The build looks like a ship, and not a collection of flying parts. It has no components requiring Zascosium or Erestrum. The cabin has O2. However, the ship is 1.56 Kt, over the weight limit. The bottom thrusters form the floor in the cabin, roasting the player as they walk over them. --- Recommend moving them under the cargo boxes to prevent cooking players. The player can walk into the radiation field near the Gravity generator, roasting the player. --- A railing block at the end of the cargo boxes will keep the player away from the gravity generator and they can still access the armor locker over the railing. At full thrust the ship takes the generators to 207%, way over the challenge specs. I did see the low power setting, but the objective was to make a ship that does not overtax the generators. Considering that S thrusters weigh 16 tonnes each (M thrusters weigh 24 tonnes) you can improve the both the power usage and weight of the ship by cutting down on the number of thrusters. The ship does have all the devices you would expect in a mobile base, and the sensors for the doors and ramps are a nice touch.
@Robot Shark, i'm very sorry that i've forgotton to do the planetary testflight! And while I knew i missed something, i didnt know what... Anyhow.. It is now 900t and otherwise adjusted according to your suggestions and updated in the workshop. Even with less fuel tanks, it lasts longer now! Guess i could not get rid of the habbit: the more thrusters the better Thank you!
When working on smaller builds, the weight of thrusters can work against you. The ship meets the challenge now and has been added to the collection.
Okay I took a little time to get my thoughts in order before posting what I think would be an interesting set of rules for a slightly larger challenge. 1T1 - Challenge. Obligations. 1-) Limit of 1 large T1 generator. 2-) Ship must have one thrust vector of at least 21m/s to escape a 2.0 gravity planet (up,down, sideways are all fine as long as it can leave the atmoshphere) 3-) The ship must be able to land on landing gear with no hull blocks touching the ground. I will argue that half-blocks that do not touch the floor would be OK because the limitation here is the game collision mechanics and not real physics. As long as the vessel could land on just the landing gear and not rely on those half blocks to maintain stability. 4-) The ship must have a pressurized SV landing bay capable of housing the prefab Tier 4 shuttle. The shuttle must sit comfortably into the docking bay and not have to wiggle in thru fancy flying or bumping all over the place. 5-) The ship must have a pressurized HV docking bay capable of housing a land tank (tier 5A I think). The bay must be acessible from the ground without the use and abuse of boosters. 6-) Hull may be of any material. 7-) Level limit 15 All ores permitted 9-) Not hot / irradiated zones unless they make sense such as a warp core room with warning signs or engine access hatches Bonus but not obligatory. 18 Growth plots (Unless your ship design would not make sense for it to have a growth farm) 3 passenger seats Living quarters for 4 people Medical bay Constructors area Of course this is just my view on what would make the challenge interesting. I am open to recommendations from anybody. Sadly I would be a horrible choice to manage a challenge such as this but would gladly evaluate ships and give advice / suggestions to anybody who asks. Cheers!,
It could always include my personal rules for "believable" ships, but I think some folks will not like them. 1. The build must look like a ship and not like a collection of flying parts. 2. No internal components are to be exposed to space, devices like the core must be installed within the build. 3. All devices and storage crates must be accessible by players from within the build and they must be visible to the player. -- a. No pressing “P” to access them from the control panel, no mounting them upside down as the "floor" of a cabin. -- b. Having one Fuel/O2 tank accessible by the player with the rest of the tanks hidden is allowed. 4. Thrusters must be placed as if “thruster burn” was enabled. -- a. The exhaust may be covered by shutter blocks (vents) to protect them. 5. Spotlights cannot be placed behind hull blocks, they must be exposed on the exterior of the ship. -- a. spotlights may be placed behind glass windows. 6. Ships must have landing gear and no hull blocks can touch the ground. -- While half/thin blocks *technically* touch the ground, this is a limitation of the game engine. Visually, they cannot touch the ground. 7. Living areas need O2. -- A. While thin/half blocks are considered airtight by the game, they must be placed so they provide a visible O2 seal. 8. The build must be 6.0 safe, no irradiating or roasting the players in the living areas. Builders can create a engineering section to house the hazardous components, but it needs to be clearly marked and separated from the rest of the build.
