Adventures in Spaceship (Mis)Engineering

[Johnathan Dahmnation]

Hello and welcome to a brief synopsis of my ill-fated attempts at competent spaceship creation!

For starters I'll post the only completed thing since my return that I'm willing to put my name to:

Spoiler: Un-named Heavy Fighter

Stats:
Dimensions: L:26 H:7 W:21
Mass 112.5/Thrust 190.7
Power: 50000 (11480/sec)
Shield: 10195(429/sec)

Armaments:
4x Over-driven Rapid-firing Cannons
2x Heat seeking Cluster Missiles (or long range Lock on variant)
1x Heavy Pulse Missile Launcher

Other Systems:
100% Overdrive speed boost

Design notes:
Lessons learned:

• Always know the size of your docking area before you start building
• Always know the size of your docking bay exit in the case you decide to cheat and build in the dock
• Never actually build from a docked core if you have an issue with said core being exposed on the bottom of the ship when done

Next is a bit of a scale down to a light fighter because I failed miserably at ensuring any semblance of similarity in dock sizes between ships

Spoiler: Light Fighter

Stats:
Dimensions: L:23 H:5 W:17
Mass 64.8/Thrust 123.2
Power: 50000 (4974.4/sec)
Shield: 1088(88/sec)

Armaments:
2x Rapid-firing Cannons
2x Long Range Lock on Missile Launchers

Other Systems:
100% Overdrive speed boost

Design notes:
Lessons learned:

• Yes, the distance from the core to the edge of the ship DOES matter when trying to fit the thing into a dock...

And Finally something slightly more ambitious though rather plain looking:

Spoiler: Missile Battleship Carnival

Stats:
Dimensions: L:469 H:68 W:91
Mass 69,723.3/Thrust 70,088.9
Power: 83,036,842.2(2,863,652.8/sec)
Shield: 6,453,922(123,557/sec)

Armaments:
4x Groups of 32x Long range Lock-on Missile Launchers
12x Heat Seeking Cluster Missile Launchers
1x Forward Repeating Laser


Other Systems:
100% Overdrive speed boost
100% Ion Shield Hardning
Docking Bay with room for 4 small craft and 6 micro craft

Design notes:
Lessons learned:

• Always confirm the direction your core is pointing before you begin building.
• Plan the docking area first, then build it.
• I'm not sure why the lip on the side docking bay seemed like a good idea... it wasn't.
• Allot thrust for the mass of the turrets next time.

And another Battleship for good measure:

Spoiler: Battleship Solution

Stats:
Dimensions: L:318 H:77 W:95
Mass 65,089.8/Thrust 65,259.9
Power: 149,452,579.5(2,781,555.3/sec)
Shield: 6,212,711(123,634/sec)

Armaments:
8x Long Range Lock-on Missile Launchers
12x Heavy Pulse Missile Launchers
6x Rapid Fire Cannons
1x Forward Repeating Laser


Other Systems:
100% Overdrive speed boost
100% Ion Shield Hardning
2x Docking Bay with room for 1 small craft each

Design notes:
Lessons learned:
Never use heat seeking missile turrets. Ever.

More to come as they are finished!

 

[ltmauve]

That's not a bad ship. Could use a few of the hsped blocks here and there to smooth it up a bit, but a very simple, well-done build nevertheless. Might I suggest something like "Blackbird" or "Raven" as a name?

P.S. Nice job with the exposed engine blocks at the back. Not many people can pull that off.

 

[Johnathan Dahmnation]

Thanks for the feedback. The blockyness was somewhat intentional, emulating the angles inspired by the F-117 Nighthawk as well as some other sci-fi/concept designs, but ultimately wanting the overall look to be "beefier."

 

[Captain Tankman]

I like the form of your heavy fighter! But IMO it could use some other colours or details

 

[Fuyuko]

Like Captain Tankman , maybe need an secondary color (grey ?) .

 

[NuclearFun]

Very nice!
The heavy fighter looks somewhat like a stealth fighter

 

[Johnathan Dahmnation]

I like the form of your heavy fighter! But IMO it could use some other colours or details

Like Captain Tankman , maybe need an secondary color (grey ?) .

Yeah, it could potentially use some color, though I'm not entirely certain of which color and where. Been thinking about it and may delay on a decision till I can create a logo and color scheme for my decals, which is something I've been wanting to do for a while.

Very nice!
The heavy fighter looks somewhat like a stealth fighter

Thank you. That was the direction of inspiration in large part.

Further critiques of any of the designs are of course welcome.

 

[Captain Tankman]

Just grab some coloured hulls and try it. You don't need to have a specific logo or colour scheme.

