Criss' Thread

    Criss

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    Greetings citizens! I haven't got much to show you today. We've been a bit busy with the holidays coming up, and so I've been away for more of the stream than I'd like. Little progress has been made on the warp gate. I decided to work on some new structures towards the entry point. These structures guide the ship into a proper position inside the ring.

    They look nice and techy, but are a bit too tacked on. I will see what I can do to improve their integration with the rest of the structure. The ends of them also have yet to be defined so that it does not simply stop abruptly.



    Now I am sure everyone remembers the Outcast exploration ship, the Pioneer. This is the first ship we did for the Outcsats. A few major elements on this design has been replicated on every Outcast vessel since. The color scheme, window and light color, engine design, and cockpit design philosophy has been applied to the other builds as best we can. However, the rest of the build falls short.

    Compared to the rest of the Outcast lineup, it's an oddball out. It irks me quite a bit that an important exploration vessel for a somewhat nomadic people doesn't really reflect their build style at all.

    So I decided to redesign it. Now, bare in mind that this is the first iteration. The ship has gone from nimble looking and fast, to something closer to what we can expect from the Outcasts. A boxy structure, specific angles in the hull, and more design elements that mirror other builds.



    Currently there are a few problems. Perhaps some people here will have some input. In an effort to remain as faithful to the original as possible, I have designed the ship to retain some specific features. The cockpit and jump drive are still on top of the ship. There is a long sensor housing that protrudes in front. The ship can still accommodate a Pioneer Pod underneath. The back end is quite bulky and there are symmetrical protrusions on either side.

    Right now we need to build up the front end so it isn't so thin. That's fine. We can either raise the sensor housing up and move the cockpit to one of the side structures, or we can lower the attachment point for the Pod, which will alter the design of the reactor casing on the bottom of the vessel.

    Here are two more shots showing some variation on the build and possible directions we can take it.





    Please ignore copied and pasted elements on the second image.

    Personally, I am a fan of the direction the second image is heading. This is closer to the original miniature model I created, which can be seen here. The idea was that one side would house the cockpit, hence the core currently floating off the port side of the vessel, and the other side would hold a large sensor array.

    So let me know what you think. In posting this I came up with an idea already so we will see where this heads during this weeks streams. Stay tuned and thanks for reading!
     

    kiddan

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    For the ship guidance arrays, maybe try making the higher/lower rows have only lights that shine towards the X (that's forw/back, yea?) center of the gate, adding some row variation. You could also experiment with making some columns have larger, somewhat protruding, pin-like versions of the brown armour between the lights, adding column variation. =)
     
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    Valiant70

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    Greetings citizens! I haven't got much to show you today. We've been a bit busy with the holidays coming up, and so I've been away for more of the stream than I'd like. Little progress has been made on the warp gate. I decided to work on some new structures towards the entry point. These structures guide the ship into a proper position inside the ring.

    They look nice and techy, but are a bit too tacked on. I will see what I can do to improve their integration with the rest of the structure. The ends of them also have yet to be defined so that it does not simply stop abruptly.



    Now I am sure everyone remembers the Outcast exploration ship, the Pioneer. This is the first ship we did for the Outcsats. A few major elements on this design has been replicated on every Outcast vessel since. The color scheme, window and light color, engine design, and cockpit design philosophy has been applied to the other builds as best we can. However, the rest of the build falls short.

    Compared to the rest of the Outcast lineup, it's an oddball out. It irks me quite a bit that an important exploration vessel for a somewhat nomadic people doesn't really reflect their build style at all.

    So I decided to redesign it. Now, bare in mind that this is the first iteration. The ship has gone from nimble looking and fast, to something closer to what we can expect from the Outcasts. A boxy structure, specific angles in the hull, and more design elements that mirror other builds.



    Currently there are a few problems. Perhaps some people here will have some input. In an effort to remain as faithful to the original as possible, I have designed the ship to retain some specific features. The cockpit and jump drive are still on top of the ship. There is a long sensor housing that protrudes in front. The ship can still accommodate a Pioneer Pod underneath. The back end is quite bulky and there are symmetrical protrusions on either side.

    Right now we need to build up the front end so it isn't so thin. That's fine. We can either raise the sensor housing up and move the cockpit to one of the side structures, or we can lower the attachment point for the Pod, which will alter the design of the reactor casing on the bottom of the vessel.

    Here are two more shots showing some variation on the build and possible directions we can take it.





    Please ignore copied and pasted elements on the second image.

    Personally, I am a fan of the direction the second image is heading. This is closer to the original miniature model I created, which can be seen here. The idea was that one side would house the cockpit, hence the core currently floating off the port side of the vessel, and the other side would hold a large sensor array.

    So let me know what you think. In posting this I came up with an idea already so we will see where this heads during this weeks streams. Stay tuned and thanks for reading!
    The second one looks better.
     
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    Looks like a bigger version of the cargo ship alright. Top seems to be missing some details but the engines look complete.
     
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    Since you aren't a schiney anymore you can enter it for sabers community contracts once he starts them. :davetongue:
     
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    Tbh I have no idea. Saber seems to do a lot with KSP these days and goes to space themed trips with attached streamers. The main issue at the moment is that we are still in the process to work on the balance with the quickfire config, so running a contest doesn't make much sense if the ships end up needing a refit again. But I think the current quickfire might be solid enough to not need a lot of refitting even if we change some values. Also it's still only in dev build so no idea if it's good to run a contest in the dev build.... Man I really want this stuff to start.
     

    Criss

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    Tbh I have no idea. Saber seems to do a lot with KSP these days and goes to space themed trips with attached streamers. The main issue at the moment is that we are still in the process to work on the balance with the quickfire config, so running a contest doesn't make much sense if the ships end up needing a refit again. But I think the current quickfire might be solid enough to not need a lot of refitting even if we change some values. Also it's still only in dev build so no idea if it's good to run a contest in the dev build.... Man I really want this stuff to start.
    I take it the quickfire config is something schema started? I've been out of the loop for a while.
     
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    DukeofRealms

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    im out of the loop too,..so this being community/run.. does this mean the changes wont go into the base game?
    Or is Schema following all this and is eventually gonna put those changes in the base game?
    Schine:

    We'll be adding the Quickfire config changes in a dev build in the next week or so. Please make sure to try these changes out and give your feedback. This will help us (and the Quickfire team) to decide what changes we should or shouldn't adopt into the default configs. The purpose of the dev build and news post is to draw attention to the QF project to help us receive feedback. We will not officially adopt any changes into release until we feel a good solution for our community has been reached.
    They are in a dev build right now. If all goes well, it will be adopted into the main release branch.
     
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    They are in a dev build right now. If all goes well, it will be adopted into the main release branch.
    I think you guys ought to put it out in release soon, because thats when itll be adopted on servers and most beneficial mass testing will be made.
     
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    Nauvran

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    I think you guys ought to put it out in release soon, because thats when itll be adopted on servers and most beneficial mass testing will be made.
    cant put something unfinished on the release build, oh wiat Schine always does that anyway
    carry on then
     

    Reilly Reese

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    im out of the loop too,..so this being community/run.. does this mean the changes wont go into the base game?
    Or is Schema following all this and is eventually gonna put those changes in the base game?
    You could just check the news section?