You can also use the replaceblocks command to swap out all blocks of a certain type with another. For example, type Code: di in console to see debug information. Specifically, you're looking at the top right where a block box will appear. Point at your ship and look for "structure ID" Then you can do Code: replaceblocks <structure ID number> hullarmoredfulllarge hullfulllarge That will replace all 'hullarmoredfulllarge' blocks (hardened steel) on the structure of that number (your ship) with blocks 'hullfulllarge' (regular steel blocks). Remember, there's no confirmation, it just happens when you hit enter, so make sure you've saved a copy of the blueprint already in case something goes wrong. That's if you only used regular cubes and simple stuff. More complex shapes have different item names, which you can see by looking at the block with the debug window turned on. Or it's stuff like Code: hullarmoredthinlarge Code: hullarmoredextendedlarge Note, the 'extended' tree has multiple listings, so it's 02 - 06 after the word extended but before large. Such as Code: hullarmoredextended02large The debug window will tell you as well. If you do mess with commands, remember to only replace full with full, thin with thin, and so on. It's complicated at first, but if you get it, it's way faster than manually replacing each block one at a time.
I scrapped the CV I was working on, it was just way too much work to get things fixed (also, I didn't see your post before I decided to do that). I spent this whole time working on a new one, using just steel blocks. I actually like the new one better anyway, because I was able to actually get things set up right. I started the way Slam said they start theirs; from the hanger. It feels weird having the core in the hanger, but meh. The new ship is basically 4 sections. Rear to front: engine room, hanger, central area (not really sure yet what to call it, its just a large open space with a boarding ramp) and bridge. I will post up some screen shots, because I either made it too big or just really suck at this! But the CPU is 190k, with nothing on board except the stuff to make the ship move. Look them over and please tell me what I am messing up on. Thanks!
That's an excellent start there! I forgot that in vanilla, hull blocks take up CPU: that's over a quarter of your CPU being taken up just by the hull blocks. Oof. In RE they don't, but as a consequence in RE I think either blocks are heavier or thrusters are weaker. Eleons design philosophy for vanilla was: they want to discourage large CVs, so they put a CPU limit on blocks. In RE, the design philosophy is: bigger ships need more thrusters anyway, so nerf those instead of penalizing number of blocks. If that were me with that ship in that situation, I'd nix the idea of being able to land on planets for the meantime and just make sure my SV can handle that for now. Removing 6 of the down-facing thrusters should free up a bit of CPU space for other devices. I should note that while you can go over the CPU limit, your devices start to become less effective as a result. Thrusters produce less thrust,constructors construct slower, and turrets turn slower. You can tell how much from the CPU Efficiency stat on the page there. 100% means everything working as intended. 90% means things work 10% slower. So, for an early-game CV, assuming you don't plan to take into battle, you can get away with a bit of CPU overflow to start with. I wouldn't let it drop below 90% personally, but you can choose how low you want it to go. I think you only need to be going 40m/s or so to be able to use the warp drive in the CV, so as long as your ship can achieve that, then it should be fine for now. So I'd remove a few down-facing thrusters, instead using your SV to go planetside while leaving your CV in orbit, and embrace a little CPU inefficiency for a short while til you can afford to install a CPU extender. One final point (otherwise I'd be typing all day), the further you put your thrusters from the center of mass (generally near the center of your ship), the more torque you get from them. So you can improve turning rate by placing thrusters as far from the center of your ship as possible. To see exactly where the Center of Mass is, you can hit N, go to debug, and check the relevant button box. The yellow ball that appears is where the center of mass is located, and the light blue one is the centerpoint that the ship rotates around. So by carefully adjusting the positioning of your thrusters, you can get better turn response. This does not increase actual thrust; it just alters how that thrust interacts with the ship. Here's an awesome article going over the design considerations for CVs with the current flight model. It mostly speaks of planetside CVs, but still has good info for orbital ones. It's written by one of the folks who is responsible for the Reforged Eden mod, but the advice applies to vanilla games as well: https://empyriononline.com/threads/guide-building-with-the-current-flight-model.94726/ Good luck!
