FRG Thor - my first frigate

[Drybreeze]

Ok well I've built a couple of ships now, plus of course my shipyard, but I'm still a very new player. I only got the game in December, and I still don't know a thing about logic systems or even jump drives. In fact I only just learned how to connect an Overdrive Effect to a weapon's system.

But that's what makes this game so damn fun - there's SO much to learn and put to good use.

Introducing my very first frigate, FRG Thor.

She's a missile frigate, with a 38m Overdriven rocket launcher dealing approximately 90k damage at 3.2km range, soaking up about 750million energy per shot, with enough charge to fire 4 times before having to wait for a recharge of her batteries.

She also has wing-mounted homing missiles measuring 18m each, plus four micro-turrets operating as anti-missile defense.

Her engines are a new design, and I managed to merge two exhausts together to fit her main engine bays port and starboard side while maintaining their look.

Each engine has an exhaust measuring 7m deep, with a further 11m of thrusters behind them in a 7x7x11m grid, linked together internally. Even with her estimated 5000 ton mass she manuevers better than any other ship I've built (except Taxi, my rapid-access 1xcore,1xpower,1xthruster inspection bike).

I have needed to use SVG Excavator a few times to retrieve materials for FRG Thor, so it's a good thing I built a large-scale salvager as that has really sped things up a lot.

Her Core and Bridge and main corridors and crew areas are clean and bright, but her engineering and inspection areas are much more raw and industrial.

Overall I'm really enjoying this build, and expect to launch her in a couple of days. I am considering releasing her blueprints for public use - she is both a very effective war vessel and also a nice role-playing ship.

More detailed images on her build and other builds of mine can be found in my Starmade fiction progress journal - Dry Empire.

What are your thoughts on her?

 

[Lecic]

A very nice ship! All survival built, too? Impressive! Good luck against the pirate hordes, newcomer.

Also, I really recommend learning how to use jump drives. They're a massive time saver.

 

[ToyotaSupra]

This is incredible, really. This should be a canon ship if they include larger ships later...

I especially like the core room. More screenshots?

 

[Broken_Angel]

For a first time frigate, it's quite impressive. How big is she?

 

[Thalanor]

Impressive. Take my like. Unique and well-designed thruster exhausts, and the interior is up to RP standard.

 

[Drybreeze]

A very nice ship! All survival built, too? Impressive! Good luck against the pirate hordes, newcomer.

Also, I really recommend learning how to use jump drives. They're a massive time saver.

I will learn Jump Drives very soon. Story-ways it makes sense that once the frigate is launched and goes hunting things that it creates a need to develop a faster way to travel, so I intend to learn about them then either retro-fit this ship or build a new fast scout or something that has both scanners and jump drives in it. My biggest issue at the moment is finding rarer minerals to manufacture that kind of technology...

All built in survival, yes. To be honest I'm not sure how to go about any other way except I read somewhere about material ID's you can conjure up with some command but where's the fun in that? Survival gives purpose, for me.

This is incredible, really. This should be a canon ship if they include larger ships later...

I especially like the core room. More screenshots?

Thankyou ToyotaSupra. I intend to fit this particular ship with a few different layouts, employing the same basic armour, engines, shields, etc. One of them will be a cannon ship, yes. Eventually I'll equip the pirates with the blueprint too, but not until I have defenses and ships that can take out several of these things at once.

You can find more screenshots in the storyline blog, on this post, plus this post, and the launch post which I expect will be in a day or three.

For a first time frigate, it's quite impressive. How big is she?

Thanks Broken_Angel. It's a first time frigate, yes.
My list of ships so far I've built is:
Taxi (1xcore, 1xpower, 1xengine) - quick get-about that I bet almost everyone has built.
Gustav - a small spherical battle-scout armed with two cannons and significantly weaker than a typical default pirate fighter... (sigh).
Speeder - my first salvager, which I eventually equipped with turrets to make it the current design.
Shipyard - my first shipyard built to create corvettes, frigates, and support frigates and form the beginnings of a growing star-base over time.
Alannis (framework, thrusters/intakes, engines, interior, complete)- my first corvette, built from the engines up, to make her interior as realistic as possible.
Basic Factory - the seed of a factory, to produce materials for builds, and to form the heart of my first starbase.
Excavator (complete)- my newer and much larger salvager, ditching turret defense for salvage performance and shielding.

