Pob

No need to apologise, we'd guessed english is not your first language, just wanted some more detail as to what this was. I understand, so you used the halo ship for the inspiration. I think "inspired by the UNSC nevada" would be the best words to use. Because you did not try to directly copy the UNSC nevada but used the UNSC nevada as a starting point for your ship.

Interesting concept, almost like ablative armour. What in ingame reason for spacing, rather than just layering?

Sneak peek at the new MFF-201, although it's not very multi-function Cost is around $200k iron 5k Titanium 6k naonite 15k Naonite internals with a smallish iron inertial damper, with Titanium skin, engines and thrusters, I've taken care with the thrusters placement for decent numbers and everything is very easy to access. The skin is all hull blocks except for the nose which is armour and covers the crew quarters (hardest part to access) The thrusters are exposed for direct access, although not obvious due to blocks covering their ports The internals have access via a thin strip of framework on the top and bottom and lets the glow be seen. Finally their are multiple small integrity field generators exposed on the outside of the hull (I pinched that idea from Ohm is Futile ;) ) Here is a thruster pod showing the layout All the coloured blocks are directional thrusters. The red block is left/right The green block is up/down and the two blue blocks are front/back The yaw was weak so I did add a small titanium gyro, it's the base block of the bridge on top of the hull, you can just see the edge of the bridge in that image.

wow but that's detailed :o question what's the original from? I can only find reference to the Keiko model kit

Ahh but here is where a dumbbell has the advantage, thunk same total volume/mass then a dumbbell will be much longer on one axis and Distance from com=force multiplied by lever length, so if the ship is twice as long in one axis then you're doubling the leverage of the thrusters.

Not one I exactly found, but I found a tech37 turret factory that had the "multiple projectiles" on the rocket launcher, so I added on some targeting cards to make them guided, I made 10 of them each fires 3 per shot, only issue is that many rockets causes my pc to struggle, but still laggy homing death :) Yes that chain gun you've got beats it for damage, so do some of the other weapons I've found, but they are not as much fun.

relooking?

So to get the most out of your thrusters you want them as far as possible from the CoM in a direction other than the facing direction. So to get the most out of your thrusters you want them as far as possible from the CoM and not pointing directly at the CoM. better way of putting it. did another quick test. stick again made of 10x2x2 iron stone, but out of 5 separate 2x2x2 blocks, reason will become clear. Stick a 2x2x2 iron direction thruster on the end facing left/right, Yaw = 1.15 Move the thruster in one, so now it's a 8x2x2 then 2x2x2 thruster then another 2x2x2 block, this does move the CoM slightly, Yaw = 0.51 Move the thruster in again, now a 6x2x2 then 2x2x2 thruster then 4x2x2 block, Yaw = 0.15 So I put forward that the upshot of all this is that the reign of the cube ship is over, now the best design is the dumbbell, a long stick with rings of thrusters at each end. or maybe a ship inside a cube frame made of thrusters.

Actually I didn't know if thrust varied by material I had assumed it did. As to roll, No, all tests had 0.0 roll, this is because the thruster is aligned to the CoM so has an effective multiplier of 0 This is part of what I'm getting at, Position vs CoM * Thruster size vs Total Mass is the important factor in rotational manoeuvrability If I had Stuck the thruster on the side of the stick in the middle then it would have Roll and weak Yaw but 0 Pitch. To add the correct extra mass to counter the material difference you'd need to add it to the front of the thruster not the sides to keep the CoM the same distance from the thruster and then all the values bar energy would be the same. So keeping this in mind we can come up with the following rules for Directional thrusters. X = left/right = yaw, Y = up/down = Pitch, Z = forward/back = roll Z facing thruster = break thrust, Y axis offset = Pitch, X axis offset = Yaw, Z axis offset = no change Y facing Thruster = vertical strafe, X axis offset = Roll, Z axix offset = pitch, Y axis offset = no change X facing thruster = horizontal strafe, Z axis offset = yaw, Y axis offset = roll, X axis offset = no change So to get the most out of your thrusters you want them as far as possible from the CoM in a direction other than the facing direction. So with our stick ship, long on the Z axis, sticking a front/back facing directional thruster on the front will only give break thrust and 0 rotational movement in any direction. stick a up/down facing directional thruster on the front and you'll get vertical strafe (numbers unlisted for that) and pitch rotational movement, but no roll or yaw.

