave
#108
GasBandit
GasBandit
#109
Dave
Dave
#110
GasBandit
GasBandit
#111
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#112
GasBandit
GasBandit
Last night, the Infernvm III engaged in piracy action. While assaulting the base of a relatively new guy who foolishly built inside an asteroid, a nearby member of another faction came to investigate the red targeting reticles that light up for everyone on the server whenever turrets lock on to a target (a bug that NEEDS addressing IMO). He came in a tiny, fast ship with only a small rocket launcher for armament, and bombarded Infernvm from beyond turret range while it was parked over the base while preparing to commence looting. Fortunately it was a small rocket launcher, and inaccurately fired, but I did suffer a couple hits.
None of my armor was actually destroyed, but my docking umbilical mast was blown off and the ventral armor is also the floor deck of the interior, and apparently some of the damage "transmits" through armor to things attached to it, and so two cargo bays and my medbay suffered sufficient damage as to render them inoperable. I only discovered this, naturally, after I wheeled on the interloper and would-be rescuer and chased him off, then drew away into deep space to assess the damage. The most troubling was the damaged medbay - without it, if I died with the Infernvm in deep space or moving, I'd lose the ship for sure because I wouldn't be able to respawn at it, and unfortuantely I didn't have the medical equipment required to repair the bay. So I was forced to return to base for repairs.
And then I slammed on the brakes, just barely managing to stop out of turret range when I saw the base turrets suddenly snap to lock on to my ship. Seems that components damaged to below the blue line on their health bar count as not being owned by anybody (since welding above blue line with computer parts determines ownership), and if I closed to within 800 meters I'd definitely be vaporized. Even worse, I was probably now lighting up as a red targeting reticle for all the server to see.
Quickly I EVA'd out of my ship and jetted the kilometer to the base, and shut down the defenses. I grabbed the parts I needed to make repairs, jetted back to the ship, and got everything back in my ownership, then went and turned the base defenses back on.
With that crisis averted, I turned my attention to the problem that started all this mess - my heavy armor staying intact but not protecting my delicate internals from suffering explosive damage from rockets. I broke out Bob the Builder from storage and ground off all the turrets and angle/corner armor from the outside of my ship, and started laying the frames for a second layer of armor all around. This will really hurt my maneuverability and acceleration, but I need this ship to be relatively rocketproof while sitting still. I only got about a third done welding the plates to completion before having to go to bed.
Oh, and this is our answer to the Anti-Pirate Coalition's stupid 4-turret-per-side cube.
None of my armor was actually destroyed, but my docking umbilical mast was blown off and the ventral armor is also the floor deck of the interior, and apparently some of the damage "transmits" through armor to things attached to it, and so two cargo bays and my medbay suffered sufficient damage as to render them inoperable. I only discovered this, naturally, after I wheeled on the interloper and would-be rescuer and chased him off, then drew away into deep space to assess the damage. The most troubling was the damaged medbay - without it, if I died with the Infernvm in deep space or moving, I'd lose the ship for sure because I wouldn't be able to respawn at it, and unfortuantely I didn't have the medical equipment required to repair the bay. So I was forced to return to base for repairs.
And then I slammed on the brakes, just barely managing to stop out of turret range when I saw the base turrets suddenly snap to lock on to my ship. Seems that components damaged to below the blue line on their health bar count as not being owned by anybody (since welding above blue line with computer parts determines ownership), and if I closed to within 800 meters I'd definitely be vaporized. Even worse, I was probably now lighting up as a red targeting reticle for all the server to see.
Quickly I EVA'd out of my ship and jetted the kilometer to the base, and shut down the defenses. I grabbed the parts I needed to make repairs, jetted back to the ship, and got everything back in my ownership, then went and turned the base defenses back on.
With that crisis averted, I turned my attention to the problem that started all this mess - my heavy armor staying intact but not protecting my delicate internals from suffering explosive damage from rockets. I broke out Bob the Builder from storage and ground off all the turrets and angle/corner armor from the outside of my ship, and started laying the frames for a second layer of armor all around. This will really hurt my maneuverability and acceleration, but I need this ship to be relatively rocketproof while sitting still. I only got about a third done welding the plates to completion before having to go to bed.
Oh, and this is our answer to the Anti-Pirate Coalition's stupid 4-turret-per-side cube.
#113
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#114
GasBandit
GasBandit
#115
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#116
GasBandit
GasBandit
#117
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#118
GasBandit
GasBandit
#119
rac3r_x
rac3r_x
#120
LordRendar
LordRendar
#121
AshburnerX
------------------
Today on Space Engineers! An abject lesson in always securing your ships before building them!
Am I supposed to start it as a station and then convert it to a ship to prevent this sort of thing on large scale builds? The slightest bump with the welder did this.
Regardless, I had to hunt down my mistake and put it out of it's misery.
AshburnerX
I'm not sure this is possible. ICBMs and cruise missiles are doable with gravity drive though.
------------------
Today on Space Engineers! An abject lesson in always securing your ships before building them!
Am I supposed to start it as a station and then convert it to a ship to prevent this sort of thing on large scale builds? The slightest bump with the welder did this.
Regardless, I had to hunt down my mistake and put it out of it's misery.
#122
GasBandit
GasBandit
#123
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#124
GasBandit
GasBandit
#125
PatrThom
PatrThom
#126
LordRendar
LordRendar
#127
GasBandit
But having 15 refineries eases the pain somewhat.[DOUBLEPOST=1405611893,1405611652][/DOUBLEPOST]I can't play space engineers at work.
But I can plan my evening, thanks to Excel.
GasBandit
Cobalt is my personal nemesis.
But having 15 refineries eases the pain somewhat.[DOUBLEPOST=1405611893,1405611652][/DOUBLEPOST]I can't play space engineers at work.
But I can plan my evening, thanks to Excel.
#128
PatrThom
PatrThom
#129
LordRendar
LordRendar
#130
Gared
Gared
#131
GasBandit
GasBandit
#132
GasBandit
GasBandit
#133
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#134
GasBandit
GasBandit
Spent the last couple days grinding down the Infernvm 3 and rebuilding a new design, with alleviating some of Inf 3's shortcomings in mind (specifically the single layer of heavy armor). At 10 tonight, I finished the DPF Bizarre Adventure (DPF is our pirate faction, the Dusty Crow Pirate Federation, so it'd kinda be like "USS").
Here's a shot of the Bizarre Adventure leaving our deep space base.
So I patrol the asteroids as usual, picking off and looting small bases and even a derelict spacecraft I found drifting with several armloads of gold and uranium still in its unpowered refinery... when I spot a telltale red reticle in the distance and head for it.
After about a 15 minute flight, I come into visual range of a base positioned above a previously unknown and not-on-the-beaten-path asteroid. PRIME real estate! When I get close to there, I notice I'm being locked onto, and my turrets are returning the favor. I stop dead (turrets start to acquire locks around 200m before they come into firing range), and go EVA out for a closer look. Just as I'm getting close enough to pick out details on the enemy base, I get a face full of rockets and gatling rounds. Oof.
I respawn in the medbay on my ship, and get as close as I dare without being in turret firing range. I arm my rocket launcher, and start poking holes. On about my 7th or 8th rocket, I get lucky and knock out his reactor, and his turrets go dark. I still can't close because MY turrets will open fire still, and I would like to take the base intact if I can (or at least as intact as it still is after a half dozen rocket impacts). To my surprise, the OWNER of the base comes whipping out around from behind the base in a drillship, bearing down on me. I declare that this is now DPF territory, and he'd better clear off if he wants to keep anything at all. He doesn't listen and tries for me in his drill ship. I'm not particularly worried about him ramming me, I'm in much thicker armor than I was previously. But he doesn't even get the chance... as soon as he's closer than 800 meters, my turrets light him up and tear him to shreds. He leaves the server, probably never to return, I'd bet.
Then comes the tedious business of jetpacking over to the base, grinding down each individual system, then welding it back up again from blue line (this is how you "hack" ownership of something that belongs to somebody else). 15 turrets, a half dozen cargo bays, a medbay, a refinery, an assembler, a beacon and a newly-rebuilt small reactor later, I've managed to capture myself a base! I pull the Bizarre Adventure alongside it, finally.
Most of the damage is on the other side, hidden from the camera, of course.
And as I said, it floats above its own personal asteroid that nobody else probably knows about, if one scrub was able to get this far without interference.
It's kind of funny, the "base" is really only a couple blocks in each direction bigger than my ship, really.
I can only imagine that reticle lit up from him accidentally doing something that got his turrets to target one of his own ships or something.
At any rate, I've got it completely under my faction's control now, and reported to them the events. I suicided and respawned at our space base to retrieve my small 3x3 drill ship, and moved it to the captured asteroid base as well, to facilitate getting started there. The plan is to get the base secure enough for now, which really it probably is, so long as the Bizarre Adventure is parked alongside it, and drill that asteroid empty, sending the valuable minerals inside back to the space base. I'm not sure if we'll process them into ingots here, or move the raw ore (processing the ore takes time and we'll have to build more refineries here at the base, but refined ingots take up much less space than raw ore, so each shipment would actually bring more useful material at once back to the space base).
Then we use those materials to finish the George Dub.. and then it'll be time to build my capital ship... But first I need to refit the Adventure with more thrusters, turns out it handles like a barn on roller skates.
Here's a shot of the Bizarre Adventure leaving our deep space base.
So I patrol the asteroids as usual, picking off and looting small bases and even a derelict spacecraft I found drifting with several armloads of gold and uranium still in its unpowered refinery... when I spot a telltale red reticle in the distance and head for it.
After about a 15 minute flight, I come into visual range of a base positioned above a previously unknown and not-on-the-beaten-path asteroid. PRIME real estate! When I get close to there, I notice I'm being locked onto, and my turrets are returning the favor. I stop dead (turrets start to acquire locks around 200m before they come into firing range), and go EVA out for a closer look. Just as I'm getting close enough to pick out details on the enemy base, I get a face full of rockets and gatling rounds. Oof.
I respawn in the medbay on my ship, and get as close as I dare without being in turret firing range. I arm my rocket launcher, and start poking holes. On about my 7th or 8th rocket, I get lucky and knock out his reactor, and his turrets go dark. I still can't close because MY turrets will open fire still, and I would like to take the base intact if I can (or at least as intact as it still is after a half dozen rocket impacts). To my surprise, the OWNER of the base comes whipping out around from behind the base in a drillship, bearing down on me. I declare that this is now DPF territory, and he'd better clear off if he wants to keep anything at all. He doesn't listen and tries for me in his drill ship. I'm not particularly worried about him ramming me, I'm in much thicker armor than I was previously. But he doesn't even get the chance... as soon as he's closer than 800 meters, my turrets light him up and tear him to shreds. He leaves the server, probably never to return, I'd bet.
Then comes the tedious business of jetpacking over to the base, grinding down each individual system, then welding it back up again from blue line (this is how you "hack" ownership of something that belongs to somebody else). 15 turrets, a half dozen cargo bays, a medbay, a refinery, an assembler, a beacon and a newly-rebuilt small reactor later, I've managed to capture myself a base! I pull the Bizarre Adventure alongside it, finally.
Most of the damage is on the other side, hidden from the camera, of course.
And as I said, it floats above its own personal asteroid that nobody else probably knows about, if one scrub was able to get this far without interference.
It's kind of funny, the "base" is really only a couple blocks in each direction bigger than my ship, really.
I can only imagine that reticle lit up from him accidentally doing something that got his turrets to target one of his own ships or something.
At any rate, I've got it completely under my faction's control now, and reported to them the events. I suicided and respawned at our space base to retrieve my small 3x3 drill ship, and moved it to the captured asteroid base as well, to facilitate getting started there. The plan is to get the base secure enough for now, which really it probably is, so long as the Bizarre Adventure is parked alongside it, and drill that asteroid empty, sending the valuable minerals inside back to the space base. I'm not sure if we'll process them into ingots here, or move the raw ore (processing the ore takes time and we'll have to build more refineries here at the base, but refined ingots take up much less space than raw ore, so each shipment would actually bring more useful material at once back to the space base).
Then we use those materials to finish the George Dub.. and then it'll be time to build my capital ship... But first I need to refit the Adventure with more thrusters, turns out it handles like a barn on roller skates.
#135
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#136
GasBandit
GasBandit
#137
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#138
GasBandit
GasBandit
#139
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#140
GasBandit
GasBandit
#141
Officer_Charon
Officer_Charon
#142
GasBandit
GasBandit
#143
Gared
Gared
#144
GasBandit
GasBandit
#145
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
So today I decided to try my hands at my first large ship. I basically scaled up my fighter design, took some ideas from Gas, and threw in a few of my own. Here's the result. Mind you, this has a bit of damage as I collided with the asteroid and stripped a few parts. Total tonnage: 2,750,000 kgs.
