SVG Excavator

[Drybreeze]

Replacing my first salvager, is my upgraded salvager, SVG Excavator.
I've built a couple of ships now, but this is the first medium-scale mining vessel so that I can start really mining asteroids and derelicts at a rate that allows me to do some much nicer, larger builds.

Stats:
Mass: 820.3 tons
Length: 42m
Height: 16m
Width: 27m
Thrust: 237.9 (-98)
Shields: 28000 (+319/sec)

Unlike any of my other vessels, I included "anatomically correct" navigation lights on this one. I wanted to make it like Caterpillar heavy equipment yellow and black, but I didn't have enough yellow hull or materials for it, so that'll be the next salvager design, or perhaps an upgrade on this one later once I've managed to collect enough of the appropriate materials.

You can see my much smaller original salvager to the right in the above image... it has turrets but no shields, while SVG Excavator has much greater defense (against pirate fighters, at least).

Docked in shipyard, with original salvager SVG Speeder to the right, and my first ever corvette, CRV Alannis to the left.

You can find more detailed images of my various builds (including interior shots and internal physical systems) and a story breakdown in my fictional blog story Starmade Dry Empire.

I was considering releasing the blue print, because this thing is slow and cumbersome but it melts a station or asteroid in short order.

Your thoughts?

 

[Deleted member 433088]

Nice! How long are the salvage modules on this build? The largest mining ship I've made so far only has a 3x33 array.

You really nailed the heavy-duty look in my opinion, and it's nice that there's style consistency in your different miner ships. It'll probably look very nice in black and yellow, but take care because if you use too much black or in the wrong places, the finer shapes might get harder to see.
The navigation lights and lit engines are a nice touch, too. Overall, it gives me a Homeworld vibe, for some reason.

 

[Drybreeze]

Thanks Mokunen... now that you mention it, it does have a bit of a Homeworld feel to it, although I haven't played it or seen any artwork for it in a few years now. My upcoming frigate even more so.

The salvage vessel is divided into two major operational halves as you can see, each half has 36 columns of salvage cannons (interspersed with columns of power, shield capacitors, or shield rechargers), and apart from a few breaks to fit the engines in, each column is 38 meters long.

Each operational half (pod) has 1306 salvage cannons, for a total of 2612. I have two salvage computers hooked up to half the columns in each operational pod, so that I can have a continuous stream of salvage by flicking between the two computers manually every 4 seconds or so. I could have all of them hooked up to one computer and sit out the recharge but it annoys me waiting for the computer to clock back on so I set it up this way instead.

Yes, the black would only be trim on a mostly yellow hull, if I was going to do it. Probably break it up with grey and grills, too. I think I'll make it another ship sometime and leave this one as is.

 

[Deleted member 433088]

Ah, I was thinking it would be yellow stripes on black and completely forgot the Caterpillar equipment is the other way around. Yeah, that's gonna look nice, though it might be hard to miss in an MP server hahaha.

Wow, that's some power on those pods. I also want to build me an asteroid/station/planet eater, but before that I need to set up some sort of automated factory because there's a lot of clicking in making all those ship pieces already.

About the cooldown thing, you might already know this but just in case, if you add Cannon as a secondary to your Salvage computer it can make the firing time equal to the reload time so there's zero downtime. That would takedouble the space and power though, and I bet seeing that beast fire its pods in succession must be badass, so it's not really that good of an idea, I just thought I'd let you know

 

[Drybreeze]

I didn't know that, no. Thanks!

Here's two pics of it eating a dead pirate station, taken roughly 4 minutes apart.

More or less same angle, same range, just... melted. Seems to take in about 10,000 scrap units per minute (167 blocks per second) best I can calculate without measuring it properly.

 

[Panpiper]

It looks to me like you are using a single layered checkerboard pattern for your array. This leaves behind quite the mess of random odd blocks. Personally I prefer a solid mass of salvage beams. This can be easily achieved by having a second set of beams behind the first in the opposing checkerboard pattern, so as to fire through the first.

To avoid downtime, simply slave cannon to the salvage beam, easiest by filling in the otherwise empty space between the checkerboard patterns. This does 'not' reduce the salvaging capacity of an equivalent number of solo salvage beams. It does eliminate the need to switch between beams.

However I do use a twin beam structure myself, as I use pulse for slaves, not cannon. This results in an insanely powerful salvage array (albeit very power hungry) that fires for 15 seconds and then has a 15 second cooldown, hence the utility of a twin array. I can with with this array setup (dual 13x13, 8 blocks long per beam), typically completely digest an asteroid leaving not a single block, in thirty seconds. By the way, I have the beams of one array fire 'through' the other array, so my salvage beam origin never changes.

 

[Drybreeze]

It looks to me like you are using a single layered checkerboard pattern for your array. This leaves behind quite the mess of random odd blocks. Personally I prefer a solid mass of salvage beams. This can be easily achieved by having a second set of beams behind the first in the opposing checkerboard pattern, so as to fire through the first.

