I too prefer HVs for Planetary Travel, especially cause ya can leave one on each fully conquered Planet & always have something there to ride in to run around the Planet, I use my SVs for travel to & from Planets. Plus, it'd be a shame to never get to play with the HV Artillery Turret, especially when ya can use one to make your HV look kinda like a Hover Tank.
In all seriousness and honesty, please let me know or point me in the direction of a thread on how to create a proper hover vessel. I've basically written them off but it would be nice to have a mobile turret platform other than a small CV. I can build a small HV that kinda works, but it constantly bounces off the ground, flips over and can't climb an incline greater than a handicap ramp. I beg you with many please.
Colonial Viper MK I Starter SV Inspired by the Viper MKI and MKII of BSG, this SV offers speed, maneuverability, firepower and all essential components at an affordable cost. This was my go to craft for most of my survival learning experience and it is well tested and modified to be both efficient and effective in all aspects including harvesting and combat. I created this vessel before the new blocks were implemented. I now mostly use my MKII which I uploaded a few days ago and sometimes wish that it had the agility that this one does. Here is a link to the Steam Workshop page where it can be downloaded. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=635912721
X-29 Fighter This was my second SV made while learning how to play Empyrion. It is very agile and very lightly armored. I wanted to keep this one as simple as possible but still make it effective. After a couple of them were destroyed, I modified the gas tank placement to make it tougher. The core and other components are more protected too and it can take more hits from most directions. To keep the sleek design and minimal block count I made every thing accessible from the bottom but its low profile (landing pads instead of landing gear) means that you must hover the craft above ground a couple meters to access most of its components including the gas tank, O2 and fridge. One of the ammo and storage containers can be accessed from the top of the wing. Even with only one gas tank, the efficiency of this craft allows the mandatory hover time when in the field to not really be a problem at all. I created a recessed pit in my landing pad at my ground base so I don't have to hover it to access the cargo. Only use this in heavy combat if it is empty of cargo because you might lose it as the containers are quite exposed. (most of the design is only one block thick) I think that it is a great starter ship. Download it here http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=635912904
Well -- this is *ugly* so I gave it an appropriate name and paintjob: The Short Bus. I picked a bad cockpit for this, so that's the first problem. I usually go for cockpit 3. To start place your starter block. I always paint mine red, and mark front and right with yellow -- just in case I somehow get disoriented (mostly a CV thing) and forget where top and front is. Then I build back and up one (maybe 2, my builds vary a lot - which is why this one will be so horrifying to look at. Sometimes that happens. Place the items necessary to get it off the ground: a thruster in every direction, cockpit, fuel, genny, RCS and so on. Hover it up and remove the existing hover engine (place the new one FIRST, or it will drop like a rock). When the original core comes out it will drop from lack of power. Place the new core. It doesn't matter where, as it has no effect on the hovering characteristics. When you replace the core, it'll power back up again -- install landing pads, more blocks, whatever you want Apply an appropriate paint job and test flight. Needed to get rid of a couple pesky visitors first. It isn't perfect, but you will be able to climb. I did this in Ningues because the cliffs are sheer. Flying in at full speed, hit a bit and slowed -- but no problems. The biggest problem is that the back and can hit in the way down... because the hover is far forward. note the engine placement has no effect on this. it's where the original blocks were that matter. (post limit it 10 files - so I'll follow up)
When I blueprint it, I count the blocks, and add as many to the front. These have to be there to put the center back where it belongs. It recalculates the hover center based on the whole ship length. So chop the red part off, and it should be mostly the same. Experiment a bit. edit: This is a starter HV I keep. I add to it as I level along. It looks better than the thing I just came up with above and is more resource friendly for a starter. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=632015727 edit again: Mods: It's dawned on me that I am cluttering the SV thread with HV stuff. Feel free to move it, but please leave the original quote by ThresholdSeven so it has context. Thanks and sorry.