Well as I've re-installed the game, because I was having some stability issues, I've started again which means some low tier ships. With that I've added my new starter ship, the Gnat-102, there is a 101 it was 1/3 the size and just too small, 102 is basically the same just rebuilt larger. I did back up my old ships and galaxies so there is other stuff on the way. ;)

I'm guessing they where not made in beta branch and with block thrusters they will perform better in the beta branch. My tip for docking large stick ships like these, is dock sidewise and pay attention to the facing of the docking port, if the port is on a stick sticking out from the station, make sure you're on the correct side of it, it's easy to get too close because the port is on the other side of a stick. And it's Pob, not Pub or Pod :P granted it's a obscure uk childrens tv show from the 80's so I can forgive ;) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pob%27s_Programme

I've just done a clean install to do some testing in the beta branch 0.11.7767 I founded a ship, a stick size 2x2x10 made of Iron Stone, this gives it some mass mass = 8.16kt now I stick a 2x2x2 cube of standard thrusters on the front and see what difference Material makes to the thruster. Iron Titanium Naonite Trinium Xanium Ogonite Avorion Mass 0.20 0.12 0.13 0.08 0.11 0.18 0.14 Break Thrust 4.8 4.8 4.8 4.9 4.8 4.8 4.8 Yaw/Pitch 0.58 0.62 0.61 0.64 0.62 0.59 0.61 Energy Required 36.00 34.36 32.40 30.41 28.59 27.00 25.66 Let's start with break thrust, all pretty much the same, only difference is Trinium and it's minor Yaw/Pitch scales directly with Mass. (I'll come back to this) Energy require is a direct scale with material Looking at this we can say a couple of things 1- Material has no effect on thruster force, this is shown 2- Position/Distance from the centre of mass has an effect of the Yaw/Pitch remembering to take into account the mass of the thruster, this is shown as break thrust remains constant while Yaw/Pitch changes with mass. The Yaw/Pitch changes as the mass of the thruster shifts the centre of mass, shown by adding mass to the other end of the stick to equal out the total mass causes the Yaw/Pitch numbers to flatten out. 3- The best material for Thrusters vs manoeuvrability is Trinium, because it has the lowest mass, Xanium is a very close 2nd, it maybe 1st, for the reason of lower power draw which means less energy to support them that in turn means less total mass. Avorion is 3rd, while titanium is lighter the lower power draw puts Avorion is solid 3rd For everyone building ships I say this, Mass and Position over material when building thrusters

I've not gone into gyro's yet on the 0.11.7767 yet, however I'd like to put forward these suggestions. a gyro's force should be relative to two factors, distance from centre of mass (CoM) and it's mass relative to the mass of the ship. This makes an iron gyro the best on a volume basis because of it's mass, you can balance this out by reducing power demand based on material. So if we compare gyro's of equal weight, and there for force, the Iron version would be the smallest but high energy draw while a Naonite one would be larger but have less power draw and an Avorion one would be the largest but with the lowest power draw. On a side note I'd like to this principle carried over to other blocks/materials, create more variation in the materials, not just the next tier is flat out better in every way, less mass, more power, more hp (ok it's not quite like that but feels like it) You can still have some blocks be better with material, but more variation and specialisation, we have some of this already with trinium having the lowest mass per volume, however I'd like to see more trade off on materials. eg currently if we have 3 generators 1m3 made of Titanium, Naonite and Trinium, the hp and power generation goes up with each tier, the only thing that doesn't is mass as titanium is slightly lighter than Naonite. Granted npc ship generation would need to be looked at as they tend to be only one material. @Wilponderoci I just spotted the name of your ship ;D

Well it's live now and quite a few people are going to have to learn the new mechanics and devote more time and mass to thrusters now. I've also spotted some odd mechanics with the directional thrusters I think depth might be more important than volume, ie, we'll go from slab to stick thrusters. I need to do some testing to see if I'm right or not. EDIT testing done in the latest beta 0.11.7677 and I was wrong, it's volume and placement that's important. For the best pitch and yaw numbers you want a cross shaped ship with directional thrusters pointing front/back on the ends of the cross. I have an idea for a heavy cruiser which will look a little odd but will perform very well

