JinMs Gameplay and Build Diary

[JinM]

02.03.7017 Progress on the military ship and some base extensions

I got to many stuff, I needed another hangar. =)

So I worked some hours on my project, and got the complete hull-shape including many details, especially the back with the nice engines and the generator / machinery detailing with those shiny lights.

I still have to add countless details at the exterior, but the main turrets and the most important places where some functions of the ship will be are now in final places:
Hangar elevator and the space this platform needs.
Main Entrance portside and a secondary extendable entrance to the starboard, so visitors can dock.
Design and finished logic for the retractable point defense turrets.
Complete construction of the fast firing sunken in turret at the keel including laying out the space the internal parts need.
The final position of the 3 missile turrets.
The rough shape of the railgun at starboard.

More pictures of the ship:

Spoiler

interior shot of the inside systems from the sunken in turret:

Here you see the retractable turret in action:

Spoiler

 

[Gasboy]

I know how that feels, having too many ships. XD I keep having to extend the ol' space parking lot every week. XD

 

[JinM]

I know how that feels, having too many ships. XD I keep having to extend the ol' space parking lot every week. XD

Yeah. Fells like stations are just huge car parks. =)

 

[Gasboy]

Yeah. Fells like stations are just huge car parks. =)

I like that extendable turret. I am thinking of making ones that are fastened to the ship under its armor, and then flips over to be used in combat.

 

[JinM]

I like that extendable turret. I am thinking of making ones that are fastened to the ship under its armor, and then flips over to be used in combat.

Great idea for a cool turret. So it has to extend, then it flips over and starts shooting, or it just flips over with the hull as basis? Either way, do it. =)

 

[Gasboy]

Great idea for a cool turret. So it has to extend, then it flips over and starts shooting, or it just flips over with the hull as basis? Either way, do it. =)

It just flips over.

 

[JinM]

7017.03.07 CRV Mantis

I progressed on the hull of my military ship project, and added some more logic systems to it. Also I had to redesign the sunken in keel turret, so it shoots ships that are in front of my iron sight and not only those 30m below it.

On the portside I added another hangar door for a very small vessel (5x4x5) and on the starboard I laid out, where the extendable docking port will be installed.

Also I added an elevator on the keel of the ship, that can be used if it parks on a platform.

I would be happy to hear some suggestions and thoughts about the hull design and exterior elements. It's next to getting finished, and soon I start filling it with walkways and the systems.

Spoiler

 

[Gasboy]

I think it looks great.

 

[JinM]

7017.03.28 WIP Update CRV Mantis

I did some work on it. =) As this is my first bigger ship I really take my time. It's fun though. There are now enough external details that I started laying out the walkways and finished installing the power and the first half of the thrust.

The biggest annoyance was realising that a power knot of 8 power lines really takes a huge chunk of the ship. It became too big to make anything nice out of it. Now I can't make the power knot into the planned rp-style reactor where I place some hull and blue crystal armor blocks around it and call it a fusion engine or something. For now I just put the power capazitors around the knot, so if the knot gets hit the capazitors are going down with it (I mean if I cant regen the power anymore I don't need to store it or am I wrong about that? :D ).

And so many things have been reworked or added:
Finished the nose design of the ship.
Raised the sunken in turrets head by one, so it has a wider fire arc.
Installed the smallest pd-turret design I could engineer at 4 spots of the second half the ship.
Enginnered a warhead battery (and the warheads for it =) ) that can be taken in from the front side of the ship.
Implemented some retractable landing gear (one half moves via rail, the other is only plex doors).
Finished the Expanse inspired Railgun design.
Started working on the bridge, that might or might not have a holographic model of the ship inside it.
Laid out the rails and the needed tunnel space for the evacuation capsule that can be accessed from the bride.

Spoiler

 

[Drybreeze]

This is some fascinating work.

 

[JinM]

Time for an update. =)

I made some nice hangar doors that have a shutter door moving into the bottom.

CRV Mantis exterior is fully finished. The interior didn't got any progress, but I made a second version that is very bad for pvp but non the less will be tested one day (beam beam main weapons).

And I tryied to rebuild the small vessel that I saw in the Starmade Trailer.
And I built an mobile port/harbor. So you have 4 additional USD arms that each have 5 USD. The port extender can infinitely dock onto itsself and has a retractable inner pipe that I extend if I need to dock a very big ship at the port's end.

Lastly some picks of my factory that has a special kind of refinery setup: If I run out of some type of ore, a red light flashes at its corresponding capsule storage, so I allways have 10mill caps of each type in store.

