HMSS Hephaestus

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    No---that makes it very hard to maneuver and aim. Just build a vertical ship instead. That way, when they shoot you, they can only punch through your 2nd longest axis, instead of your longest one.

    Bonus points if your ship is very small along the length dimension, but much larger along the other two, making for a ship that's nearly impossible to damage with cannon.
     
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    Well that isn't impossible if you use side camera to do so and only missiles/beam weapons (or swarm). But you'll get a bonus point if you build a vertical ship. Of course it's easier to destroy power lines that way but it's the apanage of good builders.

    This message is approved by the vertical ship sect.
     
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    Regarding vertical ships: If we ever get the ability to rotate ship cores I'll probably make a version of this rotated to have the port or starboard be forward and with the weapons in manual control, could be hilarious.

    Star Knight:

    I've done a bit of work on the Star Knight interior passages and have come up with a set of four passages that come in in four varieties of widths and heights between 2.75m (height) down to 2m x 1m, they all look like part of the same design philosophy. I've also decided that I really like thrusters for useful ceiling blocks in cramped utility/access passages.

    For now I think I've put moving forward on indefinite hold waiting for the quarters system. I'm going to continue putting together different interior systems on the outside, but I've decided that the Star Knight is way too big for me to be interested in refitting to optimize for quarters whenever that happens. (Unlike the Shrike whose interior I've more or less finished a draft of.)

    Shrike:

    Most of what I've done has been with the Shrike. I've recolored the whole thing in a red/dark-grey scheme from the Ashes of Victory cover. Can't say it makes much sense in world, but I really enjoyed doing something with color.

    Power Systems
    Capacity: 1,472,921 (2 groups)
    Recharge:209,898.7 (4 groups)
    The capacity I'll be tweaking up or down as needed when other systems are completed. I'm trying to keep the other systems within that recharge rate however. It wouldn't be too hard to increase it by ~50% by just laying down 4 1D groups, but they will not be as effective as the current 4 3D groups.

    I've started on the weapon systems. I'm trying to have a slow firing but relatively powerful energy weapon in a spinal mount. Right now I've made a single output Cannon/Pulse/Piercing weapon. I might switch to either 4 or 5 outputs in an X pattern to try to make it less of a pin prick gun. However, powering that would be questionable. Cannon - 357, Pulse - 170, Piercing - 194

    Before I look at making the cannon more powerful I'm going to put in 4 missile/beam/? weapons. again forward facing. Right now I'm looking at Missile - 60, Beam - 30, Explosive - 10, 4 outputs. That'll take roughly 1,300,000 to fire every 30 seconds. Definitely won't play nice with firing at the same time as the cannon, but with some careful timing you shouldn't miss opportunities to shoot. Thrust and Shield energy demands may make life more difficult, but we'll see if changes need to be made once those systems are in. Glass hammer is the aim here.

    Question: Is Ion useful on missiles? In a lot of ways I'd like to stick it on the missiles to take advantage of their range, but really doubling down on their AOE via Explosive also appeals.

    Shrike Pictures:
    starmade-screenshot-0021.png

    CO's cabin. I've tried to hit as close as I could get to a cross between submarine and strategic bomber for the interior. The interior is still substantially more spacious than a modern submarine, but I can live with that.
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    starmade-screenshot-0020.png
    Crew bunks, sleeps 8.
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    starmade-screenshot-0019.png
    Crew mess, directly attached to bunks and crew lavatory.
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    starmade-screenshot-0017.png
    Bridge looking aft.
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    starmade-screenshot-0022.png
    Ladder access to dorsal USD. I wish slabs+doors didn't do ugly things, but I like the good things they do too much to stop using slabs.
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    starmade-screenshot-0023.png starmade-screenshot-0024.png
    Additional work spaces
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    starmade-screenshot-0027.png
    Forward exterior. Note the four PDTs have great forward coverage and terrible aft coverage. The large bulges are the four forward missile launchers.
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    starmade-screenshot-0029.png
    Aft exterior, this is a little life boat / shuttle hanger. After I finish everything else I'll do the "Shrike-Beta" revision/alternate-version that will replace this with some aft PDTs. At the same time, I'll make some exterior modifications to make sure that the forward PDTs cannot block access to the USD at the wrong rotation. If I ever decide to do nothing for a year but make a LAC-Carrier it'll be nicely set up for docking.
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    starmade-screenshot-0031.png
    A size comparison of the Star Knight CA and the Shrike LAC. They are something like 10 meters apart at the closest point. Not the best angle for actually judging size, but looked cooler at this angle.