FRG Thor measures 100 nose to tail, 36m high, and 39m wing to wing. Not huge, but by far my largest to date.

Impressive. Take my like. Unique and well-designed thruster exhausts, and the interior is up to RP standard.

Thanks I'm glad to hear it! Making things as realistic as possible is half the fun.

 

[Lecic]

All built in survival, yes. To be honest I'm not sure how to go about any other way except I read somewhere about material ID's you can conjure up with some command but where's the fun in that? Survival gives purpose, for me.

Fair enough. I personally wouldn't want to build a titan or kilonaut in survival mode, but I have built some frigates for myself in survival with friends.

One of them will be a cannon ship, yes.

I don't think "canon" was a typo. I'm pretty sure he meant it. Canon means to be an official part of the game/story.

 

[Drybreeze]

Oh ok I didn't know that. In that case that's even more of a compliment so thank you ToyotaSupra.

Here are a few more screenshots, taken from the main new post here. (You can see more shots in that post).

Core, looking back through an open blast door towards the ramp up to the Bridge, and the hallways leading to other ship facilities like the Mess Hall, Crew Quarters, and Medibay.

Down the hallway, looking forward towards the Core Room. The far blast door leads to the port-side forward engineering decks (6 levels of decks straddling both sides of the main missile tubes, generators, and batteries in the front half of the vessel).

Medibay with a number of systems, including an AI dedicated to diagnostics and treatment advice, and a fully automated operations table, plus two casual triage tables.

Mess Hall serves all 6 crew members at once if necessary, with Epicurian Combinator and waste-disposal systems allowing a completely autonomous food delivery and waste disposal system (food scraps, utensils, the lot, all get mashed up into digital matter signatures ready for re-combination).

 

[Drybreeze]

Thor now has an escape pod, escape pod bay, and separate explosive-bolted hatch that blasts free by itself in the event of escape pod being activated.

To clarify - the pilot detonates it, then it blasts free under it's own pressure, clearing the way for the escape pod to jettison out. In the meantime the hatch covers the escape pod bay, protecting the escape pod from combat and infiltration.

Escape Pod Bay as seen from about 6 meters above the exterior of the hull.

Escape Pod docked in position within the pod bay. (Some edits to the lip of the bay were neccesary to assist the hatch and pod clear the ship without difficulties.)

Escape Pod Hatch being positioned.

Hatch secured, ready for active duty...

In the event of an Abandon Ship, escape pod pilot detonates the explosive bolts holding hatch in position, and the hatch will fly upwards and away with force, clearing the way for the pilot to undock the pod and jettison free of the frigate.

Internal view of the escape pod bay, with pod and hatch secured.

I have kept a copy of the entire bay, pod, and hatch so that I can quickly fit a "ready-to-fire" version in any future build... it's quite cheap and highly effective.

Plus it looks pretty cool when the hatch blows off and tumbles away into space, exposing the blue lit bay and then the pod blasts free.

I'm super stoked I got this to work - I didn't know when I started whether it would actually function or not.

Full entry showing the build, the pod interior, the mock-pod used to test the setup, the shipyard addition necessary to build the pod, etc, can be found here.

 

[Drybreeze]

Thor is launched!
Finally completed her.

She is outfitted with a compliment of 1x main rocket launcher, 2x dual lock-on wing-mounted missile launchers, and 4x wing-mounted anti-missile micro-turrets.

Her shields are a satisfying 394k reserve (+1600 s/sec) and her energy reserves are 623.6k (+143k e/sec).

Her initial trip was to a nearby raider station, which she mauled... including the 30 or so fighters that turned up to defend it... (post includes video of her being launched from shipyard at Dry Station).

Now my intentions are to make a few modified versions of this craft (heavy missile, turret, beam, ion, support, etc) and also to create a few pirate-version blueprints which I will plop into the Pirate blueprint folder so she spawns against me from time to time.

Once I've completed a few of these I intend to release the blueprint to the public domain so that anyone interested can add her to their own compliment or pirate spawn folder also.

I've enjoyed this build a lot... looking forward to my next projects... I've got so many lined up my brain hurts.