The entries for this Challenge were just about perfect for a first CV, after reaching level 10 or so, to warp elsewhere and have a mobile base. I'm hoping the next Challenge is for when a player has progressed a bit further along, so the Level 15 requirement (or similar) sounds about right. And they should be a bit bigger and generally more pleasing to the eye. However, the energy efficiency (generator limit and weight limit) is what attracted me to this Challenge in the first place. The rule of 1 Large T1 Generator has me worried. That is 10 times the power of the 2 Small Generators in this Challenge. None of the rules proposed include a weight limit (such as being below 1 kiloton, like for this Challenge). No weight limit allows even very bulky, energy-wasting designs. I'd be okay with the 1 Large T1 Generator limit, so long as a weight limit was added. In Creative, I've built and examined in detail several small, low-tier (including so-called "starter") CVs on the workshop that have one or more spacious hangars as I was deciding on what to build. These include the KDY-Artemis-(CV)-Starter, CV-M4S-Galaxy Drifter, Caines-Cobra-GT-Starter, Typhon-class Heavy Gunship, and -Polaris-Enhanced. They all had low tonnage in the range of 3.77 kt to 5.84 kt. It should be noteworthy that the -Polaris-Enhanced has a number of grow plots, a med bay, several separate crew quarters, a mess hall, 2 hatches for "escape pod" SVs and 3 hangars, 1 of which is accessible from the ground and another which could work for HVs with a Hover Booster. Despite all of the features and size, it still weighs less than 6 kt. As such, I propose that a modest weight limit of somewhere between 4 kt and 7 kt be one of the rules. Without a weight limit, players could just slap on a bunch more thrusters to practically any design in order to make it fly, making it far less of a challenge.
... and you did not try any of my single large generator starting CV's (snif) I went over my single T1 large generator builds, they range from 1.16 Kt to 3.85 Kt. So I think a 4 Kt limit would be reasonable. Thoughts?
I am more of the opinion that a size class limit would be a more interesting idea for this build challenge than a pure weight. With a weight limit you severely punish people who want to make a combat vessel as opposed to a civilian craft. I get the whole use your materials wisely but I would rather put the constraint on ship size than weight for this one. Use your decorations, lights and windows wisely. For a starter CV resources made sense as early on that is the primary limiting factor but by mid game you might want something a bit heftier or combat ready. Just my thoughts of course.
Hmm... I hadn't thought much about the vessel's combat ability and how that would affect weight. It's a good point. However - aside from hull thickness and vulnerable spots - combat ability is largely decided by the number of weapons, the type of weapons and the tech level that the player has unlocked. If entries are limited to Tech Level 15, that means no lasers, Rocket Launchers or Artillery Turrets. With the small CVs that I've seen, some of them came with weapons. However, some only came with Sentry Guns and marked the locations where other weapons could go, such as with black or brightly-colored blocks with "T" for turret, "R" for Rocket Launcher and "L" for Pulse Laser. Isn't there something to be said for a ship that only comes with a few Sentry Guns (such as for predators), allowing the end user to customize by what they have on hand or by tech level and resources? I'm not completely against having a size class limit instead of a weight limit. Either would work, I guess. Though, a weight limit and only marking where weapons could go might be more of a challenge. The small CVs I mentioned earlier ranged from 3.77 kt to 5.74 kt. However, in Size Class they ranged from 1 to 3. Also, expecting entries to come with weapons might mean requiring significantly more Zascosium and Erestrum (if not more Neodymium) than normal. Myself, I tend to ignore ship designs that call for lots of Zascosium and Erestrum, mostly because I may not be able to build it until I already have a CV to mine the Zascosium and Erestrum deposits on the other side of the star system. One can actually build a CV that requires about 250 Erestrum/Zascosium by salvaging the Thruster Blocks L (or XL) and the RCS T2 from the Titan and/or any other crashed ship around the start planet, plus salvaging the Fuel Tanks T3 from certain POIs like the Thermica Station around Akua. (Repair Stations and Repair Bays could also work, but I tend to horde those rare things.) But anything beyond 300 or so could be problematic unless you happen to be very lucky with POI loot. Yes, one can build it in Creative, strip out and/or replace the devices that require Z and E, and save a customized version. However, this is something of a hassle that I like to avoid.
