.... And how much is this grand escapade on steam right now?
Space Engineers
- Thread starter GasBandit
- Start date
GasBandit
Staff member
$20. With the caveat that this is a VERY alpha, early access title. There's a lot of shit in it that be broke, y'all.
GasBandit
Staff member
I just kinda fell into it naturally. Starting on a regular server, On my way to the asteroids I came across the wreckage of other ships and bases along the way, and scavenged what I needed off of them in order to get the rudiments of my own base going. Then I realized that I'd managed to get resources from scavenging much faster than I would have if I'd have had to do the usual slow-start hand drilling etc... so I continued. Once I exhausted all the derelicts in my area... the next logical choice was to start taking what I needed from my neighbors.
I was a little ways down that path when I met Crow, who came upon me grinding down some guy's base and thought it was MY base (and I was just some mark to be robbed) so he attacked. As the gatling rounds spanged off the station deck around me, I sprinted to my ship and fired it up, then corkscrewed my way into open space, dodging most of the fire but losing a maneuvering thruster in the process. I kept jinking and weaving until he ran out of ammo, but even then he didn't seem to want to give up the chase. I didn't want to lead a hostile player back to my base, so instead I yanked a hard 180 and accelerated to ramming speed.
Well, it sounds good, but I was in a small, lightly armored scouting cargo shuttle and he'd built a heavily armored fighter with a grinder on the nosecone (along with 6 gatling cannons). When we collided my shuttle basically vaporized and he scuffed his paint. There was a jocular trading of nyah-nyahs after that, at which point the conversation revealed to me that he was not the owner of the station come back to defend but rather a pirate... and revealed to him that I was not a bambi building his first vulnerable station but rather a pirate... and he offered to team up with me. That server went down soon, but he told me about the one where we play now... and that's how I joined the Dusty Crow Pirate Federation. Since moving servers I've destroyed/sacked at least 20 bases and 7 ships, and it's a blast.
So today I decided to try my hands at my first large ship. I basically scaled up my fighter design, took some ideas from Gas, and threw in a few of my own. Here's the result. Mind you, this has a bit of damage as I collided with the asteroid and stripped a few parts. Total tonnage: 2,750,000 kgs.
On the rear I added lots of large thrusters and a few small ones where I could stick them. This thing accelerates at a decent clip now, considering it's size. A bit slower than my fighter but not bad. 4 large, 7 small going forward on this one. Two large in the front for deceleration.
The front has 5 large missile pods. The cockpit is the small fighter type because I wanted some accuracy with the rockets. I put a sheet of glass in front of it for some extra protection. 16 Gatling turrets for protection
Rear Interior. Large container means plenty of ammo storage and it connects to a large generator in the rear. Standard med-bay. Entrance door is on the roof of this room.
Two small generators tied into my network via the rocket launchers and the conveyors. After this, I positively crammed as many gyroscopes inside as I could. I need to add more into the pontoons because it turns like a slug.
It can't do everything Gas'es ship can, but it's probably better offensively an definitely quicker. It needs more thrusters on the sides and top though to give it the agility I want.
Also, AND THIS IS VITAL: Always make sure your base is set to your ownership when you start in creative. If you don't, then your gat turrets will wreck your platform.
On the rear I added lots of large thrusters and a few small ones where I could stick them. This thing accelerates at a decent clip now, considering it's size. A bit slower than my fighter but not bad. 4 large, 7 small going forward on this one. Two large in the front for deceleration.
The front has 5 large missile pods. The cockpit is the small fighter type because I wanted some accuracy with the rockets. I put a sheet of glass in front of it for some extra protection. 16 Gatling turrets for protection
Rear Interior. Large container means plenty of ammo storage and it connects to a large generator in the rear. Standard med-bay. Entrance door is on the roof of this room.
Two small generators tied into my network via the rocket launchers and the conveyors. After this, I positively crammed as many gyroscopes inside as I could. I need to add more into the pontoons because it turns like a slug.
It can't do everything Gas'es ship can, but it's probably better offensively an definitely quicker. It needs more thrusters on the sides and top though to give it the agility I want.
Also, AND THIS IS VITAL: Always make sure your base is set to your ownership when you start in creative. If you don't, then your gat turrets will wreck your platform.
