FTL: Faster Than Light presents- The Kestrel Cruiser, now in 3d!

    lupoCani

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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.

    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.

    "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.

    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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    Nice job. I haven't played FTL myself but this looks very impressive. Nice job on doing every single bit of detail.

    P.S. since while in astronaut mode it is possible to remotely activate a ship's AI by selecting it and bringing up the AI menu, you might want to add the drone-undock buttons.
     
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    I love it! She's a bit bulkier than I imagined her, but it IS Starmade, after all. Love the attention to detail, and the functionality. Are you going to make other FTL ships?

    Props, bro.
     
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    You could add the iconic Burst Laser MKIIs by making 3 groups of 2 blocks of cannons slaved to one block of damage pulse. With logic you cold even make the reloading lights on the weapons.
     

    lupoCani

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    P.S. since while in astronaut mode it is possible to remotely activate a ship's AI by selecting it and bringing up the AI menu, you might want to add the drone-undock buttons.
    Really? Didn't know that... I'll update it ASAP.

    I love it! She's a bit bulkier than I imagined her, but it IS Starmade, after all. Love the attention to detail, and the functionality. Are you going to make other FTL ships?

    Props, bro.
    Yes, there seem to be two main interpretations of her three-dimensional shape. A somewhat more sleek, flat one:
    and the more bulky version
    And I had personally always thought of her as the latter, so I went with that.

    And yes, I do have plans for other FTL ships, but they won't be as easy. I think it's mostly because I'm not much of a designer myself, leaving me very dependent on precise measurements of whatever I'm recreating when doing this sort of thing. This poses an obvious issue when building a three-dimensional copy of a two-dimensional original, but with the Kestrel, I had immense quantities of fan art to go on. Other ships don't give me that luxury, and are generally more complex too, so I can't guarantee I'll get anywhere.

    You could add the iconic Burst Laser MKIIs by making 3 groups of 2 blocks of cannons slaved to one block of damage pulse. With logic you cold even make the reloading lights on the weapons.
    Wait, are you under the impression those few external weapon blocks make up her entire firepower? Just so you know, they do continue inward and make up about 25% of her volume.
    That's not much of a problem of course, an arrangement along the lines of this
    solves that quite perfectly. However, although I did consider it, I decided siege weapons would be far to impractical for a ship this size, even though it would indeed make her more authentic. I also did consider the idea of logic-controlled lights, but decided against it since I need that external space for the weapon itself.
     
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    Snk

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    Haha, that's awesome! I love FTL, and I love how you implemented it here. Good job! Thanks!
    But could you give a little information on how to use the ship? What all the logic is for?
     
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    lupoCani

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    Alright, installed undock buttons in the drone control room. The blueprint has been updated.
     

    lupoCani

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    Haha, that's awesome! I love FTL, and I love how you implemented it here. Good job! Thanks!
    But could you give a little information on how to use the ship? What all the logic is for?
    Well, there's not much to know, really. She's piloted from the core like any other ship, and is armed with a 100% ion cannon and a 100% pierce beam, both with 100% rapidfire. The logic, as I mentioned, is the timer that automatically shuts ship doors after two seconds when she's in lockdown. It takes up so much space because each door needs it's own timer.
     
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    Am I the only one who notices that the weapon bound to #3 fires backwards?
    Is that intentional?
     

    lupoCani

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    Come on, again? When I've retrofitted the ship I've often found that the weapons computers have spontaneously changed orientation. I've generally just reinstalled them, but then there's another gameplay update, another retrofit, and I find the computers turned wrong again. I never thought others were affected. I'll release another updated version soon, but if you still get backwards-firing weapons it must be a bug with the bluprints.
     
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    Come on, again? When I've retrofitted the ship I've often found that the weapons computers have spontaneously changed orientation. I've generally just reinstalled them, but then there's another gameplay update, another retrofit, and I find the computers turned wrong again. I never thought others were affected. I'll release another updated version soon, but if you still get backwards-firing weapons it must be a bug with the bluprints.
    So, I'm gonna have to take the computer out, put it in the right way, and then rebind EVERY SINGLE cannon module block in the ship? dang.
     

    lupoCani

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    So, I'm gonna have to take the computer out, put it in the right way, and then rebind EVERY SINGLE cannon module block in the ship? dang.
    You could use shift+V to select them all at once. You'll still have to remove and reinstall half the ion cannon, but it ought to speed things up nevertheless.
     
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    I like your interpretation and, to be honest, I think it shows how everyone thinks this ship looks like in FTL.

    Even I thought it looked like this, but then I saw the Advanced Edition posters:


    This sort of flips my imagination upside down, never thought of the Kestrel like THAT..

    So I think it's fair to say that everyone has their own ideas :P But well done, it looks belivable. I like it.
     
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    Mariux

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    Amazing, does it have the same room layout?
     
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    Would it be possible to do the Nessasio/DA SR-12/Simo-H, or do no 3-d images of them exist?
     
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    Nessasio would be or should be easier to do since you can see most of the ship shape. But then it's harder because it's such an intricate shape, it would be a pain to do it well :S

    I think the Rebel stuff would be easy enough to make.