United Colonial Corps Shipyards and Fleet

[Spartan-089]

Hey Sven I was wondering if you wanted to team up for a collaborative build. We both value highly efficient designs and a penchant for missiles, im sure if we put both our heads together we could come up with a pretty mean ship.

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

In pure ADD fashion I performed another refit the Longsword today. I was not happy with her performance escaping gravity after landing on a planet so she greatly needed more thrust as she was below 1:1. I didn't want to sacrifice shields or power so this ended up resulting in a complete overhaul of all systems. I stripped out the entire power infrastructure and most of the shielding and I was also able to scrape out some extraneous blocks. The Longsword was one of my first ships so I was sure I could improve on it. In the end I have more power using less reactors, the ship now features more shields, power and trust than before.

I have also heavily refit the Scycle and Hammer but neither of them are up to snuff as they BOTH still need their power/shields/engines gutted.

 

[JimmyJamba]

Spoiler

Found this pic in an old album. If I recall, this guy was still going strong despite drawing the short straw. I thought it might be the Longsword but I think it's the Saber? Oh the good old days...

Here is us having a look at the damage.

Spoiler

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

Spoiler

Found this pic in an old album. If I recall, this guy was still going strong despite drawing the short straw. I thought it might be the Longsword but I think it's the Saber? Oh the good old days...

Here is us having a look at the damage.

Spoiler

That would be my Shortsword, essentially the smaller sister to the Longsword. She features a nearly identical array of turrets but since she is a smaller craft her primary armament and defenses are lower.

Also that must be me in the blue shuttle back there.

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

I took a break from refits, tutorials, and survival to do a creative build on stream, codename Turkey:

Originally the ship was called turkey because she looked like she would be a fat and ugly bird in the early planning stages. I really need to pick a new name as this ship is kind of badass. I set out with a plan in mind to build a new gunship as the Condor Gunship is not that great. A gunship more or less needs to have four or five turrets on but fitting that many effective turrets on a ship this size without it looking awkward is not an easy task. This ship also really blurs the lines between what is a corvette and gunship according to my fleet doctrine so it will be called a Heavy Gunship. Several parts of the ship does have Corvette rated armor while others do not so it really could be a light corvette or a heavy gunship. This ship was also designed to be carried by my Hammer Class Light Carrier.

Armaments:
Cc1000 Machine-guns with HE projectiles
2 Mb1000 Vertical launch missile tubes.
2 MbX Vertical launch missile tubes.
3 additional turret mounts.

The missile launchers are fixed docks so they are capable of firing independently from the rest of the ship. They are well shielded and because they both feature an MB1000 and MbX missile tube they will fire 3 slow radar missiles every cycle of the fast radar missile.

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

Progress update! Work continues, now that rails are out ships are once again being brought up to date, albeit slowly.

I've refit my new gunship with the seamless rail features. This ship is quite wonderful now, and I am much happier with her new turrets over the ones I slapped together. They're not great and they suck at punching through hardened hull but they add a little extra DPS and the four vertical missile launchers are the real beauty on this ship anyway. I'm going to have to destroy one of these ships to see how it handles the collisions as a lot of the docked parts are intertwined now and not just a big cube sitting in it. Most of the shields that were docked have now been moved to the main ship but the docked launchers do have some of their own shields.
[DOUBLEPOST=1431578561,1431575712][/DOUBLEPOST]I've also finally sorted out the issues with my Longsword.

These are all the phantom connections to the core. Any logic block or computer that is connected shows up in the weapons tab but cannot be accessed. The ship in this state is below my standards so even though I've been wanting to release an update for this ship I have been unable to.

What I had to do to solve this error was copy the entire ship, 84x49x36 containing more block types than one can hold in their inventory. Once I stripped out easy to replace blocks that would take up to much space in my inventory I copied it, pasted it onto a new core off center so the phantom blocks would be in empty space and therefore not connect. Then I had to copy the ship a second time and paste it onto a new core with the core in the proper position.

 

[Krougal]

Progress update! Work continues, now that rails are out ships are once again being brought up to date, albeit slowly.

I've refit my new gunship with the seamless rail features. This ship is quite wonderful now, and I am much happier with her new turrets over the ones I slapped together. They're not great and they suck at punching through hardened hull but they add a little extra DPS and the four vertical missile launchers are the real beauty on this ship anyway. I'm going to have to destroy one of these ships to see how it handles the collisions as a lot of the docked parts are intertwined now and not just a big cube sitting in it. Most of the shields that were docked have now been moved to the main ship but the docked launchers do have some of their own shields.
[DOUBLEPOST=1431578561,1431575712][/DOUBLEPOST]I've also finally sorted out the issues with my Longsword.

These are all the phantom connections to the core. Any logic block or computer that is connected shows up in the weapons tab but cannot be accessed. The ship in this state is below my standards so even though I've been wanting to release an update for this ship I have been unable to.

