Squadron 303 new ship brainstorm

[vestal idol]

Also, they're a bit curvy, the mountings. Reminds me of those vertical curved bits on some old car bumpers, more than construction equipment.

That might just be because they don't have color yet.

[thin furnace]

Also fair. I wanted them to be a bit more visually interesting than "a square" but that can be reverted easily :>

[vestal idol]

Well, they don't need to be featureless, but they can be more angular.

[torpid canyon]

You could somewhat fix this by using the peakock main engine method of hiding multiples engines at the same place behind a shroud

[vestal idol]

That's a hinge, granted, but you know what I mean.

[thin furnace]

Yeah yeah I get you 👍

Usually when working on stuff for this game I look at quarry equipment for references, but with this one I felt that certain umm

Blobject vibe

[vestal idol]

I've used construction equipment photo for inspiration a number of times, because that's essentially what our mining ships are.

[thin furnace]

Yeah :) Yeah

[vestal idol]

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm . . . cement mixers?

[torpid canyon]

Space ice cream machine

[vestal idol]

That angular, blocky mount underneath.

[thin furnace]

Hehe I was looking at the same vehicle I think

But yeah I'll uhhh angularize the spine

I love words

[vestal idol]

Just might be.

Not so much the spine I meant, but the curvy bits that I presume the ARMs should mount to.

[thin furnace]

Well they're part of the spine mesh so

[torpid canyon]

Is the color of the paint on the K37, ATK255 and the ship you are designing made for visibility?
Does it have a name?
What is the RGB/hex code dor it?

[vestal idol]

The straight spine is probably a good thing, for structural integrity, I think.

[thin furnace]

Maybe I should separate them now that I think about it

so they can be switched out for redesigns

[thin furnace]

oh yeah that was a guiding principle for that part

Shapes angled that way have a much better resistance to pressure and shear

Alas, nothing can beat the Triangle

[vestal idol]

Away with me. I have to get some cleaning done. That way I can have a clear weekend.

[thin furnace]

Good luck :)

[vestal idol]

Just one more trash run, bundled with the trip to recover dry laundry. Some folding, and be chores are clear for the weekend, at least the big stuff.

[vestal idol]

Regarding this, we didn't pick the color for any speficic thing. The lore is that the manufacturer picked the cheapest color paint that was radiation-resistant from whatever suppliers they use.

But all this is straying into #general or #delta-v .

[vestal idol]

I tried feeding this into Dall-E 2, and the results were mixed.

[thin furnace]

Dall-E really be like "If you won't greeble it, I will"

[royal parcel]

What did you ask it to do?

[vestal idol]

I just fed it the picture and hit 'generate variations'.

[thin furnace]

oh yeah how do we feel about these mounts btw?

better shadows

[vestal idol]

They're looking nice; but I think the cockpit will need more volume -- we need reaction mass tanks and processed mineral storage out there; we need them there to counterbalance the reactor to fix the center of mass in the cargo bay.

Moving reaction mass forward and back in the front should maintain CoM - in lore - to explain why COM is where it is, even when the amount of reaction mass on board changes.

[thin furnace]

Fair, fair

I'll slap some tanks and pipes on there

Also, I think maybe I could replace the engine block and reactor with a dedicated one? Unless we wanna stick with the CERF refit

[vestal idol]

It could stand to get unified wit the curved brace there to make it look more like part of the ship.

[terse kernel]

whats all that stuff for

is that where thrusters are gonna be attached

rcs

[vestal idol]

The spars out front are RCS pylons.

[terse kernel]

i like the bracing kind of thing going down the length of the circular part

would that be like stuff that controls the opening and closing

it doesn't look super firmly attached to the back booster

and like that whole segment

[vestal idol]

Structural support to hold it together without being directly attached to the bay, except at the center - and for mounting the hardpoints, which will be broadside. The two large chunks will be for two high-stress hardpoints.

[terse kernel]

ooh two of em

is there even another ship that has two high stresS?

[vestal idol]

Nope. Stock, it would mount two ARMs; original role is a construction ship.

[terse kernel]

are there any forward facing hardpoints?

[thin furnace]

I could imagine one here maybe but up to the others

[vestal idol]

Nothing settled, yet, but I would prefer not.

[terse kernel]

it was this part here that to me doesn't looks super structurally sound

[thin furnace]

yea the engine is very much a placeholder 😅

[vestal idol]

That's the part we were talking about just prior.

[terse kernel]

ah ok

i was thinking a forward facing hardpoint would be useful for fighting pirates, as sideways you're suuper open to them popping your reactor

[thin furnace]

I wanna make it a bit curvy to fit the rest of the ship; not the pretty kind of curvy, the "this is curved to withstand impacts better" kind of curvy

[terse kernel]

that sounds pretty sweet

if only there were some heavy duty point defense things to make the high stress points a little more interesting

[thin furnace]

Well, there's the shrapnel cannon thing in the works :)

not exactly point defense but you know

[vestal idol]

Cement-mixer curves.

[thin furnace]

Yeah something like that

[terse kernel]

maybe a laser pd would be cool

it would probably be a little bulky cause of the moving parts, maybe it would have like a circular shape

[vestal idol]

I think any PD would still have a restricted range on that thing,

[brave knoll]

Try stacking exposed spherical remass tanks between reactor and cargo bay. Like giant pingpong balls in hexagonal arangement. Might look cool, justify remass placement and provide radiation shielding

[vestal idol]

Didn't we want remass on the opposite side of the cargo bay, to counterbalance the reactor?

[brave knoll]

Hm. Perhaps? Fuzzy now, heat. We could add tanks both ways.

[vestal idol]

I was thinking the hab should be expanded a bit to put tanks behind them, and the COM can be fine-tuned as remass is consumed by shifting it between tanks that are more forward or rearward.

[rotund pasture]

I love Hexgons on my ships

[brave knoll]

Hexagons are bestagons

[subtle belfry]

Hexagons are the worstagons

[rotund pasture]

Better than Cubes

Cubes are for Squares

[thin furnace]

24 hour ban, permanent

And sure thing! Honeycombed tanks with honeycombed cells

[vestal idol]

I think the tanks are already that, canon.

[rotund pasture]

Yeah the Tanks are Honeycombed to stop Fuel Shifting in flight

[thin furnace]

Yeah that's why I said it :)

[vestal idol]

But it's useful for this - if the honeycombs aren't axial, you can selectively close up cells to shift the balance as needed.

[thin furnace]

Hydraulic rebalancing 💖

[vestal idol]

Or if they are, but you can selectively close them from the front or the back.

All this is just lore, because I don't think reaction mass weight is actually localized, and the frame's CoM is just where it is, but it should LOOK like it can balance.

[iron trench]

The longer I look, the more it looking like a pizza cutter

[royal parcel]

my god

i can't unsee this now

[thin furnace]

[spends 6 hours perfecting a sci-fi pizza cutter only for it to be declared a spaceship in a videogame]

[rotund pasture]

lol

[royal parcel]

Sir, your pizza cutter is missing a part of the blade

[vestal idol]

Household objects make great spaceships actually.

[royal parcel]

Household object make great space ship bridges actually

Raumpatrouille Orion anyone?

[rotund pasture]

My other Spaceship is a Toaster

[royal parcel]

huh

[vestal idol]

Eric Geusz is the artist.

[royal parcel]

I was thinking about Raumpatrouille Orion (old German scifi series) where they used plastic cups, pencil sharpeners, faucets and an iron as requisites

[vestal idol]

We should probably move this to General or Offtopic.

[rotund pasture]

No. Make a Toastership. Naow

Am being silly now

Should go sleep

[thin furnace]

Nono unironically everyday objects make for genuinely great inspiration

Genuinely 90% of my design is just noticing something about a plant or object that I like and changing it slightly to repurpose for art

[iron trench]

Gaming chair as a spaceship. When

[thin furnace]

Whenever I get around to making the other 17 ideas I have on the backlog

[iron trench]

I'm scared of what I asked now

[subtle belfry]

That looks like itd make for a great cruiser

Fucking

Capital-scale ringdiver right there

In fact, assuming there's a tourism industry that uses cruiseships, there's probably ringworthy cruiseships out there

Similar to the whole, Arctic cruises n shit

I'd like to see one of those

(At some point down the line)

[vestal idol]

Probably the wrong thread for it, though; we should start a new one or stop in #delta-v

[subtle belfry]

True

#1059281828181200996 @vestal idol

[thin furnace]

Tried to do the fuel cells programatically but seems I messed something up in the hex calculating part lol

Nearly there tho which is nice

looks kinda baller tho . Keeping it for later

Actually you know what give me like 2 mins

maybe more

Yeah nevermind .

[vestal idol]

You could do a cylinder (or hex) aligned on the ship's axis, and just be able to close the pistons forcing water out from the front or back, allowing you to shift the balance as you wish.

That might aesthetically "bond" with the cargo section better.

Those curved braces, in final, should actually be the inner surfaces of the hab/fuel/storage and the drive sections, I think.

Those hex sections, once finished, look like they would be great as an array of cargo containers, though you couldn't use them in DV since it would overlap them in the Z axis.