On the rear I added lots of large thrusters and a few small ones where I could stick them. This thing accelerates at a decent clip now, considering it's size. A bit slower than my fighter but not bad. 4 large, 7 small going forward on this one. Two large in the front for deceleration.
The front has 5 large missile pods. The cockpit is the small fighter type because I wanted some accuracy with the rockets. I put a sheet of glass in front of it for some extra protection. 16 Gatling turrets for protection
Rear Interior. Large container means plenty of ammo storage and it connects to a large generator in the rear. Standard med-bay. Entrance door is on the roof of this room.
Two small generators tied into my network via the rocket launchers and the conveyors. After this, I positively crammed as many gyroscopes inside as I could. I need to add more into the pontoons because it turns like a slug.
It can't do everything Gas'es ship can, but it's probably better offensively an definitely quicker. It needs more thrusters on the sides and top though to give it the agility I want.
Also, AND THIS IS VITAL: Always make sure your base is set to your ownership when you start in creative. If you don't, then your gat turrets will wreck your platform.
On the rear I added lots of large thrusters and a few small ones where I could stick them. This thing accelerates at a decent clip now, considering it's size. A bit slower than my fighter but not bad. 4 large, 7 small going forward on this one. Two large in the front for deceleration.
The front has 5 large missile pods. The cockpit is the small fighter type because I wanted some accuracy with the rockets. I put a sheet of glass in front of it for some extra protection. 16 Gatling turrets for protection
Rear Interior. Large container means plenty of ammo storage and it connects to a large generator in the rear. Standard med-bay. Entrance door is on the roof of this room.
Two small generators tied into my network via the rocket launchers and the conveyors. After this, I positively crammed as many gyroscopes inside as I could. I need to add more into the pontoons because it turns like a slug.
It can't do everything Gas'es ship can, but it's probably better offensively an definitely quicker. It needs more thrusters on the sides and top though to give it the agility I want.
Also, AND THIS IS VITAL: Always make sure your base is set to your ownership when you start in creative. If you don't, then your gat turrets will wreck your platform.
#146
GasBandit
GasBandit
#147
PatrThom
PatrThom
#148
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#149
GasBandit
GasBandit
#150
GasBandit
GasBandit
#151
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#152
PatrThom
PatrThom
#153
GasBandit
GasBandit
Because the server I play on was down today (apparently the new patch is causing a lot of standalone server admins to complain about crashes every 20 mins), I started assembling my designed capital ship in a single player creative world I use for testing stuff.
Here I am laying the keel...
Here I am most of the way to being done...
Here's me testing the finished prototype against the 72-turret destroyer cube featured earlier in the thread.
[/DOUBLEPOST]And here are the blueprints for the ship, which I completed at work using excel during slow moments last week.
The idea was basically to have a ship with very protected internals but also compromising a little on armor to make it lighter (it weighs in at about 7 and a half million kg) to preserve some maneuverability, and also have it able to repair critical systems on the fly without having to jetpack around outside the ship. Most of the thrusters, for example, can be repaired from inside the engine room. It has medbays fore and aft, a central primary power core with tertiary supplimental/emergency power both in the fore and aftmost compartments, a massive 4x4x3 cargo bay cluster, roughly 96 turrets, and a forward-mounted rocket launcher for long range bombardment. A conveyor network connects just about all the important systems, naturally, tucked in the corners of the internal structure.
Here I am laying the keel...
Here I am most of the way to being done...
Here's me testing the finished prototype against the 72-turret destroyer cube featured earlier in the thread.
[/DOUBLEPOST]And here are the blueprints for the ship, which I completed at work using excel during slow moments last week.
The idea was basically to have a ship with very protected internals but also compromising a little on armor to make it lighter (it weighs in at about 7 and a half million kg) to preserve some maneuverability, and also have it able to repair critical systems on the fly without having to jetpack around outside the ship. Most of the thrusters, for example, can be repaired from inside the engine room. It has medbays fore and aft, a central primary power core with tertiary supplimental/emergency power both in the fore and aftmost compartments, a massive 4x4x3 cargo bay cluster, roughly 96 turrets, and a forward-mounted rocket launcher for long range bombardment. A conveyor network connects just about all the important systems, naturally, tucked in the corners of the internal structure.
#154
PatrThom
PatrThom
"This video is no longer available. Sorry about that."
--Patrick
--Patrick
#155
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
Yeah, what he said."This video is no longer available. Sorry about that."
--Patrick
#156
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#157
GasBandit
GasBandit
#158
GasBandit
GasBandit
#159
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
Actually... I did a bit of testing with batteries. My opinion of them has changed completely.
This is my battery powered small driller. Just your basic two drill, 6 engine, 2 gyro rig with batteries instead of a gen. Using two small batteries, it takes about 15 minutes to charge off a small station reactor and can drill for -10 hours-. There is clearly a niche for small battery craft.
I also messed around with a small refueling station.
4 Solar panels, an antenna, a battery, and connector to latch your ship to it. This is a small ship version but there isn't any reason you couldn't do it with a large ship and attach a turret to shoot down meteors. Basically you fly to where you want to build it., build it, attach a gyroscope and a cockpit to get optimal sun alignment, grind down the gyroscope and cockpit, attach a connector, and then set the battery to charge via the connector. Real simple design, fairly cheap to build, practically disposable. Only problem is it takes hours to charge the battery via solar panels and a stray meteor could take it out. Might need to attach more solar panels to up the charge rate but you could easily put on another 8 or more on there if you wanted. If it's possible to rig it to only broadcast to yourself or your faction, this seems like a great way to build an outpost.
For my next project I made something Gas talked about: a Gatling turret mine. Here's what I came up with.
This one is light armor but obviously the real deal would be heavy. This is the front.
... and this is the back. 6 Gatling turrets, connected via conveyors to two small storage containers and a reactor. I attached the reactor to charge the three batteries and to act as a control panel/loading station. At 50% charge, this can idle for -9 days- and it only took like 30 some minutes to charge. This means you can build it, load it, charge it and then turn it off when you aren't around and it will probably still be running when you get back... and if you are under sustained assault, you can switch the gen back on just in case. Again, real simple design, not too resource intensive and the angled corners make it look nice too.
This is my battery powered small driller. Just your basic two drill, 6 engine, 2 gyro rig with batteries instead of a gen. Using two small batteries, it takes about 15 minutes to charge off a small station reactor and can drill for -10 hours-. There is clearly a niche for small battery craft.
I also messed around with a small refueling station.
4 Solar panels, an antenna, a battery, and connector to latch your ship to it. This is a small ship version but there isn't any reason you couldn't do it with a large ship and attach a turret to shoot down meteors. Basically you fly to where you want to build it., build it, attach a gyroscope and a cockpit to get optimal sun alignment, grind down the gyroscope and cockpit, attach a connector, and then set the battery to charge via the connector. Real simple design, fairly cheap to build, practically disposable. Only problem is it takes hours to charge the battery via solar panels and a stray meteor could take it out. Might need to attach more solar panels to up the charge rate but you could easily put on another 8 or more on there if you wanted. If it's possible to rig it to only broadcast to yourself or your faction, this seems like a great way to build an outpost.
For my next project I made something Gas talked about: a Gatling turret mine. Here's what I came up with.
This one is light armor but obviously the real deal would be heavy. This is the front.
... and this is the back. 6 Gatling turrets, connected via conveyors to two small storage containers and a reactor. I attached the reactor to charge the three batteries and to act as a control panel/loading station. At 50% charge, this can idle for -9 days- and it only took like 30 some minutes to charge. This means you can build it, load it, charge it and then turn it off when you aren't around and it will probably still be running when you get back... and if you are under sustained assault, you can switch the gen back on just in case. Again, real simple design, not too resource intensive and the angled corners make it look nice too.
#160
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#161
GasBandit
GasBandit
#162
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#163
GasBandit
GasBandit
#164
PatrThom
PatrThom
#165
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#166
GasBandit
GasBandit
#167
Gared
Gared
#168
GasBandit
GasBandit
#169
Gared
Gared
#170
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#171
Gared
Gared
#172
GasBandit
GasBandit
#173
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
Did some more battery tests and... another thing. First the tests!
So I did a large scale solar station. Ignore the thrusters. I didn't figure out how to rotate initial station blocks until today. This design isn't as efficient as it could be... if I ditched the bottom layer of batteries and engines (which aren't needed on a station to keep it in place), it would probably work better. But energy wise it's pretty good. Even with a small ship attached to drain power, the large batteries don't lose power while charging because the panels produce enough KWH to do the charging themselves. On a less PVP oriented server, this would be a great little gas station. 15 minutes to full charge several small batteries isn't too bad. However, it doesn't work on a large battery: those take hours.
What these game needs:
- The ability to leave messages. This power station only works if the players know how to manipulate the control panel to switch the batteries on the station to not recharge. Instructions reminding people to switch them back on would be great.
- Batteries should be able to fast dump power into another battery. It would make charging stations so much more practical, especially ones that use solar.
- Why can't I put a vending terminal on this? I should be able to set prices per MWH and rig it to not give out juice unless they pay!
As for my other project... I decided to use rotors and drills to mine an asteroid.
Station block with lots of drills, storage, and refineries on the back. So I turn it on...
As long as you set the rotation to a slow enough speed, the drills will never take enough damage to break, so it just bumps up against it when it receives more resistance. The Result?
It ate through it in like 3-4 minutes, giving me thousands of kilos of resources. The best thing about this idea? It works with ships too. Just put grinders on it instead of drills and you'd have an automated ship eater.
So I did a large scale solar station. Ignore the thrusters. I didn't figure out how to rotate initial station blocks until today. This design isn't as efficient as it could be... if I ditched the bottom layer of batteries and engines (which aren't needed on a station to keep it in place), it would probably work better. But energy wise it's pretty good. Even with a small ship attached to drain power, the large batteries don't lose power while charging because the panels produce enough KWH to do the charging themselves. On a less PVP oriented server, this would be a great little gas station. 15 minutes to full charge several small batteries isn't too bad. However, it doesn't work on a large battery: those take hours.
What these game needs:
- The ability to leave messages. This power station only works if the players know how to manipulate the control panel to switch the batteries on the station to not recharge. Instructions reminding people to switch them back on would be great.
- Batteries should be able to fast dump power into another battery. It would make charging stations so much more practical, especially ones that use solar.
- Why can't I put a vending terminal on this? I should be able to set prices per MWH and rig it to not give out juice unless they pay!
As for my other project... I decided to use rotors and drills to mine an asteroid.
Station block with lots of drills, storage, and refineries on the back. So I turn it on...
As long as you set the rotation to a slow enough speed, the drills will never take enough damage to break, so it just bumps up against it when it receives more resistance. The Result?
It ate through it in like 3-4 minutes, giving me thousands of kilos of resources. The best thing about this idea? It works with ships too. Just put grinders on it instead of drills and you'd have an automated ship eater.
#174
PatrThom
Also, is it possible to carry chaff? I assume that since asteroids are annoying, is it possible to open a door or something and dump a dozen or so loose armor cubes while fleeing, to slow pursuers?
--Patrick
PatrThom
Also, is it possible to carry chaff? I assume that since asteroids are annoying, is it possible to open a door or something and dump a dozen or so loose armor cubes while fleeing, to slow pursuers?
--Patrick
#175
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#176
GasBandit
GasBandit
#177
PatrThom
PatrThom
#178
GasBandit
GasBandit
#179
PatrThom
--Patrick
PatrThom
Hmm...that means there could be value to towing a decoy block waaaaay behind you, mother-in-law style, assuming you don't sacrifice too much mobility doing so.
--Patrick
#180
GasBandit
GasBandit
#181
PatrThom
PatrThom
#182
GasBandit
GasBandit
#183
GasBandit
GasBandit
#184
PatrThom
PatrThom
#185
GasBandit
GasBandit
Update 01.040 - Pistons, Blast door blocks
Summary
Pistons have been added in Space Engineers - they can be used to build advanced machinery. Also, faction founders and leaders can now enable auto-approval for new members. Players will now be able to see a notification on HUD when somebody is hacking/grinding their ship (does not apply to armors). Thrusters can be used without cockpit - through the terminal - which enables the option to create missiles with warheads, turret countermeasures, small drones which grind enemy ships by using grinder and other. Blast door blocks has been also added in the game; it's similar to armor, but thinner, so it can slide between two layers of armor (very useful for airtight door and hangar bays).
Features
- pistons
- factions: enabled/disabled member auto-approval
- hacking/breach HUD notification
- thrusters can work without cockpit - through terminal
- blast door blocks (4 types, durability will be balanced in the next updates)
- rotor height adjustment
- semi-auto mode for battery
Fixes
- fixed issue when player could not leave respawn screen
- fixed large antenna texture bug
- fixed steering wheels losing sync
- fixed lags with batteries turned to charging mode
- fixed few instances of death-loop
- fixed multiplayer filter issues
- fixed visible aiming rectangle when turret is of after loading new world
- fixed issue when placing a new landing gear/station block without resources in survival mode was fully built
- fixed missing permanent death configuration when starting DS
- fixed issue with block preview when in 3rd person view
- optimized netcode for creating floating objects
EDIT:Corrected title to "Update 01.040"
People write they would like to see netcode updates...
