Liquid Systems Nano Yard (LSNY)

[Loadout]

So there is a category 4 hurricane headed into the Florida area. I just so happen to live in Florida. So I figured it would be best to update you all with my most up to date works as I may not have internet for some time in the coming weeks.

Sorted by Project;

Atoll - Finished. Requires photos and uploading to Community Content
Ocean - still on hold. No work since my last post on it
Forest - Same as Ocean

Strike Carrier - No name for this one yet. I am working on it today while I have the time. This guy is split in two parts. Top is the carrier, bottom is the destroyer. The current piece I'm working on is the bottom.

Fleet carrier - Still no name on this either. It's been paused for now until I finish the strike carrier. Major reason for this is I'm altering the entire recovery system to use my new fish hook recovery setup. It will enable the same launch and recovery mechanism I have already but it's vastly more space efficient. Which facilitates a redesign of the launcher, that's basically all it is right now anyways.

Kabuto RHO2 - Finished. Requires new photos and uploading to Community Content
Kuwaga - Update on the horizon. It's going to change pretty drastically. I'll post more news on it whenever I get the chance.
Minor updates planned for my other drones as well. Mostly power but some shield updates.

 

[Gasboy]

Stay safe, dude. Come back when it is safe and let us know how you are.

 

[Loadout]

So it would seem my post from Tuesday never took... huh.. alright then..

Made it safe and sound back from the west coast. Everything here is intact and there's only a few shingles missing so nothing major. A water mane did break in front of the drive way but it was more like a leak instead of a real break. They patched it up yesterday morning so it should be all set for now.

As for updates on ships I had quite a bit of free time being stuck on the west coast without opportunity to work. So I did a number of things as detailed below.

• Made a cover for my old launch tubes. They were a bit ugly cause nothing would actually sit on top of them they were just open to whatever. The design was based on the Atoll's hatch covers, the major difference is this one is angled at 45 degrees. It adds a bit more room to the inside of the hangar and it feels less bland.
  
  
  
  
  New doors!
  
  
  
  Hangar setup to match!
  
  
• Bug squashing! I recently went over the Atoll and found a few small logic bugs. These have been exterminated, the ship is officially ready for release. Now I just need to pull everything together and make a template for it.
  
  
• The Mercury project is being revived. It was really ugly the first time around and the new ship is scrapping that layout altogether. I am renaming it as i'm moving towards cloud themes for my industry/civil ships. The exact name yet is still up in the air.
  
  
• Made an automatic scanner unit. Looks like a small radar bar. Works quite nicely too.
  
  
• Everything else is on hold. Seriously on hold. It's been forever since I worked on the Ocean. I do have some inspiration for the bow at least though.
  
  In the coming weeks I'm hoping to get back off my laptop and onto the main computer (which was covered in junk but not any more). In doing so I'm going to move over the Atoll and then enlarge the bow of that ship to fit the relative dimensions of the Ocean. This will keep a similar shape across all my large vessels. Adding uniformity and cleanliness across the designs. Which ties into the next point.
  
  
• Uniformity of design. I'm getting tired of having to remake and redesign absolutely everything from square 1 on every new ship I make. I have a large selection of prefabs for interiors and even some exteriors but it's insanely hard to make a prefab to fit every need for exteriors. More so than an interior as consoles can be fit just about anywhere, but large plates need to be measured.
  
  Thus I am instead of prefabs going to use existing ships to simply copy/pasta onto larger ones or smaller ones and then trim to fit. This is exactly what I did with the Atoll and the time to create that based off the Glade was basically a week instead of 8 months. That doesn't mean I'm going to scrap cool new stuff at all though! Merely I am going to be using more bits that work already to fill the gaps in my bigger ships. This will hopefully create a sense of uniformity.
  
  This will start with the new mercury exploration ship. After I finish that I will move to the other comp, and continue with the Ocean and if I ever get to it the Forest, the Strike carrier, and that other destroyer thing I was going to build but am probably going to scrap and use the Atoll in place of. :p
  
  After thought: it would be wonderful to extend this to drones as well, however I don't feel I could reasonably do that at this time or ever. They're a bit too small to fit the same bow shape. But I could still give it a shot.
  
  TLDR: If every ship is made by the same company then they should at least look like they were. That's what I'm aiming to do now.
  