[thin furnace]

They could be stacked with a slight offset or something, so that the layering is more obvious

buuut I don't really like the look of them right now, not to mention they're like half a million triangles which makes my laptop sad

I think I'm gonna take a little break from modeling and draw instead for a bit, I've been going through a bunch of iterations and none look too good honestly

unless,

[vestal idol]

I don't think we need an array to be able to shift weight forward and back, which is the primary requirement.

[thin furnace]

Well true, but Koder suggested an array and I kinda like the idea

I just can't get the scale down right - they're either too big to be reasonably like uhhh a grid, or too small for the game's level of detail

Worst comes to worst I'll just make some cylinders on the sides

[vestal idol]

I have a thought in mind, but let me get home first.

At least some should be axial, to shield the cockpit.

[thin furnace]

oh yeah I planned for those to be stacked

but like before I copy and paste I wanna get them looking right

Hmm

maybe like some cylinder stacked like O|||D

D being the cockpit

[vestal idol]

Thinking a group of four hexagonal columns (ever see basalt columns?) Axial from cargo to cockpit, for reaction mass and processed minerals.

[thin furnace]

Hmmm maybe !

[vestal idol]

Gimme 30-40, I can sketch something junky soon.

[thin furnace]

No rush 👍

[vestal idol]

Hmm. The volume might look oversize compared to visible tanks on other ships like the Cothon.

And the Cothon is supposed to support a large fuel reserve, stock.

[vestal idol]

One quick crapadoodle sketch.

The hex grid on the bottom being the cross-section of the same colors on the top.

[thin furnace]

Hmmm could be nice

I'll try this either in a few minutes or in like 12 hours

[vestal idol]

Gonna have to scale them so they don't seem to dwarf other reaction mass tanks. Either that, or find a way to justify interplanetary tanks from stock. It is a construction ship, they may need to carry their own reaction mass, and startup mass for the reactor of whatever they're building.

[thin furnace]

Or the tanks need extra space for all the hydraulics and safety measures needed in a construction ship

or whatever

It's gonna be fiiiine

[vestal idol]

Could just be empty hull space so they can shift balance even when full, in case they take on processed cargo they need to balance, they can pull remass back a bit.

[thin furnace]

Also fair

One of them could also be like tool space or a docking bay for construction shuttles

[vestal idol]

It's not like the typical construction ship in most of the non-pirate-infested solar system needs to worry about their combat profile or anything.

[thin furnace]

True very true

[vestal idol]

I'm just entranced by the idea of this thing manhandling entire segments of a space station into place with giant ARMs for human crew to assemble and seal.

If implemented, we need a random encounter where sometimes the stations you visit have one holding something the edge of a Space Bar fixture or a phage station, and a swarm of human suits around the contact point, and welding sparks.

[thin furnace]

oughhh that sounds supremely climactic

is that the right word . It sounds like a nice vibe

[vestal idol]

Like, good climate, good mood?

Climatic is from climax, for the intense scenes.

Usually see it in anti-climactic.

[thin furnace]

Hmm

It's good for immersion and sets a nice spacey tone

Makes the world feel more alive

It is a nice vibe 😌

Ohhh I have the right term I think

It makes the world feel more lived in

[vestal idol]

Could be an occasional Enceladus set piece.

[thin furnace]

is this a good length?

maybe the ones on the sides could be a bit shorter like this

[shy sonnet]

if you're looking for feedback I like the longer sides better.

[thin furnace]

Appreciable ! And yeah feedback is what this channel is for :)

[shy sonnet]

I'd perhaps suggest working on the interfaces between prow, hold and stern. Feels like 3 pieces loosely held together right now, maybe it would be an improvement if they were more solidly connected on the outside?

[thin furnace]

They will be, but first I need to finish each piece

Doesn't make sense to connect them if they're still up for being completely revamped

But yeah they'll be more aligned with the clamps for the cargo bay

[torpid canyon]

I find the thursters poles a bit to far, especially for a space assembling ship

[thin furnace]

how about this?

Each iteration this reminds me more and more of a rotifer

[torpid canyon]

it leaves enough clearance 👍

[thin furnace]

Much better transition to the cargo bay now (I think)

from above

[shy sonnet]

nice, it's looking a bit more like a hammerhead shark and less like an angle grinder on that pic 😄

[vestal idol]

I think that section can be smaller; the Cothon tanks are supposed to be interplanetary, right? 2/rds length would probably give it room to shift mass forward and back, and still have more than the volume of the display tanks on the Cothon.

[thin furnace]

Hmmm

Good point!

Also if I make the reactor and engine a bit larger than the current ones I see a nice opportunity for a golden ratio

[torpid canyon]

The engine part is asymmetric, what are the two things on its sides?

[vestal idol]

I don't actually recall what they are, but symmetry wasn't a goal for this design. As long as the center of the frame, and every mass that can shift (fuel, ammo, etc) is aligned with thrust, she should behave as expected.The cargo bay is CoM itself, so its cargo should not interact at all with rotation.

Not sure it has a defined purpose, I think it's held over from Koder's early sketches.

This section can probably look a little more outward; when I was thinkng about it, I was thinking it'd focus on what the construction arms were holding, so someone on board can operate them - thinking of like holding space station parts together before riveting or welding begins, or whatnot.

[thin furnace]

Sure thing !

[thin furnace]

Also that's a funky radiator I think

And I wanna make another engine for this because the CERF one is a bit too angular compared to everything else (I feel)

[vestal idol]

What strikes me is that the ship is relatively flat. What if you rotated the engine so it had a flat side of the hexagonal shape on top, (yes, angling the radiator up at an angle) and kinda squashed the hex to fit the profile better?

I think if those were radiators, they'd be glowing like the main radiators. They remind me of the black panels on the K37's forward-right.

Sorry, left, when alighned with its direction of travel.

[thin furnace]

Maybe! I was thinking about making it kind of "hug" the cargo bay a little so it looks more solid

[thin furnace]

Hmm, remass tank then maybe? It's Something for sure

[vestal idol]

Fit it partially over the curved brace, I think.

[thin furnace]

Maybe, maybe

I'm also kinda tempted to make a bit of a cylindrical reactor that would be perpendicular to the cargo bay but not sure how good that would look

[vestal idol]

Also, more substantial bracing to carry pipes, since all reaction mass for the reactor and main drive is going to flow from the forward section.

[thin furnace]

Absolutely 👍 but those sorts of details are for the end when we know where exactly these pipes are going

[vestal idol]

True.

But, yeah, split the radiators top and bottom; carve out an arc that nestles up to that brace, and the break in the radiator pattern to make it clear that that's the axis of symmetry.

[thin furnace]

I think at this point it would be genuinely easier to just remake the engine block with a more fitting shape than try to adjust this one so it fits 😅 we'll see when I sit down with it

But I'll generally follow this one's design

[vestal idol]

Rear view of what I imagine, based on the current look:

Maybe mirrored on the bottom actually, with the asymmetric block on the other side.

Would give it an axis of symmetry, just at an unconventional . . . . 60 degrees?

At first I was a little upset that losing the sphere meant it lost the rotational freedom along some axes, but I think if it's for making space stations, then working deck-by-deck would limit its need to rotate much to one axis of rotation anyway.

[thin furnace]

Yeah I think this one's very justifiably flat

[brave knoll]

let's consider rotating habitat

probably too big on that doodle; the point would be to align with the thrust when thrusting, but also be able to align in the reverse direction when you put the entire ship to spin for interlunar transits

using a circular design would allow multiple configurations; things to keep in mind would be that the habitat itself would probably be in the bottom part, while the top should be mostly empty

[thin furnace]

Fair, fair

Do we want it cylindrical or spherical?

Ah gonna go with cylindrical

[brave knoll]

this would allow these three artificial gravity configs:

3; is just linear thrust; 1 spin would allow AG to happen when in rings, but would be less comfortable than just spinning 2) the entire ship

[thin furnace]

Alrighty !

Do we want the engine block to be able to rotate around the bay btw?

[brave knoll]

I think that's a moot point

[thin furnace]

Hmm on second thought nevermind 😅

Yeah

[brave knoll]

as in: with the design of the bay, it makes no difference, it can already rotate around it.

[thin furnace]

Yeah the moment I sent that message the realization came and yeah

[vestal idol]

Cylindrical works best, I think. Spherical is trickier design wise, and doesn't really help.

A chunky beam above and below it to provide the axis.

Then again, the bay itself probably is convertable to hab space, and could be used for G; we talked about that for transporting construction crew or station crew in G without having to have thrust the whole way.

[thin furnace]

Made the bays shorter 👍 Tiny progress but progress nonetheless

Hab TBD

[vestal idol]

And flattened/rotated the engine hex, I see.

The cockpit, if rotatable, probably needn't be actually articulated, since the player won't use it that way. But I'm thinking, since it's not a significant fraction of the ship's mass, you could mount it on top of the consumables bay.

Rather than a cylinder in front, a saucer on top.

[iron trench]

https://youtu.be/FRZ64_lZf_8
Extremely early gameplay previw of Liqvo's new ship

Gonna get me some haul drones and play pretend rotifer 👍

[thin furnace]

Which do we like more

I like the one with the habs at the bays more I think, makes the front part look so SOLID

[thin furnace]

I really appreciate the person reacting but both those images are in the same message 😭

[torpid canyon]

The reaction points to the second message directly?