Well if you put in 4 rocket turrets a repair station and repay bay you still use less than 900 Zascosium and Erestrium. Just looting the PV on Omicron yields more than that if you salvage the rocket launchers from it. My idea with keeping the level at 15 was that it would allow for mid range vessels without actually allowing horribly expensive builds. I understand your dislike for using Erestrium and Zascosium but they are building blocks and in a mid range challenge not something that should be entirely shunned I beleive. I would like to build a ship that can take on the enemy carrier in Omicron orbit or the freighters that roam around and take me to the rich planets so I can build the ACME Explodatron 5000 or whatever other death star like contraption I have my galactic conquering eye on right now There is absolutely nothing wrong with proposing a stripped down version of a ship but in exact contrary to your style I prefer my vessels come out of the box ready to go. My submission to the original challenge reflected this. I had a full complement of 12 turrets while other submissions, like you said, came with only a couple of sentry turrets. Food for though either way
We can describe a blueprint as having a minimum Tech Level of 15 and everyone understands exactly what that means because it is precise. However, describing something as "mid range" or "mid-game" is rather ambiguous because the term is subjective. In my mind, "mid-game" is perhaps Tech Level 15 (or 12) and after leaving one's start planet, but before "late-game", which is Tech Level 20+ and being able to mine deposits of Z and E. Once a player establishes a defensible base on, say, Aitis, Oscutune, or Masperon and starts mining, they can pretty much build anything they want. If that's not "late-game", then what is? If a CV requires so much Z and E that few players are able to amass enough to build it before reaching planets rich in Z and E, then what's the point? I did not need a combat-oriented CV to take out the enemy "Carrier" orbiting Akua. I took it out in a mid-sized SV with Gatling Guns and a pair of non-homing missile launchers. The secret is to have lots of thrusters and RCS to dodge incoming fire and adjusting the FOV down to 40 so as to zoom in and pick off the turrets. Anyway, if your main goal is to roam around until you reach the rich planets so as to build a massive "death star" combat ship, why settle for building a mediocre combat vessle to last until reaching rich planets? Why not build a comparitively cheap, stripped down ship and mine enough Pentaxid to warp around the system to go straight for said rich planets? To be fair, the 7.6 update made all weapons do more damage and made the "Alien" weapons particularly nasty and hard to dodge. And I haven't given those changes much testing since I use my own Config.ecf most of the time. Is it no longer viable to take out certain space-based POIs or enemy ships with a well-designed SV? Does it now require a combat-oriented CV with a hull of Combat Steel? So far, I've always started on Akua. I've not yet tried an Omicron start. And I've never seen a Patrol Vessel on Akua, so I was not able to loot it. As such, there's very little chance that I could have scrounged up 900 Z and E from an Akua start. In addition to all of the crashed ships, I've looted all of the POI's in Akua orbit (including the "Carrier", which is the only enemy ship), all of the enemy POI's on Akua's moon, and all but two of the enemy POI's on Akua. Aside from what I used to build my modest CV (for 240 Z and E), I did gather a few extra Fuel Tank T3, a Repair Station, and 2 CV Repair Bays, plus a Thruster Block XL that I was extremely lucky to find in a container. But I doubt that even those could add up to an additional 660 or so Z and E for a CV that requires 900. Looting the weapons off of a PV is surprising to me. How did you take it down without first shooting out the weapons? Did you take out the Core, Fuel Tanks or Generators? Was it something of a lucky shot, or did you have knowledge of the design so as to know the design's weakness? Judging by the Let's Play videos I've watched, weapons seems to be the first thing most players aim for on a PV. Further, from what I've read, many players are unable to loot anything at all from PV's because they will self destruct in short order. I've seen Lift Pizzas and others take down a PV and complain how they can't get any loot out of them. Perhaps, then, it would be better to have two seperate, concurrent challenges? Perhaps one challenge could be by weight and "stripped down" or AYOW (Add Your Own Weapons), while the other could be by size class and RFC (Ready For Combat)?
My only reservation about limiting the size class is that the size class is not based on the physical size of the build. It's based on the load it puts on the game engine to render it.