 

[Loadout]

Took a break for two weeks and just recently came back into Starmade. I'm currently making progress on the mercury update code-named "Nebula". The ships upper half is nearly complete now with large portions having been designed and attached to the prototype.

I've been fiddling around with hangar doorways, mainly because rotating doors seem to break haphazardly and I would prefer my creations to be reliable at least 99.99% of the time. That said these will probably be replaced with forcefields as those are 100% reliable compared to rotators.

I started this project weeks ago with this...

Just a basic outline of the general shape. Now it's becoming much more filled in with a lot more work having been done on the top of the ship.

Somewhere along the way I decided that a back fin would be needed to balance out the aft section of the ship, otherwise it would just sort of end abruptly. The fin allows it to trail off a bit first and provide some needed detail in the profile view.

As you can see the top section has both launch and recovery for 4 drones. These are mainly just anti-raider measures to keep them off the main ship. As an exploration vessel they should be more than sufficient to erase any nuisance pirates.

The bottom is where i'm drawing a blank. Literally. I have a few shapes in mind but otherwise no noticeable function is being performed on the bottom half of the vessel. I'm thinking of including salvage drones as well which should give it some functionality.

More work will be done on this tomorrow as well so I will hopefully be back with more news.

 

[Loadout]

Phew that was a TON of work. But this ship, the Nebula, is nearing completion. I have to say it's been a real challenge trying to mix both a smooth military cleanliness and a rough and dirty industrial onto the same ship. However I feel at this point it looks pretty freaking awesome. But enough of me talking, enjoy the pics!

Spoiler: Latest Nebula Pics!

Front profile has changed quite a bit. While the top feels heavy and solid the bottom feels very active.

The cutouts help accentuate the engines hiding slightly beneath.

Launch pads for new Scrap Fleas!

Loads of places to hide storage or systems.

Tons of thrust included to help move a fully loaded ship

This brings me to the next topic a new Scrap Flea has been designed. I completely dropped the shields on this little guy. By doing so I more than doubled the carry capacity, likewise doubled the thrust, and made the ship smoother overall. It's now a little sleeker and the shapes are a bit easier to see. Overall a great update to the little guy, and it works very well as a salvage drone.

In creating the launch pad for this as well I got an entirely new design idea for the Prometheus mk2 which has been on the back burner for a very long time namely for this reason. I can now safely say I have a structure to work with and make the next Prometheus a drone carrying salvage fleet in itself.

 

[Loadout]

So was working a bit on the Nebula's launch/recover mechanism this morning. It's always bothered me that buttons regarding rotators will sometimes glitch out, take a nap, and become unusable. Meaning you have to replace the buttons every so often in order to keep rotators working properly.

Well I find a way around that in this instance. While not moving the door itself I can use a more reliable method of opening and closing. End result, door looks nearly identical, if not a little bit cooler, and never bugs out. This also saves me about 50% of the logic blocks I was using also, making it smoother overall.

Closed!

Open!

By just using a few wireless blocks I can make a small number of doors not have to worry about opening/closing. For very large numbers though I encounter a similar issue, I feel as though I may have to give up on rotating doors for some larger projects due to most methods having some sort of bug in them.

That being said I now have to redesign the strike hangar doors to move on regular rails to avoid this issue. I had thought of making all the doors just be one giant door but that in itself presents other issues as well. Such as, no delayed launch without some odd door timing mechanics.

 

[Loadout]

Working some more on the Nebula this morning, finally figured out what to do with the back end of the ship.

The answer is, Radiators. They look neat, fit well with the theme and generally can't go wrong wherever they may be. Now all I need to do is fill out the systems, and put it up on cc. More plans to fix little things are in line but I'd rather have it up for people to play around with and tell me what's wrong than just try to tweak it forever.

As is the ship is only really missing the following few items;

• some side turrets to help fight off pirates.
• cargo storage setup for the salvage drones
• systems - no power, scanners, or jump drive, but those prefab thrusters are filled with just that, THRUST.
• Teeny bit of logic for the scanners when I get around to attaching that prefab.

 

[Loadout]

I'm not dead yet...

Been a while since my last post so I've been building up some things to actually say. The following is categorized by project to sort of make it slightly kinda almost maybe a little easier to read.

Nebula

Done. And with turrets now too!


