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    PROGRESS UPDATE POST #52



    Not much progress just yet on the fleet flagship revealed last time.

    But my two most sophisticated mining/salvaging ships went through an overhaul, bringing them up to a better shape than ever!


    IF YOU WANT ONE: Zircon-class Asteroid Miner
    1592850091500.png


    IF YOU WANT ONE: Brimstone-L7 Advanced Salvager
    1592850006796.png


    Low-effort finish on the flagship's nose section, recolored turrets, plus a group photo with the little guys above:
    starmade-screenshot-0000.png
     
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    PROGRESS UPDATE POST #53



    The destroyer-class, flagship-role vessel of my fleet project is finished and published: download here.

    After having completed it, and in search for a good name for both it and the whole fleet, I realised that my plans included seven ships.

    So I went with naming the fleet after the Seven Sisters of Greek mythology, and chose to distribute their names among the ships so that the descending ranking of the ships by size/mass corresponds to the descending ranking, by apparent luminosity, of the stars in the Pleiades cluster (excluding Pleione and Atlas, the mythological parents of the Pleiades sisters):

    Destroyer Flagship = Asterope (brightest)​
    Freighter = Celaeno​
    Mass Transportation Craft = Taygeta​
    Frigate = Merope​
    Corvette = Maia​
    Miner = Electra​
    Fighter = Alcyone (dimmest)​

    None of the remainder are even started as of now, but each should be easier to build than this girl.


    0.png
     
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    Recently, I was locked into circumstances boring enough to make me try writing up something random and cool.

    An old british heavy metal band, Saxon, once wrote an ode to a train, titled "Princess of the Night". I wrote a prose-form ode to a space freighter I once planned to build, named "Ulysses" (latinized variant of Odysseus; publicly used the name before, as a placeholder for something else, no connection between the two).

    It's an epic-style, non-narrative, dieselpunkish piece, which is probably overcomposed, and I can imagine that some parts might make it painfully obvious that English isn't my first language, but it is what it is.

    If someone knows of some sci-fi art that visually matches the level of glory of this fictional ship, as described herein, then please share, because I can't seem to picture it in my head :)



    Ulysses Mk1 — The Mountainous Space Freighter
    As decade after decade passed, Ulysses Mk1, that mighty old mountain range of metal, just kept on roaming the uncharted regions of the galaxy.

    Adrift in the unforgiving cold of interstellar space, lit only by the occasional faint emission nebula, it was equally true that no one could have stopped him, and no one cared to.

    Wandering across a zero-life-per-cubic-kiloparsec zone between two galactic spiral arms, his prime purpose was merely to find something—anything—with which he could negate his own brutally obvious purposelessness, and enjoy a taste of the fleeting, sweet illusion that is a sense of significance.

    As the cobweb-filled technological relic he was, he would have been seen as just another memento of long-past better times, by the outside world that never really heard of him.

    But for his onboard-born passengers, he was the only home they ever knew.



    For this old, mountainous freighter carried nothing else, but examples of sentience under the cover of his thickly armored hull: several little ghosts, who gave value internally to the otherwise forgotten machine that was Ulysses Mk1.

    They were the inhabitants of the belly of a mechanical whale, one so gargantuan that many lives were lived through within him without having a chance to see all of him. A skeleton crew of cyborgs, who made it their primary mission to keep alive the wisdom of how to keep Ulysses alive, by passing it on from generation to generation, most of whom had no idea that the world was anything more than a bubble of steel.

    Acceptant of their fate, these half-machines lived in perfect symbiosis with the vast machine, which sometimes felt to fall short of the criteria of being literally alive only by a narrow margin.

    The surprisingly flawless cooperation of its ancient machinery reminded of the intricate inner workings of a living organism. The intimidatingly loud clanking of its heavy, never-failing parts suggested a particularly strong will to maintain homeostasis.

    He had labyrinthine maintenance tunnels, like bowels. Behemoth pulsating pumps, reminiscent of a beating heart. Pipelines snaking everywhere, moving kilolitres of hot motor oil, like blood in vessels.