I've just realized, we've optimized netcode for creating floating objects:
explosions in asteroids, throwing out items from inventories/ejectors/connectors, destroying cargo containers and possibly drilling
...this now uses much less network bandwidth
(multiple created objects are now batched into one network packet, information transferred per object was also reduced)
We're optimizing biggest network issues first and creating floating objects was one of them even though it may seem unimportant.
Nuh.. nuh... nuh... NETCODE OPTIMIZATION?!!
(now they need to optimize the movement of unpiloted ships/ships piloted by others).
Summary
Pistons have been added in Space Engineers - they can be used to build advanced machinery. Also, faction founders and leaders can now enable auto-approval for new members. Players will now be able to see a notification on HUD when somebody is hacking/grinding their ship (does not apply to armors). Thrusters can be used without cockpit - through the terminal - which enables the option to create missiles with warheads, turret countermeasures, small drones which grind enemy ships by using grinder and other. Blast door blocks has been also added in the game; it's similar to armor, but thinner, so it can slide between two layers of armor (very useful for airtight door and hangar bays).
Features
- pistons
- factions: enabled/disabled member auto-approval
- hacking/breach HUD notification
- thrusters can work without cockpit - through terminal
- blast door blocks (4 types, durability will be balanced in the next updates)
- rotor height adjustment
- semi-auto mode for battery
Fixes
- fixed issue when player could not leave respawn screen
- fixed large antenna texture bug
- fixed steering wheels losing sync
- fixed lags with batteries turned to charging mode
- fixed few instances of death-loop
- fixed multiplayer filter issues
- fixed visible aiming rectangle when turret is of after loading new world
- fixed issue when placing a new landing gear/station block without resources in survival mode was fully built
- fixed missing permanent death configuration when starting DS
- fixed issue with block preview when in 3rd person view
- optimized netcode for creating floating objects
EDIT:Corrected title to "Update 01.040"
People write they would like to see netcode updates...
I've just realized, we've optimized netcode for creating floating objects:
explosions in asteroids, throwing out items from inventories/ejectors/connectors, destroying cargo containers and possibly drilling
...this now uses much less network bandwidth
(multiple created objects are now batched into one network packet, information transferred per object was also reduced)
We're optimizing biggest network issues first and creating floating objects was one of them even though it may seem unimportant.
Nuh.. nuh... nuh... NETCODE OPTIMIZATION?!!
(now they need to optimize the movement of unpiloted ships/ships piloted by others).
#186
PatrThom
PatrThom
#187
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#188
GasBandit
GasBandit
#189
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#190
Dave
Dave
#191
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
We're definitely going to need to figure out what we're going to do multiplayer wise.
So I tested pistons. They work great as umbilicals for connecting ships and pulling them in for docking... except in multiplayer anyway. However... don't attach a merge block to the end of one and fly it into another merge block.
... or it sheers off completely and you need to grind it off because it will no longer retract. So yeah... still some bugs to work out.
So I tested pistons. They work great as umbilicals for connecting ships and pulling them in for docking... except in multiplayer anyway. However... don't attach a merge block to the end of one and fly it into another merge block.
... or it sheers off completely and you need to grind it off because it will no longer retract. So yeah... still some bugs to work out.
#192
Dave
Dave
#193
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#194
Dave
Dave
#195
Gared
Gared
#196
PatrThom
PatrThom
#197
GasBandit
GasBandit
#199
Dave
Dave
#200
Gared
Gared
#202
Dave
Dave
#203
GasBandit
GasBandit
You really should have watched a tutorial before you started to play. That first video was painful. I kept snarling at the screen "PUSH G!"[DOUBLEPOST=1406327430,1406326940][/DOUBLEPOST]I mean, shit, it was even on your screen when you went through the controls looking for it!
#204
Dave
Dave
#205
GasBandit
GasBandit
#206
PatrThom
PatrThom
#207
GasBandit
GasBandit
#208
GasBandit
GasBandit
#209
evilmike
evilmike
#210
GasBandit
GasBandit
#211
Dave
Dave
#212
PatrThom
PatrThom
#213
GasBandit
GasBandit
Tutorial 3 - Building a ship
[DOUBLEPOST=1406356266,1406356032][/DOUBLEPOST]
But I knew about G because I watched another guy's tutorial
[DOUBLEPOST=1406356266,1406356032][/DOUBLEPOST]
Actually the first time I played it was the "Asteroids" survival level, which is kinda brutal as it just drops you in a damaged ship near a couple asteroids, with maybe 5 minutes of fuel left. There was an accidental collision that detached my ship's gravity generator, which then floated around in the cabin, and I couldn't figure out how to reattach it (didn't know about grinding returning 100% of materials or that there was no way to reattach detached objects other than grinding and rebuilding them), so I started over.
But I knew about G because I watched another guy's tutorial
#214
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#215
GasBandit
GasBandit
#216
PatrThom
PatrThom
#217
GasBandit
GasBandit
#218
GasBandit
GasBandit
#219
PatrThom
PatrThom
#220
GasBandit
GasBandit
Goddamned miner ship came apart today and I have no idea why. It's worked fine for weeks before this.
I'm pissed off. Fortunately I managed to quickly grind down and rebuild the surviving reactor and a gyroscope on the thruster assembly (since it had the cockpit surviving on it), then ground down enough of the remaining wreckage to build a grinder on the nose of the remnant craft, finish grinding down the rest of the drills and then hi-tail it back to base before one of the other factions stumbled across my crippled ass. Grr...
I'm pissed off. Fortunately I managed to quickly grind down and rebuild the surviving reactor and a gyroscope on the thruster assembly (since it had the cockpit surviving on it), then ground down enough of the remaining wreckage to build a grinder on the nose of the remnant craft, finish grinding down the rest of the drills and then hi-tail it back to base before one of the other factions stumbled across my crippled ass. Grr...
#221
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#222
GasBandit
GasBandit
#223
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#224
Dave
Dave
#225
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#226
GasBandit
GasBandit
#227
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#228
GasBandit
GasBandit
#229
Dave
Dave
#230
GasBandit
[DOUBLEPOST=1406428123][/DOUBLEPOST]SO VERY ALPHA
GasBandit
Yeah, you might wanna practice a bit first. When you think you got the hang of building and piloting, turn on Cargo ships in your saved world (you can change the settings in them without starting over, from the load screen), and try practicing pirating some NPC ships. Last I checked there was a bug that actually made them not shoot back, but oh well, can't have everything.[DOUBLEPOST=1406427693,1406427495][/DOUBLEPOST]LOL just saw this on the Space Engineers subreddit, titled "Make sure to test your engineers to make sure they will be good pilots."
#231
GasBandit
GasBandit
#232
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#233
GasBandit
GasBandit
So last night I decided the cure for the post-lost-my-ship blues was to get right back on that horse and go cause trouble. I borrowed Crow's lightest ship, the Tiny Dancer, and went looking for marks.
Tiny Dancer is as basic as a pirate ship can get - the minimum required, one cockpit, one gyro, one small reactor, one beacon (ships in multiplayer require a renamed beacon to not be deleted during daily maintenance/trash cleanup), six thrusters... that all makes the basic ship.. but then you tack on a medium cargo bay, connector, a grinder and a gatling gun, and you go from cute to worrisome.
So as I patrol the asteroids, I spot something in the distance - the barest discolored glint at the top of this asteroid -
So I get closer, and find a helpless base, ready to be pillaged! Not a bad start to the evening.
Thanks to having a nose-mounted grinder, I barely even have to get out of the ship to reduce it to components and tuck it away in the hold. I do get out to "hack" the reactor so I can get the uranium out of it before it is destroyed, but there's not a whole lot there. Ah well. Then as I pull away, I use chat to notify the faction to whom it belonged that their asteroid base is no longer there.
So I continue along my patrol, and at the fringes of the asteroid belt, I find this -
A giant chunk of somebody's (DOG faction is the somebody, apparently they named this the Doge) large 49-drill drillship holding stationary in space. I say "chunk" because the back end of it shows obvious signs of damage and there's no cockpit, forward, or reverse thrusters. I'm guessing that it just "came apart" in flight like some of my ships did yesterday. So I fire up Tiny Dancer's grinder and get to work.
But the tiny ship's hold fills up before the job is done... so bursting at the seams I fly her back to base, intent to come back with a larger ship and finish the job. It only occurs to me 3/4ths of the way home that I had enough parts right there on hand to simply add another cargo bay to Tiny Dancer. DOH.
So anyway, I go and get my new raiding ship that I just built, the Hammertime. It's not the bruiser or base that Bizarre Adventure was, it doesn't have a medlab or refinery or assembler, but it's slightly more agile and has its own mounted grinder.
There are a LOT of reactors on this drill ship.. so I make sure to hack them one by one to get the uranium out. Turns out to be very worthwhile, there was about 25 uranium ingots in each reactor!
It only occurs to me now, as I look at the screenshot, that it looks like a very bad idea to take an angle grinder to the access door of an operating nuclear reactor. Oh well.
So I finish up grinding and packing away the Doge into my cargo hold, and on the way home, I happen across somebody's base! Two jackpots in one night.
Incidentally, Major Twitch is one of the faction who took over the base I captured and stole Bizarre Adventure. The text in the above screenshot is him complementing me on my layered hull design - apparently it prevented all damage to the internal parts of the ship as they rocket-sniped off the turrets to be able to approach her. Wunderbar. Also pictured above, you can see I built on two more grinders to make the grinding of the Doge driller go faster.
But at any rate, I approach the base, jump out, disable the medbay so I don't get any unexpected guests that way, and start grinding away the base.
I hack the cargo bays instead, and find a huge stock of supplies. A hundred thousand steel plates! 400 missiles (which is good, because I was running low)! 32,000 construction components! Various other ingots and parts. There's so much, the 3 cargo bays I brought (which were half full already from the doge) quickly fill up, and I'm forced to build TWELVE MORE cargo bays (and 3 more grinders for good measure) on the outside hull of the Hammertime, just to get it all in.
But Deerslayer, the owner of the base, comes back from his own raiding just as I finish up grinding away the base platform, so I don't get a chance to get to grinding the drillship parked nearby. I kick Hammertime into high gear for a quick getaway, because I don't know the combat capabilities of the ship Deerslayer's flying, and would rather not test an unknown with 900,000 liters of booty stuffed into and strapped onto the outside of Hammertime, which has fairly minimal armaments for a large class ship - two missile turrets and a missile launcher. As I thrust away, I kick the turrets back on, and they start slinging rockets aftward to discourage pursuit... and I escape into the big empty, free and clear to make the long haul back to my own base and offload my ill-gotten gains.
It was a roller-coaster of a day... started off pretty bad, but was looking up by the end.
Tiny Dancer is as basic as a pirate ship can get - the minimum required, one cockpit, one gyro, one small reactor, one beacon (ships in multiplayer require a renamed beacon to not be deleted during daily maintenance/trash cleanup), six thrusters... that all makes the basic ship.. but then you tack on a medium cargo bay, connector, a grinder and a gatling gun, and you go from cute to worrisome.
So as I patrol the asteroids, I spot something in the distance - the barest discolored glint at the top of this asteroid -
So I get closer, and find a helpless base, ready to be pillaged! Not a bad start to the evening.
Thanks to having a nose-mounted grinder, I barely even have to get out of the ship to reduce it to components and tuck it away in the hold. I do get out to "hack" the reactor so I can get the uranium out of it before it is destroyed, but there's not a whole lot there. Ah well. Then as I pull away, I use chat to notify the faction to whom it belonged that their asteroid base is no longer there.
So I continue along my patrol, and at the fringes of the asteroid belt, I find this -
A giant chunk of somebody's (DOG faction is the somebody, apparently they named this the Doge) large 49-drill drillship holding stationary in space. I say "chunk" because the back end of it shows obvious signs of damage and there's no cockpit, forward, or reverse thrusters. I'm guessing that it just "came apart" in flight like some of my ships did yesterday. So I fire up Tiny Dancer's grinder and get to work.
But the tiny ship's hold fills up before the job is done... so bursting at the seams I fly her back to base, intent to come back with a larger ship and finish the job. It only occurs to me 3/4ths of the way home that I had enough parts right there on hand to simply add another cargo bay to Tiny Dancer. DOH.
So anyway, I go and get my new raiding ship that I just built, the Hammertime. It's not the bruiser or base that Bizarre Adventure was, it doesn't have a medlab or refinery or assembler, but it's slightly more agile and has its own mounted grinder.
There are a LOT of reactors on this drill ship.. so I make sure to hack them one by one to get the uranium out. Turns out to be very worthwhile, there was about 25 uranium ingots in each reactor!
