Woo my ship!

[Grizzly Adamz]

Alright, so, first, holy crap. You guys are insane. The first handful of ships in this category look fuckin brilliant. I've got my work cut out for me if I want to be on-par. Seriously, well-done.



Now that's out of the way, here's my ship. I'm looking for feedback and I also have a couple questions about it, if you fellows have the time & interest.

What I have:

It's the PSU, (15x15x55, focused on power generation and the gaps filled to-the-meter with power storage & shields,, plus 3 layers of blocks over it, the control hub (located on the front, inside the layers), and the primary weapons pillar. The pillar hosts 4 4x4x(60) AM cannons, 5 1x1x(60) AM cannons, 4 t-shaped d1000 batteries equivalent to 1x7x(60), and a 2x7x60 SD-BB battery.

The little widget under the pillar is the intersection between the control hub, each of the hangars, and the forward cockpits.



Here're my plans, (explained below):

White lines: Pathways & elevators, white lines border corridors that serve no other purpose at this point.

Green box: going to make a powerful salvage cannon arrangement that puts out a solid 3x3 beam, with a cockpit just above it & below my main weapons pillar.

Red: Forward cockpit- plan to switch to this if I wish to use the primary weapons with accuracy.

Grey boxes: Side-mounted hangars. I plan to use one with the largest freakin docks possible, while the other will be two-storied and host small or small & medium-sized ships. (The grey vertical line below the big yellow turret is a fuckup)

Orange: Engine. Plain and simple.

Blue: Aft cockpit- this'll be where I fly the thing from. Gives a good field of view on everything- turrets, weapons, missiles..

Yellow: Turrets! I plan to have 2-4 large turrets that fire on my locked target, with a good dozen or so smaller turrets which fire on anything, (as many as I can fit without worrying about friendly fire). There'll be a sister field on the underside.

Maroon outline: line after line of SD-KB firenforget missiles. Figure I'll angle them facing the sides, so they'll fire, clear the vessel, and find targets. I'm expecting a very impressive sight.

Black lines from forward to mid-ship: I plan to fill this in, mostly armor but I might use the space for something else as well.



The outline is a bit sparse on the profile, remembered that I wanted ~2 layers of armor over everything about halfway through drawing it.





Design feedback request!

I'm thinking I'll either put another hangar on the rear of the ship, under the engine, and put a duplicate of the top engine under that- OR I'll forgo the extra hangar & extend the engine in a V-shape starting at the lower apex (middle) of that semicircle. Thoughts?



Questions!

How worried should I be about turret friendly fire?

What's the range of motion on those things? 180*? Can they fire at a perpendicular angle?

I've got a monstrous PSU, would it be more efficient to rig up power-drains for the turrets or just saddle them with their own baby PSUs?

 

[Shophaune]

1. Turrets cannot damage their mother ship.

2. Turrets can shoot at all angles, including no-clipping through the main ship.

3. Turrets automatically draw power from the mother ship.

Also, welcome to the community!

 

[Trollerbobman]

4. Turrets need some on-board power to power their shields, they cannot use power from the mothership to do this.

 

[Grizzly Adamz]

These are answers I like!

1. So turrets are also part of the mothership? (can they hit eachother?)

2. Excellent!

3/4. Good to know for the guns, but as for powering the shield: power drain or baby PSU?



Also, many thanks, glad to be here!

 

[Shophaune]

1. No, they cannot hit eachother from what I\'ve seen.

3/4. The turrets will need a small amount of power for shielding. Don\'t try to use power drains with AI.

 

[Grizzly Adamz]

Bad idea eh? Ah, I can see where- I\'d read about them being used to siphon power from \'modular reactors\', or docked power ships---which was manually controlled. I can see why the AI might break the plan, (since sappers have their own control unit, can\'t link them to weapon computers).

Otherwise cool, should progress nicely. Trying to put together that salvage box now, before I go to mount it. Mm, trying to get all the beams to have the same strength.

 

[RedDwarfIV]

I noticed that you had massive D1000 arrays. I recommend that you break each of them into three sections - after about 20 blocks, their power increase rate goes down dramatically. Having numerous missile launchers each of 20 blocks is much more likely to cause fatal damage.