GasBandit
Staff member
I only have a couple suggestions, the first being take out the large cargo containers and fill the same space with 27 small containers instead. They have a better space/capacity ratio actually.
Small cargo container (Realistic): 15,625 L, takes 1 space
Large Cargo container (Realistic): 125,000 L, takes 27 spaces. 125,000/27 = 4629.63 L per block. That's less than 1/3rd as good.
This also lets you better form-fit your cargo carrying to whatever cavities you have available inside your hull, instead of being locked into a 3x3x3 block space for a large container.
I would be very surprised if 2 small generators will be enough to power all those large engines under heavy pursuit/escape maneuvering. In my experience, it generally takes ~3 per large thruster, plus or minus depending on how many smalls you also use.
As I discovered, only 1 large rocket launcher is needed. It fires 3-4 rockets per second, and currently gatling turrets on missile defense are stupidly easy to overwhelm. using multiple launchers just makes aiming more problematic, and if they're side by side by side and you shoot at your target on an angle, if the lefthandmost missile impacts the target first, its explosion will destroy the other missiles in flight without detonating them.
Cockpit type is entirely personal choice. Cockpit 1 (the enclosed "fighter" cockpit type) uses the most materials to build but adds extra protection vs bullet weapons (Assault rifles do zero damage to the cockpit glass, and it resists gatling cannon fire for several seconds pretty well). Myself, I generally keep my helm far enough inside to not worry so much about that, so I use Cockpit 3, and usually put a couple sheets of glass in front of it in the hull, so that I can see out in first person to precision-aim the rockets.
You actually don't need a "conveyor" block anywhere in your conveyor network to make the tubes function, and if you mean to haul lots of stuff, I can't see a reason not to use small cargo containers wherever you might have a conveyor block. The only possible drawback is enemy turrets WILL target cargo containers, but WON'T target conveyor blocks.
As for "can't do everything Gas's can," the only thing my ship has that yours doesn't, I think, is a refinery and assembler. Oh, and interior antipersonnel defense turrets to repel boarders. But that's it. But my ship has to be a de facto mobile base, not just an attack ship, and I've made tradeoffs to that effect.
Small cargo container (Realistic): 15,625 L, takes 1 space
Large Cargo container (Realistic): 125,000 L, takes 27 spaces. 125,000/27 = 4629.63 L per block. That's less than 1/3rd as good.
This also lets you better form-fit your cargo carrying to whatever cavities you have available inside your hull, instead of being locked into a 3x3x3 block space for a large container.
I would be very surprised if 2 small generators will be enough to power all those large engines under heavy pursuit/escape maneuvering. In my experience, it generally takes ~3 per large thruster, plus or minus depending on how many smalls you also use.
As I discovered, only 1 large rocket launcher is needed. It fires 3-4 rockets per second, and currently gatling turrets on missile defense are stupidly easy to overwhelm. using multiple launchers just makes aiming more problematic, and if they're side by side by side and you shoot at your target on an angle, if the lefthandmost missile impacts the target first, its explosion will destroy the other missiles in flight without detonating them.
Cockpit type is entirely personal choice. Cockpit 1 (the enclosed "fighter" cockpit type) uses the most materials to build but adds extra protection vs bullet weapons (Assault rifles do zero damage to the cockpit glass, and it resists gatling cannon fire for several seconds pretty well). Myself, I generally keep my helm far enough inside to not worry so much about that, so I use Cockpit 3, and usually put a couple sheets of glass in front of it in the hull, so that I can see out in first person to precision-aim the rockets.
You actually don't need a "conveyor" block anywhere in your conveyor network to make the tubes function, and if you mean to haul lots of stuff, I can't see a reason not to use small cargo containers wherever you might have a conveyor block. The only possible drawback is enemy turrets WILL target cargo containers, but WON'T target conveyor blocks.
As for "can't do everything Gas's can," the only thing my ship has that yours doesn't, I think, is a refinery and assembler. Oh, and interior antipersonnel defense turrets to repel boarders. But that's it. But my ship has to be a de facto mobile base, not just an attack ship, and I've made tradeoffs to that effect.
Is this due to some sort of interaction between the inertial dampers and the thrusters?
Also, I have to wonder how useful playing KSP is prior to playing this.
--Patrick
I didn't know that small containers were an option on large ships. I know Medium weren't. I might look into that. Right now the interior space is 11x3x3 but 6 of that is the large gen and the large container.