    Pistons the size of Sierran redwood, crashing into the cylinder walls with the force of tsunamis hitting the rockface of oceanic shores. Overpressure relief valves blowing out steam with the power of thunderstorms, sometimes producing a sound eerily similar to how gods sigh out of exhaustion.

    Dusty old mainframes ceaselessly emitting an unintelligible electrical whisper, as if they desperately wanted to say something, but constantly failed to learn the language. With the rare electric arc of lightning-bolt-wattage, roaring up with extreme rage, as if to say "Can't you hear that I am here?!"

    While the crew were not unlike the soldiers of an immune system, serving the good health of Ulysses.



    The relentless noise of his inner workings was the most beautiful of symphonies for them. They helped him with a glad heart, humbly admiring his eternal struggle that started geological epochs before any of them were born. For them, he was the greatest artifact from before living memory. The most sublime masterpiece of engineering.

    While tons of primordial rust dissolved in a sea of spilled engine lubricant made it clear that even he wasn't immune to entropy, the epic power of all of his moving parts made it seem as if some laws of nature conspired to keep him alive way beyond what's natural.

    His inhabitants marveled at his magnificence. They were in awe of his might. They worshipped him as a deity.

    Those of a more occult mindset believed that the ship's computer infrastructure contained one of those "Game of Life" simulations, which ran in the background, for centuries, until the vessel rose to some form of consciousness. It might have been that Ulysses really had a mind of its own, the emergence of which was just a means to the comparatively trivial end of maximizing computational capacity, through automatic self-programming.

    No one could tell whether or not that was the case. Perhaps it wasn't that this self-created artificial intelligence wasn't yet smart enough to communicate, but rather that the crew wasn't smart enough to recognize all the little signals, through his very limited channels, as attempts to initiate conversation.

    In any case, everyone was in deep respect of the stoic resilience and Sisyphean commitment with which he endured the harshness of outer space and just kept on moving with full steam.

    Their only goal: to contact any remnant of the original civilization that built their beloved Ulysses, of whom they knew only through fragments of data that survived in the starship's Engineering Manual... A civilization that was the best candidate as the organic progenitors of this race of cyborgs.



    A civilization from a planet called "Earth", which might have been long gone, for all they knew.
     
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    PROGRESS UPDATE POST #54



    Started working on the second largest vessel of my fleet project, the freighter.

    The images below show the results of the first two days of construction. As you can see, I aim to continue the first ship's clean, sleek, minimalistic, futuristic style throughout the whole fleet.

    Copy-pasting the flagship's engines really helped to kickstart the design process of this second ship. I used top-bottom symmetry on its rear part, so I still have to go along the bottom and change up a few things, to make it look more interesting.


    Also decided on the ship sizes, they will increase with 40m increments in length:
    Destroyer Flagship = Asterope (260m)
    Freighter = Celaeno (220m)
    Mass Transportation Craft = Taygeta (180m)
    Frigate = Merope (140m)
    Corvette = Maia (100m)
    Miner = Electra (60m)
    Fighter = Alcyone (20m)


    2.png 3.png 4.png

    1.png
     
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    PROGRESS UPDATE POST #55



    Just a little bit to go (designing cargo containers) and I'm done with the "Celaeno" freighter, exterior-wise.

    It has a dorsal AMS turret behind the bridge, and already functional USD airlocks on both sides.

    There's also a weapon output at the front for a just-in-case gun, but otherwise this ship will be unarmed, and will instead focus on serious active defense (strong shields and good mobility).

    Plans are to system each ship of this ambitious fleet in a way that makes sense with regards to their specific roles. If great firepower will be needed to defend this freighter when roaming through unsafe regions, its fighter/corvette/frigate escorts will help her out... Which I can't wait to start building, seeing how nicely this fleet established a style of its own.



    6.png 7.png 8.png 9.png 10.png

    5.png
     
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    PROGRESS UPDATE POST #56



    Something out of the ordinary this time, I suppose we might say.

    After finalizing the exterior of this freighter, by attaching the five cargo containers seen on the still images below, I decided to dedicate almost the whole nose section for more cargo space. A very large and detailed cargo bay was built, the port-side-only door of which introduced some asymmetry to the hull.