I've tried several different hovercraft designs in survival, but can't see any reason to use one, unless you're below level 7 which gives you the first small vessel thruster. They're utterly slow, and even a tad bit of sliding, which is usually always present is slightly annoying, when you've used to knife sharp controls of the small vessels. Generally my small vessel can dance around bases while picking up drones and turrets one by one and you only get hit by accident (or by crashing into things . Small vessel with 1 to 3 railguns, that's all you need. Unless you just wanna tear down walls to get the core, then get plasma or rockets. No worries, I didn't think your reply was harsh, I'm a Finn so I mostly speak out my mind, which might sometimes sound rude for others Also I'm on an European timezone so my answers might take some time. Personally I can't think of anything a HV can do that you cannot do in a small vessel, plus small vessel has more speed, agility, "better" weapons and able to leave the planet as well. Only "proper" thing on HV's is the artillery turret, which makes nice Battlezone hovertank look(made one for testing yesterday and it's fun with one person flying and other one shooting) and makes somewhat decent damage, but reload speed is ghastly and ammo costs neodymium ingots, so it's "cheaper" to make 10 rockets than one artillery shell in survival... Trust me I design everything in creative mode, then test them in survival and alter the designs accordingly, before I publish anything. So far I'm at 7th or 8th survival round because after you've killed everything there's really no point in playing survival mode, so I tend to just start over on same seed to test different ships and configurations. @Tyrax Lightning Glad you like it, I got the idea from making experimental heavy bomber concept with 4 plasma cannons and noticed the more you stick them together the larger plasma ball it creates (instead of shooting heap of single missiles like rockets). So I got an idea to make Starship troopers-bug-stylish plasma thrower which would shoot gigantic plasma balls. Then I just followed general shape and color of my previous cap ships, so IF dev's will use any of them one day, they can use all of them without needing much modification. It appears you can stick 21 of same weapon in one ship and shoot them all together, but light effects bug at anything more than 12. Although anything past 4 is really an overkill for anything we have currently, so I settled into 9, so ammo cost isn't that "bad", but the effect is quite nice and you can hear the reload sound from the orbit Also I always create my bases from tiny invaded buildings on every planet I go and as soon as you create covered hangar drones won't shoot your small vessels. So you can just leave one in every planet even if they still have drones(although I usually take drone base down before making a base). That's also why I use Mini-Advanced as my standard fighter, they cost less than 200 ingots of basic metals, with about 20 min built time, so I can just make 10 of them at time and just spawn them from blueprint library as needed. I'll post more of my Pocket-cruisers if the second one also passes rest of the testing later today
As promised, here's the second one of the experimental "Pocket-Cruisers" I've made. This is something that is mainly built for decimating enemy forts and buildings. Unlike the first one, this thing actually turns fast enough to beat drones into submission so I added two railguns for flying stuff. Also rockets have currently larger splash and even better damage than plasma weapons so with 8 rocketlaunchers this thing can tear down buildings even faster (doesn't look as good while doing it, though). *WARNING* DO NOT use rockets while strafing. *WARNING* In current release you have to do proper bombing runs with this much rocket launchers aboard, strafing while launching is currently bugged and will result in serious damage when missiles hit each others in the tubes and explode inside their launchers. Hence always level the ship on an approach vector and swap into railguns if you cannot fly straight when launching, due to whatever reason. Also if you plan on invading the building for use as an base after clearing it I'd not recommend using rockets on the walls, there will be nothing left after a few salvos The shadow moves over the land, searching for victims. Shooting drones. Not very exciting On a bombing run! Fits in a makeshift hangar on Rados refinery! Shape from up. Bluepring link: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=637205610
There's a bug in the game atm where a Factoried in HV has its Original Hover Point not work where it was placed at Creation anymore which breaks a LOT of HV Designs that do work just fine when functioning from a manually built in state. This forces us to have to Manually build every single HV we ever wanna use & have work right as built. I wouldn't be surprised if this was a BIG part of the reason people begged the Devs to give HVs Docking Pads & give CVs ability to land in Planets so people could Transport their working not-bugged HVs to places they wanted to maintain usage of them to work around this bugage. I like using HVs more then SVs for Planetary stuff partially cause ya can turn a HV left & right with the Mouse without damnable Involuntary 'Q' & 'E' Movements screwing ya up, partially cause Turrets enable HVs to automate its defense & ya can still manually attack things with Manual HV Gatling Gun, (HV needs more Manual Fire Weapons for higher Tiers, including some that can do at least a little bit of Gimballing.) partially cause ya can stick one Fuel Tank into it & keep it loaded with Hydrogen Fuel Packs & still have it stay fueled & powered for a nice amount of time per Full Fuel Tank which is pleasantly economical compared to Fuel Costs of Planet roaming SVs, & partially cause of the Artillery Turret like ya said making HVs likely as close as we'll ever get to capability to make auto-Rule of Cool Hover Tanks. (Also, bet HV popularity will skyrocket again if the bugage with Factoried in HVs ever gets fixed... most likely by doing something about Hover Engines so ALL of them contribute to Hover Point under each of them, rather then only a Hover Point under a single point only period.)
I have a 13-14 ton Hover Fort that I have used in past games that climbs just as well as any tiny one I have made. And it is all about the economy and uptime. I sort of like deleting entire POIs... even the big ones, and having a huge amount of storage, dual constructors, 6 fridges, plenty of spare ammo and guns, health kits and o2. I can stay out for "Empyrion days" at a time and return with stacks of plates, cables, parts in general; meat, ore... all without refueling once (strict H2 user here ). It's a mobile light source for mining out entire deposits with 6 turrets to stop the bad guys from bothering me. It's my base away from my base away from my base. (base >cv > hoverfort)
Oh yeah, this reminds me of another thing HVs can do that SVs can't... HVs are able to NOT get bumped around by the dang Monsters/Dinos.
So just made this little guy, the Scorpion, in survival on Omicron from start to finish in about 4 hours. 6 pulse lasers, important components behind the 4 doors lying on its back. Taken it for a test so far and it flies well, plus it looks like a freakin scorpion! Enjoy
I was really surprised at how quick this went. I just googled hammerhead shark for the CV i did, scorpion for this one and would alt-tab back to the screen full of photos anytime i wasnt sure what to do next, relatively little on this was remade during the building process, the hammerhead different story, but this one went much faster than expected
I really like what I did with the doors on the back with this one. Found it far preferable to the walk-in SV i made a few days back (red and white monster, did not function well at all, was supremely heavy,) and the armor on the doors is comparable to hull armor blocks so it works well, just open the doors and all the components you need access to are right there, 4 fuel tanks, 2 ammo boxes, o2 tank and dispenser and small constructor just behind the doors, 6 directional thrusters facing both up and down, 4 armor for back thrust, 4 slant for forwards and 3 slant for each, right and left. Works real nice, went with pulse lasers this time, nice longer range than the usual plasmas i rock.