To answer a few questions. Yes you can loot the PV after you shoot it down. It does eventually despawn but not before you can get most of the good stuff out. It does still occasionally bug out but for the most part it can be turned into a loot pinata. The Omicron PV can be killed easily and the rockets and pulse laser hardmounts on it are purely decorational (or pure loot). Currently you can see the core out of one of the side windows and once you kill off the actual turrets sniping the core is a question of a couple of minutes for a SV. Even if you decided to down it the traditional way and only 50% of the items survived it would still give you enough E and Z to build a ship within my proposed limitations. I looked into a few of my defunct saves (I usually play one life then start a new game, hardcore mode if you will) and in 5 of the 8 games I had enough materials. In one I had a ludicrous 1800 of each once I dropped the salvaged items into the blueprint factory. You can take out the omicron carrier in a tier 1 SV if you really don't mind being patient. It would arguably be easier to do it that way than to take a CV with only cannon and mini-gun turrets to do so. The damage to your CV could be extensive. The idea of my suggestions is to let people have a diversity of builds instead of being pigeonholed into one way of thinking. Rocket turrets are your entry level anti CV weapon and in my opinion definitely have a spot on any CV that is made to see combat. Without them I consider the armament anti drone / self defence only. I think we will have to agree to disagree. Whatever the limitations of the contest wind up being I will live within their limitations. Cheers,
Very good point, any way to balance combat and civilian CVs without giving too much leeway to any of them?
I hate to say this, but the single large T1 generator may be more of a hindrance than you think. I decided to rip out the second generator in my Guppy to see how it would perform, it went over 100% power usage during flight on Omicron. I had to remove 6 M thrusters to get it to 90% during flight, and it's a 2.5 KT size class 2.
That is worrisome. But this seems to suggest that a weight limit makes more sense for this kind of challenge than size class. I took a look at your CV-Guppy in creative. (It's a nice, spacious design, btw. I love the layout. Though, I worry about relying on framework blocks to connect to the wings/nacelles.) I counted 28 Thruster Block M on it. If you removed 6 of them, that leaves 22. But, as I wrote earlier, Thruster S is much more energy efficient (30% per MN instead of 50%). I bet that if you replaced those 22 M's with a much larger number of Thruster S you'd get nearly the same thrust and maneuverability as when you had 28 M's, but still keep it below 90% power usage on Omicron. Each M produces 20 MN thrust and uses 1000 kW, while each Thruster S produces 8 MN and uses only 240 kW. A ship with 28 Thruster Block M produces 28 x 20 = 560 MN thrust (in different directions) and (theoretically) uses 28 x 1000 = 28000 kW. Divide 560 MN by 8 MN to get 70, which is how many Thruster S would be required to get the same thrust. But even having 70 Thruster S devices would only consume 70 x 240 kW = 16800 kW, which is 60% of the power usage as with 28 M's. It's also significantly less power usage than your modified version with only 1 Large Generator and 6 M thrusters removed. (22 x 1000 = 22000 kW.) As far as I can see, the only real downside to using Thruster S instead of Thruster Block M is that the S has significantly less hitpoints. But we can cover them with shutter blocks (vents) to protect them. That, and - at least for this challenge where we must place thrusters at the surface as if thruster burn was enabled - it would require a whole lot more surface area. In your Guppy example, using 28 M's requires 28 blocks of surface area, while the equivalent thrust from 70 S's would require 70 blocks of surface area. That also means requiring a lot more shutter blocks (vents), if we decide to cover them. Well, it also requires a bit more volume. But the S is half the size of the M.
Do not forget to account for power to weight ratio. CV Thruster S has a terrible power to weight ratio so the ship would perform much worse with 70 S over 28 M, would also not exactly reduce the size or lag.
I think I need to work on a proof of concept CV for this challenge. I will try to make it look "Not like a turd" but cannot promise much more
Okay I made a proof of concept CV and well.. It looks like a turd. I put in all the essentials I could hastily throw in. The entire hull is hardened steel with the few thin hull pieces being combat steel (even HP). The docking bay first both a land tank and a T4 shuttle comfortably power consumption is at 59% in Omicron flight and upwards thrust is 23m/s Also I added 300 extra hull blocks on top just to allow for the few things I missed and for decorations / hull shapes. Everything fits comfortably with room to spare. Using combat steel would be very restrictive but not impossible (which is a good thing). There is plenty of wiggle room for choices but not so much so as to not have to care about anything. I think the challenge rules need a bit of fine tuning but I will be presumptuous here and say that the concept and core guidelines could provide a fun challenge.