    11.png 12.png


    Construction of the rest of the interior followed swiftly, the results of which are shown in a quick tour in the spoilers below. Almost the entire interior is walked through in eight GIFs; each starts roughly where the previous ends.

    GIF interior tour:

    (No systems yet, because the still-incoming devbuilds that appeared after the current stable game version seem to have systems config changes, and anyway, I intend to publish this ship only in a fleet bundle once all ships are done, so it can wait. Next up: fighter and miner.)
     
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    PROGRESS UPDATE POST #57



    Two new members join the Pleiades fleet! Introducing the "Electra-class" miner and the "Alcyone-class" fighter:

    1.png 2.png 3.png 4.png 5.png 6.png 7.png 8.png 9.png


    Progress with this fleet project is way slower than predicted, but that's just how it usually is, right?

    The miner isn't systemed yet, and has a finished but very minimal interior, consisting of port/starboard airlocks which lead to the bridge through a corridor that has four fake doors, deceptively labeled up with the serious-sounding names of compartments you would expect to see on an interplanetary mining spacecraft. (The cleverly lazy way of providing your ships with "fully supplied" RP interiors.)

    The yet-to-start remaining ships:
    Mass Transportation Craft (180m long)
    Frigate (140m)
    Corvette (100m)

    10.png
     

    Reilly Reese

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    PROGRESS UPDATE POST #57



    Two new members join the Pleiades fleet! Introducing the "Electra-class" miner and the "Alcyone-class" fighter:

    View attachment 57971 View attachment 57972 View attachment 57973 View attachment 57974 View attachment 57975 View attachment 57976 View attachment 57977 View attachment 57978 View attachment 57979


    Progress with this fleet project is way slower than predicted, but that's just how it usually is, right?

    The miner isn't systemed yet, and has a finished but very minimal interior, consisting of port/starboard airlocks which lead to the bridge through a corridor that has four fake doors, deceptively labeled up with the serious-sounding names of compartments you would expect to see on an interplanetary mining spacecraft. (The cleverly lazy way of providing your ships with "fully supplied" RP interiors.)

    The yet-to-start remaining ships:
    Mass Transportation Craft (180m long)
    Frigate (140m)
    Corvette (100m)

    View attachment 57980
    Jumbo V-Wing.

    Noice.
     
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    PROGRESS UPDATE POST #59



    At this point I think it's fair to say that I have a firm grip on the process of building ships in this specific style. The "Merope-class" frigate was created in a mere three days, a day less than her little sister that was revealed last week.

    You can play some "spot the difference" if you check the previous post (when taking the pictures below, I tried to capture them from roughly the same angles used for the screenshots of the "Maia-class" corvette).

    Main differences include that the frigate is 40m longer (140%); has a dorsal AMS turret; has the core in a dedicated room, instead the cockpit. Otherwise same deal, super minimal interior, and yet to be systemed.

    Only one more ship to go, in the rarely seen role of a "mass transportation craft" (think passenger airliner).



    Frigate (2).png Frigate (3).png Frigate (4).png Frigate (5).png Frigate (6).png Frigate (7).png

    Frigate (1).png
     
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    Your ships' style is so clean, I love it! Keep up the good work.

    Thanks! Coming from you, the approval means a lot, because I observed over at your shipyard thread that your building skills are up there really high, with very elegantly designed, complex ships of a likewise clean build quality.

    You too keep up the great work, I've been following your progress with the Lancelet :)
     
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    PROGRESS UPDATE POST #60



    Almost done!

    Yesterday I finished the hull and interior of "Taygeta", the recently-reclassified passenger craft of the Pleiades Fleet. While today I had a second try at building a fighter in this style, with incomparably better results.

    The new "Alcyone-class" fighter had to break the 40-meter-increments rule (becoming 30m long instead of 20), to be less restricted in designing an interesting shape. The passenger craft is 181m long, and can accomodate 220 passengers in 110 two-bed rooms (plus five frozen individuals in the cryogenic chamber).

    The most complex part of the Taygeta ship, its engines, were actually ridiculously easy to construct, thanks to copy-pasting the frigate's engines in a different orientation, and changing up a few things afterwards.

