Space Engineers pt3

Really need to get caught up on this :P

Let us start by saying the Little Brother did not do anything he did intentionally... to my stuff. He logged on for the first time, was looking around and whatnot. I pulled the three frigates I had out, put them on the extended hangar in the asteroid so he could use them for inspiration and he set right away to building one of those star wars rebel bombers. Real long dual engine things. He built it, but felt that bombers should have LOTS of speed... (which they usually don't heh). He put 8 or so engines on the backside for forward thrust... and 1 engine for braking. I logged out during this, went to bed. Woke up later to find him and little sister in another hollow asteroid working on darth vader's personal fighter from the first movie (pt 4). I joined them with the scv welder frigate and while doing that little brother went to take a look at my big project ship. This thing, being as big as it was going to be I had not built what was complete inside my asteroid, I ran some light armor blocks down bout 40 paces below the asteroid out of one of its natural holes near the blast doors to my base, built a platform, ran a conveyor link down there so I wouldnt have to travel forever when chasing components. Now down there I had built this long neck and a head and main body to a very large ship.

I didn't hear anything from little brother for awhile so I kept speed welding his vader flier. Then little sister vanished. Apparently they were having a private conversation that went something like this :

Brother : Can... two pieces of ship be re-attached?
Sister : Udunno, what'd you do?
Brother : Umm
Sister : Uh oh.

I finished speed welding and headed back to my base, and as I got in sight of my asteroid I noticed something odd. I could see the front of my ship in the sunlight which was odd because I hadn't turned meteor storms off at this point and thus would never have had my ship in the view of the sun. But then I noticed the tail end. pretty far away and in a dead spin drifting away from the head. Little sister was following the head and a portion of the neck, Little brother was following the tail.

-facepalm-

I later found out that little brother learned why 8 engines for forward requires at least 5 engines for reverse, he apparently came flying around my asteroid then realized he couldnt stop and since space in this game is at least semi realistic he couldnt just turn his ship and fly away quick like. He hit my ship, obliterated his ship and sent mine drifting away in two pieces.

I was irritated, attempted to recover the tail end since it was much more complicated, attempted to take my welder scv frigate with landing gear, land on it, lock the gear and bring it home. Landing gear exploded, took out enough of the frigate that pieces went floating in opposite directions and the main body was in even worse shape than before. I came out a second time with my mining frigate, attached a coupler to the tail end, attempted to 'dock' with it to bring it back, couplers exploded, killed that frigate. During this, little sister brought one of her ships to the head, attempted to bring it back home, lost that ship.

I called a cease to the rescue attempts and just went back to replacing my frigates. It wasn't intentional... it wasn't intentional...

:)

So anyways, after 2 or 3 days I finally felt like approaching the project again. That project would eventually be nicknamed 1.0 since I still havent named the damn thing. Built the body, everything, engined it up, good to go and here 1.0 is.

Some in progress, some completed costruction. Final photo in that group shows what the sky looked like after I figured out how to mod it using steams workshop. Now in that photo at this point in time on the other side of my asteroid is a donut shaped rock that little brother has settled in on building something big. When I loaded this new background to the server something unexpected happened. The maker of this workshop mod had moved the sun so it would look properly in that big cloud in the photo. This meant that the dark side of every asteroid was now the light and vice versa. And since meteors come from the sun in this game, we were suddenly in a shooting gallery. Little brother's project took a hit, I took the server down, did research and figured out how to turn off meteor storms. It isn't in the obvious dedicated config file, that option in there dosen't seem to do squat. I had to go in to the save files, find the sandbox file and turn it off there. No biggie, thats where I had to go anyways anytime I installed any mod on this server.

Meteor storm's gone, everything returned to normal. Second to last photo of that group you can see The Pill Bug's personal hangar and also the blast doors that cover one of two main access points to my asteroid.

So, 1.0 good to go for the most part, a bug causing station/ship connectors to randomly explode hitting the online servers, I left 1.0 docked and went back to frigate work.

Decided it was time for a new more effective mining frigate. Bertha was long since gone and mk8 was a simple dual drill frigate that bounced around alot when chewing dirt. As can be seen, mk9 evolved alot very quickly. Started as a four drill frigate with heavy armor around the body. Worked so damn well that I decided to see what would happen if I expanded another row of drills on all sides. Now at 16 drills, she is amazing. Seriously I love this damn thing, cuts nice big squares in to anything I point her at. Only draw back I noticed two days ago, if I am targeting specific ore's I tend to turn alot mid dig inside the asteroids to follow the veins. Unfortunately while the front side is heavily armored and takes almost no damage, the entire backside is soft and squishy. Had a minor explosion inform me of this but it was far enough back that it didn't kill me. It did take out one of two reactors, three engines and one of the gyro stabilizers. Limped her back home, repaired her and am planning on some serious upgrades. Especially since I saw just what a mining ship can be last night. Downloaded a mod from the workshop to try out in single player. Look at this...

That thing is massive. Its large ship class, easily over 100 squares long. It has at least 6 refineries in it as well as assemblies, large cargo containers, the works. Over 30 thrusters and the coolest thing? 50 odd drills in a star configuration that spins as it digs. You turn on the drills, you turn on the 360 rotating piston, you turn on the artifical mass units that cause this beast to slowly fall to the asteroid its pointed at. Then you sit back and watch, As you can see I even spent most of my time outside the ship watching it slowly drill a big perfectly circular hole through a pretty big asteroid. Took about 25 minutes for it to chew all the way through. Amazing!

mk10 for me will have likely more drills than mk9 and will have a rotating head like this monster above.

As for the base itself, remember this photo from two blog entries back?

One little building is good enough for a starting project, but I really want to upgrade that to a 'command center' of sorts with all assembly and whatnot in separate areas. That asteroid base now looks like this.

Home sweet home. Most piping is now out of the way, each module available for stations has its own wing including walk ways. Last image, 30 solar panels now completely feed this base all its energy needs to the point where the uranium reactors turned themselves off. A recent bug from a thursday update has killed the gamers performance when the ceiling flood lights in these photos are on so their almost always left off now. The smaller platform guiding lights don't seem to be affected so we're not operating in the complete dark.

I've rebuilt the lost miner as above noted, mk9 currently does the job but I do keep mk8 around when what I need really just dosent need a sledge hammer. The scv mk2 is up and running and as always improved. I also built a 'nightlight', its a simply frigate, one thruster in each direction, a piston facing up down left right with a flood light mounted at the tip of each. Extend the pistons, turn on the lights, good for working on dark sides of asteroids.

And that, is caught up as of yesterday. Spent the last 8 hours in game doing some cool stuff, but that will all be for a later post, tonight maybe. Off to bed with me, g'night.

o7