I'm suggesting adding a second pair of thrusters poles to the back of the ship

[thin furnace]

Maybe !

[torpid canyon]

And doubling the side windows to give a direct view to the cargo bay entrance

(remove the side windows and add the on the red lines)

[thin furnace]

This part is supposed to rotate :)

this thing rite here has a camera and sensor array to watch over the cargo bay

[torpid canyon]

To create artificial gravity? Thats very clever

[thin furnace]

and the view from the window facing the cargo bay would be uhhhhhh less than useful

[torpid canyon]

And the thing below the bridge is rotating in the other direction?

[torpid canyon]

Wellllll you can see if the structure is still there or not xD

[thin furnace]

in-game it will rotate 90° to close or open

[thin furnace]

"JIM, is the heavy hardpoint still there?"
[Jim looks out the window]
Jim: "YEAH"

[torpid canyon]

I'm talking about those

[thin furnace]

ohhhh ok, well those would kinda be the floor and also not visible in-game anyway

But I'll consider it !

[terse kernel]

hm i didn't like the habs at the bays as much, makes it look much chunkier compared to the curvy and long look i get from the top

i like the hexes but i don't know how apparent they'll be when we're just using the ship, its already got an interesting shape but some top down hexagons could be cool

i like the triangle wedge at the engine a lot

great progress! good job :>

[thin furnace]

The whole engine block was made by Koder but thank you 💖

[shell pebble]

Agree, the first design looks more visually interesting imo than the second one, which seems more squished and blocky.

Could probably still get that "SOLID" look on the first design by adding a bumper/deflector/cowcatcher hull structure-thing that makes it look reinforced, while still looking long and less blocky?

[iron trench]

I like the first one more from top-down view but the second one look better if it is in fully 3D free camera environment 🤔

The second one look off to me from top-down. idk how to put it in words

[shell pebble]

Indeed, but we don't get to see them from the sides in-game, so... 😛

[vestal idol]

That's . . . a very large hab.

[shell pebble]

It looks too "perfect" to me, reminds me of a square ice cream cookie

[vestal idol]

The entire cockpit of a prospector looks like it would fit in one of those windows.

[shell pebble]

True, its huge , even compared to the previous design, i hope the crew get their own Spa during interlunar transit 😛

[vestal idol]

Also . . . what about arranging windows like this?

This would make it so that windows were never under your feet, but at your sides, instead.

With windows around the outside, your feet will always be pointing at the front or rear windshield while under G, and this is meant to orient for G.

This would have three 'decks' to work on, with a window for each. (though should be smaller, still.)

Remember, the steel doors of this hatch on a K37 are as tall as a man.

Also, bonus points, the change in balance to keep the COM right for a normal-size cockpit means you don't need to replicate it on each side.

Another way to use the 'decked' windows - if you need forward visibility and all the flight crew is strapped down, you can turn it only 90 degrees, to give you three stations with forward windows - you're just gonna be sitting sideways relative to all the other furniture.

Something making me think. If she's supposed to have a centered rotation, she'll need a balanced RCS configuration . . . do you think she needs RCS spars in the back, matching the front?

Looking back through previous close-ups, I see that the forward windows are no actually the floor. Still, a curved window front, back, and one across the middle may work well for it.

[thin furnace]

I mean I figured it was supposed to fit a whole station construction crew :> but no issue scaling it down 👍

[vestal idol]

I think we talked about using habs constructed and secured in the cargo bay for moving whole crews.

Still not sure about rotating the hab for G while in the rings. Everybody will be strapped in anyway, and you should be expecting constant manuever to disrupt it. Might be useful with certain cargoes that need low G.

[brave knoll]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wJQ5UrAsIY dropping it here

[terse kernel]

wow this really puts the ships into scale

any ship ever must be gigantic

even the smaller ones like the vulture

[thin furnace]

The current iteration of this ship is about 120 meters long

I think

[terse kernel]

is there any art that puts ships into scale against like an actual person or something everyday that we'd be able to understand

[thin furnace]

Nevermind it's like 90x30m

[thin furnace]

One Second

Here it is with a 1.9m tall guy [highlighted in orange]

[terse kernel]

wow

[thin furnace]

also K37 because I have it on hand

[terse kernel]

its easy to think the ships are small when you play zoomed out all the time

must be some crazy g forces when i'm overtuning my ship's movement and stuff

wonder how they don't get sick

[dawn crag]

Yea, when you collect corpsicles you get a good feeling for size

[torpid canyon]

the human for scale really show those ships are huge, even the K37

[brave knoll]

check the artbook, it has dimensions for K37

[vestal idol]

Yeah, but in the rings you're gonna be constantly changing vector with thrust. useful for construction, but you'll want to be strapped in for mining ops.

[vestal idol]

The grey steel doors on the hatch are as tall as a man, not the painted frame around it.

Also, the axis is turned 90 degrees, so the 'floor' of the airlock is toward the engine - the doors are wider than thay are tall.

Slightly.

[thin furnace]

I'm going with the scale Koder gave me - as far as I'm aware our ship models are 1:1, so that hatch is roughly 1.2x1.4m

Which tracks since you probably would be entering it with your feet toward the hatch

[vestal idol]

Huh. Okay. I was operating on an old sketch he did to show scale, with a human standing upright, feet toward the drives, in the airlock.

[thin furnace]

Fair, fair

[vestal idol]

Was an MSPaint sketch, though, so, not absolute.

So this is 14.4 / 8 and a scrap of change, which is . . . just over 1.8?

I guess that depends on whether the width of the line counts.

Overlapping the line I get 1.6ish.

But, then, that's clipart math, so . . . <shrugs>

I guess we could verify if the scale's right - see if one of the measurements matches.

[thin furnace]

Oops sorry I was shaving

I'll compare in the morning since it's 1am and I really should sleep 😅

But in the screenshot I sent you can see a grid, each square (important: not the transparent PNG squares) is 1x1m for comparison

Which would make the K37 in the screenshot just under 40m long 🤔

Unless they're .5x.5m each and the ship is at 0.(6) scale?

Oughhhhh I'll need to get back to this, something seems off

Comparing to the obonto which is 90m long, this K37 seems to be about 40 so that's that, but then you'd think the hatch would be larger

The size of the person checks out, ~2 squares so just under 2 meters

[Not counting the outline]

Though the hatch on the diagram also has much less of a bezel

Maybe it's an earlier iteration?

OH

Hold on, I think we're looking at the wrong part

The access hatch is above that thing, the 2 silver panels inset into the hull - those would be just under 2 meters

The part that's 1.6m wide is the drone port according to the artbook

Behold

So the airlock dimensions check out - about 2 meters (probably exactly 2 meters if I were to take a guess)

[thin furnace]

@vestal idol take a gander real quick before I pass out

[vestal idol]

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Yes, that's probably the image he had scribbled on, and I had the wrong door.

[thin furnace]

Now to figure out why the ship is 10m longer than the diagram says it should be

Jk jk [passes out immediately]

[brave knoll]

yeah but that's for scale of the habitat and placement of the windows. I would imagine that a good way to approach that would be to have the habitat occupying the lower 1/3 slice of the disc, while upper is taken by machinery that doesn't care about thrust. This way you can just align the hab for thrust when in rings, but if you need centrifuge, you can spin it.

[vestal idol]

Yeah, that's pretty much what I was saying. Responding partly to an earlier post about centrifuge for ring ops.

Window placement I figured out when I realized I'd overlooked the image showing that the windows weren't a floor.

Interesting feature of this, the centrifugal floor will have seats that are on the wall and ceiling for thrust or full-ship-spin G.

"please remove all pens, tools, and coffee cups from degrees 30 to 330 as we prepare to transition to thrust G."

[brave knoll]

actually

I would add slightly rotating sections

so under thrust the stations tilt by 15 and 30 deg

(sometimes you'd have smooth floor, sometimes steps)

[vestal idol]

You'd want the base to rotate, too.

I suppose every seat could face a designated forward, but you'd lose the easily balanced symmetric floor plan.

Not insurmountable, though.

Actually, no. Only the few seats that are actually on the floor during thrust/full spin G need to face forward, or those with wall stairs. Nobody will be using the ceiling chairs, right?

[brave knoll]

what ceiling charis?

[thin furnace]

So we want windows on a segment of the hab? Or all around it

Not sure how to interpret the 1/3 of a disc 😅 is it radial or just height?

[thin furnace]

Ok makes sense 👌

Not home yet so I can't do much but how about this kind of window setup then?

Gonna clean it up a bit when I have more time :)

[brave knoll]

it would be on the opposite side. TBH I'm not sure we need windowes on this one.

you are not going to see anything wit them anyway

you could have copula at the center

[thin furnace]

Hmmm true, it could also be a bit of a nuisance to see the sky spinning in there when the centrifuge is active

Windowless it is then

[brave knoll]

we have a rotating habitat on CERF with windows, but that one is not meant to make gravity, but counter the spin of the entire ship.

