All the books I ordered are here now: Dark Force Rising, The Last Command, Dune, and Worlds in Collision. I wish they were in slightly better condition, but I needed a deal. I’ll get newer copies later.
So I did some thinking and I’ve decided to read Dark Force Rising next. I was going to read Dune first but I don’t know how much of a plunge I’m going to need to take to finish it by the end of the month. I’m falling behind on some things (things I can’t control from my end) and since I’ve already read Dark Force Rising before, I’m not going to have my first impression ruined by external factors. It could be even worse in June but I’m hoping it’s not.
In the meantime, I’ve got to figure out some way to salvage a different situation before I get set back two weeks. It’s looking more and more likely by the day.
I wish I didn’t have to write this while I’m so frustrated, but time waits for no one. Oddly enough that’s actually the problem. More on that later, though. This is another Hipper post.
Since I don’t have any major structural changes left to make–fingers crossed–I’m honing in on the Admiral Hipper’s final color scheme. It’s basically a few muted blues with orange accents all over the place. I eliminated the ‘dull white’ linings and the nose gradient for something sharper and a bit closer to the rest of the blues on the lower hull.
I darkened the lower hull to make the whole thing look a bit less ‘animated,’ but it was so unsaturated to begin with that it almost looks like the game’s base gray now. I might wind up changing it again. A dark blue over slightly lighter blue could work, but if the contrast isn’t heavy enough it won’t have the effect I’m going for.
As an aside, I’d love it if she could have more weapons and functionality to go with her look, but 62k PCU and ~13k total blocks (without accounting for the Messers/Riders) is a lot.
So the ship’s very close to finished now. Ignoring a few things I would have to duplicate later on, I could on the first sister ship Blücher. I think it’d be a better idea to try to rebuild the Heinrich first, though. That and build at least one ship from one of the other factions. I need to get the styles nailed down sooner rather than later.
Dancing to celebrate a random boarding bridge test going off without a clang
Hallo Mond!
Well that’s all for now. I should have a few bits of unrelated news up by this time tomorrow.
I didn’t get to do something important today which is why I had time to work on the Admiral Hipper. So I’ve got mixed feelings floating around.
Anyway, the workaround I mentioned in the title is a solution to a fundamental problem my size 8 carousel hangar has. By the way, the merge block idea, while interesting, was ultimately abandoned. That means the riders won’t be able to be blueprinted with the ship itself (at least not all of them) and will need to come in a separate ‘package.’ As for the problem with the hangar, it has no connectors, so fighters can only ‘dock’ inside the ship. They can’t refuel there.
Now that all of Hipper’s heavy weapons have been moved to the front of the ship, I’ve got room for support facilities. This will hold for some of the other ships of the class, too. For Hipper though, she’ll have two connector docks just behind the hangar gate, right in front of the stern. I also added two walkways and an exit tunnel to reach those docks.
This is a picture from just prior to the installation of the aft door and the walkways inside the hangar. Everything still looks pretty much the same, but both sections are more navigable now.
Somehow the entire ship is just barely over 62k PCU. I wish I could lower it a bit more but I’ve already cut way more corners than I should have with the design, everything from completely omitting interior signage to replacing beds and cryo chambers with placeholders. I even removed two airlocks and swapped every vanilla hydrogen thruster on the ship (15 PCU each) for ‘Rex’ RCS hydrazine thrusters (8 PCU each).
Well, at least she looks good. Hipper can fight, too, though I doubt she could put up a strong solo fight against some of the ‘gun laden’ designs I’ve seen using the same weapon packs. (That’s what the 8-10 Riders are for) I’m working with some strict limits to keep the overall fleet reasonable in scale, so it’s fine.
All I’ve done today is study JavaScript and record a few WoWs replays ahead of the next update. I’m a little tired, so there’s not much to mention for today. Aside from the WoWs recordings, all that’s coming to mind is the huge stack of notes I have piling up. I feel compelled to do something with those, but I’m not sure what just yet.
Tomorrow’s probably going to be pretty much the same, but I’ll still have something interesting whipped up by then.
This is my last ‘do whatever’ day for at least a few weeks so I decided to ram through some changes to the Hipper.
Some changes were minor, like moving nearly all of the programmable blocks to the data center or close to the systems they control. Other changes were enormous, like moving turrets Caeser (C/3rd) turret and Dora (D/4th) turret to the forward ventral hull, mirroring Anton and Bruno and concentrating all of Hipper’s main guns forward.
Pics in a day or two.
Overall? I like most of the changes and it’s a fresh look for the ship. My main goal was lowering her PCU cost wherever I could, so I did as much block deletion as shuffling things around. I only managed to shave off a couple thousand PCU, but 62k is better than just shy of 64k, I think.
I’ve also been steadily programming consoles and the like, making sure that eventually the Admiral Hipper will be fully functional and not just pretty to look at.
That’s all for now. Tomorrow is probably going to be me whining about JavaScript or something to that effect. We’ll see.