What I had to do to solve this error was copy the entire ship, 84x49x36 containing more block types than one can hold in their inventory. Once I stripped out easy to replace blocks that would take up to much space in my inventory I copied it, pasted it onto a new core off center so the phantom blocks would be in empty space and therefore not connect. Then I had to copy the ship a second time and paste it onto a new core with the core in the proper position.

Oh, I found a much easier way to fix that. Delete the logic.smbpl file from the ship folder. You have to reconnect everything but it works like a champ.

I like the Turkey, it's ugly, but it's A-10 ugly :D

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

Oh, I found a much easier way to fix that. Delete the logic.smbpl file from the ship folder. You have to reconnect everything but it works like a champ.

I like the Turkey, it's ugly, but it's A-10 ugly :D

I have a few other ships that are infected but not as bad, I'll have to remember that. I'm still looking for a new name for the Turkey... I don't like turkey anymore.

 

[Tacotown99]

as for the turkey i think Hellfire M.L.M.S. would work, considering its multiple silos

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

as for the turkey i think Hellfire M.L.M.S. would work, considering its multiple silos

Not a bad nick name but for classification sake I'm sticking to FTR = BIRD. Jacemachine suggested Peregrine which is a type of falcon so I will be going with that.

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

New update means new refits. The Lark MK2 is the first to have her go with the new HP system in mind.

I've increased the nose of the ship so she doesn't have that old stumpy front anymore. The ugly camera behind glass (which means I cannot see missiles) has been replaced with AN ACTUAL COCKPIT. Core location and exposure no longer matters so that's plastered front and center so getting in it is easy and you can still see if you loose the camera. Over all this version has more power and thrust, although most of the power is exposed in the wings but there is no way around that. The old MK2 would bleed power so bad in combat I needed to do something about it. Her shield strength has been adjusted (-8 capacitors +1 recharger) in favor to make room for some more missiles and of course the cockpit. Overall she is an RP style fighter so having an actual cockpit is a little more important than those extra 8 capacitators. The slight increase in missile capabilities should make her a better fighter overall, although she does need to go through some combat paces.

This also more or less invalidates anybody who uses the "a fighter must have a cockpit to be a fighter" argument when asked why their fighters are the size of a corvette.

I know I know anybody can call their ships whatever they want but distinctively large "fighters" is still a pet peeve of mine.

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

Been forever since an update... I did some tweaking to the Longsword and subsequent combat runs. I gave her a shiny new artillery piece that I am MUCH happier with, it may not perform as well as the first rail turret I gave her but it is significantly better looking. It doesn't have an ugly visible seem and it sits one meter lower and thus looks better on the ship. I also did a second refit on my standard auto-cannons. This version can actually look down slightly and you would be surprised how much that helps.

I've also finally decided to bite the bullet and strip out the old missiles, they suck since the latest patches, and install an AI controlled array. The old missiles were always such a power hog, now I can only fire 1 out of three missiles at once, and they took too long to lock on, fire a volley, wait for power to recover and fire the second volley. Sure over all the ship is less effective but it's fun again. This is the first time in a while I had fun doing combat trials. The missiles gave it just that extra edge to wear down the AHP of the target ships as my auto-cannons and rail-guns ripped holes in the targets.

I do need to do something about those turret rumps though... they look a little to flat.

 

[Panpiper]

This also more or less invalidates anybody who uses the "a fighter must have a cockpit to be a fighter" argument when asked why their fighters are the size of a corvette.

I know I know anybody can call their ships whatever they want but distinctively large "fighters" is still a pet peeve of mine.

I'm curious Sven, have you ever written down your notions of how you would classify ships, such as the way I did?

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

I'm curious Sven, have you ever written down your notions of how you would classify ships, such as the way I did?

http://starmadedock.net/threads/ucs-fleet-doctrine.464/

I really need to add/update to it.

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

I think this is will be the final design of my standard auto-cannon. I made it a little longer to give the back some negative space and that upped the damage a little. Of course it has next to nothing for shields and power so it will rely on the mother-ship. Next step is to create a self sufficient auto-cannon I am happy with. I really can't wait to fit some of these on the Dagger and Shortsword for some fun, hopefully the Dagger can handle the drain.

I also tackled the old iconic 15-5s and slapped two on the bottom of the Scycle... Okay maybe not iconic but these were the first artillery pieces I designed and were still a favorite of mine up until the turret patch. I need to come up with new turret naming scheme and I finally have an idea now that I built enough turrets but I will probably always call these big guys 15-5. I'm really happy with how the articulation turned out and they are actually more powerful than the original design, of course that does mean they are larger which is okay as they are not restricted by the old box system. I'm not 100% pleased with the shell yet so I will have to go back and give that another pass, or perhaps a complete redesign... I tried to mimic the original as much as possible while expanding them for the new system.