It only occurs to me now, as I look at the screenshot, that it looks like a very bad idea to take an angle grinder to the access door of an operating nuclear reactor. Oh well.
So I finish up grinding and packing away the Doge into my cargo hold, and on the way home, I happen across somebody's base! Two jackpots in one night.
Incidentally, Major Twitch is one of the faction who took over the base I captured and stole Bizarre Adventure. The text in the above screenshot is him complementing me on my layered hull design - apparently it prevented all damage to the internal parts of the ship as they rocket-sniped off the turrets to be able to approach her. Wunderbar. Also pictured above, you can see I built on two more grinders to make the grinding of the Doge driller go faster.
But at any rate, I approach the base, jump out, disable the medbay so I don't get any unexpected guests that way, and start grinding away the base.
I hack the cargo bays instead, and find a huge stock of supplies. A hundred thousand steel plates! 400 missiles (which is good, because I was running low)! 32,000 construction components! Various other ingots and parts. There's so much, the 3 cargo bays I brought (which were half full already from the doge) quickly fill up, and I'm forced to build TWELVE MORE cargo bays (and 3 more grinders for good measure) on the outside hull of the Hammertime, just to get it all in.
But Deerslayer, the owner of the base, comes back from his own raiding just as I finish up grinding away the base platform, so I don't get a chance to get to grinding the drillship parked nearby. I kick Hammertime into high gear for a quick getaway, because I don't know the combat capabilities of the ship Deerslayer's flying, and would rather not test an unknown with 900,000 liters of booty stuffed into and strapped onto the outside of Hammertime, which has fairly minimal armaments for a large class ship - two missile turrets and a missile launcher. As I thrust away, I kick the turrets back on, and they start slinging rockets aftward to discourage pursuit... and I escape into the big empty, free and clear to make the long haul back to my own base and offload my ill-gotten gains.
It was a roller-coaster of a day... started off pretty bad, but was looking up by the end.
#234
Dave
Dave
#235
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#236
GasBandit
GasBandit
#237
GasBandit
GasBandit
Using the loot I pillaged yesterday, I built a new suite of mobile factory (36 small cargo bays, 8 refineries, 2 assemblers), 49 drill rig, and combination grinder/welder ship that all fit together with merge blocks and can be moved as one.
I've parked it 15km out from an asteroid (twice visual range), and maybe later tonight or tomorrow. Oh, those other non-XYZ beacons... some dingus on the server'd been launching powered beacon probes into the void all afternoon, trying to lead people on wild goose chases.
I've parked it 15km out from an asteroid (twice visual range), and maybe later tonight or tomorrow. Oh, those other non-XYZ beacons... some dingus on the server'd been launching powered beacon probes into the void all afternoon, trying to lead people on wild goose chases.
#238
GasBandit
GasBandit
#239
Gared
Gared
#240
GasBandit
GasBandit
#241
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#242
PatrThom
PatrThom
#243
GasBandit
GasBandit
#244
PatrThom
PatrThom
#245
GasBandit
GasBandit
#246
Gared
Gared
#247
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
So I wanted to try a buggy again and finally figured out how to control it.
Well sorta. So here's my info on doing buggies in Space Engineers.
- You must use suspension wheels or it can't move.
- Set your cockpit controls to wheels. If you still can't move, hit P to make sure the hand brake is off.
- You need an artificial mass in the center of gravity on your ship or several spread out. This keeps the buggy on the ground.
- You need a gravity generator ether on your buggy or in the area you want to drive in.
- It's actually much easier to turn using your mouse and a gyroscope.
/ \
| | - This is the most important bit. Your wheels should be placed like this.
|_|
- With the point facing UP on your ship. This lets the wheels moves correctly when you turn them.
Well sorta. So here's my info on doing buggies in Space Engineers.
- You must use suspension wheels or it can't move.
- Set your cockpit controls to wheels. If you still can't move, hit P to make sure the hand brake is off.
- You need an artificial mass in the center of gravity on your ship or several spread out. This keeps the buggy on the ground.
- You need a gravity generator ether on your buggy or in the area you want to drive in.
- It's actually much easier to turn using your mouse and a gyroscope.
/ \
| | - This is the most important bit. Your wheels should be placed like this.
|_|
- With the point facing UP on your ship. This lets the wheels moves correctly when you turn them.
#248
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#249
GasBandit
GasBandit
#250
PatrThom
PatrThom
#251
GasBandit
GasBandit
#252
PatrThom
PatrThom
#253
GasBandit
GasBandit
#254
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#255
GasBandit
GasBandit
#256
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
Alright, so I tried the vector thrusters thing... doesn't work. The engines won't detect the current orientation and thus won't fire. I could maybe make them manually do it via the console by setting them to override but that kind of defeats the point. Still, I went to a lot of trouble to make the test bed for this thing so let's take a look at how I solved some of the problems in case they patch it.
This is what one side looks like during construction. What you can't see is that there are no blocks behind the engines to make clearance for the turns. Next to the empty space are blast doors. These give enough clearance so this way you can have a bit of side armor. How you orient the thrusters is difficult to explain, but the idea behind it is not. These are the values I used.
- Lower limit :-90
- Upper Limit: 0
- Then on the control bar you want buttons for increase velocity, lower velocity, and reset velocity.
This means that using the rotors from the tool bar will (at most) make the rotors turn left 90 degrees. So if you make the thrusters facing out 0 degrees, it will turn them towards the back of the ship. It's more complicated than that but really, it just takes a bit of experimentation. Regardless, if you don't put upper/lower limits then you WILL break something.
This is a more complete version of the other side. Notice how the rotor is on the top and not the bottom? This is because in order to use the same lower/upper values, you have to rotate the rotors. You could give each rotor the correct values and put them wherever the hell you want but this was frankly easier.
This is the complete side view.
Complete rear view.
Internals. It's a VERY tight fit. And it has some problems: namely that it's easy to get in via the gaps. Now this could be easily fixed by scaling the entire ship up and installing walls, but on a small scale it's impossible.
So yeah... this doesn't work currently, but in the future it might.
This is what one side looks like during construction. What you can't see is that there are no blocks behind the engines to make clearance for the turns. Next to the empty space are blast doors. These give enough clearance so this way you can have a bit of side armor. How you orient the thrusters is difficult to explain, but the idea behind it is not. These are the values I used.
- Lower limit :-90
- Upper Limit: 0
- Then on the control bar you want buttons for increase velocity, lower velocity, and reset velocity.
This means that using the rotors from the tool bar will (at most) make the rotors turn left 90 degrees. So if you make the thrusters facing out 0 degrees, it will turn them towards the back of the ship. It's more complicated than that but really, it just takes a bit of experimentation. Regardless, if you don't put upper/lower limits then you WILL break something.
This is a more complete version of the other side. Notice how the rotor is on the top and not the bottom? This is because in order to use the same lower/upper values, you have to rotate the rotors. You could give each rotor the correct values and put them wherever the hell you want but this was frankly easier.
This is the complete side view.
Complete rear view.
Internals. It's a VERY tight fit. And it has some problems: namely that it's easy to get in via the gaps. Now this could be easily fixed by scaling the entire ship up and installing walls, but on a small scale it's impossible.
So yeah... this doesn't work currently, but in the future it might.
#257
PatrThom
PatrThom
#258
GasBandit
GasBandit
#259
GasBandit
GasBandit
#260
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
Did some more testing. Vector Thrusters CAN be made useful, but it takes effort. Let me demonstrate.
Nothing but main thrusters on.
All vector thrusters on. Notice the power usage. That's because they are on full override.
Vectors moved to acceleration mode... I should be going at a decent clip... so why aren't I moving?
Here's the issue: the ship doesn't recognize the vector thrusters as being part of the ship, so when you turn them on via override, it will try to compensate for them with the main thrusters if you have Inertial Dampening on. But if you turn it off, you'll get quite a bit of speed boost from the vectored thrusters. So in order to use vectored thrusters, here's what you need to do.
- Make the usual controls for vectoring them (Increase, decrease, and reset velocity).
- Make group controls for turning on and affecting the speed of all the vectored thrusters.
- Do the same for each individual group.
This means you need two separate hotbars: One to vector and use them for acceleration and one to operate them individually for maneuvering. This means piloting a vector ship is INSANELY complicated and you can't get much finesse out of it. You also can't use the vectors in Inertial Dampening mode because the ship won't use the vectored thrusters for it because it doesn't recognize them as being part of the same ship... which means the original idea for vectored thrusters (for use in large mining ships) is impossible because it can't inertial dampen while drilling, making drilling way more difficult.
So the entire idea, while cool, is completely useless right now. They need to work on rotors and thrusters before this can be helpful as a design feature.
Nothing but main thrusters on.
All vector thrusters on. Notice the power usage. That's because they are on full override.
Vectors moved to acceleration mode... I should be going at a decent clip... so why aren't I moving?
Here's the issue: the ship doesn't recognize the vector thrusters as being part of the ship, so when you turn them on via override, it will try to compensate for them with the main thrusters if you have Inertial Dampening on. But if you turn it off, you'll get quite a bit of speed boost from the vectored thrusters. So in order to use vectored thrusters, here's what you need to do.
- Make the usual controls for vectoring them (Increase, decrease, and reset velocity).
- Make group controls for turning on and affecting the speed of all the vectored thrusters.
- Do the same for each individual group.
This means you need two separate hotbars: One to vector and use them for acceleration and one to operate them individually for maneuvering. This means piloting a vector ship is INSANELY complicated and you can't get much finesse out of it. You also can't use the vectors in Inertial Dampening mode because the ship won't use the vectored thrusters for it because it doesn't recognize them as being part of the same ship... which means the original idea for vectored thrusters (for use in large mining ships) is impossible because it can't inertial dampen while drilling, making drilling way more difficult.
So the entire idea, while cool, is completely useless right now. They need to work on rotors and thrusters before this can be helpful as a design feature.
#261
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
Couldn't sleep. Started a new project.
Using my newly developed talent for rotors, I'm working on a large scale mobile ship that works off of batteries and solar panels (I'm using reactors until I can move the ship into a position that it can get solar energy). The solar panels can fold in and out. They are also armored on the outside with blast doors. The whole process is a bit jerky though, as the outside ends accelerate to a fast enough speed that it kind of jerks when it stops. Still, nothing is getting damaged at any point when I open and close so it's obviously working as intended.
I have a small flight deck on the inside, which I've coated with bullet-proof glass to absorb some of the thruster damage from landing ships. It also has connectors on the bottom (hidden by the bottom solar array when it's closed) so I can hook up ships for charging. In the end I'm hoping to make this 100% solar and battery powered, with the ability to charge other ships, move cargo, refine resources, assemble materials, and protect itself from meteor strikes. It's my largest design to date and I'm being pretty ambitious.
Using my newly developed talent for rotors, I'm working on a large scale mobile ship that works off of batteries and solar panels (I'm using reactors until I can move the ship into a position that it can get solar energy). The solar panels can fold in and out. They are also armored on the outside with blast doors. The whole process is a bit jerky though, as the outside ends accelerate to a fast enough speed that it kind of jerks when it stops. Still, nothing is getting damaged at any point when I open and close so it's obviously working as intended.
I have a small flight deck on the inside, which I've coated with bullet-proof glass to absorb some of the thruster damage from landing ships. It also has connectors on the bottom (hidden by the bottom solar array when it's closed) so I can hook up ships for charging. In the end I'm hoping to make this 100% solar and battery powered, with the ability to charge other ships, move cargo, refine resources, assemble materials, and protect itself from meteor strikes. It's my largest design to date and I'm being pretty ambitious.
#262
GasBandit
GasBandit
#263
GasBandit
GasBandit
#264
Dave
Dave
#265
GasBandit
GasBandit
#266
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
Mowed lawn. Still couldn't sleep. Time for more insomnia filled building!
So the back interior is finished. It just needs to be armored on the outside and then it'll be done. Then all I have to do is the front.
Half the landing pad is finished. Two anti-personnel turrets to monitor for boarders as their isn't a whole lot I can do about some of the gaps (though that Space Police video gave me some ideas...). Behind that layer of internal walls are several batteries and gyroscopes. I used catwalks for part of the building materials for three reasons:
- They take up less area than interior blocks.
- I believe they also weigh less. Considering the scale of the ship, anything I can do to cut weight is always good.
- They look damn attractive.
Bottom of the ship deck, with connectors leading into the conveyor network, both for cargo transfer and to charge batteries. I'll probably need to put some heavy down here too, if not at least catwalks to cover up the mess.
Bridge, located in the rear behind two layers of internal walls and soon to be at least one of heavy. Two hallways lead in, both locked with two doors and covered with an anti-personnel turret. Chute above leads to my med-bay, which is also covered by an anti-personnel turret. Again, catwalks are used extensively for walls.
