Right now, I don’t have much effort invested into CA2, so I’m good for whatever. Given the abundance of work and home I’ve got right now, I’ll follow where you lead, @Old Duck. For right now, I’m quite happy prototyping for the future... though I barely had time to finalize the design for my “Boring Construction Vehicle” last night. And this morning had me rushing out the door so fast, I just realized that I forgot to to upload the few screenshots I took.
It did make me realize why I like prototyping in Survival, though. In Creative, if I screw up badly, I can just respawn the vehicle and make the necessary changes. In Survival, recovering the vehicle can be an adventure all on it’s own.
I screw up enough ways in survival to give myself a lifetime of adventures, LOL. Like the time I overfilled my cargo ship and crashed into the ground. I had to create a temporary storage cache, salvage the rest of my ship, run / jetpack back to my base, get my other ship (small grids), return to the crash site, get my stuff... It was an all day adventure! And this is just one such screw up of mine.
I've been visiting CA1, but it's pretty rubbish too. There's a private server that is very responsive, but I don't know what the community is like. My favorite part of CA2 was all my friends (and enemies) that really made it feel alive. That's just as important as server settings and performance.
UPDATE - CA2 is back online and buttery smooth! Better yet, my ships survived - no wipe!
Okay, here's the ships that I designed in Creative, with the intention of building them on the server:
First, the Firefly Surface-to-Orbit Shuttle:
The Firefly S2O is primarily designed to shuttle me and a payload from the surface of a planet, explore for a short while, and return me back to the surface safely. Weighing in at 9.5 tons, it lacks the life support systems required for an extended stay in space. By carefully managing thruster strength, it's possible to get the S2O into orbit on less than one of its three hydrogen tanks, and it has sufficient lift capacity to carry its own weight into orbit. Two atmospheric thrusters will allow it to travel short distances, using its hydrogen MAV thrusters for navigation.
Second, the Boring Construction Vehicle:
The BCV is a utilitarian vehicle, designed to excavate and build underground structures. It features a drill to clear stone, as well as a massive welder that lays out a sturdy foundation for the vehicle to operate on. Once the foundation is laid, the drill can be removed, and the welder rotated* to face forward, allowing it to construct the rest of the base. Due to poor visibility from the cab, the operator has access to a camera installed at the front.
I've already built the BCV on the server.
It worked about a well as I expected: unless I was very careful, its wide wheel base was likely to slip off the block it was welding at the time. Most of the time, the tires had a good enough grip to recover. Twice, though, I had to add pistons to it, so that I could jack it up enough for the wheels to get enough of a grip to climb back into place.
I'm not sure if it would've been more effective to do it by hand, but once I got it up and running, it didn't take all that long to do this:
(early morning edit)
*by "rotate", I mean breaking it down and rebuilding it so it faces forward... though that would've been an awesome addition to the design, it also would've been impractical.
The Firefly S2O is primarily designed to shuttle me and a payload from the surface of a planet, explore for a short while, and return me back to the surface safely. Weighing in at 9.5 tons, it lacks the life support systems required for an extended stay in space. By carefully managing thruster strength, it's possible to get the S2O into orbit on less than one of its three hydrogen tanks, and it has sufficient lift capacity to carry its own weight into orbit. Two atmospheric thrusters will allow it to travel short distances, using its hydrogen MAV thrusters for navigation.
Sounds like you're ready for an orbital rendezvous! I can't tell by the picture, does that shuttle have an O2 tank? I have one on my shuttle, but I never bothered with one on my little tug boat since I'm not in it long enough to require one. Since you're on the alien world, I'm guessing an O2 tank isn't optional. Either way, you're welcome to refill your suit and / or your shuttle at my ship if you come up to orbit. My docking port should be compatible with your design.
I once tried to drill underground with a vehicle, but it ended up horrible for me. Instead of a straight tunnel, it curved downwards and I got stuck.
Speaking of tugs and vehicles, I do enjoy using vehicles to do work in Space Engineers. After finishing my new starship, I needed to disassemble my 3D printer to free up PCU and welders. Cutting it up by hand was a pain because the backpack fills up so quick (not complaining, this is as it should be). I then thought of building a grinder ship, but then a more simple and more elegant idea stuck me - why not just attach a welder to my cargo container and bring the printer to it! I hand-cut the piston heads to separate them, and then I used my tug to fly the pistons to the welder. Remember when you asked about that landing gear on the nose of my shuttle? This is what I use it for I really enjoy the feel of running a space "forklift" - as the ED folks would say, it's all about flying ships. It also makes quick work of the job and delivers the salvage exactly where it needs to go.
