Today I found my new home server, Our Grid: Pure PvE so I can build in peace and not have to listen to posturing or drama in chat, smaller so its not a battle to gather resources needed and the ol minecraft neighbourly feel is there. Had another rough start (Restarted for the big update on another server) and spent my first 10 minutes being killed by monsters in the night while I tried desperately to make it to comrades. Water saved me again but in a much more amusing way than before. While sitting at the bottom waiting for day I remembered I needed to harvest some rocks and stone for my Emergency Survival shelter, so I dug a bit. Haha well it seems that excavated space 'underwater' fills with air! I could use survival crafter in peace AND shoot those SOBs that were swarming above my head. I almost felt bad doing it in a dodgy way but I'd died enough that night. The Emergency Shelter: a survivalists best friend. Eventually day arrived and I was able to make it the rest of way to the larger shelter, pillaging their lake along the way. Never seen a lake so shallow (3/4 was just above breathing height), or devoid of seaweed. heh. Met some clanmates, nice pair, they made a starter help donation including medium armor D), and let me use their machinery. Mmm, bike, ammo and better weapons I think! After than episode I did far better and got to L7 (20 deaths, not too bad lol) so I could produce my Transfer Pod to do a basic exploration run and hunt me up another 3 levels for the actual base. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Can you see it? No? Well not surprising, noone could spot it at this distance with the fog. Oh boy and the base itself it is potentially my first Masterpiece ^^. I've built a few bases so far: My first started as a cube (Stupid minecraft startup habits, I realised part-way) and ended as a slightly fancy shaped flat pyramid. I did some ships and learn the shapes better, so my 2nd base was Much better! It had some shape, style and purpose to it. I'd learnt that designing in creative was a much better option so I ended up doing the BitForge. Surely you can see it now? No it's not the ship, pad or sign. I know exactly where it is and I can *only* just see it That would have been my first potential masterpiece but a combination of my fail and the games update changing material costs has made it un-viable in my UrgiCorp design dockets progression scheme. If there is a way to convert structure material type then I may be able to salvage that but I suspect I'm outta luck. I had an idea for the Survival Shelter mentioned above, so I did that next. Really cheap & simple, purely a place to stop for the night and use your constructor in peace. No systems at all. Then I built It. My first masterpiece! (I hope lol!) I can definately see a large portion of structure now! Can you? Considering it's small and simple making it well was not a fast or simple task. I started with the Survival Shelter (Released just before I posted this!) followed by the usual design tasks for me: Start structure, Core systems, Completed structure, Texture, color & decorate, procrastinate, set up devices groups & devices names, set up signals, find extra things to add, bounce back to texture & run along til I get to signals again, usually a few times lol, then final inspection. It is now in plain view, though partially obscured. I can't remember at exactly which point, but suddenly had an idea that made me physically laugh. I remembered my Transfer Pod idea/design and a highly amusing option occurred. I'd build a special hangar for it attached. Oh my. It turned out pretty well and just added a little extra zing to the entire Shelter concept & design. If you still don't see it you ARE blind. I added white markers at the edges of the screenshots that center on it. I tried using the completed base in my previous server; Doh! It used materials that you can't access easily on starter planets. Fail! Back to design. That fixed, I tried again. More fail! Digging out the basement made it unsightly and easily visible due to modified land becoming dirt colored. A plan occured, rearrange the interior so the devices you Never need to directly access (Gen, Tanks, etc) are at the bottom. Ah, the old hangar in a tree gag. It just never gets old. When I did this I took opportunity to add in more control systems and decided what the hell and expanded the basement an extra 2 so you could grow minimal crops as well. Put in placeholder blocks for the grow plots and marked them with Xs ^^ More thought went into this than necessary for something you're going to likely abandon fairly fast when you move on to real bases. It is a meant as a Shelter, but it's the Deluxe model made by UrgiCorp. Home Sweet Home Features: Buildable at L10 & the only resource you need that isn't minable on the starter planet is 10 cobalt. 