So the back interior is finished. It just needs to be armored on the outside and then it'll be done. Then all I have to do is the front.
Half the landing pad is finished. Two anti-personnel turrets to monitor for boarders as their isn't a whole lot I can do about some of the gaps (though that Space Police video gave me some ideas...). Behind that layer of internal walls are several batteries and gyroscopes. I used catwalks for part of the building materials for three reasons:
- They take up less area than interior blocks.
- I believe they also weigh less. Considering the scale of the ship, anything I can do to cut weight is always good.
- They look damn attractive.
I may have to switch the landing pad to heavy armor then. It's mostly designed for small ships but it' definitely possible for a large one to drop in from the top.
Bottom of the ship deck, with connectors leading into the conveyor network, both for cargo transfer and to charge batteries. I'll probably need to put some heavy down here too, if not at least catwalks to cover up the mess.
Bridge, located in the rear behind two layers of internal walls and soon to be at least one of heavy. Two hallways lead in, both locked with two doors and covered with an anti-personnel turret. Chute above leads to my med-bay, which is also covered by an anti-personnel turret. Again, catwalks are used extensively for walls.
#267
GasBandit
GasBandit
#268
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#269
GasBandit
GasBandit
#270
CrimsonSoul
CrimsonSoul
#271
GasBandit
GasBandit
#272
CrimsonSoul
CrimsonSoul
#273
PatrThom
PatrThom
#274
CrimsonSoul
CrimsonSoul
#275
PatrThom
PatrThom
#276
GasBandit
GasBandit
#277
AshburnerX
Slowly armoring the cockpit section.
AshburnerX
Slowly armoring the cockpit section.
#278
CrimsonSoul
CrimsonSoul
#279
Ravenpoe
Ravenpoe
#280
Officer_Charon
Officer_Charon
#281
GasBandit
GasBandit
#282
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#283
PatrThom
PatrThom
#284
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
It's (mostly) done!
Here she is, all closed up. But just like a real flower, if you expose her to the sun...
... it will bloom! Aside from two small generators for initially moving it into optimal sun alignment, the Purple Sunflower is completely solar. Interestingly enough, the petal doors create enough inertia that the ship flips on the retro rockets any time I open or close the doors. Charging all the batteries at once is possible, though it has to remain stationary or it'll start to overload. It has no offensive ability outside of it's defense turrets, but it's a support ship an it would have buddies flying with it for escort. Let's look at the finished forward interior.
Compliment is two refineries and two assemblers for on-site refining and repairs. Gravity generator for ease of movement. Generators are out of sight.
To Do List:
- I'm thinking of taking out the umbilical and turning it into a repair arm that can be moved with rotors and extended with a piston.
- Might add some more retro-thrusters to make slowing down easier.
- There is currently a way to hook small ship parts into large ones. I've seen it be done but couldn't get it working myself. I wonder if I could use that someway...
Next Project:
- I'm thinking of maybe a small fake asteroid that you can pop open with pistons to hide stuff inside.
Here she is, all closed up. But just like a real flower, if you expose her to the sun...
... it will bloom! Aside from two small generators for initially moving it into optimal sun alignment, the Purple Sunflower is completely solar. Interestingly enough, the petal doors create enough inertia that the ship flips on the retro rockets any time I open or close the doors. Charging all the batteries at once is possible, though it has to remain stationary or it'll start to overload. It has no offensive ability outside of it's defense turrets, but it's a support ship an it would have buddies flying with it for escort. Let's look at the finished forward interior.
Compliment is two refineries and two assemblers for on-site refining and repairs. Gravity generator for ease of movement. Generators are out of sight.
To Do List:
- I'm thinking of taking out the umbilical and turning it into a repair arm that can be moved with rotors and extended with a piston.
- Might add some more retro-thrusters to make slowing down easier.
- There is currently a way to hook small ship parts into large ones. I've seen it be done but couldn't get it working myself. I wonder if I could use that someway...
Next Project:
- I'm thinking of maybe a small fake asteroid that you can pop open with pistons to hide stuff inside.
#285
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
So I went ahead and tried the repair arm idea. I think I've devised something pretty ingenious.
Looks pretty simple: two rotors (one left/right, one up/down), a piston, and a repair arm. It's controlled via the console on the arm, with preset, labeled groups for all of the functions. Rotor limits keep it from hitting anything unless you purposefully shoot the arm into something.
Here's why it's ingenious: you don't need to load it with stuff manually. All you have to do is dock the arm in it's resting position and then you can move stuff from the main ship stores into the small storage container, which feeds through the piston into the repair tool. The connectors give you enough room that you don't need to worry about breaking anything.
It's even got enough length and clearance to work on stuff the ship can pull up along side. You could replace the repair tool with a grinder for grinding down captive small ships in privacy.
They REALLY need to get this stuff working in multi-player.
Looks pretty simple: two rotors (one left/right, one up/down), a piston, and a repair arm. It's controlled via the console on the arm, with preset, labeled groups for all of the functions. Rotor limits keep it from hitting anything unless you purposefully shoot the arm into something.
Here's why it's ingenious: you don't need to load it with stuff manually. All you have to do is dock the arm in it's resting position and then you can move stuff from the main ship stores into the small storage container, which feeds through the piston into the repair tool. The connectors give you enough room that you don't need to worry about breaking anything.
It's even got enough length and clearance to work on stuff the ship can pull up along side. You could replace the repair tool with a grinder for grinding down captive small ships in privacy.
They REALLY need to get this stuff working in multi-player.
#286
WasabiPoptart
WasabiPoptart
#287
GasBandit
GasBandit
#288
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#289
GasBandit
GasBandit
#290
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#291
GasBandit
GasBandit
#292
GasBandit
GasBandit
There are some stupid effin' idiots playing this game. Noobchatter in multiplayer is one thing, but then you get dinguses on the official SE forums in the suggestion subforum starting threads that say things like "We need female player models."
/facepalm
Quick! Identify the gender of this astronaut!
Must be male, right, cause I don't see no tits.
/facepalm
Quick! Identify the gender of this astronaut!
Must be male, right, cause I don't see no tits.
#293
CrimsonSoul
CrimsonSoul
Seems legit.There are some stupid effin' idiots playing this game. Noobchatter in multiplayer is one thing, but then you get dinguses on the official SE forums in the suggestion subforum starting threads that say things like "We need female player models."
/facepalm
Quick! Identify the gender of this astronaut!
Must be male, right, cause I don't see no tits.
#294
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
Why don't we just tick a pink bow on the helmet? Is that enough? 
Spent last night trying to stick some fighters underneath one of my solar doors, only for it to completely eat them when it closed. I may need to go even squatter than I had and just make them long and flat. The only issue is that the weight seems to be really low and the Gatling guns always send it flying.
Spent last night trying to stick some fighters underneath one of my solar doors, only for it to completely eat them when it closed. I may need to go even squatter than I had and just make them long and flat. The only issue is that the weight seems to be really low and the Gatling guns always send it flying.
#295
GasBandit
GasBandit
#296
drifter
drifter
#297
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#298
drifter
drifter
#299
GasBandit
GasBandit
#300
drifter
drifter
#301
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
More modifications!
So I was able to make the fighters a bit squatter without sacrificing too much armor. I also reversed the guns on one side to keep them from listing up when they fire. So now...
... it closes up tight without eating the ships. This kind of makes me want to build a Protoss Carrier and install a few racks of these things inside... maybe on retractable racks made with pistons. We REALLY need Merge Blocks that are universal connectors.
A few things:
- Recharging batteries is SERIOUS power draw. I can't close the doors while charging the ship batteries and the fighter batteries. I messed with the gravity generator to help with this but it's still an issue.
- I get -4 full days- of power from the batteries while stationary. It's probably more like 1 while moving.
- Moving is a pain. I added more thrusters to help, but with the docked ships it's still like +1m/s from the weight. I may need to put in a gravity drive and just switch the gravity generators when I'm not moving.
So I was able to make the fighters a bit squatter without sacrificing too much armor. I also reversed the guns on one side to keep them from listing up when they fire. So now...
... it closes up tight without eating the ships. This kind of makes me want to build a Protoss Carrier and install a few racks of these things inside... maybe on retractable racks made with pistons. We REALLY need Merge Blocks that are universal connectors.
A few things:
- Recharging batteries is SERIOUS power draw. I can't close the doors while charging the ship batteries and the fighter batteries. I messed with the gravity generator to help with this but it's still an issue.
- I get -4 full days- of power from the batteries while stationary. It's probably more like 1 while moving.
- Moving is a pain. I added more thrusters to help, but with the docked ships it's still like +1m/s from the weight. I may need to put in a gravity drive and just switch the gravity generators when I'm not moving.
#302
GasBandit
GasBandit
#303
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#304
GasBandit
GasBandit
#305
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#306
GasBandit
GasBandit
#307
GasBandit
GasBandit
Here's the Bizarre Adventure II, still under construction, but the outer heavy armor is going in place so it's starting to vaguely take its final shape. Haven't finished placing the slope/corner armor or the turrets yet. You can also see Bob the Builder and an unnamed heavy fighter/grinder off to the side. I'm also thinking about trying to work in a collector with the grinders there somehow, so I won't have to stop to hack/pick up/transfer the contents of cargo bays and reactors... can just grind them down then hoover up the loot as it floats.
Our battlecube, which for obvious reasons, has been named the Rubix.
Our battlecube, which for obvious reasons, has been named the Rubix.
#309
GasBandit
Though it'd be more accurate if it was the front half of the Arcadia, sliced off from the rest, and the cockpit placed in the nose cavity. heh.
Really this is the smallest "large" ship I've built with combat considerations on this server (the only one smaller I think is my large version of Bob the Builder, and I think my first "battlewagon" on my old server was only 750 tons, but it only had a single layer of heavy armor). The Infernvm 1 was only a little heavier at 1700 metric tons (to this one's 1350), but it was a LOT slower and fatter to accomodate the base amenities. It represents a shift in my planning from "take and hold" to "hit and fade."
I might shift back again if design changes are made to address the multiplayer security issues regarding turrets, cockpits and merge blocks.
Incidentally, the Rubix, I think, is something like 7700 tons.
GasBandit
Hah... maybe... but to be honest the "skull face" was entirely unintentional and grew out of design. I wanted both the rocket launcher and grinders to be aligned within 1 block of my cockpit for easier aiming, and that just left the "forehead" area to place the retro thrusters. Though I have to admit, my first thought upon seeing the result was, once again...Something like this, then? *grins*
Though it'd be more accurate if it was the front half of the Arcadia, sliced off from the rest, and the cockpit placed in the nose cavity. heh.
Really this is the smallest "large" ship I've built with combat considerations on this server (the only one smaller I think is my large version of Bob the Builder, and I think my first "battlewagon" on my old server was only 750 tons, but it only had a single layer of heavy armor). The Infernvm 1 was only a little heavier at 1700 metric tons (to this one's 1350), but it was a LOT slower and fatter to accomodate the base amenities. It represents a shift in my planning from "take and hold" to "hit and fade."
I might shift back again if design changes are made to address the multiplayer security issues regarding turrets, cockpits and merge blocks.
Incidentally, the Rubix, I think, is something like 7700 tons.
#310
GasBandit
GasBandit
#311
PatrThom
PatrThom
#312
GasBandit
GasBandit
#313
GasBandit
GasBandit
#314
GasBandit
GasBandit
So very ALPHA.
Patch today broke collectors, among other things.
Also broke decoy blocks (no longer attract any fire at all), introduced some new crashes to desktop and screwed up sound propagation.
Patch today broke collectors, among other things.
Also broke decoy blocks (no longer attract any fire at all), introduced some new crashes to desktop and screwed up sound propagation.
#315
GasBandit
GasBandit
#316
GasBandit
GasBandit
#317
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#318
PatrThom
PatrThom
#319
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#320
GasBandit
GasBandit
Finished my new frigate, the Bizarre Adventure II.
She's a light raiding craft, final curb weight of 1500 tons. Acceleration of about 3m/s^2, fielding 3 gatling turrets, 3 missile turrets, 3 antipersonnel short range turrets, forward facing rocket launcher, and grinders with collector.
Now if only the lag would stop sucking so bad, so I could get some raiding done!
She's a light raiding craft, final curb weight of 1500 tons. Acceleration of about 3m/s^2, fielding 3 gatling turrets, 3 missile turrets, 3 antipersonnel short range turrets, forward facing rocket launcher, and grinders with collector.
Now if only the lag would stop sucking so bad, so I could get some raiding done!
#321
GasBandit
GasBandit
Went raiding today.
Nom nom nom.
Some other faction decided to claim the Elysium Sector beacon for their own, so naturally I had to go check it out and kill them some.