    Plans (without any order):
    1. Build the cutter/life-boat to dock with the Shrike.
    2. Continue revising the Shrike and build the Shrike beta when the Shrike is done.
    3. Revise and build additional interior space drafts for the Star Knight
    4. Start laying down the hull for the HMS Troubadour (Chanson Class Destroyer.) 397 x 43 x 25 m. Here is a MaxxQ's design that I will try to do justice to.
     
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    Gasboy

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    Wow, fantastic work so far! And that first few images, the red lighting is mad! :)
     
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    Unfortunately got some bad news here, though it has a few bits of a silver lining. I've been told that while its totally fine to work on honorverse ships for myself and share screenshots, sharing the blueprints would get me a cease and desist. It was very kindly phrased, but still sucks. (A quick search online showed other folk have gotten cease and desists for doing similar things with honorverse materials, so I have no interest in pushing back on this.)

    Silver lining #1: The reason for this is that the lawyers are hyper-actively protecting the IP to keep it as valuable as possible for companies interested in making a TV-Series/Movie. So I mean, if that ends up happening, that would be way more awesome than anything I make, and I'm happy to forgive some over protectiveness if it ever so slightly increases the odds of getting to see the books brought to screen.

    Silver lining #2: Since I'm not going to be able to "play" with these ships or even distribute them for cool walking around, I'm re-prioritizing work on them to focus more on exterior work to try and come up with some cool desktops. And doing crazy things like working on a SD shell to use for screenshots, because hey, why not - no compulsion to do the internals now.

    Gryphon Class Super Dreadnought (under construction), with Fearless, a Shrike and Troubadour (a tad further along in construction) for scale:


    That all said, I do still intend to eventually finish up the Fearless and the Troubadour as well as make the Thunder of God BC from The Honor of the Queen. If circumstances change and the lawyers feel less energetic, I'll have a nice little "Second Battle of Yeltsin" pack all ready for download.

    Pictures, though again, it will while before the these are able to be shared, if I ever do get permission :( But live action! :D (I've got that last bit on repeat in my head.)
    HMS Troubadour (Chanson Class Destroyer) Under Construction
    starmade-screenshot-0032.png starmade-screenshot-0037.png starmade-screenshot-0042.png
    Testing the Shrike's cannon and missiles:
    starmade-screenshot-0039.png starmade-screenshot-0041.png

    With that, I'm going to switch from just posting honorverse things here, to also posting everything else, which I will be able to share when completed!

    Daedalus, Excelsior (this one is from a Minecraft file), and Miranda screens coming up soon.
     

    Gasboy

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    Aw, that's a bit of a bummer. :( I had a rather high opinion of David Weber. Less so, now.
     
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    For what its worth, I didn't communicate directly with him and the communication I had was both very friendly and the individual was very generous with the detail of their response, so I'm not holding anything against David Weber and look forward to the new book in November. I think Weber and the folk at Baen are good people. My personal sense is its kinda just one of those crappy situations where no one would object to this (or other fan made honorverse materials in principle), but everyone (myself included) would prefer an awesome movie or series of mini-series and Hollywood... well, Hollywood can just suck about some things and its better for them to be too careful than to be sorry later on.:(
     
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    Unfortunately got some bad news here, though it has a few bits of a silver lining. I've been told that while its totally fine to work on honorverse ships for myself and share screenshots, sharing the blueprints would get me a cease and desist. It was very kindly phrased, but still sucks. (A quick search online showed other folk have gotten cease and desists for doing similar things with honorverse materials, so I have no interest in pushing back on this.)

    That's absolutely disgusting.
    Copyright for a work (i.e. a document or file, etc) belongs to the person who created it, and the creator of the starmade blueprints is you. The owners of honorverse have no claim over any work you do (unless you're making a copy of existing work without transforming them, but I doubt they've made any starmade blueprints that you are copying).

    It's sadly not uncommon for lawyers to abuse people's lack of knowledge on copyright, and play on their fears of the cost of legal action, and just scare people into doing what they want.

    I was really interested in honorverse because of this thread (I loved the Master and Commander series, for example), and I'd downloaded the first free e-book.
    I've now deleted it - I want no part of it if they won't embrace fans.
    Even horrendous companies like Disney (responsible for US copyright lasting 70 years after the death of the author!) happily let Star Wars fans create and share as much stuff as they like (not that they have the right to deny permission anyway) without complaining.