Making power gets easier as the game progresses. I take a survivalist approach in vanilla SP and when I get to a new system I want to exploit I will land the CV, switch off thrust and RCS group, or transfer perishables to a SV fridge and switch the CV off entirely then use the F2 factory to spawn a prebuilt a small ground base which is dirt cheap and has a solar powered base fridge. Land the SV on the base once it has charge and transfer fridge contents then switch off the SV. Ice Station Zeta. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2951214134 I keep the CV small and simple at first, just use it as an interstellar transport. 3 medium thrusters, one for down, forwards & backwards plus 3 small thrusters are enough for sufficient cargo to get you started.
@Slam Jones Hey thanks! I actually had a lot of fun working on that one. I think I will start dropping materials into the blueprint as I get them. Probably best to just stay in orbit like you said; it took me about 10 minutes to get that thing off the ground lol. I think also I will spawn it in space so I don't have to deal with taking off! I still have to paint the outside of the ship, but the interior is done. Just realized, if I am leaving the ship in space, I am going to have to come up with another HV transport. The last on I made won't fit into the hanger. But I am thinking I can make one like a small shuttle with a spot to dock the HV to. I'll keep you posted on my progress though. Thanks again for all of the advice everyone!
@boolybooly Once I finish running through the first system, I should be able to upgrade the CPU, and then I will be fine I think. But I do think that for now, I will just leave it in orbit and use my SV and HV planetside. I make them with everything I will need in leu of a base (constructor, health station, fridge, etc.) so really the only things I can't do in my ships and hovers is sleep and cook (why isn't there a portable food processor....?). I don't mind using blueprint bases, but I actually enjoy building bases of my own design based on the environment of the planets I land on. But I try not to build more then 1 groundside base per system, if that. I mean, if I find a planet that I absolutely love, I will build a base there just so I can go there all the time. But I have only been to the first 2 systems so I have no idea what will happen as I go on.
Well, I don't wanna tell you how you should play, but that's seriously huge for a T1. It's a pretty nice shape though. I mostly build pure combat ships, but all this is giving me a bit of an urge to build lower tier explorer/transport ships. For the size and weight of your ship, I'd go T2 at minimum, just so I could get the thrust I like. Reason being if it takes that long to take off, empty, it may get stuck once you have cargo in it. T2 extender isn't too hard to come by, so you should probably aim for that. But at least that hull looks to have good room for steady upgrades as you get more stuff.
Well Zeta saves power and I did design the base for this purpose, so I expect its more satifying for me to use than for you. You could design your own prefab if you decide to avoid sweating the base components every landing and still want to save power. Main thing is what slam said about switching off unnecessary components on the CV if you leave it in space. Just be sure not to leave it in the path of a hostile patrol vessel.
Don't know if it was mentioned or not (I quickly read all the replies (emphasis on quickly)) but if you can mine all the available Promethiun on a planet that has Promethium depletion metorites indicated then it means those resources get "replaced" periodically by falling meteorites. A message will pop up warning when one shows up and then you just have to find it and mine it. If you're quick you can spot the white vapor trail to locate where the meteorite landed. You'll need a mining HV (or equivalent) because it takes a fairly long time to mine completely with a hand tool (but not impossible if you're patient enough). They have an expiry time (several game days it felt like) but then more will keep showing up anyway. If you're only interested in Promethium you may want to leave the last iron/copper/silicon etc. untouched so that every meteorite is a Promethium one. That's just a hunch though I don't know the mechanics on how often and the odds of which resource may come. I have had different type meteorites on the ground at once but probably never more than one of any one particular resource. Also, if the last (or more than one) resource node is located on territory owned by one of the factions it may be impossible to zero-out the resource without getting Friendly relations first so the depletion asteroid strategy is situational. You can get Friendly relations by killing predators while on the faction's territory or by doing missions for them (story mode). (There may be other ways). Back when you needed Friendly relations to trade I used to go on foot around lake shores within a faction's territory and kill those lake monsters (the blobby ones with the antenna). Spiders worked too but are more dangerous due to being in packs. I went on foot to avoid the "being in their air/land space with a vessel" penalty. A meteorite that conveniently landed below my base in one of my games. Scared the crap out of me though because I saw and heard it land. I wonder what happens if they hit your base or a parked vessel lol. If you look carefully you can spot a couple of my CV's from that game, the left-hand one was specifically built to carry a mining HV to where meteorites landed. Much easier to fly HV's to a spot than trying to traverse forests, hills, etc. Much later in the same game (I'm lol at those pillared landing pads I'd constructed) a silicon meteorite landed almost in the same place as the earlier Promethium one. This pic also has a better view of my simple HV carrier CV (CV Lorry) which was really just a cab with a truck-bed-like area for loading/carrying a mining HV hence its name. The CV also doubled as a system-only asteroid miner (you can see the 3x3 block area I had for the CV mining tool). Alas the CV mining tool was only usable in space so I still needed the mining HV for planet meteorites.