Another couple of new ships coming, sneak peek After active testing the Mule while looking nice isn't that functional, the Bee however is very functional, so to make a better cargo freighter? Make a bigger Bee, stick a cargo hold in the middle and we have the new MegaBee. [spoiler=animated gif] Projected cost $630,472 Iron 7,200 Naonite 1,916 Trinium 34,643 Xanion 32,600 Still not BIG enough? Don't worry we here at Pob heavy industries have you covered, with generous application of our new motivational-electrified-pokey-sticktm the design team has come up with the GigaBee [spoiler=animated gif] When asked to comment on the new design our head designer said this: "Please stop shouting BIGGER at me, please!"

Love these designs, simple yet detailed, very reminiscent of homeland

Here we go I'm still not 100% happy with the front blade bit and so save time I just copied over your engine pontoons I've left it up to you to paint it you can find it in my dropbox.

Nice this is much needed.

ok in my dropbox (link in first post) is a "rhino reskin WIP.xml" have a look and see what you think so far? What colours did you use? I wish they was an easy way to see the colour applied to a block. I had a bit of trouble with the nose section as that was a x.5 size and the shaft connecting it to the main body is a x.0 size, which meant I had a 0.25 step on all sides. One thing I've found good to eliminate annoying 0.25 blocks most of the time is keep the scale at 0.5 and the grid to 0.25, you just have to watch out for central x.5 blocks

That's probably better than the way I've built things. ::) I should be coming up with paper designs, I start with function, what is the ship going to be? I then think of a general shape & look, nothing on paper just in my head. I start by building the core internal structure with cubes, block out the rough shape, add and subtract to get the proportions right. Then I start skinning it in hull/armour here's where the final shape and design form, the broadhead is a great example here, originally I was thinking something something like an enlarged MFF-101 but with a single spine with thruster banks top and bottom and a more wedge shaped front. However it wasn't right the more I looked at it the more I thought Arrow and that's where the final shape and the name came from a broadhead arrow. That's a challenge I'll happily take on ;) I'll sit down with the Rhino and see what I can do. edit: this might take longer than I thought, your block shapes are all over the shop, all multiples of 0.1 ie 14.2x0.6x3.8 it's a pain to work with a grid size of 0.1 on something this large My first point of advice is when building big sections work to a multiple of 1 or 2 going no smaller than 0.5 for slabs, so 14.2x0.6x3.8 becomes 14x0.5x4 it becomes a lot easier to then align everything to the grid and clad it with angled blocks. EDIT2: Ok I've rebuilt the internals while rounding to whole numbers and I've started skinning it. stats have changed a little so far Shields, energy gen and crew quarters have gone up cargo, energy store have gone down a chunk (eg cargo has gone from 5k to 4k) fighters dropped slightly from 8-64 to 6-52

What? I found it more orderly than a lot of my designs, save maybe the Rhino which was built from huge blocks. All I had to do was remove the back plate to make most of the changes. I did have to "ghost" through the hull by zooming in and use the selector tool to tell what I was looking at to replace the materials though. But if you think the Broadhead is a mess to look at under the hood, you better not strip the Nomad or the Taurus. Those are a mess of trying to get precise numbers, filling in gaps in the sketched hull and optimizing the final product. The back half and spine is fairly easy to get into, the mess of thrusters that is the front is a different story and that's a major part that needs work Also this is a cleaned up version, a lot of the armour/hull cladding was originally in very small plates

very nice :) any chance of getting the stats? and/or material costs?

Part of the issue seems to be that they make strafing runs on rocks they don't align, park and fire The odd part is watch the non-player faction AI miners, they seem to happily align, park and fire

just looking at the weapon types that is the line that specifies the type the variable "weaponType" come from here the variable "WeaponProbabilities" comes from here and that's where I struggle. it's using the Icon to create a value for the weapon type? ie chaingun = 1, bolter = 2, etc But my limited understanding fails trying to understand how it's generating the probabilities :o

that's what I meant by looking at the code ok looking at that script . . . my brain hurts