Ocean

Tons of work has been done here, actually where the majority of work has gone really. Plenty of photos below including;

• New engineering bay
• New core room
• New elevator shaft
• A new docking area that houses 6 personal armored suits
• The hangar was revamped
• There's an actual entry to the hangar for the Palmetto with airlock as well
• The hallways got a few minor revisions to make them easier on the eyes
• The living quarters were altered just slightly to merge more uniformly with the hallways
• The bridge was redone and taken from the Nebula
• A new set of drone hangars has been built, needs logic but that's easy to setup. Houses 40 Kabuto size Drones
• There is a bow to ship, WIP and still needs plenty of it, it's actually a scaled up version of the bow on the Atoll
• There is also thrusters in the aft section, also WIP and needs slightly less work than the bow
• There is a fully detailed cargo bay now!

There are also plans being in motion for the following

• Add main turrets as well as secondary turrets and AMS
• Also preparing to add external hull plating
• Connection points for both the bow and thrusters so they can be finished and then attached
• Logic for the hangars
• Hangar doors

Spoiler: Engineering

Spoiler: Hangar Palmetto

Spoiler: Cargo Bay

Spoiler: Core Room

Spoiler: Exterior Shots

To be continued...

 

[Loadout]

Been working on the Prometheus update lately. No pics as of yet but I will most likely be doing a before/after set of photos to showcase the major changes, of which there are many. So as for a list of things that I'm updating it is as follows;

• redesigned interior across much of the ship including lots of new viewing areas
• hallways - the previous ones were hastily built so they needed work
• cargo bay
• core room
• no more anti-personnel turret
• 2 new anti-pirate turrets + some ams turrets too
• altered main landing pad to accommodate the larger palmetto
• new landing pads for the scrap fleas that will accompany the ship.
• some reworked minor details
• # of doors has been cut in half - it's easier to use one standardized door frame now
• some moving parts never actually moved, so they are gone now.

Most of the above changes are already implemented, the ones highlighted in Red are WIP.

Once this is done I will hopefully have figured out what to do with the Ocean's bow and stern. The major hangups there are getting those two parts attached to the non-existent (yet) hull.

 

[Loadout]

So it's back to the Strike Carrier after some creative input was received. This re-envisioning carries 10 drones in 2 cartridges, mounts a large fixed barrel weapon and also has several turrets. Optionally the cartridges can be swapped out for a similar size unit which has pop-up turrets.
Guesstimated mass is floating around 8k.

More pics to come once I've gotten around to greebling. And yes I've paused both the prometheus and the ocean to work on this, however I need to get the idea out there as once again, brickwalls on both of the other designs.

In particular the walls I've hit are..
Ocean - Nose and tail, no idea how to connect these bits.
Ocean - Hull shape, still up in the air about where I'm going with it. Will the new cartridges make an appearance here? idk yet.
Prometheus - designing the landing pads for the Scrap Fleas. I'd like a reasonably large number, but at the same time, there are clearance issues, with that.

 

[Loadout]

So its been a while... tons of things have been worked on so I'll try to sum it up quickly.

Ocean - not much here, was working on the nose a bit and came up with some "eyes" that look nice. Otherwise I'm going to completely remove the hangar and go with a more standardized hangar design.

Prometheus - rebuilt the walkways entirely. They are now completely enclosed. The main core area was also redone to make it look much better. It uses a new room that is essentially the same as the new Ocean. I also copied over the cargo bay from the Ocean which is much nicer over all.

Reef - This is where most of my efforts have been focused that and the new hangar I made. This one has started to really take shape over the last few weeks. I decided I'm going to make it out of 9x9x9 cubes at first and then proceed to add plating and systems surrounding those cubes. Eventually hollowing out the interior to make way for other things like more systems or just walkways and things.

Dimensions so far are shaping up to be around 270 in length. Around 100 tall, and about ~50 or so wide. Overall it's a pretty sizable ship, I have had some reservations regarding this however in the end size is just a number.

Spoiler: Reef Pics

The final mini I settled with.

Present framework I have setup so far. It's only about the front half or so of the ship, more will be added on later today.

These are engines I was toying around with, perhaps thinking I will attach them to the reef and maybe other ships as well.

A shield bit I was hoping to use as spaced armor plating.