Well, as it turned out, I killed them a few dozen times, but finally one of them managed to lag-warp-teleport inside my ship and ground my medbay down so I couldn't respawn, then attacked me before I realized what happened. Another pirate from a rival faction was there and saw them swarm me after that, though, and killed them and disabled my ship's engines so they couldn't make off with it, out of professional courtesy. But unfortunately, when I got back and started to haul my ship away, he mistook me for them, and destroyed the cockpit. With no cockpit, I couldn't turn the inertial dampeners back on, and my ship just floated out into space again, with me unable to stop it. Because of multiplayer lag.
So I got a grand total of one foray out in the Bizarre Adventure 2.
And then the server crashed.
Why do I play this game multiplayer again?
Nom nom nom.
Some other faction decided to claim the Elysium Sector beacon for their own, so naturally I had to go check it out and kill them some.
Well, as it turned out, I killed them a few dozen times, but finally one of them managed to lag-warp-teleport inside my ship and ground my medbay down so I couldn't respawn, then attacked me before I realized what happened. Another pirate from a rival faction was there and saw them swarm me after that, though, and killed them and disabled my ship's engines so they couldn't make off with it, out of professional courtesy. But unfortunately, when I got back and started to haul my ship away, he mistook me for them, and destroyed the cockpit. With no cockpit, I couldn't turn the inertial dampeners back on, and my ship just floated out into space again, with me unable to stop it. Because of multiplayer lag.
So I got a grand total of one foray out in the Bizarre Adventure 2.
And then the server crashed.
Why do I play this game multiplayer again?
#322
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#323
GasBandit
GasBandit
#324
GasBandit
GasBandit
Grinding down a capital ship with an 81-grinder ship is a very satisfying experience.
"Nom nom nom nom nom all gone."
"Nom nom nom nom nom all gone."
#325
PatrThom
PatrThom
#326
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#327
GasBandit
GasBandit
#328
PatrThom
PatrThom
#329
GasBandit
GasBandit
#330
Gared
Gared
#331
drifter
drifter
#332
GasBandit
GasBandit
#333
GasBandit
GasBandit
#334
GasBandit
GasBandit
So I tried something a little different tonight. I downloaded Seuss' Pitch Black Skybox mod from the steam workshop, and started a new map with 7 large asteroids
This mod does more than it sounds - it not only turns the skybox pitch black, but removes the sun and all ambient light from the level. The only light is that which ships and bases provide.
So naturally it's kind of dark, to put it lightly.
I cannibalized some parts of the standard starter ship to build a spotlight and some "interior" lights on the exterior of the ship to increase its visibility. Since I knew the game starts you more or less pointed at the asteroids, I cautiously accelerated to 10 m/s and started inching my way into the gloom... too worried that to go faster would risk smashing into something before I could react.
It was flying blind. And worse, frequent paranoid stops and starts would chew through my extremely small uranium supply in short order. I decided I would cannibalize more parts to make a small scout vessel to search for an asteroid. My power is a currency, and it would be spent much more slowly pushing around a 5 ton ship than a 155 ton one.
I am forced to cannibalize more structure, the glass in front of my cockpit for silicon, the connector, the gravity generator, a couple thrusters, and though I tried hard to avoid it, my medbay. There was just no way around it. But doing so, I managed to build a simple small scout with a couple spotlights and a battery. I couldn't complete a reactor on it because I had nothing to cannibalize for the gravel to make reactor parts other than my main reactor - which was right out. Main reactor goes down, I can't refine, the lights go out, all kinds of bad things happen.
So I manage to build it up, and connect it to the ship to charge the battery.
I had to grind down the ship's connector and rebuild it behind the scout, then ootch the large ship forward until docking was achieved. Then set the battery to charge.
I also had to basically cannibalize everything but the cockpit, the connector, the gyros, thrusters cargo bay, assembler and refinery, but I made sure to build a beacon in the big ship before I left, so that I could find it again - the lights don't reach forever in the inky gloom.
Thus prepared, I tentatively groped my way out into the darkness.
It took quite a while of yo-yo-ing out and back, out and back, around and around, every minute fraying my nerves a little more, but suddenly rock loomed up in front of me, and mineral blips appeared to my ore detector. I was surprised how close it was to the mothership, actually.. only 1.5km away. I must have traveled quite a distance before I got the idea to build the small ship for scouting.
Stopping only enough to chisel off a little gravel to make reactor components, I leave the scout ship there, floodlight pointed at the rock to serve as a visual aid at which for me to pilot the refinery ship - it only then occurring to me of course that I probably could have stuck an antenna on the scout ship too, ah well. I jetpack back to the big ship, and start piloting it toward a distant tiny smudge of light in the darkness.
I nearly hit another, smaller asteroid on the way. Ooops. But I manage to miss it, and continue and finally rendezvous with the scout ship at the main asteroid.
I re-dock the scout ship to charge up the battery some more, and while that happens, I also modify it into a basic drill ship.
My first order of business was to find some uranium to restock my rapidly depleting energy stores - I was down to half a kilo.
I find a uranium vein relatively nearby, and drill out what I can from near the surface with the rudimentary drill ship. I also get some iron, nickel, gold, and of course, rock for my trouble.
Digging in the dark can make a sane man crazy.
Unfortunately, I haven't found any silver in the asteroid yet, which will be important for rebuilding my medbay and another reactor, to start a base. I might have to mount an expedition to an adjacent asteroid, if I can find it. At least I've got a supply of uranium now. Once I find some silver, I can start on a base and get it lit up and beaconed, finish cannibalizing the starter ship for parts, and begin building up. Hopefully, I'll be able to make a rudimentary attack craft before too long, and I can take what I need from the occasional passing merchant ship - though, I'll probably have to leave the armed ones alone for quite some time.
All in all, this mod makes single player much more incredibly challenging, interesting, creepy and engaging. Light becomes an essential resource - you're fighting to keep the lights on as much as you are to keep your suit energized. Beacons/antennas become critical. A very good way to breathe some life back into single player while waiting for them to (hopefully soon) fix multiplayer netcode.
This mod does more than it sounds - it not only turns the skybox pitch black, but removes the sun and all ambient light from the level. The only light is that which ships and bases provide.
So naturally it's kind of dark, to put it lightly.
I cannibalized some parts of the standard starter ship to build a spotlight and some "interior" lights on the exterior of the ship to increase its visibility. Since I knew the game starts you more or less pointed at the asteroids, I cautiously accelerated to 10 m/s and started inching my way into the gloom... too worried that to go faster would risk smashing into something before I could react.
It was flying blind. And worse, frequent paranoid stops and starts would chew through my extremely small uranium supply in short order. I decided I would cannibalize more parts to make a small scout vessel to search for an asteroid. My power is a currency, and it would be spent much more slowly pushing around a 5 ton ship than a 155 ton one.
I am forced to cannibalize more structure, the glass in front of my cockpit for silicon, the connector, the gravity generator, a couple thrusters, and though I tried hard to avoid it, my medbay. There was just no way around it. But doing so, I managed to build a simple small scout with a couple spotlights and a battery. I couldn't complete a reactor on it because I had nothing to cannibalize for the gravel to make reactor parts other than my main reactor - which was right out. Main reactor goes down, I can't refine, the lights go out, all kinds of bad things happen.
So I manage to build it up, and connect it to the ship to charge the battery.
I had to grind down the ship's connector and rebuild it behind the scout, then ootch the large ship forward until docking was achieved. Then set the battery to charge.
I also had to basically cannibalize everything but the cockpit, the connector, the gyros, thrusters cargo bay, assembler and refinery, but I made sure to build a beacon in the big ship before I left, so that I could find it again - the lights don't reach forever in the inky gloom.
Thus prepared, I tentatively groped my way out into the darkness.
It took quite a while of yo-yo-ing out and back, out and back, around and around, every minute fraying my nerves a little more, but suddenly rock loomed up in front of me, and mineral blips appeared to my ore detector. I was surprised how close it was to the mothership, actually.. only 1.5km away. I must have traveled quite a distance before I got the idea to build the small ship for scouting.
Stopping only enough to chisel off a little gravel to make reactor components, I leave the scout ship there, floodlight pointed at the rock to serve as a visual aid at which for me to pilot the refinery ship - it only then occurring to me of course that I probably could have stuck an antenna on the scout ship too, ah well. I jetpack back to the big ship, and start piloting it toward a distant tiny smudge of light in the darkness.
I nearly hit another, smaller asteroid on the way. Ooops. But I manage to miss it, and continue and finally rendezvous with the scout ship at the main asteroid.
I re-dock the scout ship to charge up the battery some more, and while that happens, I also modify it into a basic drill ship.
My first order of business was to find some uranium to restock my rapidly depleting energy stores - I was down to half a kilo.
I find a uranium vein relatively nearby, and drill out what I can from near the surface with the rudimentary drill ship. I also get some iron, nickel, gold, and of course, rock for my trouble.
Digging in the dark can make a sane man crazy.
Unfortunately, I haven't found any silver in the asteroid yet, which will be important for rebuilding my medbay and another reactor, to start a base. I might have to mount an expedition to an adjacent asteroid, if I can find it. At least I've got a supply of uranium now. Once I find some silver, I can start on a base and get it lit up and beaconed, finish cannibalizing the starter ship for parts, and begin building up. Hopefully, I'll be able to make a rudimentary attack craft before too long, and I can take what I need from the occasional passing merchant ship - though, I'll probably have to leave the armed ones alone for quite some time.
All in all, this mod makes single player much more incredibly challenging, interesting, creepy and engaging. Light becomes an essential resource - you're fighting to keep the lights on as much as you are to keep your suit energized. Beacons/antennas become critical. A very good way to breathe some life back into single player while waiting for them to (hopefully soon) fix multiplayer netcode.
#335
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#336
FnordBear
FnordBear
In a stunning announcement today BT Industries has stated they will provide the first two cruisers of the Jovian Federation's defense fleet at no cost in return for continued contracts to BTI. When asked what prompted such a bold move, Chairman and CEO Fnord Bjornson had this to say, "In these dark times BTI supports the Jovian Government's buildup of a self-defense force. With the aggression of the Earth Union Armada against the Sovereign Mars State and it's ally the Belt Colonies, we can not be sure when this cold war will turn hot."
When asked about his stance on the silence of the Saturian Kingdom Mr. Bjornson would only state, "The Kingdoms have as much right to defense as we do, being on the edge of the frontier I am sure they will ally with the Confederacy if the the war turns hot. After all, if the Jovian system falls they are next in the gunsights of Earth imperialism."
Stock Photo: Two BT Industries "Europa" class cruisers.
When asked about his stance on the silence of the Saturian Kingdom Mr. Bjornson would only state, "The Kingdoms have as much right to defense as we do, being on the edge of the frontier I am sure they will ally with the Confederacy if the the war turns hot. After all, if the Jovian system falls they are next in the gunsights of Earth imperialism."
Stock Photo: Two BT Industries "Europa" class cruisers.
#337
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
Gas'es new mod had me thinking... so here's this thing I threw together.
I made a tiny Nuclear sub! Well... not TINY, but small compared to some of the other builds in this thread.
Here's the production phase. Lower left is a test to see if I could do a certain something....
Forward interior. You can see the hanger bay for the mini-sub, as well as the entrance to the torpedo room.
Rear bottom view. I have two refineries acting as large engines for the props... also as refineries, because why not?
Rear view top. I built a fairly elaborate scaffold system (with cosmetic supports) that leads to the medbay.
It finishes by going around to the piloting console.
Torpedo room interior. I used small ships to make the torpedoes out of an engine, a landing gear, a power generator, a beacon and a warhead. Firing order is turn off thrusters, max override, turn off landing gear, turn on thrusters. They fly out of the standard opening door block for added fun. As for the beacon, that's actually an idea I had for Gas. Since beacons make light, why not add them to torpedoes to act as tracers in that dark environment of his? Would give you some idea of where they went when fired. In fact...
Why not just launch a few probes? This simply probe can last for HOURS, is cheap to build, and will survive impact if you keep the speed low. Better, the flat surface on the front mean the probe will try to right itself. Maybe add some spot lights to see what you hit.
And yes, that CAN fit through the door.
I made a tiny Nuclear sub! Well... not TINY, but small compared to some of the other builds in this thread.
Here's the production phase. Lower left is a test to see if I could do a certain something....
Forward interior. You can see the hanger bay for the mini-sub, as well as the entrance to the torpedo room.
Rear bottom view. I have two refineries acting as large engines for the props... also as refineries, because why not?
Rear view top. I built a fairly elaborate scaffold system (with cosmetic supports) that leads to the medbay.
It finishes by going around to the piloting console.
Torpedo room interior. I used small ships to make the torpedoes out of an engine, a landing gear, a power generator, a beacon and a warhead. Firing order is turn off thrusters, max override, turn off landing gear, turn on thrusters. They fly out of the standard opening door block for added fun. As for the beacon, that's actually an idea I had for Gas. Since beacons make light, why not add them to torpedoes to act as tracers in that dark environment of his? Would give you some idea of where they went when fired. In fact...
