Well, let’s not let the Heinrich hold up a good post on the other build I was working on. I’ve made some major progress on the Cosmo Messerschmitt. Actually, let’s just call it the Cosmo Messer for short. It does resemble a comically oversized knife.

A heck of a lot has changed since the previous version, some things I’m ecstatic about, and other things I’m just begrudgingly accepting as limits of my first ‘from scratch’ fighter design. I put two cameras on the tailfin and ditched the modded blast doors for a more conventional look. The side profile actually looks a lot better with vanilla blocks anyhow. The big losses from the older version are the connector and the retractable landing gears. This new version is working with just a piston mounted magnetic plate for the purposes of landing on the ground or docking to a ship or platform.

Note: The missing landing gears and connector

I ditched the aforementioned components for several reasons. I wanted the bottom of the Cosmo Messer to have enough space for both internal and externally mounted ordnance. This is also why the magnetic plate is on a piston. I needed something with variable height–suspension basically–so its ‘landed’ height could be adjusted per loadout. Not only could the hinged landing gears not do this very well, but connector placement severely limited weapon placement, among other things. The landing gears were also modded and a bit glitchy, so eliminating them knocked yet another mod off the Cosmo Messer’s required mods list.

While this means the fighter has to be manually reloaded in a survival setting, the base model is far more customizable than before. I even took a step back with the armaments because of that. The current version only uses vanilla weapons. While it’s modestly armed for its size, I think the workshop version (date pending, probably not by October) will be a better sell. Even so, this build is not likely to reach a pure vanilla state. Even if I let the shape go a little and got rid of the sloped armor, the thrusters are a unique problem, one well beyond my current level.

The current build carries 4 gatling guns

… and one four-tube rocket launcher with its own magazine

Fewer mods makes it more likely to function well out of the box, so that’s a priority after form and functionality. Future variants will have modded weapons, but that’s for my use. If people have other modded weapons they’d like to try on it, the Cosmo Messer has a decent conveyor system, a medium container, and seven medium sized batteries to accommodate them. That’s not even the best part; there’s still room in there for more parts and whatever other gizmos you might want to put under the hood.

So what’s with the paint job? I started painting the Cosmo Messer’s basic accents to see if there were any changes I needed to make to the outer shape right now, before I got too deep into the internals and things couldn’t be moved around anymore. I’m glad I did because this thing looks great. I can’t copy all of the paint schemes from Space Battleship Yamato, but the options are pretty good. I used more light panels than I’d making better coloring angles on the wings and tailfin, but other than that there’s very little compromise with the design of the ship.

Current cockpit view

The cockpit’s also seeing a lot of work and runs about 5 separate scripts by my count: Whip’s Artificial Horizon, Whip’s Turret Based Radar (currently reliant on friendlies for target acquisition), SIMPL Ship display, Delta Steering, and a Cruise Control script. I’d like it if the radar was on a larger, better fitting screen, but artificial horizon really should be prominent in a fighter. That’s critical to safe navigation, especially in atmo.

One last thing I want to bring your attention to are the engines.

I’m going to suffer for not optimizing these images someday …

I’m still using modded thrusters because I like the look, but I set up conveyors to the back of these so if someone wanted to spawn this without the modded thrusters, they could easily put in hydrogen thrusters without any extra work. For the most part. I haven’t set up conveyors for the internal and ventral thrusters because figuring that out would have driven me insane; four of those seven medium batteries I mentioned are situated around the internal strafing and reverse thrusters. Just know that the visible rear thrusters have conveyors set up and ready to go. The ventral thrusters will follow once I figure out what I’m doing. The rest is up to you, fellow engineer.

Last note: I also changed up the look of the nozzles. They’re very Raptor-esque just like the Cosmo Falcons.

That should just about to it for now. Progress is looking good and so is the Cosmo Messer. I wanted to do an update on the Heinrich too but I’m in the process of removing another mod from the ship completely which takes time and consideration. Soon, though.

Soon