Today has been a day for putting things together. Put together a new grill earlier. Now I'm putting together my first modular colony outpost. I'm still trying to decide how I want to arrange the buildings. The first couple merges have gone well! It's starting to take shape... I just need to add the fuel/o2 tanks and power generators now. I wish there was an easier way of manipulating and merging bases. Edit: Turns out those walkways don't allow for oxygen because thin blocks still count as full blocks so I guess, uh, hold your breath and don't linger. Edit x2: It's done and everything is up on the workshop.
When bringing our CVs back to our primary space station, I've always liked to be able to just walk straight from the station to the CV. Started with walkways that convert to elevator blocks once they get out of range of the base's gravity generator. At that point you'd have to line up an external airlock with the platform; this can obviously be a chore. One CV was an early made, small CV with a simple shape (for mining purposes.) So it has flat sides and a flat bottom. Our other CV is a blueprint of mine from our old server that wasn't really designed with this in mind; the door is embedded in a "neck," the bottom and sides are uneven with guns along both. Lining this one up is a lot more difficult. With the engine power it has, I put on a second set of weak engines for all directions, including a single RCS, all set into a "docking thrusters" group for port speed. I could spend 5-10 minutes trying to dock this one due to the precision needed. So I made custom space docks to act as guide-rails and stoppers, making it lot easier and quicker to line up the doors: The first one was really easy due to the flat sides and bottom. You can literally just walk straight between the base and the CV. Docking structure allows you to just slide it right in. The other one was significantly more difficult. You can see the walkway going into the neck where the airlock door is embedded. Better view of the CV's door location, docked. Perfectly lined up. This one still takes some finesse, but with the dock to act as a guide and having separate docking thrusters for precise movement, it's fairly easy to line up now.
Nice, I haven't seen many other large SVs, everyone focuses on CVs it seems (which I'm not saying is a bad thing.) How big is it? I very intentionally went way overboard; making it so it only just fits inside the largest hanger, maxed out with every single SV gun, and able to hold 18+ people (even though I only run it on a private server with 3 of us, I had fun with the concept.) Still has more external detail work to do, and when I started was only using standard steel blocks, so needs various upgrading still, but its sheer mass means that so far, even assaulting the biggest targets, damage is very minimal as it gets spread around a lot. I don't know that I have the biggest SV out there, but I find it's already much larger than necessary to act as a fully-stacked weapons platform + mass-transport ship, while being just small enough to fit in the largest hanger, so it's still practical to dock without an absurdly large hanger. On that note, it is exceedingly entertaining assaulting a drone base with one person on the ground ,and the gunship circle strafing the base providing fire support.
Biggish SV's are fun. I built the one you referenced so that I could stand up and walk in and out of the cockpit. Getting into some of my early mining SV's was like getting into old VW Beetle through the wing window.
Had some epic space combat fun tonight. It was actually the 1st time I've ever assaulted the Alien Outpost. I realized that, in all my 1325 hrs of playtime in Empyrion, I've spend very little of that time in space (in survival), and even less time engaged in space combat. And I quickly realized that it's one of the most exciting parts of Empyrion. I went in in my Effraim StarFighter with railguns and rockets, and had a blast slowly taking out the many turrets, weaving and dodging like a wildcat between the torrent of fire (wish I took some screenshots), getting ripped up often and repairing on the fly, and fighting off space drones in between it all. A word to the wise: Railguns suck against space drones! I went back and re-fitted with Pulse Lasers and was blown away how much better they are against them. When I killed all the big guns, I took my CV in close to clean up the remaining drones and the small turrets... unleashed almighty hell on that outpost! I was victorious. Although, after entering the outpost and de-coring it, I experience some weirdness as I was returning to my CV and turned around. Seeing the sight below really freaked me out! What the hell is that??? That's the torn up front end of MY CV floating in space. Although, as you can see, my CV is very much intact in the foreground. I can't figure this out. I promise you, this is no photo trickery. This is really what I saw. While some may claim it's just a bug, I like to think that the Aliens have been watching me, and, impressed by my tech, were in the process of trying to replicate my CV for their own use. But it seems I put a stop to that ****... just in time! I'm actually still a little freaked out by this occurrence. All in all, what a blast!!!
Nice nice nice!! One question though, how does the merge function work? You have 2 or more seperate Structures (Bases technically spoken), speak some mergestruct on it and they are one Structure (Base technically)? Who's Core is the final Core then? (I see you have put the Core very visible on the outside, perhaps for fast disassembling?)
Hi GUYS I'm readying myself for a brutal trip to Aestus and Masperon Moon for the rare ores. Saw for the first time Freighter Tug 6. It's red. It' didn't attack me! Does anyone know whats up with it?
So you start off with the first base. setrotation ID gets the ball rolling. This lines up the first structure along a particular plane. setrotation ID 0,360,0 will have it pointing north for example. This makes it easier to line them up. I try to spawn the next piece close and lined up where I want it to be. Then I use mergestructs ID ID. Setrotation may get used again if the initial merge command puts it on a different axis so it's facing the wrong way. If I'm lucky they were lined up enough that this merges them along the plane I want. If not then it's a lot of playing with setposition ID #,#,# on the second base to get it into the right spot. Then mergestructs ID ID to see if they snap together like I want. If not more setposition until they do. If they do snap together correctly then I use mergestructs ID ID -ex to finalize the move. It will remove the core from the second base once you use that command. The fact that it removes the extraneous core is something one needs to be aware of. It's why the cores aren't really integrated into the various structures. It wouldn't do to have the core pop and the structure collapse or something. When I was done merging things and had my final base I simply moved the core to a more appropriate spot. I also turned structural integrity off in the console while I was working(si off) and I save after every merge. If you want to be more cautious save it under a slightly different name after every move. Using that I can turn a collection of buildings like this: Into this: Thanks! I have more buildings coming with phase 2.