Sounds like you're ready for an orbital rendezvous! I can't tell by the picture, does that shuttle have an O2 tank? I have one on my shuttle, but I never bothered with one on my little tug boat since I'm not in it long enough to require one. Since you're on the alien world, I'm guessing an O2 tank isn't optional. Either way, you're welcome to refill your suit and / or your shuttle at my ship if you come up to orbit. My docking port should be compatible with your design.
I once tried to drill underground with a vehicle, but it ended up horrible for me. Instead of a straight tunnel, it curved downwards and I got stuck.
Speaking of tugs and vehicles, I do enjoy using vehicles to do work in Space Engineers. After finishing my new starship, I needed to disassemble my 3D printer to free up PCU and welders. Cutting it up by hand was a pain because the backpack fills up so quick (not complaining, this is as it should be). I then thought of building a grinder ship, but then a more simple and more elegant idea stuck me - why not just attach a welder to my cargo container and bring the printer to it! I hand-cut the piston heads to separate them, and then I used my tug to fly the pistons to the welder. Remember when you asked about that landing gear on the nose of my shuttle? This is what I use it for I really enjoy the feel of running a space "forklift" - as the ED folks would say, it's all about flying ships. It also makes quick work of the job and delivers the salvage exactly where it needs to go.
I visited Darkfyre's base and was very impressed with her straight tunnels. She said her secret is to use projector as an alignment tool (in her case it was ladder going down). Brilliant! I'll be using this trick for future underground bases. That works for hand tools anyway, but the problem with vehicles is that the drill radius of a vehicle has to be perfectly calibrated to the wheel base, otherwise the vehicle will end up curving either up or down.
I visited Darkfyre's base and was very impressed with her straight tunnels. She said her secret is to use projector as an alignment tool (in her case it was ladder going down). Brilliant! I'll be using this trick for future underground bases. That works for hand tools anyway, but the problem with vehicles is that the drill radius of a vehicle has to be perfectly calibrated to the wheel base, otherwise the vehicle will end up curving either up or down.
Yep, I've considered designs like this. This means your driller also needs to be a welder with enough steel to build those blocks. You could technically make the vehicle generate its own steel using a survival kit (assuming small grid). Hmmm...... Great, now I've got something new to obsess about today - I need to give this a try!
Though as I consider this, something more automated feels like an even better solution. Like a vehicle that drives itself forward for a certain amount of time, then switches to reverse to a connector to unload, then forward again, then reverse (all doable using timer blocks). One could build a proper tunnel borer and builder using this technique!
Sounds like you're ready for an orbital rendezvous! I can't tell by the picture, does that shuttle have an O2 tank? I have one on my shuttle, but I never bothered with one on my little tug boat since I'm not in it long enough to require one. Since you're on the alien world, I'm guessing an O2 tank isn't optional. Either way, you're welcome to refill your suit and / or your shuttle at my ship if you come up to orbit. My docking port should be compatible with your design.
I know you don't like free gifts, neither do I if it makes the game too easy, but if you're ever interest in trade, just let me know. For example, I'm happy to trade uranium ore for refined iron ingots. I used to do something similar during my early game when I couldn't get uranium. You can also do this via NPC stations and bases if one is nearby.
In reality the planet map is a planar map - not spherical, right? with just roling over at the boundaries. The horizon is some illusion thing, is it?
I dont get into my head still how orbital planets and planetside planets work.
That describes my “Boring Construction Vehicle.” It can drill and lay down floors at the same time. It does need to be paired with a static grid mounted powered projector, though.
I know you don't like free gifts, neither do I if it makes the game too easy, but if you're ever interest in trade, just let me know. For example, I'm happy to trade uranium ore for refined iron ingots. I used to do something similar during my early game when I couldn't get uranium. You can also do this via NPC stations and bases if one is nearby.
In reality the planet map is a planar map - not spherical, right? with just roling over at the boundaries. The horizon is some illusion thing, is it?
I dont get into my head still how orbital planets and planetside planets work.
That describes my “Boring Construction Vehicle.” It can drill and lay down floors at the same time. It does need to be paired with a static grid mounted powered projector, though.
Very clever! The static projector is the best design, as it's simple. Otherwise you need merge blocks and all sorts of other complicated stuff. KISS is the best way to do things, especially on a server.
Now I need to try to design and build one of these myself! I actually have a newbie outpost on CA1 from when I didn't know how CA2 would go, so maybe I'll make a long tunnel there just for fun. CA2 will still be my main server.
It's when I flew to surface on triton. I mused building. A tower. A high one to orbit. Then a ring around Triton. When you build all is rectangular. But that cant be when you build a ring around a sphere.
Wanting to play with this road-laying tunnel driller, I figured this would be a good time to test my new ship in gravity. I love the view out the windows of blue sky (which is also my most anticipated feature of Elite Odyssey):
Unfortunately my chute failed to deploy! THIS is why I test in creative mode. At least the sofa survived!
