Mech's Pretty Pictures

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    hey kids, been a not-signed-up lurker for a bit, decided I'd show off a little now that I've got the hang of Starmade.

    so first up, my still-sorta-WIP home base, The Rock:

    (the 'wip' part is I'm working on converting the asteroid into Station without messing up the looks too much, a long and tedious process)
    structurally, however, it's mostly complete, though I haven't got a crafting setup running on it yet (you can't see it, since it's parked a couple sectors over, but I built an ugly-as-sin Planet Cracker Salvage array to fund all this without crafting)
    so, for power-

    we have this Pylon array. the central pylon is nothing but reactors, a set of six 3x3x3 cubes stacked together. the pylon on the right is identical in size, but is 1/2 powerplant and 1/2 Capacitor. the left pylon with the turrets on it is a stack of three 3x3x3 cubes of Shield Regenerators, while the one behind it is filled with Shield Capacitors in an identical configuration.
    the turrets are lightly shielded Dual Lasers with four laser blocks each (arranged into twin 2-block cannons) and are entirely reliant on the station for power.

    to cover the other aspect, there are three of these Missile batteries, which have twin 2x2x2 missile blocks, decent shielding, and a small amount of on-board power generation and storage. (there's a third one on the very tip of the 'roid that isn't visible in this picture)- here's a closeup of the business end of those batteries:

    the big killer, though, is this baby:

    for reference, that cannon goes back into the turret housing for three blocks. it is 12x3x3. can you say PAIN?!
    it's so large it even has an interior housing:


    yeah.

    on the actual base interior, all I've added thus far is a good-sized cargo crate and the computer core:

    which has most of the station's important gubbins, like the Build block, plex undethinator, and Faction module. once I have more of them, I plan to add some additional display screens for notes and such- the one now is a 'systems readout' that's really my 'to-do' list for the base. it's got full gravity, blast doors (which I also use on my turrets to get at the AI module) fully enclosed enviroment etc- I haven't finished making a proper airlock for it quite yet, so it's still unpressurized like most of my craft, but it does okay.

    speaking of craft!


    this is a Light Tug I put together for pushing asteroids around. it's got slots for two 1x1x8 weapons (currently sporting a Repair beam and Salvage Beam) and light shields, though I wouldn't take it into combat. excellent thrust profile- it can quite comfortably push the asteroid around which The Rock is built.

    my current main ship, however, is the Black Manta, into which I've dumped all the Black Advanced Armor I could find:


    as you can see, she's got three turret mounts, currently sporting those light laser turrets and a missile battery, as well as a towhook on the tail for small things like cargo pods or turrets. she's got two cannons and two lasers, decent shielding, and a fair bit of power to throw around. future upgrades will include steath/EWAR systems to make her a proper sneeky git to run around in.
    she's got a small cockpit interior, nothing too fancy:

    that's it as far as 'nice-looking' ships go, the only other one is my Planet Cracker, which is literally just a gigantic plate of Salvage Beams (offset on the diagonals so as to have LOTS of beams rather than one Superbeam) a truly ludicrous number of reactors to power it, and some thrusters. sure, it looks like crap and dies if you even sneeze on it, but, well, Planet Cracker isn't a overly ambitious name for the damn monstrosity.
     
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    Pretty cool for just getting the hang of starmade. I'm assuming all materials are salvaged/crafted?
     
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    Pretty cool for just getting the hang of starmade. I'm assuming all materials are salvaged/crafted?
    some salvage, most bought. \\\\
    I may have abused the hell out of the fact that templates don't require the store you're buying from to actually have he components in stock to get a crapton of certain things (reactors, salvage beams, grey standard armor...) to build with.

    but when you have a ship that literally renders down an entire planet to base materials in a few minutes you can do that kind of thing.

    Edit:
    long-term, though, I'm going to be converting all the other asteroids in the sector into defense stations like this one, then building a massive freefloating shipyard complex to dock things to and-or build in. I may also add more 'roids to that defensive setup- I'm aiming for a sprawling complex of small, heavily-armed bases in a rough sphere around my main shipyard.

    my first game had a rather unfortunately placed Pirate station and I kept going like this:
     
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    @Mechworks When you says asteroid is it an actual asteroid or a station you made to look like an asteroid because if its an actual asteroid it may present problems.
     