...so the hab itself is designed for zero-g

[thin furnace]

How about this

Hmmm now that I look at it some more it looks like a nipple . Maybe I'll adjust it a bit more

bit more ✨ visually interesting ✨

Design inspired by the tried and true Philips head screw

[brave knoll]

I was thinking about a visual difference between the hab zone and the non-hab zone. Like, exposed pipes in the upper part, or some other kind of broken symmetry

[thin furnace]

Sure thing 👍

[brave knoll]

but this is just me throwing stuff at the wall here

[thin furnace]

A chance to slap some greebles on the ship is not something I'm gonna miss 😄

But for now I gotta go :) color theory lectures starting in 3 minutes

I'll be back in like an hour

[vestal idol]

If you use the entire ring for have rotation, with a symmetrical floor plan friendly to balanced rotation, there would be stations all around.

But not insurmountable to have equipment occupy much of that space.

[vestal idol]

I like this one a lot. Maybe panes with angles instead of a sexy sports-car curve, but that's a good concept.

Feels weird to have a rotating centrifugal section so large and then use only a fraction of it for the people that need G, and burden the mechanics with whatever equipment balances out the people.

Compared to the CERF hab, it still feels comically large.

Though, counterpoint, the model E hab.

[thin furnace]

It's like 10m in diameter, and with most of that being dedicated to equipment, that really isn't all that much space I think

[vestal idol]

I get that it's not that big, it's just bigger than many depicted habs.

Maybe I'm only thinking of working space, not crew cabins. The COCKPIT on most ships is much smaller.

Though, if you use the "upper" decks for crew cabins, those cabins would have the "chair on the ceiling" problem, when radial g turns to linear g.

Ugh. Not easy to hold two gravitational frames of reference in my head at once. Need more coffee.

(Three, really, but two are close enough that hab design can mostly treat them the same.)

[terse kernel]

i really like this style of window

to me it's a lot more interesting than both of the central variations

it has flair, it has personality

my opinion might change with the full view of the ship combined with the window variations

[shy sonnet]

fixed this for you

[thin furnace]

Perfection

[rotund pasture]

lol

[terse kernel]

idea

what about both styles of window at the same time

[thin furnace]

Cupola + this bow thing?

I mite consider it but koder suggested windowless so we'll see :)

[terse kernel]

hm

that must suck to be the crew without any windows

ooh actually you could say that they have the fancy thing where there's cameras on the outside and monitors covering the walls, so its as if you're looking outside the ship anyway

though thats just headcanon, it wouldn't be visual lol

[thin furnace]

When you're spinning, having windows would make the crew very, very dizzy

[terse kernel]

yeah i suppose

[thin furnace]

Without windows they just feel the centrifugal force as gravity - with windows, they'd have 2 conflicting reference frames (inner ear telling them they're just standing, eyes telling them they're spinning) which would make for a lot of vomit

[terse kernel]

lol

well there's gotta be something on it right otherwise it just orange circle

[thin furnace]

So I'm installing Linux on the ship instead

[terse kernel]

maybe some cool lights

[thin furnace]

That's why I made this one :)

[terse kernel]

or some metal reinforcements

[thin furnace]

There's gonna be some machinery and reinforcements jutting out

...tomorrow because I should sleep soon

[torpid canyon]

Have you decided on how many hard points there will be on the ship?

[surreal rune]

are you set on habs like this or would a hab ring be a better fit since rather large anyway?

[vestal idol]

Most of the time, it'll have linear, or almost-linear G, especially in player hands. Koder said there would be no chairs on the ceiling while under linear G, so I imagine that, even under rotation, he means that humans wouldn't be occupying the whole thing.

Otherwise, some ceilings would HAVE toturn into floors when they switch from rotation G to linear G.

[vestal idol]

I think that ring design would be better for an axial mount - but I'm also not sure we have enough people to justify it, nor do we need full G for a huge ring.

[thin furnace]

While cool this kind of thing would look goofy as all heck from an orthographic top view 😄

[vestal idol]

I suppose you could mitigate the floor/ceiling issue by limiting it to crew quarters, in the unwindowed part.

[surreal rune]

Ehh add a break and some things to show movement and it could be cool. Also wouldnt it be more reliable gs? Less mass moving on your main thrust vector

[vestal idol]

Not sure what you mean by break, and it probably won't BE rotating in the rings, since thrust will be alternating on/off so much. GS?

[surreal rune]

More reliable gravity

Mb

[vestal idol]

Oh, you mean the view top-down on an axial mount? I thought you meant mounting it as the hab is mounted now. Can't work in the engine, though.

Remember, these are all going to be sprites.

[surreal rune]

Ahh tech limits mb

[vestal idol]

You do have a point, though, that when switching from rotation to linear, it would always be the SAME wall that turned into a floor.

Though, in this design, I expect the space with the workstations is the space where the floor stays a floor.

[surreal rune]

Also you could spin the ring faster so it could offset the linear movement

So floor is always floor

[vestal idol]

Well, give you more friction against it, not offset it so much.

But if you're under 1G thrust, you'd have to spin 2G to get the combined axis to only 120 degrees off-balance.

Sorry, half that, only 60 degrees.

Trying to math without coffee.

[surreal rune]

Wouldn't be much worse than a ship at sea in a storm id imagine

And question could you not just create a visual looped image to slowly play over the axial hab ring's space or do i have a terrible understanding of what is possible.

[thin furnace]

Technically we could but it would be very hard on the performance [compared to the usual ship] - since it would need to be done frame-by-frame which means it would take about 60x as much VRAM as the usual sprite

(can't make it a seamless image that scrolls since we also need a normal map for it)

Though I suppose maybe there are some tricks that could make that work, wouldn't say they'd be worth the effort though

[surreal rune]

Ahh i have only the tiniest experience programming so i thought id ask.

[vestal idol]

I don't think a sea in a storm requires you to endure double G, though.

[surreal rune]

True just was thinking equivalently bumpy

[vestal idol]

We did talk about this for the hab, since the core was an obvious option for a docking point.

[brave knoll]

not really
imagine you are burning 1g. You'd have to spin up the hab to 2g in order to have 1g on other side and 3g on the other side; with the size we are working here it would mean gravity changing between 1g and 3g every few seconds.

...and I think Lurk already covered that 😅

that's what I get for drive-by comments

[surreal rune]

Lmao

Yeah hope everyone can handle being in a fighter jet while walking

[thin furnace]

Compulsory sit-ups

[terse kernel]

this doesn't really look ring-worthy to me, one unfortunate collision or some mass driver dire from a pirate could do devastating damage to the ring structure

[iron trench]

We don't be there that long either. Thought, it could serve as a variant that customized for rings condition so the hab ring turn into something else like impact cage

[terse kernel]

maybe it could be part of a deluxe edition like the pelican

[vestal idol]

I think he was talking about an axial ring (he was proposing a new design), but you would still have to have a 2G spin to have 2G outward and 1G toward the wall - a collective . . . 3Gs? 2 point something Gs? At a 60 degree offset to the actual designed floor.

The less you spin up, the more severe that offset.

[thin furnace]

Bit many collections in here. I know what to do ! I will simply make Nested Collections

Working on the reactor and engine today, then we're going back to the habitat because it's a very heated subject

[heady eagle]

incredible

[thin furnace]

thank you for tuning in dear listeners, for added immersion play some radio transmission from a baseball match from the 80s or whatever

(2180s of course)

Jokes aside overall so far I feel like it's turning out alright :)

The engine is a bit too angular compared to everything else though (I feel)

Although you know what, Mite do windows first

is this a good compromise? providing a bit of visibility when not spinning, but also not obstructive when in spin

oh my god just noticed the habitat was 0.037 meters off center . Close call

[languid cliff]

yeah it could be a bit more rounded

isn't the the engine part of the CERF?

[thin furnace]

It is

[torpid canyon]

The engine part sill stay the same or not?

The fact ist hexagonal and not round is strange

[thin furnace]

Working on the hab for now

and yeah it's a placeholder

Some detailing

I think I'm happy with it for now

Engine Lifted (Carefully)

[languid cliff]

I like the details on the Hab. One thing once it is spinning would you not end up with problems, because some of those things are not balanced by things on the other side?

[thin furnace]

They are balanced, in lore 😉

The part without detailing is for storing humans

But I'll give it a bit more bulk just so it looks more balanced

how about now

[languid cliff]

that looks good

[thin furnace]

Bit Stubby at the Moment

[vestal idol]

What are the greebles supposed to be? Detail is good, but functional detail is better.

I like the forward cockpit. Moving the center off the storage means they can both turn on one axis.

[thin furnace]

Koder asked for some piping and stuff so I added some exposed coolant pipes and someuhhh

uhhhh

I don't remember what those were

[vestal idol]

.............hmmm.

Thoughts on what to use them for in a variant, but not here.

[thin furnace]

Thingimajigs

[vestal idol]

Call them external access for EVA O2/water/coolant.

Lockers for tanks with hookups to refill the swap-outs, and a small emergency shelter for suit beaches.

[thin furnace]

You know what, they're right above the electronics and stuff , they might as well be like service access hatches or whatever

[vestal idol]

Construction ship, so lots of EVA.

[thin furnace]

Also very true

oooooo

Miniature shuttle docks

Man I'd love to make some shuttles down the line

[vestal idol]

Not sure I'd imagine shuttles smaller than CC's. Maybe for EVA transport rigs, not airtight, just a little armor and some strap-on RCS.