    I rally am genuinely disgusted that they'd do this to you Shadow. In your shoes I'd ignore them, but I understand why you aren't willing to.
     
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    Gasboy

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    For what its worth, I didn't communicate directly with him and the communication I had was both very friendly and the individual was very generous with the detail of their response, so I'm not holding anything against David Weber and look forward to the new book in November. I think Weber and the folk at Baen are good people. My personal sense is its kinda just one of those crappy situations where no one would object to this (or other fan made honorverse materials in principle), but everyone (myself included) would prefer an awesome movie or series of mini-series and Hollywood... well, Hollywood can just suck about some things and its better for them to be too careful than to be sorry later on.:(
    Eeh, it's still shortsighted. As if seeing these ships in a game wouldn't generate interest in a movie or TV show or a game.
     
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    Eh, for whatever its worth, while I think shortsighted probably is accurate with regard to the homeworld mod and the MMO both of which could have raised the profile for the honorverse, these blueprints are too irrelevant for shortsighted to feel quite right... give too much credit for a few screen shots!

    SeventhDurandal - I did think about it, but honestly I wasn't sure how to make it work with the Starmade mechanics in a way that felt true to the material, that's why I decided to focus on the time frame immediately before missile pods. In Starmade, since there is no ammo, volume is firepower.

    Jojomo, I don't disagree with you about the legal stuff per say, but two things. One, while I may be placing the blocks the design is Weber/Baen's in a general sense, and in the specific sense I am copying someone else's rendition of that work. Two, I've spent some time looking around on the Baen honorverse forum and such, I like the folk, I respect them, I've been asked not to distribute it because I think they genuinely believe that it could conceivably make movie/tv more difficult via some second or third order effects, their request is good enough for me.

    Again, I really hope things change and I'm able to finish and share these, but until that time...

    Onto brighter pastures and happier topics!

    Star Trek and "Spacecraft 2000 to 2100 AD by Stewart Cowley" are the goals I think.

    The first ships I tried to make were three Star Trek ships. The Daedalus, Miranda and Excelsior classes. The first two were made with somewhat loose looks at references, the Excelsior was copied from a minecraft schematic then colored/wedged by me.

    Each of them has things I like:
    The Daedalus
    - is a manageable size
    - looks star trek, but looks different enough that it feels like a primitive vehicle from the dawn of Starfleet

    The Miranda
    - I made it too tall, but that allowed me to fit two decks in the saucer at the edge
    - It's perty.
    - I killed myself doing and redoing the hanger doors before just going with plex blocks, but I learned a lot about logic/rails which has helped since

    The Excelsior
    - It's lift system is what I intend to use in everything I make that can spare the volume. It's awesome. (It also kinda broke itself... but I'm ignoring that :rolleyes:)
    - It's saucer is way too thin, while it's nice to have accurate dimensions, the Excelsior killed my desire to make Star Trek ships for a while.

    Pictures! Starting with a fleet shot then the Daedalus, I'll post Miranda and Excelsior screens in the morning
    starmade-screenshot-0010.png
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    Yes those PD turrets are extremely... not form fitting lets say. They are also the first turrets I ever made while following along with tutorials. Looking at it now I think I'm going to recess one each on the top, bottom, and each side of the sphere. They will make far lesser eye sores then.
    starmade-screenshot-0001.png
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    Engines! Hanger! That's all.
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    This bridge is even bluer than I remember when I first made it - I think I had my lighting setting way down.
    starmade-screenshot-0004.png
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    Photon Torpedo room / nuclear missile room. Whatever tech they had back then. During my first accidental fight with an Isanth I went into build mode and watched it tear this room apart from more or less this POV, that moment really sold me on StarMade.
    starmade-screenshot-0002.png
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    My very first logic room. Also at the back there is a set of display modules that move up on a rail to cover the viewscreen on the bridge. I didn't quite believe when I first started that display modules were only for text and could some do something more. Live and learn.
    starmade-screenshot-0003.png
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    Bunks, good lighting for night vision. Way too bright again.
    starmade-screenshot-0006.png
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    10 forward! or rearward. And only if using binary. The way too bright light is a theme here. Also a lack of color from the blocks. Everything is very sterile looking.
    starmade-screenshot-0007.png
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    At least it looks better from outside.
    starmade-screenshot-0008.png
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    Shuttle bay with a TOS looking shuttle. Again, far too many white hull blocks.
    starmade-screenshot-0009.png

    Definitely a lot of things I'd want to change, but the ship is small enough that it actually doesn't feel particularly overwhelming, so I'm looking forward to starting on fixing it up a bit.
     