This ship has undergone a TON of changes and redesigns over the last couple of weeks.

New Hangar - More hangars, you'd think I'd get tired of making new ones all the time but this one was designed with a specific goal in mind. Minimalism. I wanted a hangar that took up as little space as possible with a rack to match. Meaning ideally the rack would take as little space as possible as well. Taking both of those into mind I came up with a design that forces the rack to launch the drones instead of the hangar. Doing it this way makes recovery next to impossible, however I have come to the conclusion after months of testing that it is largely more effective to save launch/recover techniques for bigger ships, such as docked corvettes or cargo ships.The results are below...

Spoiler: Hangar pics

In the picture you can see I skipped largely on recovery to save space. I also connected a timer circuit to the rack itself, several seconds after the rack is deployed the drones will deploy in groups of 3. Given how close they are everything has a tendency to go flying about wildly, which actually helps with deployment believe it or not.

That is what I have for you all so far, more to come later on.

 

[Gasboy]

That's a big mini. XD

 

[Loadout]

That's a big mini. XD

Most of those didn't stay minis. I got about half way through then suddenly decided I couldn't possibly make it work. So I dumped them in favor of something else, I went through about 18 different designs. Only a few survived though, those that did I'll probably recycle for something else. x)

 

[Gasboy]

Most of those didn't stay minis. I got about half way through then suddenly decided I couldn't possibly make it work. So I dumped them in favor of something else, I went through about 18 different designs. Only a few survived though, those that did I'll probably recycle for something else. x)

Well it's enough for me to consider building minis first before starting on a new ship.

 

[Loadout]

Using the Same idea as the Reef project I have begun laying out the framework for my next most ridiculous creation. I call it Project Herakles...

This mini is about 12 x 20 x 5... which is 1:45 scale!

The full size ship will be somewhere around 900+ blocks tall, 200+ wide and about 500-ish long. By far the most massive ship I have ever created thus far. Block for block I have every intention of this ship becoming my personal titan. With similar block potential to Keptick 's charon.

Stats remain to be seen at this point, however it will be monstrous. Plus it is probably the only titan class that is vertical or at least that I've seen thus far. =)

 

[Gasboy]

Wowsers.

 

[Loadout]

Update:

Working on the Heracles, still no idea which version of that name I'm going for. There will be a latin inscription on it, so I was thinking of taking the latin Hercules, but then the greek versions look a bit cooler imo. So idk yet. =P

Finished the cubiform outline. Starting to add panels and also work on wedges at this point. Thankfully I made prefab shapes to help fill them in, though I'm starting to wish I'd filled in more of the wedge shape instead of just the angle. and an extra armor layer. In any event the outer shape is beginning to really take shape now.

 

[Loadout]

Update:

So it's been 6 months since I last updated you all on the status of.. well, anything. Rest assured the factories have been churning out armor plates, and midnight-doom hamsters at a regular pace. That being said without the incoming power update, weapons, systems, and most vital bits of the ship remain empty.

In fact I've hollowed out versions of all my drones, the Ocean which had some power to it, and the turrets I've been building for the Herakles. Without power they're just shells obviously but most have a tiny thruster stick to move about.

Oh also the Prometheus mk2 has had it's power system removed. I was playing with the new rail-unloading blocks on it and have had some set backs on that. I decided to keep the swinging beam on the bottom of the ship as it gives a bit more versatility. Otherwise the ship includes several docking stations and a newer cargo hold to store all the goodies it will harvest.

So the Prometheus mk2 is going to carry somewhere around 12 Scrap fleas, which will harvest and then use the unloading rails to store their goods on board. Along with the current beam arm, also equipped with unloading rails, it makes the ship quite useful. I'd love to eventually get around to making an even larger armored version, something about the size of the Krom salvager. But that is many moons away, and will not happen in the foreseeable decade or at least until the power update permits it.

I have some photos taken of the Herakles cannons as well as the body itself. The body was filled out a little bit more but only a small bit. The cannons are a scratch creation that took some time to come up with. They actually read plus ultra on the sides, which roughly means "further beyond" in Latin. The reference being to the Pillars of Hercules. In the historic context there were 2 but I really can't make 2 guns big enough to fit this ship. I mean I could go all Charon mega turret on them but I didn't feel it would be appropriate.

