Robo's Stuff 'n' Things

[MeRobo]

Actually noticeable Galea progress since the last time I posted about it here

 

[MeRobo]

My first set of engine templates has been updated. I started a second set of templates (hopefully finished soon) but decided that before adding more engine templates to CC I should first bring the old set up to date.

On an unrelated note, I decided to heavily rework the Galea because I was unhappy with several elements. You might (somewhat correctly) consider me an idiot for doing this, but to me it would have been a waste of a build if I were to finish it in a way that I personally don't like.
The biggest changes can be summed up as follows:

• No more "Wedge Staircases"
• No more forcefield engines
• addition of ventral white armour plates

No screenshots worth sharing though

I also did some more faction related stuff, but because I'm not sure whether any of that stuff will ever end up on CC I won't post those builds here either

 

[MeRobo]

Some recently taken images of the Galea core room, most of the stuff you can see here has been around for a while (the excessive lighting in the first screenshot is no longer around)



a look at a bit of core through one of the many top side windows. It turned out surprisingly hard to take screenshots of this room, I'd argue it's best experienced in game, but that isn't really a possibility for most of you due to heavy wip state of the ship

 

[MeRobo]

No screenshots worth sharing though

For the first time I might have screenshots worth sharing of this redesign

 

[MeRobo]

Today I won't post Galea images, no, today I'll post images of something different unfinished, however, this thing should be finished soon™. This is a small freighter meant for the currently ongoing Trident Build Initiative.
If you somehow haven't heard of it yet, you might want to check it out and join yourself.


The interior is finished, the central bits of grey are actually the outside of the interior.

 

[MeRobo]

You can now find a finished version of the ship from the previous post here.
If you just want images and don't want to click on a link, here they are

 

[MeRobo]

While awaiting the video review of the contest entries, hoping the single entry I managed to finish in time makes it into the video I got back to Galea.

As you might see, there's a lot of new grey bits, although about two thirds of them predate the aforementioned contest.

 

[MeRobo]

As you might have figured by almost a year of inactivity, this thread and the projects therein are more or less abandoned. When creating my entry for the recent community build initiative I came to realise that I no longer find much joy in building in StarMade, most of the time wishing I could just make a 3D model instead (and I'm not exactly proficient at modelling spaceships). I mostly finished the build out of a sense of obligation, considering I lobbied quite hard for "racing ship" as the topic during the polls that were used for the 1st and 2nd initiative.

Why do I post this here? Because maybe a few of you are interested in the very few finished builds I never uploaded to the community content section. From memory, that would be the Fortis, Ocis and unnamed 3rd Drone as well as the updated version of the smallest ship of my fleet contest entry, the first 2 of which were built for the Galea project. If I (or you, unspecified reader) find anything else that fits these criteria and there's interest for an upload, let me know and I'll upload those builds.
Finished in this context means that both the exterior and interior are complete, systems aren't a requirement

In case I come back to the game at some point in the future and manage to finish something, I'll let you know here.

 

[MeRobo]

A surprise to be sure but a welcome one. I helped with turrets and details on Company, Gladius Mk.5, Exodus, so I'm putting this here, might have very small contributions I forgot on some of the other projects in that pack (me contributing 5 random slabs and a corner block became a bit of an in-joke in Trident during the time these and others were built).

 

[MeRobo]

Another Trident thing, this time with so much involvement by me that I actually ended up being the one uploading it.

Yay necro-posting

 

[colonel lacu]

Yay necro-posting

There's no such thing as necro posting when the forum gets on average like 2 replies per week

 

[MeRobo]

There's no such thing as necro posting when the forum gets on average like 2 replies per week

I mean, since 2022 I only have posted in here in April, if at all. This thread is inactive even by SMD standards.

 

[MeRobo]

Yesterday I forgot my chance at an exceedingly rare non-April post. As compensation, this will have a few more details on some decisions surrounding the build. But first, here's the Wizard Class Corvette which was made for ComCardinal's escort contest.

While I had started a different build for the contest within the official time window of the contest, said build got abandoned due to features I wanted to include resulting in excessive size. Simultaneously, trying to somehow adhere to the idea of the contest resulted in lacking space in some areas. As bizarre as it might sound, attempt 1 ended up both too big and too small and was abandoned. After the decision to abandon that build, I looked at other projects as well as other games and didn't plan to partake in the contest.

Fast forward to the 28th/29th of June, after the initial deadline had already ended. While following the Spa 24 hours, I decided to play some Starmade to have an easier time to stay awake during the night time hours of the race. After some completely unrelated messing around with some thruster configurations, I decided to give the whole escort vessel thing another go.