    The fleet will be released in the following days, as a bundle of seven beautiful shells, with which anyone will have the opportunity to practice some systeming and fleet operations in style.


    Passenger Craft (2).png Passenger Craft (3).png Passenger Craft (4).png Passenger Craft (5).png Passenger Craft (6).png Passenger Craft (7).png Passenger Craft (8).png Passenger Craft (9).png

    Passenger Craft (1).png

    10.png
     
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    PROGRESS UPDATE POST #61



    Nothing new this time, just wanted to show some cool GIFs of my recently released fleet.

    DOWNLOAD FLEET (Shells): Pleiades Fleet
    DOWNLOAD FLAGSHIP (Systemed): Asterope Destoryer


    If the GIFs don't show at first, try reloading this page:

    Also, I might take a break from StarMade starting now... One can never know for sure with such addictions ;)

    x.jpg
     
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    PROGRESS UPDATE POST #62



    I might take a break from StarMade starting now.
    Wrong!!

    I find that building in StarMade is one of the best things to do if you're trying to listen through entire discographies of legendary bands, and you want to keep other parts of your body occupied (besides your ears) while doing it. (At least when you also intend to stay sober, otherwise drinking or blazing are better for this purpose, obviously.)

    This week I'm going through the glorious albums of KISS, as for the ship shown below, it's named "Eratosthenes Mk1", and will feature a giant "magnetic tuning fork" as a nose, in which it will hold a "floating sphere" turret.

    Any opinions or suggestions? :)


    2.png 3.png 4.png 5.png

    1.png
     
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    PROGRESS UPDATE POST #63



    The project shown in the previous post has been finished and published.

    Here's the ship, fully systemed and featuring a modest interior that at least appears to be fully supplied (using deceptive fake doors and misleading signs).

    And here's a separate download of the floating sphere turret only, which is actually a modified version of the ones protecting my notorious mysterious science station.


    1617643797790.png

    1617643866054.png
     
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    AtraUnam

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    I've done plenty of sphere turrets before but usually half inset into a ship, I might have to steal that magnetic jaws concept from you.
     
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    I've done plenty of sphere turrets before but usually half inset into a ship, I might have to steal that magnetic jaws concept from you.

    Be my guest.
    You made me realize that I too have used that half-inset mounting solution before, but with turrets that aren't exactly spherical, due to gun-shaped protrusions, as shown on the screenshot below (that's my Watatsumi battlecruiser).

    A third option would be, of course, to have a few of those gorgeous and deadly minimalistic spheres casually float around a hyperfuturistic/ancient alien ship, maintaining perfect formation and a constant distance from the mothership with the usual "unexplainable propulsion". That would be the way to maximize their field of fire, and would look awesome.


    1617757881516.png
     
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    PROGRESS UPDATE POST #64



    Made a tiny but complex robot. With its 8 joints (rotation points) it might not be that complex anatomically (it kinda is, considering its size), but "neurologically" it certainly is fairly complex.

    Firstly, looking at the anatomy part, it has shoulder, elbow, hip and knee joints, all enabling limb rotations along the same plane, and each having clockwise and anticlockwise moveability, in 45-degree steps at default speed.

    But looking at the "neurology" and mechanics side... The joints have to have two inputs each, 16 total, all available on the hotbar for manually defining postures or debugging faulty animations. Programming an animation that makes him leave the default posture, do whatever number of the jogging movement pattern, then come back to rest, regardless of when was the animation deactivated, can be achieved with a circuit that's surprisingly simple on its own:

    xCircuitry.png

    But when it comes to connecting the 13-block circuit above to the aforementioned joints, in a way that results in limb motions that actually resemble the dynamics of human running... Well, to avoid too much headache, one must rely on some self-styled way of breaking things down, to see both the individual momentary states of what is aimed at as a final result, AND the specific steps you have to go through while wiring it all up:

    xMechanics.png

    It took 40 connections coming from the delay chain, as well as some observation of what the parts of my own body do automatically when I tell it to run. Of course, it suffers from certain limitations of the game, but it was fun to build. Take a closer look here: "Johnny Runner" mech suit


    starmade-gif-0001.gif
     
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