 

[Tacotown99]

and as a plus creat a large white cloud to cove your tracks if im getting the size of the gun right

 

[awesome270]

multiple missiles. U might want to make say like a cloud of missles ^ with lots of 1 block missle pods. Of course they should be connected to a different computer then the main ones.

 

[Grizzly Adamz]

And 3 sections would be very convenient; question is, will they hit the magic 400dmg number? (hardened hulls are 200hp with 50% armor right?)



-Though, so long as they\'re caught in the blast from two 200dmg missiles they\'d still be toast, and there would be a lot of missiles.

 

[Grizzly Adamz]

Running is unnecessary with those shields.

inb4 the shields aren\'t very good.





-Edit

A new question!

If I have leftover space, should I use it for shield generators or power storage?

 

[FORGE9unsc705]

That depends on how good your power is, if you can manage everything with no problems, go for shields, otherwise get more power.

 

[Grizzly Adamz]

Suppose I\'ll have to wait till the engines are in. Do shields draw power constantly, or only when they\'re recharging?

 

[FORGE9unsc705]

Only when charging, but if someone has the power to drain your shields, there really isn\'t much you can do. Unless you can out manuever them.

 

[Grizzly Adamz]

Is there a way to calculate energy consumption? Is shield/s equivalent to e/s? Engine draw?



Here, spent most of the day adding the circuitry layer to the pillar and installing that salvage array. Went with a 7x2 instead, I think each is ~40 blocks, (.067). Started bottoming out within my dimensions at ~37, so I pushed it, got an extra block for everything, pushed it again because I thought I could, got yet another, and then scraped the bottom of the barrel for one more on each. Spent two+ hours on that, heh.

-E: the actual number is 48, checked.

You\'ll also note !MORE LIGHTS!; I follow the mantra of \'make it look cool when it\'s partially destroyed\'. So it\'ll have a boring matte black crust, but break\'r open and she\'ll glitter for you.



I finished off by throwing on the outline for the hangars, which\'s next on my list & will become the circuitry layer for those walls.







-edit

Ah shoot, I just figured: I can\'t angle the missile launchers, can I? :C

 

[Capt Scragg]

Turrets can be life saving when you run into some of the massive ships out there. Dumb fire missles are ok if your prey is not moving but they miss a lot. Might want to add kb or bb missles too. If you like building try the windoom creative server.

 

[Grizzly Adamz]

Much obliged sir, will keep it in mind.



-E

Welp, had to extend the hangars to make the most of the square docking bay areas. After doing that, I didn\'t like how it was getting stubbier, so I extended the pillar by ten blocks- the salvage array was a PITA to move.

Otherwise, hung up the hangar\'s curtains & added the missile batteries. Unfortunately, it doesn\'t seem like I can change their initial direction, so they\'re all front-facing




They\'re also fickle- test-firing them reduced my initial proof of concept PSU to..nothing. Which leads me to a question...



I tried flying away from the station to do more test-firing without incuring space PD wrath, and got ambushed by pirates. Well, two pirates, and two of my PSUs. How do you turn that off/should I just move the BPs to a seperate folder?



-Also!

Is there a way to improve turning speed? I lined the missile arrays with engines, shielding & power, so I\'ve got pretty decent accelleration but my turn speed is lousy. Is that where turrets come in?

 

[ltmauve]

Yeah, there\'s really nothing you can do about turn speed, which is why you get turrets to cover for you.

 

[Grizzly Adamz]

Did a bit of work on the hangars & sealed in the corridor. As of now, it hosts 2 33x17x15s, 5 15x13x9s & 18 7x7x7s.





Btw what\'s with the weird default text when submitting pictures?







-e

Well, neutral news: trying to make a 3-plane curve is rather difficult, especially without computer assistance. However, I now know what I\'ll be stuffing the extra space with, (crew quarters!), and am considering \'hangar shields, (wings).

Here\'s the attractive angle:





Bad news: looks like I\'d have to just about double the length of the weaponry if I want a sleek profile. Here\'s the not-so-attractive view. Ought I taper the hangar shields?



I also figure I\'ll want to mount some engines in places that\'d make 3d motion realistically plausible, (so some small ones forward & aft for pivoting, some med-smalls halfway for strafing).

 

[Planr]

Those curves look kind of strange, the way they slope with a depression rather than an expression.