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Since I'll be linking to this in FTL-related areas of the web, this thread might get as much attention from FTL players as from Starmade ones, and only a minority of both groups can be assumed to have heard of the other. As such I'd probably better structure the text into sections accordingly.
Her overall design is the same as before, but with several notable enhancements. Redoing her entire systems array allowed me to balance her shields/weapons ratio much more firmly, if not to a precise 50/50. A large part of her internal decoration has been redone with the various new cosmetic blocks, dozens of details have been tweaked and the door system has been given a healthy dose of automation with the new logic. Externally, she doesn't look too different-
So to cover her refit in greater details, it would appear I need to present you with a gallery-
The Ship has been uploaded the registry, and can be found here. Should replacements be needed, the shuttle can be downloaded individually here, the Amc drone here and the beam variety here.
FTL: Faster Than Light is what I believe people refer to as a top-down rougelike space sim. A game, that is. Although a variety of unlockable ships exist, you start with only one, namely, the iconic Kestrel Cruiser:
A while ago, I successfully rebuilt the ship in starmade and submitted it to /r/ftlgame. Shortly thereafter 0.15 was released, and I had to put her through numerous refits to keep up with not only the initial weapons update, but also the many balances and new features that followed. In the end I had to clean out her systems entirely and reinstall them from scratch, but thanks to that, two months later, I can finally once again present a fully compatible and functional Kestrel.
As some of you may have seen on /r/ftlgame two months ago, I recreated the Kestrel in the three-dimensional space sandbox Starmade, the website of which you are currently visiting. Unfortunately, this was rather badly timed- only a short while later a massive update was released that completely overhauled the weapons systems, rendering the ship powerless. The period of retrofitting her that followed ended up being rather long due to both perfectionism on my side and the many tweaks and overhauls that followed the initial ship-breaking one. I have, however, finally been able to push out something that both works with the current build and has myself remotely satisfied.
Her overall design is the same as before, but with several notable enhancements. Redoing her entire systems array allowed me to balance her shields/weapons ratio much more firmly, if not to a precise 50/50. A large part of her internal decoration has been redone with the various new cosmetic blocks, dozens of details have been tweaked and the door system has been given a healthy dose of automation with the new logic. Externally, she doesn't look too different-
So to cover her refit in greater details, it would appear I need to present you with a gallery-
Port view of the ship:
As identical to the original as the image above.
Stern:
Almost identical, with the exception of a slight rearrangement of the hull just above the airlock.
Underside:
Where both the drones and shuttlepods are attached. Again, almost, but not entirely, identical to the original.
Docking light:
A minor addition using the new logic system, a green light that activates when no ship is attached to indicate the docking area.
Aft Airlock:
The aft airlock of the ship. As with the original, the outer doors and the gravity have no faction restriction, the inner doors do.
Engine Room:
Has a new decorative reactor, and a display block providing live data on the ships' power supply. Furthermore, a non-canon door has been added to the left of the reactor, leading to the primary systems cluster.
"Oxygen" Chamber:
Still no such thing as oxygen in this game, it remains a storage room.
Corridor:
The forward starboard engines-weapons corridor. Used to be the entrance to the primary systems cluster, not anymore.
Weapons Room:
Still pretty much the heart of the ship, for the sole reason of it being located in the middle. Contains the ship core, an Ai, a gravity module, and of course the control systems for all on-board armaments. Shown is the rapidfire ion cannon controller, not shown on the opposite side is the rapid pierce beam. To the far right is another entrance to the primary systems cluster, since that is where the evacuation hatches are found.
The Ai has a number of functions. Unfortunately, it no longer self-activates to defend itself if the ship is unmanned and the shield is breached, however, it can still fill it's primary purpose of keeping the ship fighting in evacuation scenarios, hopefully protecting fleeing crew.
Cloaking:
When the ship was originally built, both cloaking and radar-jamming was too power-intensive to be equipped on the ship. Fortunately, this has been (possibly temporarily) changed, and while cloaking is now even more infeasible, jamming is a fairly cheap thing. It's not cloaking per se, it still belongs in that room.
