Nothing noteworthy was finished in time for today’s post, but tomorrow’s a Sunday and that’s always got potential.

A while back I posted some pictures of the Prinz Heinrich (inspired by the one-off cruiser, not the battleship from WoWs) and it was coming along nicely. Since it was based on the D-37 Timberwolf, the interior was already a solid design. I never dared to change it too much until recently. While I was updating the ventral section, something finally snapped and I decided to strip out the ship’s interior entirely and try to see if I could improve it. Now it’s not something I would consider an improvement over the vanilla version of the Timberwolf, but it’s surprisingly roomy by comparison. The only reason I attempted this was because of a passage ways mod that has both open and enclosed block types. It’s perfect for maximizing the interior space of a ship while hiding most conveyors.

Something else snapped while I was redoing the interior of the ship and I wound up adding a larger super structure, stripping all the weapons, redesigning entire parts of the hull, particularly the bow section, and I referenced one of the Halo ships on the Space Engineers workshop to experiment with some subgrids. I rarely have any luck trying to incorporate subgrids, but lately hinges have been surprisingly reliable and stable. I won’t touch piston bases for any reason, not even to make an spacecraft catapult, but the hinges are fine, rotors are good if used sparingly, and piston heads make good decoration. The only rotor in use right now is for a combination search unit (sensor, spotlight, and camera).

The hinges being used have extra armor attached to them. The ship’s a bit heavier than it should be but I’ll make a sweep sometime and cut back on parts where I need to. Greeble can sometimes help with that. Normally the hinged parts are fixed but there are two sets in the back that are designed to fold and rotate to put the armored wings in different configurations. It looks really nice, but it’s also kind of insane for one of my builds. The term ‘unique armored cruiser’ fits Heinrich perfectly now.

I’ll try to find the time to finish up the major changes so I can put up a guided tour video along with some screenshots. There’s also a new Cosmo Messer variant (a scout) that comes with it. The Heinrich can carry two of them, one internally and one near the stern.

That’s all until tomorrow.