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.
Welcome back to another weekly WIP post, this time featuring the more completed version of one of the new missions coming with the 0.9.0 update with an urban, in-shelter setting. We’d like to give you a glimpse of a shelter’s perimeter and what we as PMC are trying to protect.
WHOA!!!
This is one of the more detailed mission/map previews we’ve gotten. It’s also nice to finally be able to run (or more likely from the preview itself) fly around this a cityscape.
On closer inspection of that gif, I think the playable area is actually going to be the wall itself, the exterior wilderness, and that sliver of open area between the wall and the city. Even so, it’s a nicer backdrop than many of the older maps.
I hope there’s at least one hunt on this stage so we can have some repeatables that aren’t story specific, but we’ll see.
Well things are getting more focused on some fronts, at least. Still I’m behind on a lot of things and October’s not likely to be any more merciful to me. That said, I still made progress on a few things, so I don’t feel too bad about it.
On that note, the Cosmo Stuka has been revived. I was building a new frame from scratch last night on a whim and then decided to load in the half broken version with all the subgrids and see just how much work it would take to save that build. Turns out, not a lot. Back when I built that version of the Stuka, I didn’t know Black Armor’s technique for using multiple hinges to stabilize and strengthen subgrids. Now each subgrid part is supported by two hinges. The build’s much more stable now and just needs a better internal layout for actual performance. More on that later.
Going into October I’ve got two writing goals: First is same as this month but it’s do or die time. The Lyre of Binding Chapter in Lydia’s Golden Treasury needs a draft finished. Second, I’m starting the first Remnants story.
For October I’m just going to keep reading Legacy of the Force #1 and Dune and we’ll see if any progress happens.
Lastly are programming related goals. It’s mostly studying but I can at least ‘interpret’ both of my study targets (JavaScript and C#). Both are important for different reasons so I’ll be setting a lot of time aside for those, too.
That’s all for now. I’ll be firing off a more in depth update on the 2nd.
