Got a chance to explore this excellent ship. The hull shape is marvelous, no single area was left untouched. Interesting turrets, nice deployable landing gead (I wish we had a planet to land on using those!) and a cargo elevator. Finding a hatch caused no problems (although the location of a USD is controversial at best since you’ll need a pretty long docking tube to dock this beauty to anything) but the surprise waited inside. No control over airlock procedures? Well, taking into account the quality of landing gear stuff and some other ship systems I’ll talk about later that was a huge and rather unpleasant surprise. Even more – the ship seems to lack any gravity generators, be them manual or automatic.
Following down the hallway (a pretty boring and undetailed one, should I say. The ship’s corridors are pretty much not decorated as a whole, so no more mentioning that), I was met with a huge ceiling-mounted minigun turret supposed to fend off boarders. Nice touch, should I note. The area with the turret leads to a pretty nice cantina (loved the oven and a huge thumbs up for the jukebox) and some U-shaped living quarters.
Crew cabins are really nice, with all that furniture and excellent spacious crew bunks. Officer quarters are even better. Guess, I’ll be stealing some ideas ;-) The bathrooms not so much, though, mostly due to strange design of toilets and sinks. I’d use a wedge or a slab for those, or at least hide functional blocks behind slabs.
In the middle of the crew quarters is the true gem of the ship – her bridge. The author created an interactive neural interface for his pilots, with a nice GUI and nav marks to ease the control of the ship. All information is conveniently relayed to a large multi-layer holoscreen, and I am afraid ot imagine what logic operates it. The GUI seems to be triggered by a proximity sensor instead of a button, and that adds to immersion too
Walking past the officer rooms, you get into more functional area, consisting of a Hangar with cargolift and all the small ships (containers and drones), the brig, the medbay, the Combat Information Centre and logic core (not discussing it here, but direct access to logic is always great). The hangar is pretty nice (same boring bland walls, but the contents are very pleasing), the drones (or “pods” are well-built and pretty useful. Containers and main cargo area could use some more work though. The brig is mediocre at best, but what would you expect from one? The medbay is rather nice, somewhat lacking the equipment, but pretty much functional. The CIC is another well-designed area, full of display-art, but somewhat lacking on block-art just as many other ship areas (mixing and matching wedges and slabs will definitely add to its looks).
Opposite of the canteen is the very much similar area dedicated to plant growth and some recreation (a pool). The pool area is done pretty well, but the grow plots… Something very whong happened there with lights. Namely, the character gets stuck in them very easily, and I had a hard time getting out… Definitely needs urgent fixing. The corridor then leads to another airlock on the opposite side of the ship.
Was very surprised not to find an engine room anywhere on the ship. It seems that either author forgot about it or it was omitted on purpose to provide more space for systems. Otherwise I can summarize that the ship’s interior is rather good and preasant to explore.
The ship as a whole can be rated 5 stars easily. It is not hard to see how much work did author put in his creation. Exceptionally nice work, Type O! Can’t wait to see even more of your creations!!!
- With the cargo-platform I placed the Up-button on the other side because it felt odd having the "upwards" button on the bottom; I will revise the location.
- My main-thrusters are based on the XRS-2200 linear aerospike design, you can found it on Youtube its very sci-fi looking.
- The rail-blocks above the doors is just for looks; it always felt odd how the door just opens and disappears.
- Im still on the fence about gravity-modules, its situations like you'd @ 16:05 that annoys me in starmade, its why I dont have them.
- Theres a pause in the landing-gear procedure because it has to wait for the cargo-platform to retract everytime (fixed timer); rear L-gear clips the cargo-hatch. Waiting also makes sure everything is in position before that tricky double inverse rotation.