To avoid downtime, simply slave cannon to the salvage beam, easiest by filling in the otherwise empty space between the checkerboard patterns. This does 'not' reduce the salvaging capacity of an equivalent number of solo salvage beams. It does eliminate the need to switch between beams.

However I do use a twin beam structure myself, as I use pulse for slaves, not cannon. This results in an insanely powerful salvage array (albeit very power hungry) that fires for 15 seconds and then has a 15 second cooldown, hence the utility of a twin array. I can with with this array setup (dual 13x13, 8 blocks long per beam), typically completely digest an asteroid leaving not a single block, in thirty seconds. By the way, I have the beams of one array fire 'through' the other array, so my salvage beam origin never changes.

Thanks Panpiper that's very useful info. But my current salvagers are 38 deep. Even at 8 deep how do you prevent the beam being interrupted by the forward positioned alternate set unless you're firing directly forward? Know what i mean? To be separate beams and output they must not be adjacent to another block so to fill in the alternate checkers i would need to have the front block of the alternate checker set to be one block back from the back block of the first set.

Making the whole array 76m deep but that's no big deal. The bit i don't get is that means the back array is firing down a 38m tunnel formed by the front set... so unless you're firing exactly forward won't the beam be interrupted by hitting the sides of that tunnel. .. if you aim the beam a little left of forward, for example...

The slaving beam to them sounds promising, I'll do that immediately.

My biggest issue right now is getting elements that I can't find in current asteroids. .. stuff like Sertise... i hate going near planets cuz it crashes my game too memory hungry.

 

[Deleted member 433088]

Thanks Panpiper that's very useful info. But my current salvagers are 38 deep. Even at 8 deep how do you prevent the beam being interrupted by the forward positioned alternate set unless you're firing directly forward? Know what i mean? To be separate beams and output they must not be adjacent to another block so to fill in the alternate checkers i would need to have the front block of the alternate checker set to be one block back from the back block of the first set.

Making the whole array 76m deep but that's no big deal. The bit i don't get is that means the back array is firing down a 38m tunnel formed by the front set... so unless you're firing exactly forward won't the beam be interrupted by hitting the sides of that tunnel. .. if you aim the beam a little left of forward, for example...

The slaving beam to them sounds promising, I'll do that immediately.

My biggest issue right now is getting elements that I can't find in current asteroids. .. stuff like Sertise... i hate going near planets cuz it crashes my game too memory hungry.

In my experience, shots from an entity go right through said entity; you could plug the ends of your cannons with blocks and they would fire like there was nothing there. This is the same reason you can't build a planet mining rig ON the planet. You should be perfectly fine building what has been suggested.

As for Sertise, if I'm not mistaken that one is found in Larimar asteroids, which are the hardest to find. Asteroid types are bound to a certain distance from the star, and Larimar only appear very close to the actual corners of a system... good luck finding a sector with asteroid orbits that are large enough and tilted just right. Happy hunting :/

 

[Drybreeze]

In my experience, shots from an entity go right through said entity; you could plug the ends of your cannons with blocks and they would fire like there was nothing there. This is the same reason you can't build a planet mining rig ON the planet. You should be perfectly fine building what has been suggested.

As for Sertise, if I'm not mistaken that one is found in Larimar asteroids, which are the hardest to find. Asteroid types are bound to a certain distance from the star, and Larimar only appear very close to the actual corners of a system... good luck finding a sector with asteroid orbits that are large enough and tilted just right. Happy hunting :/

That's useful info thanks. Now to figure out where a start is and what makes a corner of a system a corner. Haha so new. I'll get there. Thanks again!

 

[Drybreeze]

Found one in the neighboring system!

One lonely asteroid with nothing around it for sectors. Had 15k larimar and like 150 each of rammet and sertise. Less than 1%. Looks like building shield capacitors will be slow going. Better off hunting and salvaging pirates...

 

[Deleted member 433088]

Found one in the neighboring system!

One lonely asteroid with nothing around it for sectors. Had 15k larimar and like 150 each of rammet and sertise. Less than 1%. Looks like building shield capacitors will be slow going. Better off hunting and salvaging pirates...

Looking at those numbers, I guess you didn't claim the system before you mined the asteroid. When mining in systems other than your own, you always want to claim them if you can for that massive mining bonus, it'll save you tons of work.

 

[Drybreeze]

Cool I didn't know that! Thanks I will try it.

I'll also note whether the asteroid re-spawns as a whole or grows slowly over time or neither.
The other closer cinnibar, lukrah, chabaz and varis asteroids all seem to re-spawn, but I haven't yet confirmed for sure whether they grow slowly or just instantly respawn every time I log in. So many things to teach myself about, one of the biggest reasons why I'm writing a blog site is to be able to publis all this stuff in an organised way, so other new players can find it a bit more easily than is possible at the moment.