Robot arms maybe.

EVA power loader, Aliens style.

("get off her you--")

[thin furnace]

You know, like a tiny uhh

Jet-scooter? for hauling power tools

I'd imagine would make it much easier to move around than, say, a jetpack

[vestal idol]

Well, also arms for moving big heavy pieces of space station, but I guess the ship itself has that covered. But the player won't have access to or benefit from them, so maybe just EVA supplies and shelter.

[thin furnace]

Fair fair fair

Radiation shielding for EVA techs

[vestal idol]

Well, also a place to stash someone with a suit breach. Just a closet you can pressurize so they have time to patch.

That and so they don't have to cross a lock to top off air and drinking water.

[thin furnace]

I like the idea

[shy sonnet]

They kinda look a little like escape pod berths on both sides

if they'd run the whole length they would, it looks like there's a depression in the middle

[vestal idol]

Can't use them that way, though. Overlapping colliding objects is hinky, physics wise.

[torpid canyon]

What will be the RCS layout?

[thin furnace]

see the metal mounts jutting out

[vestal idol]

RCS masts much like the Cothon, but four of them, and probably with a better configuration than the Cothon.

[vestal idol]

Does blender provide any kind of way to estimate CoM?

I'd be surprised, but I thought I'd ask. CoM can be wherever we say it is, since the internals are where we say they are, but still.

Thinking about whether elements should be shifted at all to ensure a thrust axis through the CoM.

[thin furnace]

Well, kind of

You can establish a center of mass for each object (in blender known as the object origin [simulations use it as CoM]) and you can ask blender to make a median point out of all the origin points of the objects

However this doesn't take the mass of each object into account

Though there might be a way. I'll look into it in the morning

Also, sorry about no progress today . Had a bit of an art block with the reactor design

[vestal idol]

No worries.

[long elm]

Octopus inspired ship design maybe or I'd be happy with a bigger ship that has a high stress point with more that 2 low stress points. I dont wanna give up my grabby arm

[thin furnace]

How do we feel about this kind of reactor design?

[I'll add more details of course IF we like it]

[torpid canyon]

it looks good but a little skinny without greeble or supports

for example, adding supports like these would make it look fragile

but since its a construction vessel something like the cothon structural exoskeleton would make more sense

[thin furnace]

👌 sounds good

ROCK SOLID

[languid cliff]

much better

[thin furnace]

looks quite ok I think

Quite happy with these radiators too

[vestal idol]

I think it'll get some connective beams like the front did, if we decide it fits. It does seem a bit anemic, though. The section forward of the radiators doesn't seem to do anything.

This might be a @brave knoll question . . . how reasonable would it be to give it animations that activate on power up/down?

I'm thinking of those RCS masts - have them spread out shortly after boot, so that it clears the docking bay, then opens up. In the rings, this would translate to the same thing happening during a reboot.

Maybe fold in the sensor mast while powered down, too.

Ah. Just realized; the narrower forward section doesn't establish a shield keeping radioactive exhaust form shining forward.

Now that I think if it, with the top/bottom saucer cockpit, the cockpit isn't protected by the reaction mass/processed cargo as we'd intended earlier.

Suppose the bulk of the reactor itself is enough for direct shine.

What kind of radiators? Just hot panels, like the K37? It might make sense to get them hotter from one end, and cooler at the other.

[thin furnace]

Just barely, but it is shielded

[vestal idol]

But not by the water, which it's above/below.

[royal parcel]

Looks nice 👍
How big is the radiator btw? K37 has 100 m² iirc, i guess it should have a similar area. Maybe more, if it is meant for a stronger reactor?

[thin furnace]

As for radiators I kinda want to make them extendable like on the K225, but not sure how feasible that would be

[vestal idol]

Well, it works on the 225, so it should be fine. An X-pattern isn't a good idea, though, cross-shine.

[thin furnace]

I had an idea for like ones that would extend like a fan on boot, but that's probably for another ship 😅

[vestal idol]

If we shortened the hexagonal sections and closed the saucer inwards so it's a single squat cylinder, the consumables would be free shielding.

[thin furnace]

Something like this?

Do keep in mind also this change absolutely won't be visible in-game 😄

[vestal idol]

I was thinking, make them part of the same mass, so they could be two decks with a stairway, put it behind the side hexxes, too, but that would need a redesign. You'd have to have the pivot for the axis top and bottom, instead of in the middle.

They would be visible in the dealer, but also not that big a deal.

Is it time for a shitty MS-paint sketch again?

[thin furnace]

they are already a single component with a cylinder between them

[torpid canyon]

Having radiators extending out on a building ship is probably the vest way to weld the radiator to the station your are building

[thin furnace]

Naw metal doesn't need to be heated to weld in space 👍

just touching is enough

[vestal idol]

Well, you don't necessarily want it to shine on your construction, either. So, leftward-shining radiators might not be a bad idea. And give us extra asymmetry points.

[thin furnace]

Ooh that's a nice idea

Oh also ! I've been thinking more about how this ship looks like a rotifer and like uhh

I think it would be a very fitting name for it too . After all "rotifer" means "wheel-bearer" and this ship does bear quite a wheel

[vestal idol]

As for the pivot I was describing, I meant something like this, so that the full saucer section (where you have people and workstaions) was one part, and fully behind the hexxes, with your consumables that can shield it.

[thin furnace]

ohhh ok

hmm

I think this would be doable

[vestal idol]

I know, I know, crappy MS paint, but you get the idea. That's a rather big redesign, though.

[thin furnace]

Wheelbarrow wheel rotated 90°

[vestal idol]

Yes, that.

My sketch is a little fatter than I intended it, though. Ignore that, feel free to put it on a diet. 🙂

Or even keep it as is, if it takes too much time. It feels like it would be time-consuming, and we COULD justify what we already have, anyway.

[thin furnace]

zoinks

The girders need replacing but . Yeah

[vestal idol]

Oh. That was quick.

So, leftward-facing radiator:

[torpid canyon]

The radiator could extend all the way to the cargo bay

[vestal idol]

The line on the left is the length when extended, which should nuzzle right up.

[thin furnace]

Girder done

[vestal idol]

It should be snugger against the hull, or even sliding in grooves in the hull, so that it has easy delivery of coolant through it.

[thin furnace]

I usually can't focus. But when I do I am unstoppable

[vestal idol]

But you know, conceptually, it gets the message across.

(Talking about the radiator at this point.)

[thin furnace]

👍

I think I get what you mean, will try to implement it somehow

Not sure how it'd fold out though

like animation-wise

[torpid canyon]

Will the hab spin on it self?

[vestal idol]

Think of the BBW rads.

[thin furnace]

on the other hand maybe the overlap wouldn't be much of a problem yeah

Oh right it will just obscure itself so no layering problems lol. I'm dumb

[vestal idol]

The hab won't normally spin, but it would be capable of it for long interplanetary stretches without thrust the whole way.

[brave knoll]

While technically possible, it's best to avoid moving parts that have physical presence (aka, moving rigid bodies). Things like radiators that don't actually collide are fine, but RCS pylons - not a great idea. It requires to have the whole simulation perform a lot of additional work, as it would now have to simulate thrust applied over joints.

[vestal idol]

So the radiator - which here, would collide - probably also should not be animated.

[thin furnace]

Dang

Well I'll make it NASA style radial radiator panels then

Just like way hotter

I hate the space heater industry! I hate the space heater industry!

Prototype

RIP the RCS though in this case

hmm

[vestal idol]

Think the heat source would be a coolant channel, so, maybe an s-shaped zigzag instead of a grid?

[thin furnace]

hmmm perhaps !

[vestal idol]

The 225 uses something like that.

[thin furnace]

I'll see how that will look since right now this is a quick trick with an ambient occlusion node >:)

[brave knoll]

the fact that you can see them heating up the RCS indicates a potential problem

[vestal idol]

Shift the radiator forward, over the narrower section? Though it does put it closer to the heat, nothing says it HAS to be right on the radiator, and it'd take shine off the mast.

[thin furnace]

Super-superheated propellant for the left RCS

but yeah no worries I'll move them a bit :)

[vestal idol]

This profile is very awkward to radiate from - it wouldn't look spectacular in-game, but realistically I might have vertical radiator fins, top and bottom.

Only problem is, it's not gonna look very interesting in-game.

Honestly, your original radiators look the best of all these initial designs, I think.

Though, they still have the RCS-shine issue.

FYI, since you were looking for good radiator panel images:

[thin furnace]

👌

Tried to do it the quick way, didn't exactly work out whoops

but alrite I'm reverting to the old design and fleshing it out a bit more

[vestal idol]

You know what we haven't done? Wire-filament radiators.

[thin furnace]

maybe I'll keep them just on the left for that asymmetrical look

[vestal idol]

I'm not sure those are good for handling high heat, though. I suppose it depends on how many filaments you use.

[thin furnace]

like a big ol coil? Just a bunch of times

[thin furnace]

ohhhh ok

hmm

[thin furnace]

certainly looks interesting

[vestal idol]

I think the thermal mass of the filament would be less than that of a panel, meaning it might need much more surface to be effective, and the second image, they'd wobble under thrust, and we can't make that look right in-game.