I have a large generator in the back, behind the large container. If anything, my power supply is excessive as I don't even hit 20% with all guns firing and going full speed. But if we got energy weapons, it would probably only JUST be enough.
I was using the conveyor blocks because I didn't know I could use the small cargo containers as medium ones. I needed to make a connection to all of the missile launchers, hence why I have two conveyors side by side. We need 3-way conveyor tubes, both angled and straight.
Strictly speaking, I could add one if I wanted to, but the door is already covered and if they can get past both of those turrets then I've already lost. I also need to move all of my gyroscopes into the pontoons because they are eating up interior room. but if I took out the large container, I could probably stick a refinery and assembler in there too, if I really wanted.
GasBandit
Staff member
Yes. The Inertial dampeners are able to access 100% of a thruster's power, whereas the user can only get 66% max, according to the wiki. This actually makes for an interesting non-newtonian flight model, as the best way to do corrective burns is actually to turn the Inertial damps on, thrust forward full, and point yourself where you want to go. The inertial dampener will utilize your lateral/ventral/dorsal thrusters much more effectively than you can, and curve you into the desired trajectory. Once you see your thrusters go back to idle, simply turn the I.D.s back off and continue to coast.
KSP is fun enough in its own right to merit playing.
GasBandit
Staff member
I was just browsing through stuff at random, and I looked up Serenity's statistics, and it's very interesting to me the difference, and I wonder if it indicates a failing in the underlying science of the show, the game, or both.
Serenity, according to Wikipedia, is 82 meters long and has a mass of 128,100 kg.
Bizarre Adventure, according to Space Engineers, is 40 meters long and has a mass of 2,038,000 kg.
My ship is half the length of Serenity but almost 16 times the weight. I don't think the Armor can account for all of that, as even the 25 meter Infernvm 3 weighed 750,000kg.
So how does this square? Is Serenity's science fiction more fiction than science (even apart from the other stuff like propulsion and setting and whatnot), is Space Engineers just supermassive in general, or is Serenity built out of some kind of phlebotinum/unobtanium superlight metal alloy?
And to add insult to injury, wikipedia goes on to say that Serenity is capable of 4.2g acceleration, which is a smidge over 41 m/s^2. As previously noted, Adventure's acceleration is, even with interlocks disabled, roughly, oh, call it 10m/s^2, or barely (and I mean barely, like 1%) over 1g.
Would it even be possible to build Serenity in space engineers? Probably not, I'm thinking... at least not to spec.
Fun fact, I just looked it up, and a large heavy armor block weighs 3000 kg.
That means large heavy armor has a density of just over 96kg per square meter.
Which is inconsistent, because a small heavy armor block is a cubic half meter, but weighs 100kg.
Granted, it doesn't take 125 times as long for a gat turret to eat through a large heavy armor block as it does a small. It doesn't even take 30 times as long (it's closer to 10). But still.
I'm beginning to think these Space Engineer guys don't have it all straight.
Serenity, according to Wikipedia, is 82 meters long and has a mass of 128,100 kg.
Bizarre Adventure, according to Space Engineers, is 40 meters long and has a mass of 2,038,000 kg.
My ship is half the length of Serenity but almost 16 times the weight. I don't think the Armor can account for all of that, as even the 25 meter Infernvm 3 weighed 750,000kg.
So how does this square? Is Serenity's science fiction more fiction than science (even apart from the other stuff like propulsion and setting and whatnot), is Space Engineers just supermassive in general, or is Serenity built out of some kind of phlebotinum/unobtanium superlight metal alloy?
And to add insult to injury, wikipedia goes on to say that Serenity is capable of 4.2g acceleration, which is a smidge over 41 m/s^2. As previously noted, Adventure's acceleration is, even with interlocks disabled, roughly, oh, call it 10m/s^2, or barely (and I mean barely, like 1%) over 1g.
Would it even be possible to build Serenity in space engineers? Probably not, I'm thinking... at least not to spec.
Fun fact, I just looked it up, and a large heavy armor block weighs 3000 kg.
That means large heavy armor has a density of just over 96kg per square meter.
Which is inconsistent, because a small heavy armor block is a cubic half meter, but weighs 100kg.
