Neonin

Cheers guys, I appreciate the comments :) Decided the Lynx was still missing a few things and I wasn't happy with the turret placement, so made some adjustments. Still has eight on the dorsal side but more spread out, and I added two on port/starboard and four on the ventral front to try and even out coverage for point defense. Tweaked the thrusters so there's more braking (and a bit extra turning) at a small loss of max speed. Oh and I added a few extra greebles and stuff. Pretty happy with it, now to get mining/salvaging so I can afford it in my normal game! Just in case anyone spotted it, the hazard strips on the turret placements are gone. They look cool but each one cost a lot in number of blocks, and I like to try and keep that to a minimum so it doesn't affect performance too much. For example at the moment the Lynz sits around 700 I believe, with the turret mounts using hazard strips it's well over 1000...

That's a nice looking ship! I especially like the raised nose bit at the front, it gives it that distinctive look.

Realised I was going to need something a bit tougher than the Porker before I get to the (still unfinished) Endeavour so I did some fiddling... This one is a pure warship, no cargo hold. She's not quite finished yet, haven't decided on the exact number of turret mounts I want to put and whether they're where I want them yet, but she's pretty close. I think the style is similar to how Endeavour is turning out so they should match together quite nicely once I have both, plus once I have enough trinium it's a straight upgrade.

They've gone to plaid! I don't normally go in for recreations but... Spaceballs! LUDICROUS SPEED! GOOOOOO!

So after making a replacement for the drone (why not? Mining lasers you get at the start are more efficient anyway) I decided to work on the escort carrier some more. She's currently fleshed out for the most part as you can see in the screenshot. Hull and shields around 110k a piece, yaw/pitch around the 0.38 mark, with a roll at 1.1 I think it is right now. Front and side hangars together hold 31 fighters, which fits with it being an escort carrier rather than a full-fledged monster carrier. last time I checked her costs were around $1.2 mil and 150k trinium. Not horrible. Aaaaanyway. Screenie. There's more to go on the top of the main body where I want to build a fake bridge (cause who needs a bridge in this game, and who would put one in a vulnerable position? Sod it, it looks cool!) and I've done no greebling on anything further rear than the neck really. I'm aiming for three larger turret mounts in front of the bridge area and a bunch more to the rear. She only has six upgrade slots at the moment, I tried adding computer core but it needed to be mahoosive just to get one extra slot so... maybe I'm doing something wrong there. Still got space inside for more stuff anyway. Progress!

Decided to beef up the "little" ships I use for mining/salvaging, basically I nicked someone elses idea of having a cheap ship you can build a bunch of when you hit a system, whack turrets and crew on, and send them off to strip the place. (Bear in mind thrust and max velocity is 20% of full value due to lack of minions) The "Porker" class is named for the unusually snout-like nose of the ship, reminiscent of terrestrial pigs. At least in the crazed mind of the designer who drew it up it is. Capable of mounting enough crew and upgrades to man upwards of ten turrets, the Porker-Class is a cheap workhorse that, thanks to its integrity field, can withstand fire from dirty little pirate scumbags or nutjob aliens for a limited time without being blown into bacon. Emphasis on "limited time" folks. Some lunatic people fit out Porkers with guns. Or tusks. That's right, they turn a Porker into a Boar. Like I said, lunatics. Still, a swarm (swarm? What's the collective noun for pigs? A mess? Sounds about right) of these can do some serious damage. (I'm aware the collective noun is actually "drove" btw!) Porker-Class.xml

I'm sure I nicked it from somewhere too, bound to have seen something like that on a ship in some game or another. Thieves of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your freedom! Wait, that doesn't sound right...

Came for the ships, stayed for the humour!

Ever have one of those days where you feel ill and can't be bothered? Me too! So I did some turret mounts along the front spine. I say mounts, they're just warning strips around the area turrets attach to, which is still the main hull armour spine so they don't get shot off easily... Time to play for a bit and let the mind regenerate!

Damn that looks good!

Just a little place for me to chronicle my design journeys! Made ships in all sorts of games. Space Engineers, Empyrion, even a few in Planet Explorers. The build mode in this reminds me of PE the most with the freedom, and it's making me think a bit more than I'm used to. Started off with the usual cubes, then moved up to somewhat functional designs for my first real attempt at playing that I think still fit into the general design aesthetic of the game, as haphazard as that is! You can probably see how the design was evolving. Fairly quick to make in the builder and allowed me to spend time playing. Once I hit Trinium and got access to hangars I thought "I need a carrier!". Somehow the design idea behind the other ships had lost its luster (mainly due to stupidly browsing the screenshots on Steam and seeing what other people had come up with) so I decided to put a bit of effort in to the next one. It's the first time I've really gone all out on the greebles... So far I have: It took me a few hours just to get the name right... So far the front is mostly hangar space, with the neck having a few essential systems in it, all covered by integrity fields. I have to say I'm having a lot of fun experimenting and trying out different block types to the usual hull/armour I typically use! Anyway, I shall continue to post progress as I work on the design.

I don't necessarily mind ads. I do mind the auto-playing Twitch stream (plus sound) that suddenly blares out every time I refresh the page or click a new one that I then have to go and pause again. That one needs to die in a fire. Burn it at the stake like the evil witch it is!

Thought I'd use my first post to weigh in on this, as someone who only just installed the beta patch to try it out. Firstly let me come down firmly in the "Newtonian physics suck the fun out of life" camp. I hated Independence War. I hated turning off flight assist in Elite Dangerous. I like Wing Commander. I like Freespace. Call me a dirty casual, I don't mind! That said, I decided to test out the changes because I don't want the ship I'm currently designing to suck. Enter my little basic Epee-Class. This one had a large main engine and four smaller engines, with a thin panel of normal thruster blocks on both sides and dorsal/ventral. Before the patch it was pretty nippy and easy to turn. After the patch... disaster! The world has ended! Call the United Nations! It turns like a brick. A fast brick. Wait, what? I can go from 0 to max speed in under a second but can't turn worth a damn. Sounds like an old American car... I don't need to accelerate that fast so I removed the four small engines and just left the main one, leaving gaps in the body that I promptly filled with the new directional thruster blocks. Well that helped... kinda. I can turn now, but my roll speed is still like 0.01m/s. That sucks. Where's my safe space! I want a refund! Never mind the U.N. call the galactic overlords! I DEMAND SATISFACTION! Oh. I changed which way the directional thrusters pointed. Normally I put thruster blocks firing in the direction that part of the ship body is facing, so on the port side they fire to the left and visa-versa, and that is how I'd initially put the new directional blocks in. I turned them round, so the dorsal thrusters were firing port/starboard and the starboard/port thrusters were firing dorsal/ventral. Holy cow! Allow me to illustrate... Before and after stats, although the stats before the actual beta patch aren't included but were I think 2/s for yaw/pitch/roll. And how the thrusters now fire: Note I also replaced the layers of forward-facing braking thrusters in the nose to one large directional thruster block. To sum up, cancel the phone call to the galactic overlords. I can emerge from my safe space. I need no further satisfaction. I hope my traumatic experience helps others, and I will be setting up a charity to support those of us who have been through such a horrible ordeal. I shall name it Survivors of the New Order With Feelings Lightened And Karma Evened. We shall all be SNOWFLAKEs. (This post is humour, I fully support everything being made optional so people can play how they want within reason and fitting with the Devs vision of their game!)