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    Jojomo, I don't disagree with you about the legal stuff per say, but two things. One, while I may be placing the blocks the design is Weber/Baen's in a general sense, and in the specific sense I am copying someone else's rendition of that work.
    No, the design is not.

    Any documents or files they've produced are theirs. (e.g. the books)

    If they've drawn a layout/blueprint of a ship, the document that is/contains the layout is theirs, you can't reproduce that document, but you absolutely can draw and share your own image that uses the same layout (or create a starmade file that does).

    The apperaance or layout of a ship can't be copyrighted. Only a particular document that contains it can be, and only that document is protected.

    If they thinks this helps them they're wrong. I'd never heard of honorverse until you posted your ship, and I'm exactly the sort of person who'd like it.

    If he wants to copy Game of Throne's success he should take note of all the minecraft recreations of GoT content that is created and shared without any legal threats.
     
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    Gasboy

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    No, the design is not.

    Any documents or files they've produced are theirs. (e.g. the books)

    If they've drawn a layout/blueprint of a ship, the document that is/contains the layout is theirs, you can't reproduce that document, but you absolutely can draw and share your own image that uses the same layout (or create a starmade file that does).

    The apperaance or layout of a ship can't be copyrighted. Only a particular document that contains it can be, and only that document is protected.
    This isn't the issue, however.

    The issue is that they (Weber/Baen) would likely take someone to court over this. And whether or not you prevail, can you afford to fight it?
     
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    No, the design is not.

    Any documents or files they've produced are theirs. (e.g. the books)

    If they've drawn a layout/blueprint of a ship, the document that is/contains the layout is theirs, you can't reproduce that document, but you absolutely can draw and share your own image that uses the same layout (or create a starmade file that does).

    The apperaance or layout of a ship can't be copyrighted. Only a particular document that contains it can be, and only that document is protected.
    Fair enough. I don't want to get too drawn into discussing what will not be, but thanks for the information. Even though I still don't intend to continue, knowledge is always cool and I appreciate you sharing it. Just as fyi for you (and anyone else who saw this thread and thought the honorverse seemed awesome, but were turned off by my post above) part of the reason the Baen folk have so much good karma with me and I'm willing to drop it at request regardless of legal realities, is that pretty much the entire series is available here online for free, legally - Baen and Weber fully know and approve, the files are from cds they distribute, again for free. That gets them serious good people points for me since my physical copies are in shambles after seriously mistreating the earliest books years ago. I'd really encourage you to give the books a go if military sci-fi with very thought out and consistent tech is of interest to you (and also ya know a main heroine who is bad-ass as can be.)

    Edit: Gasboy, as I imply above, even more than a question of affording it's a question of wanting. This sucks, but its how they want things right now and I respect em enough to go with it. Don't get me wrong, I'm going to be a pain and pester them in six months to see if anything has changed, but for now I'll just look forward to being about to have a grand roll out of everything at once.

    Edit2: fixed the link
     
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    Maybe one day, people create a ski fi universe with novels and artwork like Wikipedia. Where everyone can share his stuff without any law restrictions, and the best ones are picked out by the community and make it into the real novel und universe, and the other not so popular submissions are treated as possible storylines but not the real one.
     

    Gasboy

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    Maybe one day, people create a ski fi universe with novels and artwork like Wikipedia. Where everyone can share his stuff without any law restrictions, and the best ones are picked out by the community and make it into the real novel und universe, and the other not so popular submissions are treated as possible storylines but not the real one.
    We could do that. :) StarMade is potentially a giant, shared universe.
     
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    And that's actually the case with the future AI factions.
     
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    Started a bit of refitting the Daedalus to give it a considerably more militant interior look due to it being both the product of the Earth Romulan War and just far earlier than most of Star Trek. Also have begun switching the exterior from white hull to white standard which has reduced the eye pain more than I expected.