Granted, it doesn't take 125 times as long for a gat turret to eat through a large heavy armor block as it does a small. It doesn't even take 30 times as long (it's closer to 10). But still.
I'm beginning to think these Space Engineer guys don't have it all straight.
First, MOST ships in that universe are probably made with the equivalent of light armor. Light armor is 5 times as light as heavy, so your weight would be more like 400,000 kg if made of similar materials as Serenity. Double your length and you are at 800,000 kg. So really, it's more like 6.25 times the weight.
Secondly, your ship is ENTIRELY STEEL. Steel is 8000 kg/m3. However the hollow, layered design of heavy armor (3000kg/m cubed) probably reduces the weight a bit, so for this experiment, we'll use the fraction 3/8 to determine the difference between a solid block of material versus a heavy armor block. What you need to consider is that Serenity probably doesn't have an entirely steel hull. It could be something like Titanium, which is 4500 kg/m3. Using the same ratio of 3/8 for heavy block conversion, a heavy armor block of Titanium would be 1687.5 kg/m3. So a titanium version of your ship would be 1687.5/3000 or 9/16ths the weight or 1,125,000 kgs. Make it out of light armor blocks (1/5th the weight) and you get 225,000 kgs. Double the length and you get 450,000 kg. Mind you, the REAL number would actually be a bit less because doubling the length wouldn't double the weight but it's an easy number to work with.
Okay, so clearly Serenity isn't made out of Titanium. Let's try aluminum, which 2700 kg/m3. Heavy armor would be 1012.5 kg/m3, making the ship 27/80ths the weight of your steel one or 675000. Make it light armor and your at 135,000. So if you made your ship entirely out of aluminum and with similar armor, you would weigh a bit more than the Serenity at half the size.
So in order for Serenity to make sense, it has to be made out of something that weighs about half as much Aluminum (1350 kg/m3 or less). That rules out Carbon (2266 kg/m3) unless it's made out of Carbon nanotubes or something. This means that ether the Serenity is made out a super space age plastic/alloy or it's completely bullshit because nothing metallic exists that would be both strong and light enough for space flight and re-entry at that weight.
Secondly, your ship is ENTIRELY STEEL. Steel is 8000 kg/m3. However the hollow, layered design of heavy armor (3000kg/m cubed) probably reduces the weight a bit, so for this experiment, we'll use the fraction 3/8 to determine the difference between a solid block of material versus a heavy armor block. What you need to consider is that Serenity probably doesn't have an entirely steel hull. It could be something like Titanium, which is 4500 kg/m3. Using the same ratio of 3/8 for heavy block conversion, a heavy armor block of Titanium would be 1687.5 kg/m3. So a titanium version of your ship would be 1687.5/3000 or 9/16ths the weight or 1,125,000 kgs. Make it out of light armor blocks (1/5th the weight) and you get 225,000 kgs. Double the length and you get 450,000 kg. Mind you, the REAL number would actually be a bit less because doubling the length wouldn't double the weight but it's an easy number to work with.
Okay, so clearly Serenity isn't made out of Titanium. Let's try aluminum, which 2700 kg/m3. Heavy armor would be 1012.5 kg/m3, making the ship 27/80ths the weight of your steel one or 675000. Make it light armor and your at 135,000. So if you made your ship entirely out of aluminum and with similar armor, you would weigh a bit more than the Serenity at half the size.
So in order for Serenity to make sense, it has to be made out of something that weighs about half as much Aluminum (1350 kg/m3 or less). That rules out Carbon (2266 kg/m3) unless it's made out of Carbon nanotubes or something. This means that ether the Serenity is made out a super space age plastic/alloy or it's completely bullshit because nothing metallic exists that would be both strong and light enough for space flight and re-entry at that weight.
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Magnesium would be closer for weight (60% the weight of Aluminium), and Tungsten would work for reentry, but I didn't see anything that would satisfy both. Maybe some sort of internally reinforced Mg/Be or Mg/Al/Be alloy?
(Reentry in a craft made of pure magnesium sounds like an extremely unsound idea, unless your idea is to go up in the brightest, whitest fireball ever)
--Patrick
GasBandit
Staff member
Because the server I play on was down today (apparently the new patch is causing a lot of standalone server admins to complain about crashes every 20 mins), I started assembling my designed capital ship in a single player creative world I use for testing stuff.