@boolybooly I did make a basic spawn , something easy to gather for, since I wasn't using CV's. But since you all came in here and gave me all of the advice that you have, I went ahead and did a CV. I moved to the 2nd system (I'm sorry, I don't remember the name, Omi-something) with the CV, and left it in space. I used my SV to take out the system drones, and have lost 2 ships to defense platforms (gah!) but so far the CV has been fine. I am not sure if it is the 4 fuel tanks or staying in space, but I have not had the same fuel issues as I was having before. Could also be that I just used steel blocks and not hardened or combat. I even started adding to the interior of the ship to get more use out of it. The only things that I leave on are the fridges and the grow lights (I finally decided to try space farming). As a precaution, I even built an HV fridge like Insopor suggested. I dump half of the food I collect and farm into the HV fridge, and the rest goes into the fridge in the galley. But, I have not really had the issues I was having before, so the galley fridge hasn't had the issues I was having before. Since I have to leave the garden lights on, I have even set up custom switches in the control panel (to save myself time scrolling down the list of things to shut down) and I switch them off when I leave the CV. So at this point, things are looking fairly good. I have yet to add a shield to the CV though, so I do have to be careful where I park. @DarkMaid I made myself a mining SV as japp_02 suggested, as I started finding more then just ice asteroids in the new system. I have more promethium right now than I need, which is nice. As for the incoming asteroid warning, I saw that the other day, and it tripped me out. I had no idea what it was because I hadn't seen it before. I was looking around expecting an asteroid to crash down on me, but never saw anything. Now I think I understand what that was, so thank you for that screen shot. I figured out the reputation thing from my dealings with the Talon. But, something else I realized (because I had my HV set up with Miniguns) is that even if I was getting a penalty for being in their territory, my HV was killing things so fast, I was usually honored before I got the key matrix (of course, I am also really slow to progress because I spend time farming resources to spawn my SV and next base; the SV to get me to the next system, and the base once I got there). I think you lose 50 points for every real time 5 minutes in their territory; but in 5 minutes I was getting 3k plus from farming the "blobs" (lol) by the lakes. Before I leave the start system, I am Honored with the Talon, and friendly with the pirates. So the way I see it, if you are going into some ones territory with the intention of farming reputation, it is far faster with an HV equipped with miniguns. I usually don't do any mining in anyone's territory though, because it just feel wrong to me. I may gather a few plant proteins to feed myself , or grab that titanium deposit (they didn't see me so I wasn't there!) but I won't do any mining. Flatbed CV, interesting idea. But since I am not sure I want to have an entire fleet of CV's I have been brainstorming an SV design that I can use to transport my HV to planets. It is going to have to be small enough to fit into my hanger bay so my first design is out. If you haven't ever tried to use an SV to carry an HV, I can tell you this much. It is possible, but it feels like trying to fly a CV off the surface of a planet. Its not as easy as flying an SV fighter for example, ground to orbit in 10 seconds; its more like 2 to 3 minutes depending on the thrusters you use, and the weight of the HV. But, it is definitely possible I found out. Okay, I am off to bed, but I will do another update. Really, thanks everyone. You may have actually changed my mind.
Huh, I guess I was operating under the mistaken assumption of turrets not giving XP (or perhaps not faction relationship points at least) for predators. Maybe they changed something or I messed up my testing. Got me curious now I will have to do some more thorough re-testing. For example, I used to hunt Golems for XP (and their loot of course) to level up but discovered that minigun turrets didn't give out the XP but that gatlings did. Even before I could afford gatlings I would exit the cab and use a sniper rifle (this while still airborne as I'd built a small standing area outside the cab for my character. I just had to be really careful to not accidentally fall off the SV lol). Tbh I enjoy the very early, survivalist phase the most: great memories of flying around on barely-able-to-fly SV's made mostly of carbon blocks, hunting snow golems in frigid glacier biomes, swimming in hot springs to collect precious plant protein just to prevent starving to death, etc. Great times