Shielding:
This room was redone entirely, and with great success if I may say so myself. As before, the shield blocks it contains do contribute to the protection of the ship, but only marginally. Another enhancement are the display blocks with live data on the shield integrity.
Medbay:
Probably my favorite room on the ship. Using the 0.15 cosmetic blocks I believe it to be fairly accurate interpretation of the Kestrel's on-board medical facility. It is sadly only decorative, but I hope I'll be able to change this soon.
Sensors:
Still entirely cosmetic, and probably the least modified room on the ship. Still looks good, though.
Drone Control:
After being informed that AIs can be remotely activated, I updated this room post-release with launch buttons for the drones. Thanks to ltmauve for telling me this.
Piloting:
Probably the least useful room on the ship. At least it now has better lighting and displays for power and shield levels.
Door Control:
This room controls what I consider the single largest enhancement to the ship, namely, the automated door system.
The doors on the ship now use the logic system to open and close automatically for players. For enhanced security, both inner and outer airlock doors have not had this feature installed, as the door automation is not faction-sensitive.
Should even more security be desired, one can activate the internal lockdown by activating the leftmost activation module. With the ship in lockdown, automation is deactivated, and the doors revert to the the manual controllers installed across the ship, which will open them for two seconds and then close automatically.
The three other activation modules disable the inner doors on their respective airlocks, as documented on the display block. The rooms still contains the faction module, saw no point in moving it.
Primary systems cluster:
Or, if you will, the true engine room of the ship. I hate the idea of completely separating the player from the machinery that runs their ship, as such, I've left this corridor-esque space unfilled and installed doors to the ship's main deck. As with the previous version of the Kestrel, this is where the hatches to the shuttles are found in case one would need to evacuate the ship without entering the ship core.
The cluster of logic blocks, should anyone wonder, is what provides the timer function to the manual door controls.
Microcraft:
As is is visible in the underside shot, the Kestrel carries two shuttlepods and two offensive drones.
The shuttles are fairly simple constructions. Engines, shields, faction block, a generator and a cockpit module. In addition to this, she also has two computers as passenger seats, with a permission module in the center. Since these cannot be reached from the hatch to which they dock, they also have an upside-down gravity module that can.
They're easiest to get into by using the up/down arrow keys while in the ship core, the hatches are there mostly to provide a means of access that does not deactivate the Kestrel's Ai.
The passenger computers in this image are astrotechnicians, since I thought I should use a nonoffensive computer for a nonoffensive purpose. However, these have since been replaced with cannon computers to lessen the risk of future updates breaking something.
The drones are exceedingly weak, and were installed mainly because I could. They have Beam as well as Amc versions, the Kestrel spawns with one of each. Faction module, Ai, weak shielding and a single weapon, pretty standard stuff. To lessen the logistic hassle of redocking deployed drones, both them and the shuttles have docking modules allowing them to carry each other. (The shuttle's one is actually a turret dock. Why not?)
As identical to the original as the image above.
Stern:
Almost identical, with the exception of a slight rearrangement of the hull just above the airlock.
Underside:
Where both the drones and shuttlepods are attached. Again, almost, but not entirely, identical to the original.
Docking light:
A minor addition using the new logic system, a green light that activates when no ship is attached to indicate the docking area.
Aft Airlock:
The aft airlock of the ship. As with the original, the outer doors and the gravity have no faction restriction, the inner doors do.
Engine Room:
Has a new decorative reactor, and a display block providing live data on the ships' power supply. Furthermore, a non-canon door has been added to the left of the reactor, leading to the primary systems cluster.
"Oxygen" Chamber:
Still no such thing as oxygen in this game, it remains a storage room.
Corridor:
The forward starboard engines-weapons corridor. Used to be the entrance to the primary systems cluster, not anymore.
Weapons Room:
Still pretty much the heart of the ship, for the sole reason of it being located in the middle. Contains the ship core, an Ai, a gravity module, and of course the control systems for all on-board armaments. Shown is the rapidfire ion cannon controller, not shown on the opposite side is the rapid pierce beam. To the far right is another entrance to the primary systems cluster, since that is where the evacuation hatches are found.