Here I am laying the keel...
Here I am most of the way to being done...
Here's me testing the finished prototype against the 72-turret destroyer cube featured earlier in the thread.
[/DOUBLEPOST]And here are the blueprints for the ship, which I completed at work using excel during slow moments last week.
The idea was basically to have a ship with very protected internals but also compromising a little on armor to make it lighter (it weighs in at about 7 and a half million kg) to preserve some maneuverability, and also have it able to repair critical systems on the fly without having to jetpack around outside the ship. Most of the thrusters, for example, can be repaired from inside the engine room. It has medbays fore and aft, a central primary power core with tertiary supplimental/emergency power both in the fore and aftmost compartments, a massive 4x4x3 cargo bay cluster, roughly 96 turrets, and a forward-mounted rocket launcher for long range bombardment. A conveyor network connects just about all the important systems, naturally, tucked in the corners of the internal structure.
Here I am laying the keel...
Here I am most of the way to being done...
Here's me testing the finished prototype against the 72-turret destroyer cube featured earlier in the thread.
[/DOUBLEPOST]And here are the blueprints for the ship, which I completed at work using excel during slow moments last week.
The idea was basically to have a ship with very protected internals but also compromising a little on armor to make it lighter (it weighs in at about 7 and a half million kg) to preserve some maneuverability, and also have it able to repair critical systems on the fly without having to jetpack around outside the ship. Most of the thrusters, for example, can be repaired from inside the engine room. It has medbays fore and aft, a central primary power core with tertiary supplimental/emergency power both in the fore and aftmost compartments, a massive 4x4x3 cargo bay cluster, roughly 96 turrets, and a forward-mounted rocket launcher for long range bombardment. A conveyor network connects just about all the important systems, naturally, tucked in the corners of the internal structure.
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Yeah, what he said."This video is no longer available. Sorry about that."
--Patrick
My thoughts on batteries: these are basically just for emergency power or short-term work near a solar charging station. Maybe they'll be more useful once energy weapons become a thing but until then I don't really see the point. They are simply too big for fighters and you'd need too many for large ones.
GasBandit
Staff member
Sigh.. reuploading the video. It's 300+megs so will take an hour to upload/process.[DOUBLEPOST=1405859809,1405859511][/DOUBLEPOST]
In my opinion, controlling them is stupid. You shouldn't have to manually switch them from charge to discharge. They should automatically charge if there is unused reactor capacity (power useage below 99%) and discharge if the grid is in overload (101%+) to cover as much of the difference as it can.
Actually... I did a bit of testing with batteries. My opinion of them has changed completely.
This is my battery powered small driller. Just your basic two drill, 6 engine, 2 gyro rig with batteries instead of a gen. Using two small batteries, it takes about 15 minutes to charge off a small station reactor and can drill for -10 hours-. There is clearly a niche for small battery craft.
I also messed around with a small refueling station.
4 Solar panels, an antenna, a battery, and connector to latch your ship to it. This is a small ship version but there isn't any reason you couldn't do it with a large ship and attach a turret to shoot down meteors. Basically you fly to where you want to build it., build it, attach a gyroscope and a cockpit to get optimal sun alignment, grind down the gyroscope and cockpit, attach a connector, and then set the battery to charge via the connector. Real simple design, fairly cheap to build, practically disposable. Only problem is it takes hours to charge the battery via solar panels and a stray meteor could take it out. Might need to attach more solar panels to up the charge rate but you could easily put on another 8 or more on there if you wanted. If it's possible to rig it to only broadcast to yourself or your faction, this seems like a great way to build an outpost.
For my next project I made something Gas talked about: a Gatling turret mine. Here's what I came up with.
This one is light armor but obviously the real deal would be heavy. This is the front.
... and this is the back. 6 Gatling turrets, connected via conveyors to two small storage containers and a reactor. I attached the reactor to charge the three batteries and to act as a control panel/loading station. At 50% charge, this can idle for -9 days- and it only took like 30 some minutes to charge. This means you can build it, load it, charge it and then turn it off when you aren't around and it will probably still be running when you get back... and if you are under sustained assault, you can switch the gen back on just in case. Again, real simple design, not too resource intensive and the angled corners make it look nice too.