Yellow one that is like a big docking clamp?I think it has player - not alien - turrets. Sentry guns are the right ones. I think I posted it in the bugs few months ago. But might be good idea to drop a line there again so it gets fixed.
Wow...NPCs! The trader is totally killing me on these steel plates tho LOL Also, I feel bad for the NPCs that I walk into their home and take a shower.... thats just not right man
@Siege Inc. Love your work as usual. But if I might offer feedback: those legs the houses stand on, look bit feeble to my eye. Maybe beef them up a little bit, add trussing or something? Just a suggestion But other than that - brilliant work. Would love to see that base in the moon for example
Thanks! Your advice is noted but the design was very deliberately chosen so truss blocks are not in the cards. To the moon!
An old project of mine revisited. This was my first serious attempt at an SV which started in my first week of empyrion. It had evolved over some weeks to look like it does here. Here you can clearly see I have not discovered how to use angled or triangle blocks yet I decided to take another look with my current skillset, and damn, this thing was really built to last. Over the course of several combat scenarios the hull was developed thickened and designed all around the attacks I were receiving at the time. So today I flew it up to the akua drone base on medium setting and did a few orbits and even landed on the [pad for a few seconds to see what sort of damage i could escape with. Red lasers and 5.8m rounds pummeling the hull all round. I flew slowly and precise and carefully landed for a few seconds then took off slowly and slowly flew away whilst under fire the whole time. I only lost a flare light from the rear ^-^ So this small sv has very very thick skin, this is obvious when the 3 small and medium thrusters struggle to get the thing off the ground still and the vessel generally flies like a stuffed pig ! My point is, turns out it was a lot more durable than i expected, so I will update it starting today. -needs vents -need some nice shaping to the front -need more lift power -signal and sensor features. hopefully can achieve all this and still keep it as durable as a steel condom. The following pictures were taken after the drone base pass. You can see I have already fitted the aircon and glass doors interior just after the drone base test this morning I hope to make the vessel prettier and more desirable as my workshop entry for this particular vessel is covered in cobwebs due to nobody viewing XD
Now that you are using your cv in space combat, you will find this sort of "wierdness" happening more often. Many a space battle I have seen ships become deformed and mutilated like what you have shown here, large sections of my cv would sometimes appear offset from my cv even whilst the original section was still in place. Sometimes a relog fixes this, other times you can interact and remove the new blocks with a multitool without effecting the original blocks still on the ship. This glitch only ever seems to happens once a cv starts shooting. This has not happened to me of late but then neither has large amounts of cv combat. I have used a cv once in the last 2 months to attack a space base, went off without a hitch I guess. it would be cool if our ships could actually be severed into pieces at its weak points XD The nose of your cv drifting off into space with sparks flying would be awesome ! Of course any attempt from eleon to try and simulate this sort of dynamic physics would probably result in them all going back to work at mcdonalds.
This is looking fantastic! I've been put off by the mergestruct function because it didn't seem user-friendly enough to be worth the hassle but I might finally check it out
@Siege Inc. and all others, Another question: Now merging different Structures to one whole Mega-Struct is possible now (which is really a very good addition!!), is the opposite true in the same way? That is, I'm making a HUGE (for my means ;-) Base that can be made as a space station and a ground/moon base too. Actually I've doing multiple Modules for that - but already in place. Now I'm thinking of partitioning all... So, can I "cut" (i.e. say some setNewStructure x,y 20,20 and ANYTHING above relative x coords 20 and relative y coords 20 (and z coords as THE fixed axis here in this example) the structure into two without dissambling all and saving as new blueprint?
Yesterday we played around with the new sauna my husband made for our faction to enjoy. It's near our expedition base camp, and Timo also constructed a nice wooden track and an HV train (RCS off to just go up and down the track). After I dove down into the hot springs pool, @rainyday took a leap next. Nice cannonball pose! It went great until he entered the water at that one painful spot--Timo is going to fix that and put some bandages at the bottom in case anyone breaks a leg. The sauna is fully functional! You go up the elevator and there's a big furnace surrounded by wooden benches. You sit near the furnace until you're feeling too warm for a bit, and then walk the plank and soak in the pool. I stepped out of our MP session for an hour to work some on a new expedition base for our next expedition, destination: Oscutune. When I got back, we had a fantastic adventure taking out the Drone Base on Ningues. Timo had destroyed the base's defenses before we left on our mining trip, but the base hadn't regenerated yet. I set it to regenerate after approximately 30 hours in real time, so that surprised me. That was such a fun POI raid!! After our gaming session, I returned to Creative Mode to work on the base until some early hour of the morning. I really wanted to finish the second floor before bed, but here's where I left off on the new base, Space Cats Retreat. I'm going to work on it as much as possible this evening. So far it's been a really fun project.