[thin furnace]

Hmmm yeah true

Unless they'd be under a ton of tension

tho wait that can't be good at those temps

Let's stick to panels for now 😅

[vestal idol]

We could use a sheet of them, but once you do that you're basically using a glorified belt-loop radiator.

[thin furnace]

This plus a gradient (and a way to heat up the RCS less) should be fiiiine

Tempted to make some lateral ones as you suggested but then again that won't show up in game oughhh

It is an interesting design challenge though, making a ship that will simultaneously make sense but also have a ton of detail on only one axis

[vestal idol]

Maybe move them out a bit - instead of facing 45 and 135, facing 25 and 155?

I like the asymmetric design challenge. It's not the way you'd WANT to make a spaceship, but once you have a use-case for wanting it that way, the challenge of it is interesting.

[thin furnace]

very true, very true

moving them is a bit cumbersome at the moment since they're integrated into the reactor mesh whoops

Gotta make a separation

amputated

I like them this way I think

just gonna add some struts and stuff for the sake of looking better

quite alright I think

With the rest shown

Tempted to make them larger also

[thin furnace]

Gonna be it from me for today :) Gotta get up early tomorrow

[vestal idol]

That's nice- no shine on the mast at all. That grid needs some love, but I gather from what you said that it's a temporary shortcut, so that's set.

She's looking like she finally has some real mass to her. 🙂

May want to adjust the torque mount on the saucer so the greebles on it will fit under when it rotates. It looks like they might not. Other than that, I think it looks good.

[iron trench]

Space Pacman

[vestal idol]

The EIME is going to function a lot more like a pac-man than this thing, I think. Her bay has the look of it, but she's much weirder than that.

This is the weird, ugly, asymmetric working ship that is absolutely not made for convenience which I've been wanting for a while now. 🙂

I just noticed all these . . . cables? Or is that an artifact?

[brave knoll]

That looks like blender gizmo; it's a relationship hint, not something that will render

[thin furnace]

Yes they simply let me know that the sensors are child objects to the mast they're on, nothing to worry about

As for the grid on the engine I think I'll remove it altogether and add some hand-made detailing instead :)

Might Still end up a grid, just a better looking one 😄

[vestal idol]

Not sure why the hot parts should look like a grid though. Usually you'd run coolant through a channel back and forth, and each bend will be an s-curve to avoid a high pressure point. Think AC or automotive radiator.

You can see it if you look close at this: #1041996532859289640 message

Image of a radiator panel from ToughSF.

[thin furnace]

Oh yeah I meant a grid in the sense of some channels with coolant on one axis and thin panels running between them on another axis

Overlapping cylinders and cuboids

[terse kernel]

im still attached to this style of window, the new design you showed seemed really small and if the idea was to save from nausea couldn't there be some big shutter on the window that extends when spinning fast

i like the new style of radiator, i equally like the old one. what about a continuous radiator ring? i think that would look cool

[thin furnace]

The idea is not to have radiators on the right, since that's the side of the ship that would be facing the station it's servicing :>

[royal parcel]

How about a radiator that can be disabled? Probably a lore-only feature for the time being, since a mining ship doesn't need it. That way the ship has more radiator surface during flight.

It could even be set to a low temperature, to provide heating to the construction zone if necessary.

[terse kernel]

ohh i see

well either way it's great progress

[vestal idol]

Could shutter them. Those are cool windows. Though divided into panels would be better.

[thin furnace]

It's a bit late to add windows like that in a quick way but I'll see what I can do

[vestal idol]

I think if you need to heat the station, you probably have environmental support up, since people will be there without a suit.

[vestal idol]

Not a big issue, just like the style of that vertical drop on the sides. It looks cool from above.

[thin furnace]

I'll see what I can do either way 😎

[vestal idol]

If it's burdensome, it's also ignorable.

[thin furnace]

Already starting to look much better :>

new window setup also

[iron trench]

This look like a blender

oof. Ringroid dust. Don't breath it in

[thin furnace]

Just Some Noise. The RTX is off to save battery power and the integrated GPU isn't as good at rendering fast 😄

[dull warren]

Are we also getting a new hud with this ship? Because I don't think any of the currently available ones would fit

[thin furnace]

Yes 👍

But ship model first, then we'll go over the hud :)

[dull warren]

Gotcha

[torpid canyon]

Any specific ideas on the HUD?

[thin furnace]

I would like it to have some swoops and circles, to keep in line with the Obonto logo and the ship's circle-ness

[torpid canyon]

Maybe being able to change the "front" of the vehicle to the cargo entrance side?

[thin furnace]

[the logo, for context]

I'd like this to be the theme on some of the HUD borders too

like u know umm

I'm a professional graphic designer as you can see

[torpid canyon]

And colors will be white, gray, light green and light blue?

[thin furnace]

¯_(ツ)_/¯

I don't know yet

[torpid canyon]

Low saturation colors like I saw before

[thin furnace]

We get there when we get there

I'm partial to some amber

since the ship is orange and the habitats are orange

and I like amber terminals

a lot

[terse kernel]

that's nice

[terse kernel]

i like

[torpid canyon]

Hope it will like neat like the model E but will be actually usable

And that fusion reactant is displayed if stored

[terse kernel]

i hear people like arms so this should go down well

i think it'll be very interesting for its unique cargo bay

wonder how the heck the MPUs will look

[languid cliff]

I like it. though maybe it should not cover up a lot of space considering this is a work vehicle. (I hope I remembered that last part correctly)

[thin furnace]

Yeah it will probably be either in corners or like a strategic spot right next to the ship

Or maybe at the sides of the screen, making the field of view more square?

[iron trench]

What is this? HAL Fanta edition?

[clear scarab]

oooohhhh... I had an amber monochrome display back in the day... I like this

Then again, I also like the idea of making some sort of space vista cruiser... so uh...

maybe don't take what I recommend seriously

[thin furnace]

A passenger cruiser is on my agenda so don't get too too discouraged :>

[torpid canyon]

Why do I feel if you had infinite time and sanity there will be more ships and variants in this game than I can remember?

[languid cliff]

Because that is probably what will happen

[torpid canyon]

Like modded StarSector when the game freezes for a solid 3 seconds when I open the ships codex?

[thin furnace]

Soon I'll have more free time and by then it should already accelerate somewhat :)

[languid cliff]

That was basically this game a while ago when owned ships were inside the dealer menu. You would open up the menu and it would lag like crazy for a few seconds if you had a lot of ships.

[brave knoll]

we are putting windows on the floor?

[thin furnace]

They're at a 45° angle to the floor

And the idea is they'd be shuttered

But if that's not something we want it's an easy change to make :)

[brave knoll]

no worries yet, that decission will come after we see the thing in-game

[thin furnace]

Oh also since [I think] I'm almost finished with the ship, do we want the hab to be completely stiff in-game or should I move it so it can be a separate sprite for Slight Spinning purposes?

I do like the mental image of it rotating very slightly to look wherever the player is turning 😄

[brave knoll]

I think we should do separate sprites

[thin furnace]

@brave knoll test [final?] ship sprites in the cloud. let me know if I did anything wrong or overlooked something :)

[brave knoll]

so, I know I'm doing drive-by on the final stage - sorry for that, I'm terribly preoccupied with life stuff ATM.

Looking at the sprites, why didn't we opt for larger opening?

[thin furnace]

On it 👍

[brave knoll]

Oh, I want to hear a reason for this design first 🙂

[thin furnace]

Honestly mostly just aesthetics 😄 it fit nicely with the width of the braces around it

[brave knoll]

also, this will be visible. Was it meant to be visible?

(doesn't look like it was supposed to by normal maps)

[thin furnace]

! Turned down the subdivision modifier and forgor 💀 to turn it back up for the render

Good catch

[languid cliff]

They may actually be useful in normal operation at the construction site(this is a construction spaceship right? Or did I not remember correctly?) if the seats reorient to face them. Just turn the hab to face the construction area and you have a great view of that area.

[iron trench]

I'm wondering how the MPU layout will look like on this thing 🤔

[dawn crag]

A drone that flies into your cargo hold and starts spamming thrusters

[iron trench]

Actually I wouldn't mind having a new or a unique MPU for the ship

That sound kinda rad tbh. A drone system acting as MPU and only operate when your hold is open

[royal parcel]

Iirc it's supposed to be on the outer diameter of the hold, so it scoops up chunks when the bay rotates.

How do you call that? Laterally?

Or maybe tangentially.

[brave knoll]

query:
You press W; which thrusters fire?

[thin furnace]

I'd say for the sake of movement consistency, the ones that are pointed the same way as the main engine

(assuming the alternative is "the front would be where the cargo bay is facing")

The ARMs should give plenty of room to get used to the non-standard roid-eating side

[brave knoll]

there are things to consider gameplay-wise

if we rig it so the front is this way, things like EIAA1337 is going to be bonkers on it.

[languid cliff]

Maybe opening the cargobay while locked on to something it should rotate?

[brave knoll]

hm

[languid cliff]

Id also suggest changing the manual steering controls and maybe disabling the main torch automatically (both could maybe be turned off in tuning), but that might be a good chunk of work and bugs.