This is my battery powered small driller. Just your basic two drill, 6 engine, 2 gyro rig with batteries instead of a gen. Using two small batteries, it takes about 15 minutes to charge off a small station reactor and can drill for -10 hours-. There is clearly a niche for small battery craft.
I also messed around with a small refueling station.
4 Solar panels, an antenna, a battery, and connector to latch your ship to it. This is a small ship version but there isn't any reason you couldn't do it with a large ship and attach a turret to shoot down meteors. Basically you fly to where you want to build it., build it, attach a gyroscope and a cockpit to get optimal sun alignment, grind down the gyroscope and cockpit, attach a connector, and then set the battery to charge via the connector. Real simple design, fairly cheap to build, practically disposable. Only problem is it takes hours to charge the battery via solar panels and a stray meteor could take it out. Might need to attach more solar panels to up the charge rate but you could easily put on another 8 or more on there if you wanted. If it's possible to rig it to only broadcast to yourself or your faction, this seems like a great way to build an outpost.
For my next project I made something Gas talked about: a Gatling turret mine. Here's what I came up with.
This one is light armor but obviously the real deal would be heavy. This is the front.
... and this is the back. 6 Gatling turrets, connected via conveyors to two small storage containers and a reactor. I attached the reactor to charge the three batteries and to act as a control panel/loading station. At 50% charge, this can idle for -9 days- and it only took like 30 some minutes to charge. This means you can build it, load it, charge it and then turn it off when you aren't around and it will probably still be running when you get back... and if you are under sustained assault, you can switch the gen back on just in case. Again, real simple design, not too resource intensive and the angled corners make it look nice too.
Alright here are my comments:
- You have too many missile launchers, packed too closely together. What was happening early on was your missiles were getting chained destroyed, which is the only reason you lost any of your turrets. Now once your gat turrets took out the missile turrets, it suddenly became a different game. My advice? Ether put fewer missile turrets on there or rig it so half of them don't fire until you stop seeing your missiles instantly get destroyed. Then you switch them back on to finish the job.
- You went through probably millions of rounds in just a few minutes. Can you guys feed this beast?
GasBandit
Staff member
The real drawback I've found with turret mines is resupplying them with ammo. I wish there were some sort of energy weapon.
Also, once their position is known, it's easy to missile them down from safe distance. They're so small that any rocket impact, even on heavy armor, does explosion damage to every component of the mine.
I've been doing a lot of weapons testing this weekend. I was working on a human-guided kamikazi warhead torpedo (which I named the Nukecycle), but only about 1 in 20 made it to the target. The gat turrets always seem to shoot it down well before it gets close.
However, it was during my attempt to shield the warhead with heavy armor that I discovered the unsung and underestimated value of kinetic weaponry.
A single block of heavy armor blew a 5+ meter hole in heavy armor and destroyed internal components.
So I said, this is worth looking into! I modified the Nukecycle into what I now call the Kinetic Torpedo Cycle.
It has a lot of promise.
And it isn't even really a big deal that the pilot is pretty much guaranteed to die with the KTC, as you would need a mothership nearby, to build these on-site, and that ship would probably have a medbay at which you can respawn.[DOUBLEPOST=1405863857,1405863445][/DOUBLEPOST]
It's looking like we might be scrapping the George Dub due to difficulty with the grav missiles.. so we're in need of a new capital ship. The Bounty just got bumped up the chain.
Also, once their position is known, it's easy to missile them down from safe distance. They're so small that any rocket impact, even on heavy armor, does explosion damage to every component of the mine.
I've been doing a lot of weapons testing this weekend. I was working on a human-guided kamikazi warhead torpedo (which I named the Nukecycle), but only about 1 in 20 made it to the target. The gat turrets always seem to shoot it down well before it gets close.
However, it was during my attempt to shield the warhead with heavy armor that I discovered the unsung and underestimated value of kinetic weaponry.
A single block of heavy armor blew a 5+ meter hole in heavy armor and destroyed internal components.
So I said, this is worth looking into! I modified the Nukecycle into what I now call the Kinetic Torpedo Cycle.
It has a lot of promise.