 

[JinM]

Okay guys, here we go again:

Hangar
Okay first off, I want to show you my hangar progress. This one will be located on a new station I am building right now: It has a docking platform made out of pipes, that moves in and out of the hangar. When you fly to the platform, you move onto a pickup rail, this pickup rail moves you onto the platform. Reaching the platform the hangar cycling process gets activated: Opening doors and moving the docking clamps to the ship, then closing the blast doors on the clamps to further fixate the ship, then the platform moves into the hangar, and then the hangar door closes again.

I hope to one day integrate controls to let multiple hangar bays be accessible from one hangar door: So there is allways a platform on top of the hangar, or that you allways can call a platform when you fly to the hangar. (Just like in Elite Dangerous).

Spoiler

Walkway
Then I made some small new walkway style:

Spoiler

Factory + laboratory interior
That are some pictures of my interior stuff, allready posted in other threads:

Spoiler

Let me close the post with a recent door design of mine:
(activated via motion sensors, closes automatically after 3 seconds, manual door additionally, motion detector automation can be deactivated to only allow faction member to use the manual door control buttons)

 

[JinM]

Hi guys. What's new?

New interior props
Another set of interior props ready to paste: small medical chair, water tank t1 and t2, a small heater(notice the ice crags illuminated by red light inside of it), liquid oxygen tank.

Spoiler

SLV Fedora update
And my salvager Fedora got a small update, and get's very close to a CC release. Right now it's not perfect, but with 2 or 3 hours more work it will be polished enough for a CC upload. I am not sure, if I also include a chain jumpdrive, I have to admit that it doesn't pay off when we have a power update soon anyway.

For now I added in the following stuff:
picture 1: a small landing spot and a suitable minishuttle
picture 2: a rp-crane that can move and hold to each cargo silo and carry the contents to the front corner of the ship (the logic is set up in a way, that the crane can stop at each silo, and in between the silos too)
no pics:
motion detector autodoors (immediatelly opens on approach and close after 2 seconds, can't be manipulated and can't break due to the usage of smart and-gates), that can be sealed from the cockpit
some new bullseyes with grates in front of them (not sure if the grates should stay)
small layout changes in the workshop level

The logic for the autodoors is quite complicated for beginners, I think about uploading a set of frequently used logic stuff on the CC.

Spoiler

Station bottom expansion
Also I exanded to the bottom of my new station on Brierie. For now it houses my shield generator (the blocks inside store 2k and generate 200s/s), and in the future I plan to construct a bigger generator in there. Maybe this generator will also have an exhaust pipeline: In the old power like 5 lines flow through there, in the new power the end exhaust might contain the stabilizers... (big maybe).

Also I added in a cargo load pipe, so my salvager can dock there and get drained of his cargo. Additionally you see in front of the drain pipe some small lights: I think those realy add to the landing platform. The last picture contains a set of my new street and flash lights for outsides of stations.

Spoiler

Medical bedroom finished
And I finished my medical bed room of my research tract. Notice the small relax table, where the chair uses a turned off light as chushion, and the set of pipes running along the beds to the sensor computers.

Spoiler

 

[JinM]

Let's maintain this thread.

Spoiler

A new reactor, with 200k e/s and 400k capacity. Ready to be changed with the new power:
Entry point to the reactor core: If you press the opening button red lights flash around it. I need to upload a little video to show the atmosphere of that.
A little arcarde game box like you see them in old 90's game halls:

Top view of my current station look, I also spawned in my corvette, as you see in the background. You also see the wip of my public docking hub. The USD can be logic controlled so the docked ships get shoot out, and then the rails switch to look inwards after 5 seconds. The public dock indicating "visitors" sign gets sealed of by plex doors and the green lights turn to red next to the rail dockers, if I deactivate the dock. There will also be a black board so everyone can write on it (public modules behind the displays) and a little station guide. Maybe later on also some public med, teleporters, and first aid storage (or a storage so people can send me gifts if they enjoyed their stay :D ): Here I made some colored hull fabric, fully automated producing the colors and pulling the stuff from a central collection silo of ores:

Current look of my current main fabrication hall, with the small 2 generators and 4 small fabricators I worked with the last month until I got my new glowy reactor:

 

[JinM]

Fabricator Extension

Automated Standard Armor Factory - Now with small machinery on top of it.

I am not sure, if I like the cramped look in my hall. It kinda fits the space theme. But...well...I don't know. I just wanted to get that factory done, so I can finally spawn in pve and pvp ships regularly. Playing pve or pvp kinda sux, if you have to make half hour shopping trips to respawn your ship after a fight. So having an automated factory is kind of a neccessity for me.

