Hey all, I figured I'd get some public input on the cruiser I'm presently building. I was able to sketch together a quick blueprint, and I'll post screen shots tonight. The features on the blueprint are mostly skinned out with grey hull but no modules yet.
The whole thing has a length of about 270 meters, has a height and width of 150 meters, and has a mass to be determined.
Looking at the BP...it's definitely influenced a bit by my favorite web comic, although it's a bit larger.
A quick google reports the Schlock forums (zoo.nightstar) as saying 80 meters, and someone tried to link a comic to back that up, but the link appears broken.
Since I'm home, here's a good view of the ship's figurehead and primary turrets. I'll probably wedge the dragon at some later date and maybe experiment with some crystal in front of the lava eyes. The dragon is in fact an anti-astronaut turret. If you try to board my ship, I intend for it to eat you.
[doublepost=1501300617,1501297212][/doublepost]Added a tiny bit of color and copy-pasted the hangars a couple times and wow! It already starts looking cool. That dragon looks more like a turtle when it's hiding under those giant turrets though.
I got to thinking, and browsing the ship forums...You know what every ship needs? Anti missile turrets. You know what every ship also needs? Gothic spires. By a happy coincidence, we can put the AMS -on top of- the spires.
Also, I am kind of planning to have a giant planet-cracking laser behind the stained glass window. Just b'cuz.
There is some messy stuff behind the buttresses for the AMS towers; I was trying to do some three-dimensional vaulting and it did not turn out pretty. I think I'll replace the vaulting with another pair of smaller spires behind the first pair.
What's better than a couple of towers on a battlecruiser? A whole bunch of towers. The free-standing towers will mount turrets on top (probably AMS turrets) and the recessed towers will not. Copy and paste saves the day! Also I decided on a logo for my faction. In keeping with its current allegiance, Tenebris Lux will be using the stylized angel logo. But, there is another logo on the ship, which is not really visible here. Will shoot a pic of it, plus the logo in the stained glass, tomorrow.
And in the meantime, a ship this cool deserves an escort fleet. These corvettes will stick so close to the main ship that they might as well be turrets Able to quickly orbit in their assigned lanes, once their weapons are mounted they'll be able to take on anything that tries to threaten the main ship.
OK, the long-awaited Shadow logo of the Tenebris Lux.
Obviously very similar, but as you can see this ship is plagued by off-by-one symmetry errors...I need to stop building when I'm tired :p Haven't made a lot of progress on the main ship in the last couple days because...
I've been working on the corvette. And I think I like the underbelly-city look so much I'm probably going to strip out the gilding on the underside of the cruiser and replace it with an apartment complex. Because really, who needs more than one cathedral per ship?
The dragon consumes a world, devouring food for its precious children. It does not count the lives it has cost this day.
I like pulse miners because they are only 9 deep, you can stick some on practically anything.
Failed turret lineup. Including the corvette which started life as a turret.
And the winner is...a giant cube. Because Starmade. Threw some lipstick on this pig and hope nobody notices that half my ship is giant ugly cubes. Made of tiny cubes.
Note that the turret is pointing -at- the ship; I wanted to make sure it had a full 360 degree rotation freedom. It doesn't really need it; I think having just one set firing broadside should be plenty, but I was worried about lagtastic collisions if the barrel should knock into the main ship. I think I knocked about 20 blocks off my original planned barrel length, but the end result kind of looks like a storm bolter.
If you are very perceptive and can tear your eyes away from the butt area of the ship, you might notice that two of the new turrets are missing chunks out of their barrels. There was an incident with a badly-place symmetry and an "accidentally synced all the beams from three guns to one computer"....don't ask.
I am almost tempted to put a fallen angel across the center engine as kind of a WH40k-style crucifixion, but I don't think I will.
Ship was completely destroyed by NPC pirates while my client was busy crashing. 65k mass ship including 11 million shield points, 25k beam modules and 55% ion, MIA. Remains could not be recovered. I might roll back to my last BP tomorrow, or I might start over from scratch. I never did figure out how to put broadside cannons on this ship, and I think I've learned a thing or two about ship building from the project so far. Only thing recovered so far is this:
It was coming along quite nicely, no reason to give up just because of one devastating problem.
(now, more than one, or even just the same one twice, that's pushing it)
Pirates literally didn't even attack until I crashed, they just sat there and let me shoot them until I went offline, and then they tore my ship up while I wasn't even there. Got killed before I could get back into the ship core and jump out.
Think I am going to shelve this cruiser for a bit and repurpose the parts into a 75-ton hybrid fighter/miner for the LVD mineapalooza quest. I am running short of supplies after losing all those turrets, especially beam modules.
After much discussion and hunting for options, I decided to continue the project with some major changes. Partly this was due to the addition in my faction of a very avid miner/builder, which meant my resource crunch wasn't quite so pressing. Partly this was simply a lack of other options that I really liked.
However, there are some changes going forward.
The center of the craft, from about 20 blocks in on the sides and back from the edge of the citadel sphere (see first post for plan) is largely untouched. The cathedral and engines, basically, and everything I put in the guts of the craft so far (75k mass! whew!) remain as-is, though I plan to add two new engines. These will go on the center of the wings, right on the visible (for now) transition line between grey hull and standard armor on the trailing edge of the wings.
The dragon figurehead has been removed and that entity deleted; I'd like to add an angel figurehead (like the rolls royce hood ornament) which is more in keeping with the theme of the ship and the Tenebris Lux faction.
The eight 25-meter turret bays will be merged into four larger turret bays (you can see in the picture I've removed the divider). I'd like to fit 40-meter main turrets but I might be able to fit 60-meter main turrets, and this is friendlier to the LVD ship turret policy (2 at 10k mass +1 per 20k add'l mass).
And the new wings add lots and lots of internal space -- I haven't added much to the length of the craft, maybe a couple meters, but it's using that length a LOT more efficiently and is already benefiting from that decision. I might wrap the wings around the nose a little bit just as a nod to Schlock Mercenary, but I might not. The docking claws ended (being the tip of the craft, technically) about where the wings end now, so I've only added maybe 20 meters.
Got a little bit of wedgery done. It feels like this is headed in the right direction and the ship looks a little less naked. Somehow the wings wound up exactly the same height (19m) as the hangars had. Will have to think about that.
Think I need to bring the hull area a little bit in on the wing (the hull is the second elevation) to give the wing a more even perimeter. Having the slope for the second elevation merge directly into the slope for the first elevatio is a little bit tacky amidship.
Created the wedging by taking a 13x19x10 copy of the initial wedging near the back (the bit that sticks out) and pasting it about 20 times. This forced me to make a very even, smooth angle of attack on most of the wing and I really like how it came out. Then made a (i think) 8 x 6 x 10 copy for the second elevation but got lazy and the results suffered.
A friend asked me to contribute a skyscraper to his floating city project, so I threw a little something together this evening. The friend objected, "It's too big!" Yeah, that's what she said.
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