And it isn't even really a big deal that the pilot is pretty much guaranteed to die with the KTC, as you would need a mothership nearby, to build these on-site, and that ship would probably have a medbay at which you can respawn.[DOUBLEPOST=1405863857,1405863445][/DOUBLEPOST]
I noticed that about the missile turrets, too.. I'm swapping out every other missile turret for another gat turret instead. As for feeding it, well, we have our own asteroid now. But this ship isn't intended to be a front-line bruiser. It's meant to be a heavily defended staging point for assaulting a heavily turreted base. It's basically the Bizarre Adventure writ large. So the number of times the ship will be "in the thick of things" will actually be very small. On a PVP survival server, most people prefer to run and hide rather than risk losing the resources they put into their vessels... so seeing the Bounty coming would send most of them scurrying for their hidey holes, and the few which didn't vaporized very quickly even under the gaze of a mere 6-8 turrets. The exception to this rule, of course, is the Anti-Pirate Coalition... they've got two or three large cruisers as well, and at some point, a confrontation is inevitable.
It's looking like we might be scrapping the George Dub due to difficulty with the grav missiles.. so we're in need of a new capital ship. The Bounty just got bumped up the chain.
Have you tried using the kinetic warheads against a grav shield yet? You might need to stick some kind of thrusters on there to keep it straight against that.
GasBandit
Staff member
Yes. That target I was hitting actually had a gravity generator pulling down at 1g, but because I was travelling at 100 m/s well before I hit it, its time to affect my trajectory (remember the maximum radius of a gravity field is 75m) was less than a second.
Not quite the strongest grav shield, but a more likely scenario. Also, because you are manning the torpedo yourself, once you get up to speed and are confident you're going to hit, you can hit y to kill power to the torpedo, and the artificial mass will no longer be affected by grav shielding.
I was going to suggest this, if the nearby medbay just means respawning and strapping on a new banzai torpedo. Looks like you already discovered it. Seems like they would be good at taking out gatling turrets, assuming you can aim them well enough.
Sounds like the ultimate doomsday weapon would be some sort of railgun that fires cubes of heavy armor, if it's possible.
--Patrick
It's not even an issue. I was using a small missile launcher against my gat mine and it just shredded it in a few missiles. Anti-missile defenses are worthless unless you have full range to hit the missiles.
GasBandit
Staff member
Even then they're kinda dodgy.
Ironically it seems the best anti-missile defense is to put your missile launchers on anti-missile as well. It usually won't hit the missile, but missiles have about a 2km range.
So if your attacker is sitting at 1km firing missiles at you (just outside the 800m turret detection range), the missiles you fire at his missiles will probably miss the missiles but might actually hit the guy who fired them, if he's not moving. This actually happened to me in testing.
Ironically it seems the best anti-missile defense is to put your missile launchers on anti-missile as well. It usually won't hit the missile, but missiles have about a 2km range.
So if your attacker is sitting at 1km firing missiles at you (just outside the 800m turret detection range), the missiles you fire at his missiles will probably miss the missiles but might actually hit the guy who fired them, if he's not moving. This actually happened to me in testing.
Ok, spent some time on this, think I'm starting to get the hang of things, but right now I'm at my wit's end dealing with a small mining ship. Started on Lone Survivor to see if I could actually manually mine all of the ores I would need to make it to a small ship, then a large ship, and reinforce the base along the way (this is on a private game, so I don't really need to reinforce the base, but it would be a good exercise). Found all of the ores that I needed to get myself going, and built a small mining ship (basically a copy of the miner from Easy Start 1), get in the cockpit, fire up the drills, they work just fine, but I need to put more uranium in my reactors. Get out of the ship, add uranium, get back in, drills don't work. Get out, go around the front, and discover that since getting out, they've become non-complete (i.e., I have to re-weld them). Go back to my assembler to get parts, re-weld my drills, test fire them, they work just fine again. Position miner a decent distance from asteroid (I've read that if you get drills too close to an asteroid they can break off, so I figured I'd bore my way in from a few dozen meters out), go to fire up the drills, and they're dead again. Do I need more gyroscopes mounted on the drills to keep them from taking wobble damage, or what?
GasBandit
Staff member
That's a very peculiar situation. This is a small ship, yes? How many drills are on it?
Wait, I bet I know what it is. Do you have thrusters pointed at the back of the drill within 5 or 7 blocks? Thruster exhaust damages any device it hits in a linear path. It needs about 7 blocks clearance to avoid damaging anything in the same linear block line as it.
That would explain it.
Yes, the thruster exhaust thing got me the first time too.