    Pictures:
    Already a lot less painful by just switching to standard! (Just compare to the PD turret on top of the sphere, ouch.) Also I just realized that I did no smoothing when I first made this... not looking forward to that.
    starmade-screenshot-0005.png
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    The revised bridge. It feels incredibly... empty at the moment. Probably going to take in the walls a block to make it feel just a tad more cramped. This is supposed to be an early ship, not the fanciest ship to grace the stars.
    starmade-screenshot-0003.png
    starmade-screenshot-0004.png

    The Excelsior's lift logic uses Svens combination lock from this logic tutorial. Which probably makes it silly for me to be as proud of it as I am, but whatever, it's awesome. Using that logic you can repeat numbers in the code you put into the lift to tell it where to go. (Simply put, if I remember my math terminology correctly... :confused:, it allows permutations rather than just combinations as if you use activation blocks directly in the lift.) This combined with choosing to use wireless blocks for the 5 digit keypad allowed me to simultaneously shrink my lift to a 4x4x4 cube while increasing the number of programmable stops to 120. I think. More than enough regardless. Happy days.

    Lift Logic Pictures:
    starmade-screenshot-0001.png
    You can see here the lift neatly squeezes into a 4x4x4 cube so it's shaft uses up far less internal volume than previous versions i've used that were as much as 5 or 6 blocks to the side. Switching to use the immaterial rail blocks was also a big help for that purpose as well as for making changing direction far less of a headache.
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    starmade-screenshot-0002.png
    The lift controls, when I put it together I used six blocks since that is what I had used with activation blocks, but that results in far more permutations than are necessary. In the future I'll probably use 4 or 5 (giving 24 or 120 possible destinations respectively) and if I use 4 I'll have one be a "wipe" button and one be a "send" button while using overhead lighting to indicate valid/invalid destination codes.
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    starmade-screenshot-0014.png
    Here is a look at the wireless destination board which is linked to the one on the lift as well as the deck codes (I wrote them all out so I don't screw them up when setting them up.) Those codes would also go into the display blocks on the lift, although it could be fun to have a room or two which are only accessible by lift by secret unlisted codes... In the background you can see the combination lock / shift register.
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    starmade-screenshot-0000.png
    starmade-screenshot-0015.png
    A few more shots of the logic that makes the destination codes work. It definitely could be more space efficient in terms of placement and possibly logic (though I really don't know about that.)
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    starmade-screenshot-0016.png
    This is a very space inefficient way of laying out logic, but I liked the idea of being able to walk around it, it also helped me visualize what I was doing, doing this for this first/second time. Unfortunately, the C+V linkages between buttons eventually stopped working for some of them requiring buttons to be delete, replaced and relinked to rails, which helped lead to me switching to different StarMade projects. (The other big factor was realizing that squeezing decent looking turrets into a Star Trek hull sucked and that there were far more fun ways to be using my StarMade free time.)

    Because I anticipate finding working on Star Trek ships again both awesome and awesomely frustrating due to their volume... limitations, I also plan on working on ships from Spacecraft 2000-2100, which is sort of a 1970s alternate history about what was then the future. Lots of gorgeous art from various sci-fi novels fitted into it's three factions. Here are some images of ships I'm considering working on, I'll probably with the Mule since that looks to be the smallest and least difficult. There is not the incredible depth of layouts/plans that I've used for Star Trek / Honorverse so this will be something very different and difficult for me. Much more artistic.

    CAM 117 Gunship
    TDA 107C Partisan
    MRT 114 Mule
    Voyager II
     
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    We could do that. :) StarMade is potentially a giant, shared universe.
    It's off topic, but I know one project that allready did such thing. Its called "Secure Protect Contain" and the story is around the history and files of a blacksite facility where dangerous objects and creatures are "secured protected contained" and also their behaviour is studies including all the incidents. Gave me some nightmares reading like 30 pages of it. :D SCP Foundation
     
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    Decided to start with the Mule. I started off trying to scale it to 100 meters along the z-axis. Changed my mind halfway, thinking that perhaps the scale would be better at 50m. Result is a somewhat screwy 75m scale :rolleyes:. I might go back in and try to fix that and one or two other assumptions that I have realized are almost certainly wrong, but I also like some of the results for practical purposes, so I'll finish it as is first.

    Everything from the red/white checkerboard and up in the source material (last post) will be a turret. For now I've got mining beam, combo push/pull/stop and missile+beam turrets in mind. So three variations in total.

    Not too much to show for now and it has a lot of problems, but using more variety of blocks has made it a lot of fun despite the frustrations. A very refreshing change from the mono-color schemes of Star Trek & Honorverse ships.
    starmade-screenshot-0023.png