[brave knoll]

I could try to define "front" in relation to the rotating part of the bay

so what would happen is that when you are locked on something and try to open the bay, the entire ship would turn

(with thrusters, on AP)

[royal parcel]

You could also say that the Elon autopilot is just not suitable for it, because of the odd arrangement.
Personally i wouldn't want to have "forward" perpendicular to the main engine.

[brave knoll]

That won't stop it being reported as a bug. It never did in the past.

[royal parcel]

Hmm, true

[royal parcel]

Certainly worth a try, but i can also see this being confusing and it will eat remass. If that's possible, a tuning option to set the ships frame of reference could be great.

[brave knoll]

but the alternative option is that you click on ore and it aligns your ship in a way that makes taking it in impossible

[torpid canyon]

or maybe the ship has a built in sytem that change the "front" of the craft on demand for the AP

[brave knoll]

Isn't that what I just suggested earlier and we are discussing?

[vestal idol]

That is going to be bonkers, but you ARE using that AP on something it wasn't designed for, like trying to install tesla self-driving software on an electric skateboard.

[vestal idol]

I'm not sure I'm a fan of this; I designed that mostly out of the CAT logo, but I feel like it could be fairly utilitarian.

[thin furnace]

Then I'm going the way of the amber CRT 🙏

[vestal idol]

Problem is, construction equipment doesn't really have instrumentation to the degree a car or tractor does, since you're meant to be watching what you're doing, I suppose.

[thin furnace]

I mean, this particular one is first and foremost for transporting equipment in space, so I feel like ample interface would be in order

Also, nobody says you can't just slap a screen on there and rewire it to display whatever

[vestal idol]

Yes, but when I mean is that reference is hard to find.

This actually looks a lot like what the K37 should look like in lore, given that the player view, OMS, etc are all supposed to be separate monitors.

[thin furnace]

Oh also, idea I had in the shower - the ship could shift its "front" between the thrust vector when the main drive is on, and the bay vector when the main thrust is off (in the OMS) - and the habitat could turn to face the front so it's more intuitive

[vestal idol]

Though, of course, still without reference for informational displays. Most displays are for cameras, everything else is physical.

I feel like that would mess with the AP. How would I get it to fire the main drive? The AP won't use the main drive unless it's aligned with the translation vector.

[thin furnace]

Well, the idea is when the main drive is enabled the vector would be aligned with it

And when it's not aligned, the engine would be disabled completely so that doesn't matter

[vestal idol]

But when it's not, you couldn't turn the main drive on without using manual.

It's not aligned with the thrust needed, so it won't fire.

[thin furnace]

Nono I mean off as in disabled in the OMS

Like toggled off

[vestal idol]

Oooooooooooh. Hm.

Not sure I'd mind that; though, on the other hand, I also often disable the mains through most of a dive, too.

[thin furnace]

But also I should sleep so sorry if I don't respond for the next 7.5 hours 😅

[thin furnace]

Well, then you'd simply be piloting a very W I D E ship most of the dive 🙂

[vestal idol]

Like, I'll go in with 350's and NTTRs, so I have efficient thrust and GTFO thrust, and just disable NTTR unless I need it - which means this ship would be sideways the whole way.

Remember the variable configuration suggestion?

What if this ship had a system specifically for the configuration?\

[thin furnace]

That's a question for koder I think

Also I keep procrastinating sleep, not good 😅

Goodnite !

[vestal idol]

Get some good sleep.

[vestal idol]

I think our best approach to this might be to describe the ship as unsuited to autonomous autopilots that are not programmed to handle its unconventional configuration.

[proper lagoon]

https://discordapp.com/channels/426287934870781952/1066167872210083905/1066167872210083905 this

[clear scarab]

if it ends up looking like some sort of space-vista cruiser station wagon complete with fake wood paneling, I am probably going to die. XD

[brave knoll]

We could also have the orientation change trigger with relative velocity

all of this applies only to autopilot flight

we need a name for this thing

My suggestion would be Obonto Construction Platform 209; aka OCP-209

Also, this is the time to iron out specs like dry mass

Stock torch, thrusters and other equipment

baffles are going to be a challenge

[brave knoll]

okay, first in-game view

okay, @thin furnace couple of suggestions based on what I see in-game:

1. I think we could make a room to embed the cabin a bit inside the tanks, so it doesn't pop out so much

2. on pristine ship this looks boring, could probably use some details

3. these stripes look like shading artifacts

[thin furnace]

All perfectly doable 👍 I'll get on that later in the day

[brave knoll]

4. you can't really see the dividing line when the bay is closed

there is a faint thing visible, but it looks more like shading artifact; we could use some meatal bevel there, or even an interlocking pattern

[thin furnace]

I'm really partial to calling it something relating to "Rotifer"
Because it looks like a rotifer, and rotifer means "wheel-bearer" in Latin, and this ship bears a wheel alrite

Not a hill I'd die on though so no worries if that doesn't fit

[brave knoll]

OCP-209 "Rotifer"?

hm, this thing, as modelled, is 90m long

🤔 fortunately, it fits the dock. Barely.

...but that would put our ballpark estimated dry mass around 600 tons

it's bit longer than AT-K225 and much wider (not accounting for the docking bays, which are mostly empty); AT-K225 has dry mass of 150 tons

these parts look damaged even on the pristine sprite. Different material?

[vestal idol]

First thng I can see; maybe the radiators need more detail, and the reactor body. Maybe some maintenance hatches, ports, pipes to/from the gantry for remass/power transfer, whatnot.

[brave knoll]

tried 600t dry mass. Suprisingly nimble when rotating, but that was the whole point. Dreadful decceleration and dV; pulls about 2m/s^2

[vestal idol]

The sensors maybe should use a different material than the mast, so they seem like tacked-on items, which they kinda are. They seem very uniform right now.

Might be the light, but that's the light we'll always see it in, so . . .

2 is a space where pristine makes in-game sense; maybe painting a logo here would be better than adding greebles? That can be done via ship paint instead of the model.

[vestal idol]

Huh. Had to google it. Kinda? I feel like construction equipment is usually purpose-named; like a CAT Excavator, with a model number, rather than a CAT Artic Thunder Excavator. (If we're using men's deodorant names to compare.)

[thin furnace]

Hmm fair fair

[thin furnace]

Oops, most likely an oversight on my part

[thin furnace]

I like the idea, there's a lot of real estate for painting something there

[vestal idol]

Nothing wrong with the aesthics, to be fair. And the out-of-universe reverence is fine. Orbital Construction Platform RTFR-TK429?

The painting can also be done in-game, so the player can use the canvas.

[thin furnace]

I don't really know what I'd even add as the detail on the bay part, since it's supposed to rotate it can't really have anything jutting out of it

[vestal idol]

If you need surface detail, maybe like the prospector nose; make it out of panels that are assembled, with indented lines between them.

[thin furnace]

Perhaps! Perhaps

Also, as for the size I just used the measurements that were there already when I started 😅 granted, the fuel + cargo containers did add a real bunch of length

I can size it all down though, victimless crime

[vestal idol]

I think barely fitting is okay - the bays may even have been made with construction platforms as the largest ship model they'd accomodate.

I'm not sure cutting a notch in cargo to move the cockpit back makes sense; the cargo bays are shaped linearly like that so you can shift the cargo balance, and any notch like that is space you can't shift in.

Really kind of a treat to see something come together collaboratively, and have time for feedback cycles and such. Koder works so hard and so fast that a lot is often locked in before feedback comes back.

Obviously not a negative, working fast, but, you know.

[thin furnace]

A lot of this perceived patience is just me not having a lot of time to model currently 😄 but hopefully when I have enough to speed up with this stuff considerably I'll try to make things as modular as possible so we can make changes on the fly

[vestal idol]

I know you're not full time, so I'm not ragging on you for speed.

[thin furnace]

Didn't assume you were, no worries :)

And I do enjoy collaborating like that a lot too 😄 having alternate perspectives is really helpful with inspiration and stuff

And especially with spotting oversights that I'm selectively blind to

Ok small list so I don't forget later:

• some sort of detailing on the bay [or leave it up as real estate for painting]
• more visible bay door edges
• double check materials on the hardpoints
• adjust engine details
• more contrast on the radiator
• QUADRUPLE check symmetry
• move hab axle halfway into the containers (make a boolean cutout in the containers for the hab?)

[brave knoll]

So, double checking references, it looks like we can have mass of this in range of 200-600 tons

I'm not sure I like the idea that it's bigger and heavier than the titan

[thin furnace]

I can size it down no worries 🙂

Would it be better in the realm of let's say, 70m long?

[brave knoll]

Not really sure at this point.

[thin furnace]

Then we'll see

Worst case scenario we can change it back

[brave knoll]

If it's only about scaling down, that can be done in post/engine

but we'll get a shorter version already if we pack that habitat a bit inside the front of the ship

[thin furnace]

Should look quite nice if it's like halfway into the hull yeah 👍

I might also adjust the 3D model to have some space there so it makes sense if someone tinkers with it later in the DLC or stuff

[vestal idol]

That would make that part of the bay not useful for cargo shifting, which is really the only point of that section of the hull, though.

I suppose you could put the machinery for shifting in that space.