1 Raid or a Travel pod up to an asteroid fixes this issue. ^^ Camoflagued for use in PvP enviroments. Single anti-personelle turret placed where it is *Very* awkward to get a safe shot at, but covers a large area outside & the entrance. If used in PvP the door and windows should be upgraded as soon as possible. Single cannon to make sure drones don't destroy it without a fight. Commonly used devices organised into Access group & ordered according to how fast/often you are likely to use it. Devices located strategically, & color coded. O2 & med near door, processor n crops below. 'Main' area. There's really not much area, but it is still arranged in UC fashion; Cargo close to crafting, control panel easy to access and everything color coded and signposted. Automatic Systems: Automatic lights Automatic ramp But what does it all mean?! Manual Systems: Grow lights Power Saving mode (28 hours) Hangar light & doors Automatic Ramp Retract & Disable Bonus Signal: Setting a 'Blackout' custom signal will let you quickly turn off lights without triggering grow lights. Peek-a-boo! This base is Complete and is currently undergoing QA testing! Ie: I'm about to use it in a MP survival game. I'm also finishing up the UrgiCorp Classification & Symbolology charts which will make my apparently odd symbol & color choices clear. Man THAT has taken a while, almost a week... Graphics work is relatively fast, as is planning systems, however, coming up with logical, recognisable names for all the options this generates and troubleshooting it (ie: resource requirement changes!) can take a while. As a teaser type thing my classification on steam workshop success level goes: Masterpiece: 100+ subs, Obelisk: 1000+, Monument: 2000+ subs, Legend: 10000+. The last choice was for a specific point: Legends can take on a life of their own. Word gets carried on and down the ages until the original form is but dust, and with 10000 subs, it IS to that point. ^^ Atlantis is Legendary, Argentspire is Monumental. The Ladybug is Legendary, and The Emerald Mk I is fairly new and is only a Masterpiece so far. For an item to do that well a lot of love has gone into it and it deserves an appropriate title. And cause I just thought of it, here's the last one that a select Few, truly talented or lucky individuals will ever achieve (Maybe a while after EGS is released): Anomaly: 100000+. On a side note: anyone else find the sounds of the day/night & weather cycles going in the background to be quite pleasant? I often leave the game running so I can nab screenshots & reference early builds quickly so I've been hearing it alot lately. Tweeting and Chirping is sooo much nicer than the roars and chitters of Trouble Approaching. lol
Today I tried another warp ship. I've piled enough junk into the factory to spawn the thing so I'll get up on the roof of my BA and try it out in survival.
I've been doing a bit more work on the interior of my large cargo Freighter and it feels like I'm starting to get somewhere. I've redone almost all of the interior and am for the most part just fine tuning. The only problem is I'm starting to think about changing the engine pods..... Why do I do this to myself!? Hopefully I'll be able to get this thing on the workshop in the next couple of days. That is if I don't decide to change anything else XD
I mostly hung around in creative, tweaking designs, correcting how spotlights were pointing, adjusting older ships and bases for 7.0. Removed the repair stations from my starter bases because of their new materials requirements. Just lots and lots of design reviews and tweaks. Added pulse lasers to the Cerulean Star. Added shutter blocks to the Bombardier over the windows for additional protection. Since the Bowhead is no longer a HOPD (disqualified because of the material requirements for the thrusters), I removed the trash plates and mounted it's forward weapons in the blueprint.
Didn't really do this today, but I might post my new SV Transportship with warp for 5 people. Edit: I'm too dumb to post proper pics -.-
Hello everyone Frends . I want to let you know that I'm still working on the completion of the vessel when it's time for me. There are a few places that have a difficult angle and I miss inspiration. That vessel I want to make nice even in interiors.. I do not want to spoil it, so I need time... She is big .. It will come
I was up until 5am this morning working on the Millennium Falcon's refit. The new interior is miles ahead of the old one and she's going to have a working hyperdrive finally. In the immortal words of a gun loving trash panda with a talking tree for a best friend....Oh. Yeaaaaah. I tore out all the flight systems and life support too. I think I can get a more efficient setup this time. It takes soooooooo many damn thrusters and rcs to move this ship. Edit: It's done and workshop updated. Some before and after screenies This is a hallway on the left side of the ship near the airlock there. Spoilered the rest Spoiler Crew Quarters The main room with the monster chess table thingy Cockpit The forward cargo hold What a difference a year makes.
