Bionics – Fish inspired spacecrafts

[der_scheme]

So I wanted to build a stealth ship that could still prove a formidable enemy, would have a nice and stealthy hull, an explainable interior, and a small hangar bay where I could transport my smaller crafts.







And I pondered which hull designs would look stealthy and also complement to efficient reactor designs. I decided to build a "Stingray-class Corvette", just to find out that there's a car called that way. Anyway, I decided that didn't matter. So I dived into current Earth stealth technologies and crafts, made concept arts, and started building in good spirits. Still being nowhere near a finished hull and already having about 3500 blocks, I realized that my plan had failed. Energy being capped at 1 million eps and thus limiting ship size to 6666 blocks (ignoring thrusters), I saw no way how this thing (that I didn't intend to get this big) would be able to cloak when finished.

The ship in its current state:



So I decided to put this project on hold. Maybe there will be made changes to cloaking mechanics or the energy cap, or maybe I'll just build it smaller (don't prefer that one :P).

Okay, I thought, just build the next craft: The stealth fighter that I wanted to dock in the Stingray's hangar. I started out, built the hull, put some stuff inside, and just when I wanted to install the cloaking device, I did some final calculations and startled: Somewhere I forgot to multiply with 10. My ship only produced only about a 10th of the energy required. Darn.

Unwilling to accept my fate, I took everything out and transformed it into a flying reactor. Energy production still was far from enough, getting by 10000 was more than hard. Finally embracing my fate, I decided that this thing wouldn't need to cloak.

The finished craft (devil fish inspired):

Devil-class Starfighter

• Mass: 33.4
• Dimensions: 11x5x21
• Power: 4573eps
• Thrust: 44.7
• Shielding: 6141 (512eps)
• Armament: 4 AMCs with an approximated DPS of 1000

It has two empty spaces left where one can install stuff like a faction module.



Although probably not being able to build the small stealth carrier I had planned, I'll report back, this time with a real stealth ship!

 

[NeonSturm]

Or use imgur.com? - No ads there afaik



I wait until final version before I add my rating.

 

[MichaelSeph]

Gonna fish some fishezzz !

 

[der_scheme]

Because they do not provide thumbnailed hotlinks for copypasting. I didn\'t realize they had annoying ads, but since NoScript lists layer-ads.org as blocked, I guess they use layer ads. Sounds like a good enough argument to manually edit the links in the future.

 

[der_scheme]

Smalltooth-class Raider

Although it is often used by pirates, there have only been a handful of reported sightings throughout the galaxy. Most people who encountered this cutting-edge prototype probably never were able to tell anyone about it, others may simply have confused it with its larger sibling, the Sawfish-class Corvette.

Its few owners value it for its intimidating exterior, strong weaponry and a radar jammer that usually proves a great strategic asset. The experimental Antimatter Focusing Grid can fire an almost constant beam of Antimatter, compensating for the ship\'s lack of missiles. However, due to the intense interferences, the Smalltooth can\'t maintain its jam while firing.

• Mass: 206.6
• Dimensions: 60x12x21
• Power: 105005.2 e/s
• Thrust: 312.7
• Shielding: 35994 (1930 sp/s)
• Armament: 1 AFG (88 lenses) with more than 6300 DPS

Exterior:



Interior (Cockpit, Corridor with storage unit and bed, Engineering):






The stingray was too large, this one too small. Since every power generator has to be at least 11 blocks in length (otherwise it can\'t maintain its own power demands with active cloak and jam), there simply wasn\'t enough space for the amount of efficient energy pipelining required. My estimations show that I would have to scale this thing up to about 80 meters in length (yielding the beforementioned Sawfish-class Corvette).