Ofcourse I could build a big-ass miner with 120m long salvage arrays, but it would kind of break my immersion. I also hate, when my cargo storages overflow with stuff, and the cargo bay is only a big chunk of blocks inside a flat cube, with no rp-content at all. It has to be inside some silo or some sort of holding area. I also think about making a cargo hold, that looks like a modern warehouse, with rails on the bottom where forklifts carry around chests and pakets, and where I make really long storage racks, with like 3 levels.

Anyway, back to the fabricator. It has buttons to switch between grey, dark grey plus black armor and all armor on off production. The main armor blocks grey, d-grey and black also have a bigger storage of 1.1k instead of 0.5k. Most tedious part of the fabricator is entering the armor type production for each color, and connecting each armor to its corresponding colored hull fabric. It also has a storage, that pulls in only the ore for hardeners needed, and to it the refinery is connected. It looks kinda unspectacular, but setting it up and placing all the enhancers with right limits inside was kinda tedious. Took like 1 or 2 hours. Now each fabric has 4 enhancers, and the grey, dark grey and black one has 8.


And some actual pictures of my corvette, as the finall hull, where the top hangar bay entrance got replaced with a nice new cannon beam overdrive turret. I plan on gutting the ship and filling it with good pvp stuff, when the new power is out. I don't know. Right now it kinda works okayish. For the rp-version of the corvette I will use the top hangar bay version, as I really like it when I have a perma stealther inside my ship that I can use for scouting:

Spoiler

Oh, and I tried to make another arcade game box. But I have troubles making a realistic looking pinball game. The 5x6x4 version looks hardly like pinball, even if I put in hull blocks that resemble the pinball interiors, and the smaller version in front doesn't make you think of pinball at all. Ofcourse, the small version would work, if you place it inse a bigger game hall, then you kinda can assume what it is. But even then the visitor might have a hard time figuring out what's it supposed to be. ^^

 

[Gmodism]

Nice! only browsed thorugh this page but nice medical room, how was you one used the storage boxes in interiors like that? make them visible that is.

 

[JinM]

Nice! only browsed thorugh this page but nice medical room, how was you one used the storage boxes in interiors like that? make them visible that is.

That's a hidden feature. It works not by filling the storage. You have to place down one cargo block, and then copy one cargo block. Rotating that copied 1x1x1 selection let's you browse through all the block versions.

 

[Gmodism]

That's a hidden feature. It works not by filling the storage. You have to place down one cargo block, and then copy one cargo block. Rotating that copied 1x1x1 selection let's you browse through all the block versions.

Oh right, copy the one block and rotate it ^^
that was the thing!

 

[Batavium]

I do not often react to something based on looks but I have to say this is really starting to look very good.

Be sure to Blueprint that often!

btw neat to see my little cube is still there.

 

[JinM]

A bloddy server reset! So my base on brierie is gone. Well not gone, I ofcourse save blueprints for backups...But just like every time I am too lazy to mine the ressources, and start up with a new station. =)


Right now on Freaks I started building a cheap, small and expandable starter base. For this I made building plates in 7x7x2. Because I wanted to build just like with Playmobil castle parts. =)

playmobil castle parts - Google Search

And I mean a real starter level one base: Lvl 0 reactor, one basic factory, a few cargo blocks, one USD, one landing platform, one small hangar, and an easy to expand elevator shaft. All laid out for ships not bigger than 12x7x7. I just miss a basic staircase, to have this extension possibility too.

And by extension possiblities I mean: With the building plate pattern I can easily expand it to all directions, and it would look allways natural. There are also corner, hepta and tetra shaped wall-parts in my collection, but they start making sense at a bigger stage of the base. I allready have an expansion plan for one with 3 storeys and 4 additional rooms, when I finished the small one to a stage that it can get uploaded to the CC.

Spoiler: more pictures

With level one starter base I tried to figure out, what a good progression scale would be in Starmade. I came to the conclusion, that, right when you start with 50k credits, your first ship is not bigger than 12x7x7. Level two would be 20x20x20. =)

Problems with the building plate style: It could look cluttered pretty fast. I think a maximum of 4 storeys can be made with 7x7x2 plates. Bigger stations need bigger plates, or it looks too busy with all the details. I am allready a little bit worried about the details in the current 7x7x2 plate-set. But for now I go with it, it would be pretty tedious to find cleaner 7x7x2 plate designs.