Been getting the combat itch again lately. Made afew smaller 'bomber' frigates, pretty sure I photo'ed one of'em in a previous blog entry. The follow up to that one was supposed to be lengthy and heavily armored, yea it got exploded the first time I took it up against a military npc ship.
Decided to build another small class fighter but overkill it on armor. This one has kept me alive to date though she's out of commission atm. Last thing I took her up against was a ore hauler ship and the Gatling gun on its top got several shots off before I killed and captured the ship. Ship felt fine, went about my routine. Landing gear locked on to ship after all its defenses were gone, activated my inertial stabilizers to bring the thing to a stop, disconnected gear immediately because landing gear is buggy again and has a habit of exploding. From there I took the pilots chair and all the beacon/antennae just to make sure the game would acknowledge this as my ship.
Flew back to base and was hoping out of my latest combat frigate (nicknamed "The brick" for good reason) when I noticed the damage. The shots the enemy ship had gotten off destroyed the conveyor line supplying the ships four forward launchers. Further lucky shots managed to take out the conveyor pipe behind that, a piece of armor on the corner of that one and two more conveyor pipes behind it. IE, the enemy fire missed my by inches and now there is a large hole through The Brick where conveyor pipe used to be. Heh.
Well that said, I need a large class fighter and am without one since Pillbug met a sad fate against some ship or another a week or two back. I decided to just go at this random and see what comes out. I made a giant rectangle and stared at it for about forty minutes while my sister happily inventoried and cannibalized the npc ships I had caught earlier in the day with Brick. I don't have a photo of the rectangle, but it isn't needed. It was a big. Rectangle. What I do have are progress shots after it stopped being just a rectangle.
I like the 'dune' block design so put it across the top and bottom. Added a double triangle row across both the left and right sides just because I wanted something there. Placed two large thrusters in all direction with an additional eight small thrusters on the back side for get up and go. Also left holes along the sides and top for future turret installation.
Interior shot from before I actually completed the plating. I had to quickly complete the thrusters, a gyro and one of the reactors because.... landing gear is buggy again and the whole ship was shaking violently while the landing gear holding it in place slowly worked through a conveyor pipe I started this project on. Got the ship capable of standing still and killed the landing gear.
Partially armored. As this is a combat ship, all plating is heavy. That's ALOT of steel plates to complete this beast. The entrance is on the front in between the two braking thrusters. Large enough to fit two small ship frigates.
Initial layer of plating installed and painted, now to pipe out the weapon systems. This ship will have a refinery, assembler and cargo containers on board to maintain self sufficiency. I debated large vs small cargo containers but this ship is 'just' small enough that a 3x3x3 large cargo container would take up way to much room no matter where it ended up. So for this ship it'll be multiple small containers instead.
All the forward pipe work complete, I still need to build the production systems and link it all together in the back. But with the front done, I've added a second entire layer of heavy armor plating because I'm paranoid like that :P Pretty sure this is going to be a very very slow ship :P
Second layer of playing and lighting installed.
Debated for awhile but decided that since the ship is self sufficient and self contained, everything that can be on the inside should be. Since this ship will be capable of housing two small frigates, it gets two frigate connector points. I know one of the frigates will be one of my scv model ships with grinder/welder combo. Probably a combat frigate for the second. Dunno though, I tend to go through those quickly. "Something" will go in the second parking space.
Afew photos of The Ark sitting next to 1.0 and 2.0 and whatnot. Not alot of progress to report on 2.0 btw. Would definitely work for exploration but 2.0 would be chewed up by anything that fired at her light armored self. Main body is still mostly hollow.
My goal for this ship is for her to move from asteroid to asteroid scanning and placing beacons labeling what ores are in the asteroid. Will also beacon any ship wrecks or stations I find out there in exploration. Will probably cover the top of this ship with solar panels so she isn't completely uranium dependant.
I've already got my mind on a 2.0 to this ship. Three times longer 1 1/2 times wider and two blocks taller. Carrier class? Yum!
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