Or upload your fighter and start a colouring contest and see what the community comes up with

 

[RoosterTheRed]

Very nice. The shaping of the ships is fantastic, and I love what you do with crystals. The monochromatic hulls are a bit dull, but adding a secondary color (I'm a fan of red) would definitely help. Props.

 

[Johnathan Dahmnation]

Well, now that I have discovered the magic of tetras I was going to go back and smooth, maybe even color some things (lol not really, it's staying black because lazy), but feel rather demotivated as my first attempt at a capital was broken by whatever is up with missile power consumption alongside my other in progress design, also killing my plans for a missile frigate.

Going to go cry in a corner in the fetal position for a bit while I mourn for a universe devoid of massive missile craters.

 

[Johnathan Dahmnation]

Well, I think I figured out the nature of the issue I was having and it may have to do with bugged effects, which means with some caution I can continue putting missiles on all the things while awaiting confirmation. So in the meantime, new ship is up.

 

[epicfacethe3rd]

this battleship looks really nice. it could use some anti-turret defences I'm working on though, and bigger turrets.
ATDS: (anti turret defense system)
_
|_|white light
|_| laser/missile of choice
|_| control for weapon
|_| core module
|_| power module
|_| faction module
|_| AI module
|_| thruster


you can, of course move stuff around in it, but it works like this:
1. turn on AI, set to "ship"
2. activate faction module
3. chain tons of docking modules together
4. put module in each docking unit
5. cleverly hide modules as external lights
6. to activate ATDS, just undock modules.

the lights are critical when in large numbers, as the act like flares, blocking the enemy's view, keeping them from blasting you with their human controlled weapons.

 

[Captain Tankman]

Awesome ship! It does indeed look like a heavy and dangerous battleship!
Nice work, keep it up! :D

Btw. the flare idea is great ;D

 

[Johnathan Dahmnation]

Well, I'm a bit sad and demotivated by my ships still being broked by bugs I can reproduce but others seemingly can't. As such working on my first Dreadnaught (WIP partially visible behind the cube) has come to a screeching halt since the thing has been unusable for 2 updates (alongside everything else I've made). Instead I've devoted my admittedly very limited attention to the more fun side of the bug, making broken comedy cannon configs.

This thing does around 60k DPS while only containing 10 cannon blocks. Yay bugs!

This one does over 600,000DPS for all of about 3 seconds, but it's a fun 3 seconds, uses 120 cannon blocks though.

 

[Johnathan Dahmnation]

And now for a progress update that no one asked for! Just wanted thoughts on the exterior for now. The from portion being seen is just about all that is done. I think it looks a bit less like a giant 3.5mm audio jack now, but I could be wrong.

Thinking of changing the green glowy to blue as it feels out of place and clashy with red and blue having much more prominence and repetition. Your thought?

 

[Aizria]

Honestly, the green looks neat. But, I can see what you're saying. If you're bent on changing it, I personally would change it to red, or maybe orange...probably red. The reason being that some uniformity is good, but I think that, if the green were changed to blue, it might be a little too uniform. But that's my opinion. ^.=.^ Either way, the ship looks rather nice so far. :D

 

[Captain Tankman]

I agree with changing the green glow to blue. It fits more into the overall look of the ship I guess.

The ship itself looks really cool so far! :D

 

[Johnathan Dahmnation]

Rear view of the same ship with most of the structural work done. Next up is turrets. Been working on designs which I hope will work out. Rear of the (semi)completed turret work is visible in the top. That and a pair of new smaller ships to fill out some new docking bay sizes.

Also, went with red for the front section.

More shots as adding turrets is complete. Since once again I failed to make the turret point large enough without making the shapes really awkward I decided to compensate with number.

The more I think about it, the more I realize my lag issues are likely self induced.

The only thing left to work out are the internals. Trying to decide if there is any point in minimizing mass of it I should just fill the thing out. Also may need a bit of a weapons rework.

 

[Johnathan Dahmnation]

Slight progress:

Added a "bridge" for a higher camera viewpoint because I'm indecisive about how I want to see as I fly:

Spoiler: Some images

It peers above the top main turret:

The view from there:

I'll get around to setting up the display block eventually, for real, seriously... soon. Honestly it would already be done if I could do it from build mode like accessing storage or plex doors (or so I tell myself).

Speaking of the turrets, how do you think the main ones turned out?

Spoiler: More images

Lastly I have a question, what kind of slave do you think works best for an Ion-Beam weapon? Pulse for the alpha? Cannon to reduce power consumption/shot? Something else?

As always, comments, criticisms, love, hatred and all things in between are always welcome and appreciated.

 

[Captain Tankman]

I would recommend beam+beam to compensate the small range or beam+cannon for more eye candy (beam shoots continuously)