Motors and piston drives.

[thin furnace]

Hmm, might just spread the containers apart a bit then? Or dedicate it to hydraulics or stuff

[thin furnace]

Same braincell 🤝

[vestal idol]

Maybe that's only funny to my lack of coffee.

[thin furnace]

Nono it's perfect ✨

[royal parcel]

As an extreme measure you could remove the autonomous autopilot from the ships equipment menu.
Ok, maybe you'll get "EIAA1337 is missing" bug reports then...

In 2D the radiator looks a bit odd and too small imho. Could it maybe cover half of the reactor assembly?

[thin furnace]

I can make it w i d e r

[royal parcel]

Oh, wait, on closer inspection, does it already wrap around? It looked like just one panel to me. 😅

[thin furnace]

It's 2 panels (to allow for the thruster pylon to fit) but yeah it's wrapped around top to bottom :)

[royal parcel]

Aah, ok. Maybe with the added details it will be more clear that it wraps around. The flat glowing panel gave me no hint to that.

[thin furnace]

Yeah I'll need to increase the contrast between the parts - it's supposed to go from dark red to yellowish-white in hotness depending on the spot

But as you can see it's kind of all orange right now 😅

[royal parcel]

👍I like orange

[vestal idol]

Orange is good, but it would be nice to have color variation.

[iron trench]

It was a construction related vehicle doesn't it? It should be orange

[thin furnace]

Ohhh my godde

we had a problem with symmetry, I meticulously checked each part to make sure it's where it should be. Everything was! I was puzzling over it for a good 40 minutes

Then I switched to view the model from the top . The camera was 0.5 meters to the left .

[thin furnace]

accidentally assigned the radiator material to part of the engine and by Gosh this looks baller

Not Likely to be in the final version but we can dream

opinions on this radiator look?

Inverted intensity compared to the other

Pro: areas look hotter where they would be hotter irl
Con: the rods don't look as hot
Of note: the con can easily be fixed

I thinkk I like this

[royal parcel]

First one is fine imho but the second gives me weird vibes. It feels like i'm not looking on the surface but rather into something. It has kind of a weird depth perception. Sorry, i don't know how to word it better 😅

[thin furnace]

I mean it does have some depth to it 😄

But if the first one's better I'll stick with that :)

is this okay

[royal parcel]

Yeah, looks good

I think the stark contrast between the pipes and the surface behind them made it look like the pipes were way above the surface.

[thin furnace]

ohhh ok understandable

[royal parcel]

But this image shows they are right on the surface

[royal parcel]

Now i know! This was the vibe i was getting from this version

[thin furnace]

I mean in a lot of ways that's literally what it is 😄

[royal parcel]

Yeah, kinda, but i think the surface between the pipes is not meant as a reflector, so i guess the temperature difference shouldn't be that big :)

[thin furnace]

True true very true

[royal parcel]

Anyways, last picture looks nice imho

[thin furnace]

made it a liiittle more realistic I think

[royal parcel]

Not much of a difference, is there? A little brighter. But yeah, also good

[thin furnace]

It's the small things that make the biggest changes 😌 (this will be literally invisible at in-game resolution)

Also, to address the lack of a nice border between bays, the new and improved (!) Larger Bay Door now has a nice border and clamp

[royal parcel]

Oh, nice! Clamps are a good idea

[thin furnace]

I kinda like this look for the hab I think

Could still rotate in there too

[torpid canyon]

with the bridge completely out the ship looked a bit too long and brittle

[thin furnace]

Yeahh true

clips a lil bit but that's a problem for future me to solve

[vestal idol]

Honestly, that doesn't bother me much. It's a construction ship, and cranes aren't built to look like a wrestler. The bigger concern was whether it could dock at Enceladus. And I guess the hab dock is a concern, too.

[vestal idol]

This does look awesome, and there is something to be said for cooling an engine bell, but it'd be a bit out of place for this lumbering hulk.

[iron trench]

BBW rubbing her hands together ready to slamming this ship against her nose

Do we need to give NPC a longer ARM?

[brave knoll]

Try moving it out by 25%

[thin furnace]

👍

In like half an hour :)

[brave knoll]

perfect, I'll just make myself coffee and can start integrating it.
Actually... I could probably set it up in the engine by splicing the sprite, right?

[thin furnace]

Probably yeah 😄 I can also just cut out the hab holder separately so you can move it wherever

though that would make the image a lot longer for not a lot of graphics, maybe I'll stick to as it is

Moving it out a little for easier edits 👍

[torpid canyon]

Do you have ideas on how to make bigger ships fit in docks then?

[thin furnace]

@brave knoll new sprites uploaded :)

[rotund pasture]

I suspect that being unable to Dock is going to be the Downside of using Larger Ships

[brave knoll]

11 frames?

@thin furnace I think I see 13?

[thin furnace]

! odd

[brave knoll]

I'm on mobile net, perhaps it didn't download yet?

[thin furnace]

definitely 11 for me, maybe you're seeing the old cached image?

[brave knoll]

ah, it's just still downloading

[thin furnace]

oop, no worries then

[brave knoll]

Okay, we need to now figure out some basic stats - first thing, dry mass and stock equipment

Titan is at 150t; this one is bit larger ATM; our ballpark estimation for the mass would be somewhere between 150 to 600t

(that's based on l^2 and l^3)

I tried it at 600 and it was kind of flyable, pretty nimble at rotating (it has good RCS placement for that), but the acceleration on K37's was about 2m/s^2

I'm going to try with 200t, I think it can be justified

[thin furnace]

Yeah, it's larger but ~80% of its volume is also hollow

[brave knoll]

Most of AT-K225 is also hollow

[thin furnace]

Hmm true that

[brave knoll]

other things - hardpoint placements? Do we have visible mounts on the model?

[thin furnace]

These two Bricks and also maybe the girder on here if we want a light hardpoint facing "forward"

Pardon the abysmal handwriting I was using a mouse pointer 😄

Slapping 2 NANIs on this thing would be a great idea let me tell you

[torpid canyon]

larger ships will also require to make a bigger dock at enchilada

[thin furnace]

This one is just small enough to be a snug fit on the E's dock, if we keep it at the default scale

...I think

[vestal idol]

A forward facing hardpoint needs to be further up.

[brave knoll]

future you will need that for the dealer renders soon 😛

[thin furnace]

Yeah, unfortunately now I am the future me 😅

[vestal idol]

Also, I am not in favor of forward hardpoints.

An additional light stress or two facing out, maybe. Broadside is awkward enough that maybe we have wiggle room for extra mounts.

[brave knoll]

@thin furnace here is my problem 🙂

[thin furnace]

Ohhhhhh whoops, that's on me 😄

The one with a space was supposed to be the backup

In case I messed up post-processing 😎

[torpid canyon]

it would be cool if the has hard points facing in both direction, it would make the ship very versatile for the player

[brave knoll]

I'm going to change the in-game files all lower-case to avoid file name case sensitivity problems

[thin furnace]

Thank you to past me for making this easy

[vestal idol]

I would not be a fan of constantly toggling hardpoints to switch left and right. Anyway, she's a construction rig that has a definite "work is this way" direction.

[vestal idol]

Thank you for the entertaining image of an RCS-driven hab rotation.

[brave knoll]

so, after dropping it just in, everything is messed up, as expected 😅

[vestal idol]

Just in case your crew needed to know what being in a blender felt like.

[brave knoll]

actually, while we are at this stage; @thin furnace do you do that compositing into a final sprite with a script by any chance?

[torpid canyon]

this will be the new make shift combat barge of the rings

[thin furnace]

yup, I set up one that executes this:

[brave knoll]

this space between sprites uses up some vram without any benefit

[thin furnace]

Currently working on making it agnostic

[brave knoll]

you think you could trim that to ~4 pixels? top and bottom too.

[vestal idol]

I think the 225 will definitely keep her place as the heavy gunboat, but this girl will have some interesting characteristics worth experimenting with.

[thin furnace]

Hmm, I could try ! But that's probably better to do in blender since that's where that space comes from

I'm obsessed with standardization so I just had to set it to 480px width 😅

[brave knoll]

any approach will work, and I know we don't do that for the previous ships, but it might be a good idea to start

[thin furnace]

5 mins and it'll be done ! I also moved the sensor pylon a bit since it's the only part that juts out that far

so that allows some savings

Hmm

could also squeeze the separate parts a bit tighter but not sure if it's a great idea

eh, I'll leave them be 😌

[brave knoll]

as long as I can snip it with a rectangle it will work great

[thin furnace]

It shall be done then :>

[vestal idol]

As for this, I think the only way is to place the grab on the front, which is a little problematic because, as I understand, the point that it rotates around in the ARM just be hand placed. But carefully doing so is the only way I see a ship like this accessing both hab services and enchilada.

I've seen the BBW try to manifest at Enchilada and it has a spaz trying to find a way to fit, eventually popping into a weird angle.

[torpid canyon]

the point where the docking arm grabs the ship?

[vestal idol]

Yeah. Moving it forward rather than placing it CoM.

[torpid canyon]

it could be on the very front or a side making big ships able to dock to more things

[vestal idol]

Has to be close to both the front and side for E' and SRA docks.