Why not just launch a few probes? This simply probe can last for HOURS, is cheap to build, and will survive impact if you keep the speed low. Better, the flat surface on the front mean the probe will try to right itself. Maybe add some spot lights to see what you hit.
And yes, that CAN fit through the door.
#338
GasBandit
GasBandit
I may end up using probes, though I doubt they'll be shot through doors don't forget in survival mode, batteries are completely drained when first created, so I'll have to link them up to the mothership via connector to charge them up before sending them out. I'll probably have to use a small ship (the drill ship) with a landing gear to "aim" the probe, at which point I might as well just use the drillship to give it a push and then release, no thruster needed.[DOUBLEPOST=1407937883,1407937746][/DOUBLEPOST]
don't forget in survival mode, batteries are completely drained when first created, so I'll have to link them up to the mothership via connector to charge them up before sending them out. I'll probably have to use a small ship (the drill ship) with a landing gear to "aim" the probe, at which point I might as well just use the drillship to give it a push and then release, no thruster needed.[DOUBLEPOST=1407937883,1407937746][/DOUBLEPOST]
Sleek design. My only critique is.. no heavy armor?In a stunning announcement today BT Industries has stated they will provide the first two cruisers of the Jovian Federation's defense fleet at no cost in return for continued contracts to BTI. When asked what prompted such a bold move, Chairman and CEO Fnord Bjornson had this to say, "In these dark times BTI supports the Jovian Government's buildup of a self-defense force. With the aggression of the Earth Union Armada against the Sovereign Mars State and it's ally the Belt Colonies, we can not be sure when this cold war will turn hot."
When asked about his stance on the silence of the Saturian Kingdom Mr. Bjornson would only state, "The Kingdoms have as much right to defense as we do, being on the edge of the frontier I am sure they will ally with the Confederacy if the the war turns hot. After all, if the Jovian system falls they are next in the gunsights of Earth imperialism."
Stock Photo: Two BT Industries "Europa" class cruisers.
#339
PatrThom
PatrThom
#340
GasBandit
GasBandit
#341
FnordBear
Ship can take a ridiculous ammount of punishment and remain combat effective.
All stock parts.
FnordBear
There are heavy armor bulkheads internally as well as heavy armor structural beams. The whole thing is compartmentalized and uses a double hull with deadspace between layers.
Ship can take a ridiculous ammount of punishment and remain combat effective.
All stock parts.
#342
GasBandit
GasBandit
#343
FnordBear
FnordBear
#344
GasBandit
GasBandit
#345
FnordBear
FnordBear
#346
GasBandit
GasBandit
#347
FnordBear
FnordBear
#348
FnordBear
FnordBear
FLASH*****
In a stunning turn of events the JFDF-007 "Ranger" came under fire from an unknown aggressor. Due to quick thinking and valor by the crew and Captain Eltus Mashine, the ship sustain non casualties and was able to fend off the opponent. While no official statements have been released some are already speculating that the cold war between the Jovian Federation and Earth Union has just turned hot.
Photo: An unknown worker greets the JFDF-007 "Ranger" at Callisto Anchorage as she docks for repairs.
In a stunning turn of events the JFDF-007 "Ranger" came under fire from an unknown aggressor. Due to quick thinking and valor by the crew and Captain Eltus Mashine, the ship sustain non casualties and was able to fend off the opponent. While no official statements have been released some are already speculating that the cold war between the Jovian Federation and Earth Union has just turned hot.
Photo: An unknown worker greets the JFDF-007 "Ranger" at Callisto Anchorage as she docks for repairs.
#349
PatrThom
PatrThom
#350
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#351
GasBandit
GasBandit
#352
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
You really should just say to your factions guys "Hey... if you aren't going to be around, I know some people willing to hop in and pick up the slack.". This shit has got to stop.
On lighter news... I did some probe tests tonight.
First I used Gas'es idea of an engine-less probe. This doesn't work for a couple of reasons.
- It's hard to aim this thing because dragging the probe makes the ship want to handle weird. I tried several different positions but it's always the same.
- Without an engine to keep it in place, the probe just bounces off of whatever you hit.
So I changed things up and tried again.
This one worked a bit better. Set it for the lowest power setting on override and sent it on it's way. This one had a different problem: it can't correct itself once it hits, making it bounce off and keep flying.
This one works perfectly though. The extra engines keep the ship from bouncing around once it's hit and the gyroscope keeps it from twisting when it hits. It might be possible all this needs is a gyroscope though, so I did a few more tests.
This one does exactly what I designed it to do: On impact, one of the front legs breaks off to absorb the impact. Then the ship skids along for a second before the gyroscope kicks in and forces it to find an angle where it's just moving forward, keeping it in position until the energy runs out, which point it'll stay in position anyway. Now I used a generator for this but there is no reason you couldn't slap on a battery, charge it up, and then move the battery into position with a merge block or something before you built the probe around it.
Cheap, easy to build, and easy to use.
On lighter news... I did some probe tests tonight.
First I used Gas'es idea of an engine-less probe. This doesn't work for a couple of reasons.
- It's hard to aim this thing because dragging the probe makes the ship want to handle weird. I tried several different positions but it's always the same.
- Without an engine to keep it in place, the probe just bounces off of whatever you hit.
So I changed things up and tried again.
This one worked a bit better. Set it for the lowest power setting on override and sent it on it's way. This one had a different problem: it can't correct itself once it hits, making it bounce off and keep flying.
This one works perfectly though. The extra engines keep the ship from bouncing around once it's hit and the gyroscope keeps it from twisting when it hits. It might be possible all this needs is a gyroscope though, so I did a few more tests.
This one does exactly what I designed it to do: On impact, one of the front legs breaks off to absorb the impact. Then the ship skids along for a second before the gyroscope kicks in and forces it to find an angle where it's just moving forward, keeping it in position until the energy runs out, which point it'll stay in position anyway. Now I used a generator for this but there is no reason you couldn't slap on a battery, charge it up, and then move the battery into position with a merge block or something before you built the probe around it.
Cheap, easy to build, and easy to use.
#353
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
Did a few more tests on Probes. I think I've come upon two rules for this kind of thing.
- The greater the mass of the probe, the more light armor chunks you need to absorb the impact. Or to put it simply, heavier means longer.
- The faster it is going, the wider the chunks need to go to cushion the impact and catch onto the rocks. Or to put it simply, faster means wider.
So I made this thing as basic as I could, while still making it able to hold everything it needs. Here's the ugly version.
It has a battery instead of a generator, a beacon to find it, a gyro to keep it from freaking out on impact, a merge block for charging, and legs long and wide enough to absorb impact at 100+ m/s. It looks like a crash test vehicle afterwards but it works.
Now I can't wait for the devs to implement proximity sensors or speed controls to make all of this pointless.
- The greater the mass of the probe, the more light armor chunks you need to absorb the impact. Or to put it simply, heavier means longer.
- The faster it is going, the wider the chunks need to go to cushion the impact and catch onto the rocks. Or to put it simply, faster means wider.
So I made this thing as basic as I could, while still making it able to hold everything it needs. Here's the ugly version.
It has a battery instead of a generator, a beacon to find it, a gyro to keep it from freaking out on impact, a merge block for charging, and legs long and wide enough to absorb impact at 100+ m/s. It looks like a crash test vehicle afterwards but it works.
Now I can't wait for the devs to implement proximity sensors or speed controls to make all of this pointless.
#354
GasBandit
GasBandit
#355
GasBandit
GasBandit
#356
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#357
PatrThom
PatrThom
#358
GasBandit
GasBandit
#359
PatrThom
PatrThom
#360
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#361
GasBandit
GasBandit
#362
CrimsonSoul
CrimsonSoul
#363
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#364
GasBandit
GasBandit
#365
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#366
GasBandit
GasBandit
#367
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#368
GasBandit
GasBandit
#369
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#370
GasBandit
GasBandit
#371
GasBandit
GasBandit
#372
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#373
GasBandit
GasBandit
#374
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#375
GasBandit
GasBandit
#376
drifter
drifter
Heh, creative mode is the only reason I'm even considering Space Engineers. I'm sure I'm in the minority here, but I just wanna build cool shit
#377
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#378
GasBandit
Speaking of which, that's why the continued broken-ness of multiplayer is so aggravating. Every time I see someone post something in creative mode single player, my reaction is... so what? You didn't struggle to build that. You didn't gather the resources, you didn't risk piracy and invasion to hide it while you worked on it, you didn't have to manage fuel supplies or support infrastructure, you just "wished" it into existence.. and its potential will forever go unfulfilled because there's nobody else to use it on, and no reason to do so even if there was. But because multiplayer is still so laggy and broken, people still huddle in their little single player creative aspergalaxies, posting huge and intricate ships to reddit that utterly fail to impress because there's no difficulty to it other than imagination.
It stops being space engineers, and starts being space art designers. Because Engineering is for solving problems.. and there are no problems in a single player creative mode world.
GasBandit
Different strokes for different folks, but to me, at that point it ceases being a game and starts being a drawing notepad. There's no struggle, no risk, no triumph, no reward. Losses mean nothing because you can copy-paste your ship right back, and gains mean nothing because everything is infinite. Not really even any reason to have asteroids in a creative map, if you ask me. Comes a time when you've just built a 5km long superdestroyer and realize that it will never actually have any potential other than a ship in a bottle because it's in creative mode, and probably single player at that.Heh, creative mode is the only reason I'm even considering Space Engineers. I'm sure I'm in the minority here, but I just wanna build cool shit
Speaking of which, that's why the continued broken-ness of multiplayer is so aggravating. Every time I see someone post something in creative mode single player, my reaction is... so what? You didn't struggle to build that. You didn't gather the resources, you didn't risk piracy and invasion to hide it while you worked on it, you didn't have to manage fuel supplies or support infrastructure, you just "wished" it into existence.. and its potential will forever go unfulfilled because there's nobody else to use it on, and no reason to do so even if there was. But because multiplayer is still so laggy and broken, people still huddle in their little single player creative aspergalaxies, posting huge and intricate ships to reddit that utterly fail to impress because there's no difficulty to it other than imagination.
It stops being space engineers, and starts being space art designers. Because Engineering is for solving problems.. and there are no problems in a single player creative mode world.
#379
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#380
drifter
drifter
#381
GasBandit
GasBandit
#382
GasBandit
GasBandit
Speaking of things people post on Reddit, get a load (pun intended) of this would-be comedian who has "made" a washer and dryer. In space.
#383
PatrThom
Or you could just add in a cough button.[DOUBLEPOST=1408400112,1408400051][/DOUBLEPOST]
--Patrick
PatrThom
I'm sure if you want one of us to clean up the audio for you, we can do that.
Or you could just add in a cough button.[DOUBLEPOST=1408400112,1408400051][/DOUBLEPOST]
Creative is for experiments. Survival is for fun.Heh, creative mode is the only reason I'm even considering Space Engineers. I'm sure I'm in the minority here, but I just wanna build cool shit
--Patrick
#384
GasBandit
GasBandit
#385
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#386
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#387
GasBandit
GasBandit
#388
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#389
GasBandit
GasBandit
#390
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#391
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#392
GasBandit
GasBandit
#393
GasBandit
GasBandit
#394
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#395
GasBandit
GasBandit
#396
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#397
GasBandit
GasBandit
#398
PatrThom
PatrThom
#399
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#400
PatrThom
PatrThom
#401
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#402
GasBandit
GasBandit
#403
GasBandit
GasBandit
#404
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#405
GasBandit
GasBandit
#406
CrimsonSoul
CrimsonSoul
#407
PatrThom
PatrThom
#408
GasBandit
GasBandit
#410
GasBandit
Also they don't have the tool that tells me the relationship values between characters by parsing savegame data like the first one, so I wouldn't be able to do such good "status updates" each week as I did before.
I've been holding off hoping those would be added.
GasBandit
Soon, I hope. The game is playable, but they don't have all the tweaks/features that I'd like from the first one - They used to have an option to apply a multiplier to the value of interactions, which I maxed out at 3x - which is what made interesting stuff happen so much. That's not implemented right now - so the amount of time before interesting stuff starts happening would be tripled.With AA2 out, aren't we due for a new Halforums Academy?
Also they don't have the tool that tells me the relationship values between characters by parsing savegame data like the first one, so I wouldn't be able to do such good "status updates" each week as I did before.
I've been holding off hoping those would be added.
#411
Officer_Charon
Officer_Charon
#412
GasBandit
GasBandit
#413
GasBandit
GasBandit
#414
GasBandit
GasBandit
Guess who's back in the saddle -
#415
PatrThom
PatrThom
#416
GasBandit
GasBandit
#417
GasBandit
GasBandit
#418
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#419
GasBandit
GasBandit
#420
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#421
GasBandit
GasBandit
#422
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#424
GasBandit
GasBandit
#425
GasBandit
GasBandit
#426
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#427
GasBandit
GasBandit
#428
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
Yep, just built an asteroid searching probe.