I'll get some pics up in a few days when I get a chance.

In other news I did some minor work on the Ocean, most of my hangups revolve around the hangar section at this point. What size it should be, what shape it should be, and of course where the hell I'm going to fit it onto the vessel itself. I've been struggling with this ship for a long time now and really haven't come to any conclusions on what the outer hull should look like. Hence most of the issues I've had with it... really all the issues actually. Meh, I'm going to have to decide eventually.

More to come later...

 

[Loadout]

Feels like forever has passed me by. Not much to report besides a few quirks here and there.

Finally got some more photos of the Herakles taken...

Spoiler

These shots show off one of the turret cannons. There will be plenty of these. I was planning on grouping them into pairs and then mounting about 12 (pairs) of them across the entire ship. Each cannon is about 60 blocks long and around 20 tall only around 15 or so wide though. Each of them should pack one hell of a punch though when filled up.

The inner armor panels have been filled in. These are not final though! they are just the Inside layer of armor. Another layer is planned to go on top of these plates to provide the finished appearance. There is also some minor shape work going on here to help bring together the forms.

With the engine update I am planning on placing most of the reactors in the top Hammer shape. It will likely become 80% reactor. I hope I can add enough stabilizers to make it work though as it's going to be huuuuuuuge.

Did a teeny bit of work on the Ocean as well...

Spoiler

Replacing the Bow...

I wasn't happy with the bow shapes, or really any shapes at all so I decided to incorporate the cannons from the Herakles to tie them together. I'll be adding a few Herakles turrets as well probably just two though as they'll be massive.

Since I have no idea what the hell is going to happen to my drones post engine update I've decided to make a hollow "carriage" that will eventually fit the launch mechanism/hangar. Seeing as it's just a hollow space I can safely build around it and leave that area free for future changes whenever they roll out.

The space itself is 45 x 45 x 90. Right now it's free floating but once I move a few things around it'll get glued down.

Will also be adding several of these onto the Herakles to denote dedicated Hangar Space. I also had at one point decided on what I was going to write on the hull in latin. Something about fratres oileum, a short poem about brothers of oil and steel.. now I have to figure out where I wrote it down...

Post script: Found it! was hiding on my phone. With a rough translation as well from google...

Fratres sacrum oleum
Vade venatores feram
Sanguis pro ferro
sacrificium pro victoria

basically...
[Oh] Brothers of Sacred Oil
Go forth wild hunters!
Blood for Steel
[your] sacrifice for victory

More thoughts on the Ocean.

The more I think about docking the Ocean the more I feel like it would be a waste of time. It's such a big ship that I doubt most stations will ever be able to fit it on one of their ports. This has led me to a few conclusions...

• External airlock does not need a docking port
• Some sort of shuttle craft will be needed to ferry players to/from stations and the ship
• A dock for said shuttle obviously - the current hangar is unlikely to be sufficient as it's rather boring to look at.
• Because of the new dock a new wing of the interior must be added and an older wing or two is likely to be removed in the process. - cause of this a lot of stuff that current has an exterior face will likely be removed. This includes the living quarters and the present airlock.

As for what shuttle I'll be using I would love to recycle a ship such as the Cricket or the Palmetto. I'm thinking about altering one of their versions to have side docking and a few extra docking ports to make it easier to attach to the Ocean.

For instance having a docking port on the sides as well as the bottom and removing the front ingress/egress in favor of sliding side doors. Cause we need a Chevy Astro (Minivan) in Space!

More will come hopefully before Christmas time. I'm starting a new job that is much closer to home so I should, probably, be able to play more in the coming months. Yay for no more 60 hour work weeks!

 

[Loadout]

Was working on the Palmetto tonight. Decided I wanted to revisit the drop ship theme...

Looks the same riiiight?

but it's not! :P

crouching rails, hidden drop pod, hurr hurr.

Complete with functional indicator lights!

New cargo area as well!

With a nap time feature and a bed too.

cargo units are the same as in the ocean and new prometheus too. Recycling at it's best


Upon further reflection I don't feel the Pod is good enough. I'm thinking I'll try to re-purpose a drone for minor planetary surveying. Like I did with the Flea, except probably one of my larger drones like the JuGa.

That being said it's late so I'm off to bed...

get it? haha. Yeah I need sleep now.