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    @Mechworks When you says asteroid is it an actual asteroid or a station you made to look like an asteroid because if its an actual asteroid it may present problems.
    the answer is 'both.'
    I found a nice looking asteroid, build up most of the complex, then started to convert the 'roid into station, one layer at a time, which is still an ongoing process- I removed the scaffolding I'd build to assist in that conversion for these pictures, but the process is ongoing- I've barely started it, in fact, as I just finished getting the pylons together yesterday. if you look closely, you can kinda make out where I've converted 'roid into station, particularly at the bases of the missile batteries and in the first pic.
     
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    hence why both my base and my ship are armed to the teeth now. I really do pity the first idiot who tries to hit The Rock- between the missiles (which, in testing, blew apart a Pirate fighter I.. uh... acquired,) the lasers (which, while not amazing, are still irritating) and the Capital cannon that servers as a roof ornament....
     
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    so I finally looked at how many Salvage Beams Planet Cracker has.

    or, well, I did the math, anyway. the array is a rough, rectangular prism, square in two dimensions- 30x20,000x20,000, to be precise- the first layer is a checked array of 10x1x1 Salvage beams, with empty space between them. the middle layer is more of those 10x1x1x Salvage beams linked to identically shaped blocks of Capacitors. the outer layer is comprised entirely of reactors- 40,000,000,000 in total.
    wait, we aren't even near done!


    this gigantic brick is linked to the core by a single Salvage Computer and five Capacitors, in a line extending out from the center of this planet-eating behemoth. another six capacitor 'tail' goes to a pyramid-shaped lattice that contains 400 Storage Units, that then cap another 10,000 Reactors sheathed in Capacitors.

    at each corner of the primary array is a 20x20x20 block of thrusters, which barely manages to push the ridiculous thing at a snail's pace.


    what is this ridiculous, lag-prone megalith for?

    simple.

    that ridiculous megalith can render an entire planet down to nothing but blocks in about two minutes of sustained firing.

    yes, I have been basically funding my entire game by flying this thing to a planet and going OM-NOMNOMNOMNOMNOM

    edit: it might actually be bigger than it needs to be, strictly speaking, but I erred on the side of caution when I sat down and set out to build a planet-eater. I can't really tell, given the ranges and all, and how the Main Array completely obscures LOS from the cockpit, but I wasn't leaving any randomly floating blocks from the three planets I've had it eat thus far (except the first one, which was mostly to fund the construction of Planet Cracker itself, and thus 'eaten' piecemeal with frequent trips to the store to buy more lots of 500 Salvage beams and Reactors.)

    edit2: I give this information mostly because I left it sitting a couple sectors over where there used to be an ice planet and some Pirates apparently decided to shoot it up while I was building The Rock.

    I decided to just let the stupid core overheat, since I really haven't the patience to take that monstrosity apart. we really need a 'Strip all blocks' command.

    edit3: I put the Tug up if anybody wants it. doesn't come with any guns, but it can pretty much run anything you can shove into its two weapon tubes.
     
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    since I'm now plus a factory, I decided to stat building something a little more... impressive than my little tugboat and fighter.

    note: this is only a small portion of the ship. it is an existing sci-fi craft. first one to guess right gets an internet-cookie![DOUBLEPOST=1414639547,1414636035][/DOUBLEPOST]

    If you can't name this now, please turn in your Geek Card at the desk.
     
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    so I've (mostly) finished the hull, so now I'm working on the interior spaces before I start putting in the various systems.
    Main Engineering is shaping up nicely:
     
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    I prettied up my cargo barge for you:


    also the cargo pods, which are separate ships for ease-of-transfer-
     
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    so I've been prototyping something, but I'm running into an issue getting something to work. namely:

    it says my dock's too small.

    despite being almost large enough to dock two of those end-to-end.
    Halp?
    edit: for the record, the Providence shown here is completely within the bounding box of the docking area, with ~20 blocks or greater clearance in all directions.

    is it just something dumb like 'can't dock a bigger ship to a smaller ship' or something?
     

    Reilly Reese

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    Im gonna bet your docking area is long in the wrong direction.

    As in the game wants to dock your ship 90 degrees to the left/right

    I suggest turning your docking area.
     
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    so I decided to take a small break from my big project for some other things.

    *plays 'name that pokemon' music*