I’m so close now it physically hurts. That also might be the hot sauce talking.
Anyway I want to have things finished by the 10th but that’s cutting it really close if I wind up running into anymore problems. I’m laser focused on the Hipper and the Messer right now, trying my best to finish up everything and then get the blueprints ready, but it’s still a coin toss as to whether I can make it. If I’m not finished by the 10th I’ll have to wait until after the 17th, so here’s hoping.
My day only started about two and a half hours ago so there isn’t any news yet. About all I can say for now is that I couldn’t add enough additional thrusters to in that big cavity in Hipper’s prow to make a meaningful difference, so instead I added more artificial masses and two more gravity ‘drivers’ for the gravity drive system. It’s enough for me to be able to live with Hipper’s sluggish maneuvers.
That’s all her propulsion systems tidied up, which just leaves the seats, consoles, etc. Once I’m finished programming and testing those I think we’re finally done.
The Cosmo Messer F is basically finished so that just needs the video footage, which I’m also working on. I also need to find out how to post that sidebar with the blueprint’s required mods. I never did figure out how to do that …
I had to stop tweaking the Hipper early today, but there was some progress made here and there. The briefing room got slightly remodeled, though the problem that motivated the remodeling wasn’t actually solved. Let’s just say subgrids are involved and it makes a part of the floor look more hazardous than it really is.
As for the main issues I still have to fix, it’s mostly down to the consoles and programmable blocks, but there’s one major issue I want to figure out now that I’ve done some serious maneuver testing. The Hipper’s acceleration with the SDS gravity drive system is great, but the ship’s overall handling is a bit lower than I need it to be (especially considering the ship’s being tested with only two of the potential thirteen it can carry docked to it).
One possible solution: There’s an area near the bow of the ship that’s completely empty. Originally I had a large clang drive installed there to allow the Hipper to fly on planets, but clang drives are clangy and there were a few other minor issues that outweighed the benefits, so I removed that a few milestones back. That empty space is probably my last bit of wiggle room to work in some kind of large thruster bank to give the ship better strafing. Failing that, I might have to upgrade the gravity drive system with side mounted gravity generators instead.
I’ve never been quite satisfied with the Hipper’s engineering section, but I went a little overboard in trying to make the ship workshop ready. For one thing I’ve basically remodeled the entire section, so much so that the Hipper’s sister ships are likely to have unique engineering sections themselves.
I wanted to find a way to fit two geshtam engines into the engineering space. The only way I could do that and still have the area be ‘comfortably navigable’ was to arrange them vertically. Thankfully this remodeling only took a couple of hours. The geshtam engines practically poke out of the bottom of the ship now, but a thin layer of heavy armor keeps everything looking nice and smooth on the exterior. Granted, this is a weakpoint of the ship now, but not the easiest to exploit.
Even with the ridiculously tall look of the engineering section, the Hipper’s core looks quite similar to the Magdeburg’s now, so that’s nice. The remaining issues with it are finding a new spot for the gravity generator and reinstalling some oxygen tanks.
The only other issues keeping Hipper off the workshop are that cleanup I mentioned, touching up the gravity engine system, and making sure all the seats, consoles, and programmable blocks are setup. That and the Cosmo Messer F, which I feel needs to go up first.
We’re just in the final clean up phase now, like I mentioned before. The Admiral Hipper’s interior needs some polish, the programming needs some double and triple checking (haven’t published anything this huge before), and the preview video for the Messer F needs making. Once that’s done, the workshop write up and upload for both happens on that day.
Cosmo Stuka
This one’s farther off and it’s going to need a lot of testing to get right. The Cosmo Messer is half aesthetic and half performance; the Stuka is almost entirely aesthetics with me cramming in internal thrusters, hydrogen tanks, and gyros wherever I can fit them. All these subgrids make the Stuka really janky as a carrier strike craft, even in small numbers, but I still want to make one and then improve the design over time.
There were several different cockpit tests performed …
I was about to settle on some very weird WCO cockpit choices, but in the end I felt a forward facing fighter cockpit and a backward facing one would work best, at least for the first Stuka. I was working with a single seater version for a while, and I even came up with an explanation for the Kaisers doing that, but eventually I realized I had more than enough room for a second seat; I just needed a design I could live with.
I also took out that old intake from an earlier version of the Stuka and replaced it with the reloadable rocket launcher. That makes more sense to me for a Cosmo style ship, and it means Stukas will always hit harder than Messers on subsequent attack runs. Regular rocket launchers now adorn the sides of the cockpit to give the Stuka that extra alpha strike capability. Wing based armaments haven’t been figured out yet, but this ship is more than capable of handling custom built ordnance, so that’s definitely an option for this or a later iteration.
I’m hoping that by making the landing gears part of the main grid (and not subgrids) will make the Stuka more stable in hangars and possibly even compatible with the carousel racks I made, but that still needs more testing, too. The Stuka is about the same size as the Messer, so if at all possible, I want them both to fit on the same racks, even if it’s not Hipper class racks specifically.
Konigsberg
This ship is meant to be a predecessor class to the ‘K’ type cruiser the Kaiser faction tried to mass produce just before a major war breaks out. There are only three Konigsberg class ships and about twenty of the K cruiser variants, but finishing the Konigsberg will be major progress toward all of them. This is the start of the ‘grunt cruiser’ for the Kaisers so while it’s an older and less pretty design, it’s just as important in the long run as the Hippers.
Remnants
I don’t know why it’s so much easier to iron out lore details for Remnants than anything else, but that’s something I need to take advantage of. In addition to a main story I’ll be starting this month, I’m also going to be using that inspiration to do some big write ups for posterity, as well as a short story (very short) here and there where I can manage.
The main story will center around a new character I’ve been ironing out for almost a year now. He’s known by a lot of names by the time the story starts due to his ties to several major countries. Examples include: Urban Randall, the Sky Duke, Urban von Scharnhorst, and Urbano Tuerto.
Although he’s not a mercenary, he’s not really allied with any of the countries that gave out some of those names, either. All I can say for now is that the treasure trove of names and titles he has will make more sense pretty early in his story. I’ll also introduce some of the other characters as I get things rolling. I’m particularly looking forward to introducing some of Urban’s close allies. They’ve all got deep ties to the world’s lore.
Lydia’s Golden Treasury
Sometimes I wonder if I’m being held back by some mystical force long enough for me to figure out some crucial piece this chapter’s missing, but I just can’t think of anything. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I want to axe the key conflict for this chapter and keep things closer to home and more Enya centric. If that turns out to be what needs doing then so be it. I really want to finish this draft so I know what specifically needs editing in future chapters. Once the new chapter 2 is finished I can also start back on the final two chapters of the story. I’ve been wanting to do those but the Lyre of Binding’s too critical to put off.
This month, I’m really hoping I can iron it out, even if it just comes down to being a drawn out explanation of what put Enya in the mindset she’s in when the Atoning Mirror chapter starts.
Closing
October’s off to an iffy start, but that’s no reason to get discouraged. Now the economy finally imploding, THAT would be reason to doubt I can get any of this done. We’ll see how things go.
