April 2015 Build Challenge

[Raiben]

Same.. Guess I'm catching up over the next 3 days :P

 

[Tydeth]

Hmm, I forgot to post the Day 9 VIP Jump Shuttle... I shall rectify this oversight.

Spoiler: Rectified

It comes with 2 85-block jump drive systems, which unfortunately after completion of the whole ship turned out to not be 100% ratio. However, it's still plenty fast at charging, and if you encounter danger you can just fire the second and leave the danger in the exotic particle dust. It also has a 83-block Overdrive, giving it a 43.1% boost to top sublight speed.

As it was a VIP jumpship, I decided to go for an ambassador level of import to the VIP, painting the ship in white/yellow/purple for diplomatic/government colors. Blast Doors on the docking ports and Crystal armor for the crew provide protection for areas that would otherwise be structural weaknesses on the vessel.

That Alcubierre Warp Ring took up way too much of the mass budget in hindsight, but given the only real purpose of this ship is to travel in style, it is in my opinion worth every block.

I'll probably have its download be a zip with 2 sment files: one with the Day 1 & 7 turrets, and one without them.

Spoiler: Bonus

Yep, Day 8 Drone's big brother, the Day 10 Light Fighter. This thing is beefed up in every aspect over its smaller brethren, and also includes an AI module so you can use it as a drone. The only thing it lacks that the little one has is the logic-clocked push pulse system, but that's because this one is made for manned travel where the other was intended for AI.

The quad guns are 3:2:2 Rapid-fire Punch-through cannons; while they don't fire as quickly as the 1:1 ratio guns on the drone, they do significantly more damage per shot, and there are twice as many of them. With these guns sporting an effect, they're even deadlier once the target's shields collapse. Unlike the drone's cannons where the slave blocks are in the fuselage, the fighter's weapon modules for this system are entirely self-contained on the wing edge pods.

The missile is of the same type as the Mk 2 Drone's: Lock-on. The fighter's missile can deliver 3.85k damage in a hit, and can aim at target 18km away (sector size = 10k) before screaming towards it at 159.1 m/s (top speed = 75). It does however suck most of the power tank in that shot, so it's best to take out PD before launching.

You enter the craft in the manner that real life military fighters use: the glass canopy opens up and you jump in the seat. From there, you have to aim at the corner between the faction module and the AI floor: This was done to protect the core from directly overhead shots; glass and glass doors lack armor.

In addition to beefier versions of the drone's armament and shielding, the fighter sports a pair of utility modules. First is the 40.4% efficiency overdrive, allowing this thing to exceed the normal speed limit nicely. The other is a Radar Jammer, and both can be run permanently while maneuvering; you just need to watch your cannon fire while doing so as thrust + OD + RJ + continuous gunfire will drain power.

Speaking of thrust, just like the drone, the fighter is compatible with Large Thruster Plumes mod, and will display them when flying at speed.

 

[MossyStone48]

That's impressive. The VIP shuttle is flashy but not gaudy. The fighter is simple, functional and looks the role. nicely done.

 

[Dannage]

Doh, I missed this thread.... Must keep my eyes on the forums... Hope there'll be some more of this in the future, and I spot it on day 1.

 

[Tydeth]

Sat 11th: Advanced Fighter (Not to exceed 400 mass and must have passive effects and jump plus weapons and shielding. Turrets are fine)
- Your common strike craft. The quintessential hallmark of your fleet. Most of your attacking needs bundled into one package. Scale it down or add to it as you like but the main thing I'd like to see here is something multirole. One swiss army fighter. Have fun making other variants for specific jobs. This first one just needs to be able to survive and even flourish in nearly any situation. Not an easy build for most.

This link will probably describe this challenge's created ship more than anything I can actually say, lol.

For this one, I use a reference image, because of the aforementioned.

Spoiler: Advanced Multi-Role Fighter

Weapons:

• 2x Cannon/Cannon/Punchthrough/Green
• 6x Missile/Missile
• 1x Missile/Beam/Red
• 2x Missile/Pulse/Explosion/Blue

Defenses:

• Standard Armor (Advanced Armor around the Core)
• Shields (See spoilered image)
• Overdrive Passive
• Ion Passive
• Radar Jammer

Other:

• Jump Drive to the Danger Zone
• Scanner

Notably, it can maintain jammer, ion, and overdrive simultaneously, even while charging the scanner. Thrusting and weapons fire will require some discipline to use to avoid depleting the power with all three or four active, but as long as you don't go gung ho "FIRE EVERYTHING" you should be fine.


I attempted to see if it would qualify as Pirate Buster, by attacking a Delta Pirate Station I found. It did alright wiping out the turrets and the fleets that spawned while doing so, but then I had to whittle down those shields while trying to manage my power and not die to more fleets that I couldn't switch focus to because the station would regenerate shields. Even then I did fairly ok until a missile pirate (specifically, the Day 8 Raptor Drone I made) shoved a 4.5k missile up my thrusters.

 

[Tydeth]

Sorry for the double post.

I refit the Advanced Fighter, splitting and moving the missile/beam/red from the nose to wing-mounted pods between the blue bombs and the heat-seeker clusters. In addition to the significant improvement to power and smaller upgrade to shields, it gained the following:

• New missile/beam does a bit more damage, and has the benefits of being harder to negate via PDS (2 missiles instead of 1) and improved block destruction from hitting two places on the target.
• Ion passive upgraded to 30.7% shield buff.
• Overdrive slightly upgraded to counter the additional pod mass; now provides 53.7% effect.
• Visually more impressive with the extra weapon pod.

With the upgrades, the refit version was significantly more capable of handling the "whittle down shields and break faction block" part of the Pirate Buster challenge qualification, unleashing serious block destruction upon the pirate base until the fleets overwhelmed my fighter with firepower everywhere, and another Day 8 Drone missile-killed me despite the jammer.

The refit version will be the one uploaded to CC.

 

[MossyStone48]

If someone reports the double post I'll manually merge them. The refit is aggressive enough to merit the new post.