Real simple design.
- 3 thrusters. 1 forward, two reverse
- A charged battery or a small reactor
- a beacon
- 3 sensors
Set the reverse thrusters to off. Set the forward sensor to turn on these thrusters when it detects the asteroid within the desired ranged . Set another sensor to turn off the forward engine at the same distance. Set the final sensor to turn the beacon on when you hit that range. After all of that, set the forward thruster to override at it's lowest setting and let it fly. It'll stop pretty quick.
Real simple design.
- 3 thrusters. 1 forward, two reverse
- A charged battery or a small reactor
- a beacon
- 3 sensors
Set the reverse thrusters to off. Set the forward sensor to turn on these thrusters when it detects the asteroid within the desired ranged . Set another sensor to turn off the forward engine at the same distance. Set the final sensor to turn the beacon on when you hit that range. After all of that, set the forward thruster to override at it's lowest setting and let it fly. It'll stop pretty quick.
#429
GasBandit
GasBandit
#430
PatrThom
PatrThom
#431
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#432
GasBandit
GasBandit
#433
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#434
GasBandit
GasBandit
#435
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
After extensive testing, I have my final results on mineral finding probes. There are only two ways to be 100% sure that your probe will stop within appropriate range of a discovered asteroid as long as you depend on override rockets.
- Build a crumple claw to cushion impact and catch on the asteroid while the engine is still going full blast. This is primitive and requires you hit the asteroid, which is difficult enough, and there is always a small chance it won't catch and will instead fly off.
- Use sensors to shut off engines. You also need to add enough engines to stabilize the entire thing after impact and one extra to power it. This is fine if you have enough parts lying around to build them, but it just feels like it violates the spirit of probe design.
But then I realized something VERY important: there WAS a way to launch this thing AND have it go at a steady, manageable rate... Remote Control. Here is the final probe design.
All you need to build this:
- x2 thrusters
- x1 small reactor (Though you could modify it for battery use) + Uranium
- x2 sensors
- x1 camera
- x1 beacon
- x1 gyroscope
- x1 antenna
- x1 remote control
- x2 angled light armor
- x1 light armor block
Program order:
- Turn off the beacon.
- Set both sensors to 50m in all directions except backward and to only detect asteroids.
- The front sensor should be set to turn on the beacon (first block) and turn it off (second block)
- The rear sensor should be set to Remote Control - Inertial Dampener (On/Off) (First Block)
- Access the probe remotely
- Switch to Camera
- Add Remote Control - Inertial Dampener (On/Off) to your toolbar
- Aim your probe
- Switch off Remote Control - Inertial Dampener (On/Off)
- Accelerate to a manageable speed before releasing control
Because the inertial dampeners are off, it will keep going at that speed until it ether hits something that isn't an asteroid or it detects one... and as long as you keep it at a manageable speed, it will have plenty of time to slow down and stop. This works 100% of the time as long as you don't gun it during the acceleration phase. It's still only a 50m tube of detection but that's all we get right now.
- Build a crumple claw to cushion impact and catch on the asteroid while the engine is still going full blast. This is primitive and requires you hit the asteroid, which is difficult enough, and there is always a small chance it won't catch and will instead fly off.
- Use sensors to shut off engines. You also need to add enough engines to stabilize the entire thing after impact and one extra to power it. This is fine if you have enough parts lying around to build them, but it just feels like it violates the spirit of probe design.
But then I realized something VERY important: there WAS a way to launch this thing AND have it go at a steady, manageable rate... Remote Control. Here is the final probe design.
All you need to build this:
- x2 thrusters
- x1 small reactor (Though you could modify it for battery use) + Uranium
- x2 sensors
- x1 camera
- x1 beacon
- x1 gyroscope
- x1 antenna
- x1 remote control
- x2 angled light armor
- x1 light armor block
Program order:
- Turn off the beacon.
- Set both sensors to 50m in all directions except backward and to only detect asteroids.
- The front sensor should be set to turn on the beacon (first block) and turn it off (second block)
- The rear sensor should be set to Remote Control - Inertial Dampener (On/Off) (First Block)
- Access the probe remotely
- Switch to Camera
- Add Remote Control - Inertial Dampener (On/Off) to your toolbar
- Aim your probe
- Switch off Remote Control - Inertial Dampener (On/Off)
- Accelerate to a manageable speed before releasing control
Because the inertial dampeners are off, it will keep going at that speed until it ether hits something that isn't an asteroid or it detects one... and as long as you keep it at a manageable speed, it will have plenty of time to slow down and stop. This works 100% of the time as long as you don't gun it during the acceleration phase. It's still only a 50m tube of detection but that's all we get right now.
#436
GasBandit
GasBandit
#437
PatrThom
PatrThom
#438
GasBandit
GasBandit
#439
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#440
GasBandit
GasBandit
#441
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#442
PatrThom
PatrThom
#443
GasBandit
GasBandit
#444
PatrThom
PatrThom
#445
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#446
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
So yeah... drill probes? Not worth it.
#447
GasBandit
GasBandit
#449
GasBandit
GasBandit
#450
GasBandit
GasBandit
Got an idea, an itch, and built me a new heavy fighter - I present, the Ghetto Bird.
Weighing in at 130 tons, she sports twin gatling turrets and an 8g gravity drive. Suitable for high speed combat where acceleration is key.
Weighing in at 130 tons, she sports twin gatling turrets and an 8g gravity drive. Suitable for high speed combat where acceleration is key.
#451
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#452
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
So I finally tried stealing a ship.
Worked pretty well. Business ships don't have a ton of ammo and only carry guns on the top, making them easy to steal. Just flew my armored ship up, flew into the breech, and ground the controls down until I could turn on the inertial. Once it stopped, I turned off the power and that was that. Hacked the rest.
Worked pretty well. Business ships don't have a ton of ammo and only carry guns on the top, making them easy to steal. Just flew my armored ship up, flew into the breech, and ground the controls down until I could turn on the inertial. Once it stopped, I turned off the power and that was that. Hacked the rest.
#453
GasBandit
GasBandit
#454
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#455
GasBandit
[DOUBLEPOST=1412227206,1412227121][/DOUBLEPOST]wait, no, that was a private sail. Ah well. Similar thing.
GasBandit
Remember this post on the first page of this thread? That was me taking down my first business shipment. Heh. Having done it yourself now, you can probably appreciate even more some of what I went through
[DOUBLEPOST=1412227206,1412227121][/DOUBLEPOST]wait, no, that was a private sail. Ah well. Similar thing.
#456
GasBandit
GasBandit
#457
PatrThom
PatrThom
#458
GasBandit
GasBandit
#459
AshburnerX
And the only REAL explanation I can think of for why he was able to get away is that he was one of the hosts.
You definitely need a wingman for that kind of thing. If you'd had someone boxing him in, he'd have never gotten away.
AshburnerX
Actually, it wasn't too much of a problem for me. See, all but one of my components was placed behind the grinder (which has gobs of HP), so when I was soaking up bullets, all I had to do was keep the nose between me and the guns. It soaked up all the damage. Then I placed one gun between me and other gun, which resulted in it gunning down the other gun. Once it ran out of ammo, I ditched the grinder ship, flew into the back, ground through the door and hacked the console. The only "hard" part is not over shooting the door opening. I had to do like 10 approaches because I kept flying off.Remember this post on the first page of this thread? That was me taking down my first business shipment. Heh. Having done it yourself now, you can probably appreciate even more some of what I went through
And the only REAL explanation I can think of for why he was able to get away is that he was one of the hosts.
You definitely need a wingman for that kind of thing. If you'd had someone boxing him in, he'd have never gotten away.
#460
GasBandit
GasBandit
#461
Frank
Frank
#462
GasBandit
GasBandit
#463
GasBandit
GasBandit
#464
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#465
GasBandit
GasBandit
#466
GasBandit
GasBandit
#467
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#468
GasBandit
GasBandit
#469
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#470
GasBandit
GasBandit
#471
GasBandit
GasBandit
#472
PatrThom
PatrThom
#473
GasBandit
GasBandit
#474
PatrThom
PatrThom
#475
GasBandit
GasBandit
Shit, man, got enough engines?
#476
GasBandit
GasBandit
And who knows what this is gonna be.
#477
PatrThom
PatrThom
#478
GasBandit
GasBandit
#479
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#480
PatrThom
PatrThom
#481
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#482
PatrThom
PatrThom
#483
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
Well... I was busy tonight. Not only am I working a ship design inspired by @GasBandit 's thug ship...
I also snagged two practically pristine NPC vessels without losing Gary (my grinder). Lost the grinders and took some damage in the cockpit and storage containers, but it still flew just fine afterward.
NPC Ship seizing seems to follow the same basic steps every time:
- Build a ship that can eat a few hundred rounds
- Exhaust their ammo
- Match speed and direction before turning off inertial dampeners
- Hack ship and turn on it's inertial dampeners
- Hurry back to your ship before it flies too far away
The only difference I can see for PVP is you actually need to be able to fight the ship in question and it's probably better to two man it or join ships afterward.
I also snagged two practically pristine NPC vessels without losing Gary (my grinder). Lost the grinders and took some damage in the cockpit and storage containers, but it still flew just fine afterward.
NPC Ship seizing seems to follow the same basic steps every time:
- Build a ship that can eat a few hundred rounds
- Exhaust their ammo
- Match speed and direction before turning off inertial dampeners
- Hack ship and turn on it's inertial dampeners
- Hurry back to your ship before it flies too far away
The only difference I can see for PVP is you actually need to be able to fight the ship in question and it's probably better to two man it or join ships afterward.
#484
GasBandit
GasBandit
#485
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
So I finally got my ship off the dock...
I call it the SPD Emergency. It's not terrible but t has a few problems.
- Acceleration sucks unless the gravity drive is on. This means maneuvering is difficult. I may switch out the side/up/down thrusters with large ones.
- The gravity drive has a slight lifting drift. I don't think it's the artificial mass... it's dead center in the center of mass and I've tried moving it already. Is this normal with gravity drive? I'm only using 4 grav gens.
- I MUST move that cockpit. It draws fire like crazy.
Still, it netted me a mining transport.
I call it the SPD Emergency. It's not terrible but t has a few problems.
- Acceleration sucks unless the gravity drive is on. This means maneuvering is difficult. I may switch out the side/up/down thrusters with large ones.
- The gravity drive has a slight lifting drift. I don't think it's the artificial mass... it's dead center in the center of mass and I've tried moving it already. Is this normal with gravity drive? I'm only using 4 grav gens.
- I MUST move that cockpit. It draws fire like crazy.
Still, it netted me a mining transport.
#486
GasBandit
GasBandit
#487
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#488
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
Alright... redesigned the SPD Emergency. Moved the cockpit behind the missile launcher, put a merge block on the front to soak up fire. Works rather well if you can shot rockets from the hip like I can. Captured a mining ship without too much trouble...
Well... half a mining ship. I think I nailed something important with a rocket because it split in two and stopped firing, despite having 87 cases of ammo on board.
It seems the key to frigate design is to build something on the nose to soak up the fire. What's the most durable object in the game that a Gatling gun will fire on?
Well... half a mining ship. I think I nailed something important with a rocket because it split in two and stopped firing, despite having 87 cases of ammo on board.
It seems the key to frigate design is to build something on the nose to soak up the fire. What's the most durable object in the game that a Gatling gun will fire on?
#489
GasBandit
GasBandit
#490
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
#491
GasBandit
GasBandit
The Damocles, in progress...
Interior of Untitled Capital Ship's torpedo bay
View from the bow
From the side
Interior of Untitled Capital Ship's torpedo bay
View from the bow
From the side
#492
GasBandit
GasBandit
#493
AshburnerX
AshburnerX
Well... here's the SPD SWAT on it's Maiden voyage. It's over-sized and over engineered.
Went up against a Military Transport. The devs are sneaky as hell... they have it set to fire missiles at a range your turrets ether can't or won't lock onto them at. This means I got shot down 6 times before I threw in the towel.
Went up against a Military Transport. The devs are sneaky as hell... they have it set to fire missiles at a range your turrets ether can't or won't lock onto them at. This means I got shot down 6 times before I threw in the towel.
#494
GasBandit
GasBandit
#495
PatrThom
PatrThom
#496
GasBandit
GasBandit
#497
PatrThom
PatrThom
#498
GasBandit
GasBandit
#499
GasBandit
GasBandit
I've improved on the ghetto bird's design... Meet Ghetto Bird Mk II
Only 5 tons more weight, double the thrust from the second mass block, and now with a missile turret. This is now a full on gunship capable of taking on capital ships with super maneuverability and enough firepower to whittle them down.
Only 5 tons more weight, double the thrust from the second mass block, and now with a missile turret. This is now a full on gunship capable of taking on capital ships with super maneuverability and enough firepower to whittle them down.
#500
AshburnerX
AshburnerX