Due to interior space issues on the abandoned 1st attempt, I decided to do this build partial interior first. I completed the core room and then built the floor for the main corridor and the airlocks, thereby having arrived at my maximum width. For the dock I felt a little experimental regarding the shape, in my opinion it worked out quite well. Next where the thrusters. They are quite an old design, originally built for a different ship which ended up using completely different thrusters instead, I had them in my templates ever since. Due to working better with the ceiling and floor heights of the core room, I placed them with their XZ (green) symmetry plane offset compared to that of the dock doors. The overall ship was built around the thrusters symmetry plane, though even the underlying structure isn't fully symmetrical (except YZ (red) plane).

With some interior in place combined with a plan for the remainder of it, as well as two major exterior parts (thrusters, dock) in place it was time to block out the overall shape of the ship. The overall idea was in place quite quickly, though the "cutout" where the AMS turrets (more on them later) live required a few iterations. Originally this was going to be "Unoriginality - The Ship". Not only was it wedge shaped (I once had it said about me that all I build are wedges) but I planned to make it a "coloured armour plates on a dark grey frame" which is admittedly something I build a lot of (hopefully some of that might show up here later on this year). While discussing the armour plate colour (they were grey at the time), I had the idea of converting the plates into parts of the frame, making the ship one big three dimensional dark grey greeble canvas. I decided to give it a try, liked it and all of a sudden the ship was no longer the most generic thing possible.

The greeble canvas is greebled all over.

Now to the AMS turrets. Technically they were finished way before the decision on plates or no plates was made, but I felt it made sense to finish the overly long paragraph on how the overall shape and tyling of the ship was arrived at. Effectively they are very heavily modified versions of the Slinger from the Trident turret pack posted earlier this year, though definitely different enough to be its own thing. I might upload it, though when and how that happens is a bit up in the air as of now (would feel a bit weird to upload such a tiny turret on its own).

The turret was fully functional before there even being a plate to keep or remove

The turret in its final form, featuring the aforementioned grey plate, though the turret in this form predates that, I just forgot to immediately take a screenshot of the finished thing.

Let's talk about interior! I have a difficult relationship with interior. On the one hand, there's parts I enjoy, such as bridges or core rooms (especially those, given how many random disembodied core rooms I have floating around somewhere). On the other hand, I find building a lot of interior bits tedious and somewhat frustrating because I often struggle to get everything I want to have into a build at a reasonable scale. Now you already know that the first finished section of this ship was the core room. Easy enough, it's a part I actively enjoy building and consider myself pretty competent at.

The core room, featuring many pipes

After leaving the core room, you'll arrive at a crossing. do you go towards the port dock and the crew quarters, or in the opposite direction to the starboard dock and the storage area? Or perhaps you want to go straight ahead to the command centre or make a stop at the (very compact) medbay on your way there.

Out of these, the crew quarters definitely are the area where I felt the constraints of building interior the most. Part of the space the storage room on the other side has is taken up by the medbay, however, even without that in the way it would be still pretty tight. In an ideal world, there'd be more bunk beds, they wouldn't be packed quite as tight and the bathroom would have both more and slightly larger shower stalls as well as other bathroom features. Oh, and the food and seating area probably would be it's own separate room (and again, larger). Despite all this, I'm quite happy with how this room with all its spacial challenges turned out. To fully experience it, you'll have to download the ship though.

Behold, the bunk bed corridor (in an unfinished state)

Not only does the corridor from the core room connect to the command centre, but so do the storage and the crew quarters. With all paths leading to that place it's inevitable that we discuss it here. It's basically a bridge without the whole window thing, featuring plenty of consoles, computers and screens. It's the heart of the ship, the place where most of the people actually doing stuff are. I like the more protected feel, though I do like a bridge.

The command centre with its console towers, console walls and (admittedly non-functional) holo-table

Besides the three already mentioned connections on the back of the command centre, there's a 4th door. It connects to a small corridor which leads us past the officer quarters (housing three officers) and the captain's quarters (housing one captain) to the final room of the ship, the cockpit. Three poor people don't get to be safe and protected in the command centre, instead they get to fly the ship and shoot at things while having a window.

These three people have seats and a window

Lastly a paragraph regarding systems. Due to the styling of the hull (and interior) the system space on this is very oddly shaped and annoying to build in. After a first test I realised that the reactor should be enlarged quite a bit. After ripping out chambers and some other systems to make space I doubled the reactor in size and went on with putting in systems. It turned out there still was plenty of empty space in strange places. If I wanted to fill that, I'd have to significantly enlarge the reactor again which I decided against in the end. The ship can do all the things it's meant to do, but it's neither as power stable as I'd like it to be nor as capable as it could be. I ended up filling the empty space with beige basic (in case you wonder why that's in the block list of the BP) to have something I can remove without causing too many issues in case I want to empty out the shell to give it better systems.

I intended to give only a little bit of extra info and ended up writing a giant wall of text, I clearly can't be trusted outside of April.

 

[colonel lacu]

rare interior-first W