This may be one of the more addictive games I've ever played. Now the only question I have (for myself, mainly), is whether I want to finish up this large mining ship build (you know, now that my small mining ship is up and running, gotta make a big version of it), or switch to a grinder proof of concept for piracy and head out on the public servers?
GasBandit
Staff member
Can't go wrong with a 7x7 megaminer. That's what you've seen me drill holes all the way through asteroids with in this thread. Stick it with a couple large cargo bays and a connector, then dock it with a station that has 7-10 refineries, and you're really in business.
Honestly I've barely been able to play online since thursday, there's some kind of bug been introducted that makes noob/spawn ships crash servers. So anytime any new player spawns into a server for the first time, it crashes. Maybe there's been a hotfix for it today, I dunno, haven't gotten to check. I wish the patch from the week before that didn't accidentally make NPC cargo ships invulnerable, or I might be practicing piracy in single player.
It's a fun game, but SO VERY ALPHA.
Did some more battery tests and... another thing. First the tests!
So I did a large scale solar station. Ignore the thrusters. I didn't figure out how to rotate initial station blocks until today. This design isn't as efficient as it could be... if I ditched the bottom layer of batteries and engines (which aren't needed on a station to keep it in place), it would probably work better. But energy wise it's pretty good. Even with a small ship attached to drain power, the large batteries don't lose power while charging because the panels produce enough KWH to do the charging themselves. On a less PVP oriented server, this would be a great little gas station. 15 minutes to full charge several small batteries isn't too bad. However, it doesn't work on a large battery: those take hours.
What these game needs:
- The ability to leave messages. This power station only works if the players know how to manipulate the control panel to switch the batteries on the station to not recharge. Instructions reminding people to switch them back on would be great.
- Batteries should be able to fast dump power into another battery. It would make charging stations so much more practical, especially ones that use solar.
- Why can't I put a vending terminal on this? I should be able to set prices per MWH and rig it to not give out juice unless they pay!
As for my other project... I decided to use rotors and drills to mine an asteroid.
Station block with lots of drills, storage, and refineries on the back. So I turn it on...
As long as you set the rotation to a slow enough speed, the drills will never take enough damage to break, so it just bumps up against it when it receives more resistance. The Result?
It ate through it in like 3-4 minutes, giving me thousands of kilos of resources. The best thing about this idea? It works with ships too. Just put grinders on it instead of drills and you'd have an automated ship eater.
So I did a large scale solar station. Ignore the thrusters. I didn't figure out how to rotate initial station blocks until today. This design isn't as efficient as it could be... if I ditched the bottom layer of batteries and engines (which aren't needed on a station to keep it in place), it would probably work better. But energy wise it's pretty good. Even with a small ship attached to drain power, the large batteries don't lose power while charging because the panels produce enough KWH to do the charging themselves. On a less PVP oriented server, this would be a great little gas station. 15 minutes to full charge several small batteries isn't too bad. However, it doesn't work on a large battery: those take hours.
What these game needs:
- The ability to leave messages. This power station only works if the players know how to manipulate the control panel to switch the batteries on the station to not recharge. Instructions reminding people to switch them back on would be great.
- Batteries should be able to fast dump power into another battery. It would make charging stations so much more practical, especially ones that use solar.
- Why can't I put a vending terminal on this? I should be able to set prices per MWH and rig it to not give out juice unless they pay!
As for my other project... I decided to use rotors and drills to mine an asteroid.
Station block with lots of drills, storage, and refineries on the back. So I turn it on...
As long as you set the rotation to a slow enough speed, the drills will never take enough damage to break, so it just bumps up against it when it receives more resistance. The Result?
It ate through it in like 3-4 minutes, giving me thousands of kilos of resources. The best thing about this idea? It works with ships too. Just put grinders on it instead of drills and you'd have an automated ship eater.
Also, is it possible to carry chaff? I assume that since asteroids are annoying, is it possible to open a door or something and dump a dozen or so loose armor cubes while fleeing, to slow pursuers?
--Patrick
Asteroids are your only source of minerals outside of piracy. Finding one that isn't hollowed out is a god send, not an annoyance.
That said, you could probably rig up a chaff launcher with an expeller. Connect some expellers to a container full of rocks or whatever and start dumping them if you have someone on your tail. I'd rather just spend the time dodging though.