The Ai has a number of functions. Unfortunately, it no longer self-activates to defend itself if the ship is unmanned and the shield is breached, however, it can still fill it's primary purpose of keeping the ship fighting in evacuation scenarios, hopefully protecting fleeing crew.
Cloaking:
When the ship was originally built, both cloaking and radar-jamming was too power-intensive to be equipped on the ship. Fortunately, this has been (possibly temporarily) changed, and while cloaking is now even more infeasible, jamming is a fairly cheap thing. It's not cloaking per se, it still belongs in that room.
Shielding:
This room was redone entirely, and with great success if I may say so myself. As before, the shield blocks it contains do contribute to the protection of the ship, but only marginally. Another enhancement are the display blocks with live data on the shield integrity.
Medbay:
Probably my favorite room on the ship. Using the 0.15 cosmetic blocks I believe it to be fairly accurate interpretation of the Kestrel's on-board medical facility. It is sadly only decorative, but I hope I'll be able to change this soon.
Sensors:
Still entirely cosmetic, and probably the least modified room on the ship. Still looks good, though.
Drone Control:
After being informed that AIs can be remotely activated, I updated this room post-release with launch buttons for the drones. Thanks to ltmauve for telling me this.
Piloting:
Probably the least useful room on the ship. At least it now has better lighting and displays for power and shield levels.
Door Control:
This room controls what I consider the single largest enhancement to the ship, namely, the automated door system.
The doors on the ship now use the logic system to open and close automatically for players. For enhanced security, both inner and outer airlock doors have not had this feature installed, as the door automation is not faction-sensitive.
Should even more security be desired, one can activate the internal lockdown by activating the leftmost activation module. With the ship in lockdown, automation is deactivated, and the doors revert to the the manual controllers installed across the ship, which will open them for two seconds and then close automatically.
The three other activation modules disable the inner doors on their respective airlocks, as documented on the display block. The rooms still contains the faction module, saw no point in moving it.
"Activation Module" refers to the handscanner-like blocks, which are essentially toggle buttons. Unlike the area sensors that automate the doors, they only interact with players from the same faction as the structure to which they are attached
The faction module is what designates a ship's allegiance, and by extension, who may or may not open on-board doors.
The faction module is what designates a ship's allegiance, and by extension, who may or may not open on-board doors.
Primary systems cluster:
Or, if you will, the true engine room of the ship. I hate the idea of completely separating the player from the machinery that runs their ship, as such, I've left this corridor-esque space unfilled and installed doors to the ship's main deck. As with the previous version of the Kestrel, this is where the hatches to the shuttles are found in case one would need to evacuate the ship without entering the ship core.
The cluster of logic blocks, should anyone wonder, is what provides the timer function to the manual door controls.
Microcraft:
As is is visible in the underside shot, the Kestrel carries two shuttlepods and two offensive drones.
The shuttles are fairly simple constructions. Engines, shields, faction block, a generator and a cockpit module. In addition to this, she also has two computers as passenger seats, with a permission module in the center. Since these cannot be reached from the hatch to which they dock, they also have an upside-down gravity module that can.
They're easiest to get into by using the up/down arrow keys while in the ship core, the hatches are there mostly to provide a means of access that does not deactivate the Kestrel's Ai.
The passenger computers in this image are astrotechnicians, since I thought I should use a nonoffensive computer for a nonoffensive purpose. However, these have since been replaced with cannon computers to lessen the risk of future updates breaking something.
The drones are exceedingly weak, and were installed mainly because I could. They have Beam as well as Amc versions, the Kestrel spawns with one of each. Faction module, Ai, weak shielding and a single weapon, pretty standard stuff. To lessen the logistic hassle of redocking deployed drones, both them and the shuttles have docking modules allowing them to carry each other. (The shuttle's one is actually a turret dock. Why not?)
The Ship has been uploaded the registry, and can be found here. Should replacements be needed, the shuttle can be downloaded individually here, the Amc drone here and the beam variety here.
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