Man, this is awesome! Once i'm finished with my current project, i'll definitely try this. If they don't care for us, we need to help ourselves! You know what i love about this game the most? This community. I think everyone knows that i'm not a fan of playing with other ppl. (no drama or distractions), but i LOVE sharing experiences and here on the forums and talk about the game and things in general. It's a shame we are only tolerated but not really supported by the devs, like MP or PvP.
Your hardcore gamers, in particular the forum goers, get to think about games a lot as they build. They spot nuances. But they're not the best at checking in on new bugs in old systems as they likely have a workaround (Like me placing 2-high ramps on a single support block. Have to make a flat surface below to place it correctly, then can remove the scaffold) Newer players don't tend to know the nuance yet, and might not play often enough/enough overall to get the whole picture. They're also perfect for 'idiot-proofing'. Before anyone panics that's a programmers term for making the program foolproof from faulty inputs with error checking & error correction if you're feeling fancy. ^ For my miniupdate, I can confidently say It's All Gone Pete Tong. I started using and testing the Shelter in mp; soon after I realised my current UrgiCorp miner design needed many more levels and thinking on it was also meant as a BitForge exclusive. Soooo off I trundled to creative mode again! Now like 5 hours later I am back to report in! Initial structure & the core function need to lift it, plus preplanning structure & Role devices Eventually I got it to the stage where it didn't feel like some parts connected with sticks and went to take it out for an initial test flight. Oh. That's right, gotta balance Hover placement. Plus spotlight placed early to give plenty of opportunity to shape merge or outright hide it! With all the devices I wanted to include (Plus a few 'I almost forgot that' reserved spots ^) I decided last minute to make it a 3-man vessel (Had started with idea for turret copilot anyway), did adjustments, then I was finally free to complete the structure and do main shaping. Approx 3 hours in. All seating comes as standard with a good or great view of the surrounding land. Depending on the pilots skills, passengers should get an interesting<->terrifying experience as they see trees and large rocks whipping by... And I've just completed that, done a quick experimental shape tuning bypass, added light & installed my control system devices into the relevant places. It is now ready for me to start the full decoration & tweaking stage now RIP another 3 hours Gotta ask; Do any other builders here also find the symmetry plane indicator to be highly obnoxious and wish they had a much more subtle version, or the ability to keep building (And painting!) in symmetry mode with it not showing up at all? Or even a hotkey to toggle it on/off so I don't have to mess about with buttons, dialogs and *click in the right place* on said dialog, THEN close the bloody dialog, just to get a clear view of my progress? And symmetrical multitool deleting would be nice too. ^^
good god I think I might be finished! looks like I'm done with the texturing, I got some switches wired up and did a little work on the engine pods. I think I'll leave it a day or two before publishing just so I can look at it with fresh eyes.
been working on a 21-laser mining contraption, with drills arranged like a drone swarm. It's mostly done just getting the signal logic stuff setup how I want is taking much longer than I thought (and manually grouping 430RCS units.. ugh). I'll probably throw together a miniature one with 6 drill drones as well once this one's done. Spoiler: more pics
The Distant Horizon and her crew. I need to arrange the weapon layout a bit more effective. It's mostly Pulse Laser Turrets (20 so far) and Missile Turrets (yet to be installed). Interiors: The bridge Science Station Engineering Station Sickbay: Hangar: Engineering: Crew Lounge Astronomical laboratory Garden + mess hall I still don't know what to do with that corner far in the background (upper level).
I love that. Ships feels so empty without a crew on board. I'm going to have to try that with Nexus station at some point. How did you get the human looking crew though?
Those business guys are among the Alien block, which i find very strange somehow. Did anyone notice that there a no females? (i find this even more disturbing...)
Some pvp ! Server: SBS - NEWPlayerFriendly/PvPvE/BIGSTARTERPackage/Events! Come check us out for some fun! This isn't my point of view was a guy that ran into our group.