So far 2022 has been a pretty rough couple of months. Even my monthly goals approach is getting blasted with constant setbacks. Since I don’t know what random nonsense is lying in wait for me in March, I’m trying to think of some changes I can make in the meantime to try and stay on track.
The biggest problem right now is that Lydia’s Golden Treasury needs a new chapter I didn’t see coming, between chapters 1 and 3. I’m much faster and far less prone to mistakes writing things chronologically, but that’s no longer an option. Having been a month behind already when some issues with the site came up means my goal of having LGT finished by the start of April just isn’t happening.
While LGT may need some restructuring, I still don’t want to put off everything else past April. That’s how you get backed up for months as other things inevitably come up.
I’m going to try out some new daily approaches for my writing projects during March, then in April, I’ll use the best ones to tackle LGT and anything else that needs doing little by little.
February isn’t over yet, so I’m still going to do what I can. I’m on track to finish reading The Virtues of War and FV2 is certainly doable. An LGT editing session requires a bit more focus than I have right now, but I’ll try to at least get started on those again before the end of this month.
I don’t quite get the drone scripts the XB-2 uses yet, but based on my own testing I’ve got serious doubts that I’ll be able to convert the E model of the Cosmo Messer into one. My best bet with this sort of thing is having a connector on the back in the same style as the XB-2. Even that won’t fix all the problems, though.
It’s the length, among other things. The Cosmo Messer has to land in a particular orientation to have them in good numbers on a ship, which is more code and more problems. Even with a connector on the back they would have to orient themselves to be right side up to be stored internally, something the XB-2s don’t have to do.
I’ll keep poking around to see if there’s a way to do it long term, but the E models have come too far for any major overhauls at this point.
At least they look majestic parked on the approximately 60% complete Admiral Hipper.
I didn’t want to be posting this late, but it’s always a possibility with Clan Battles.
Anyway …
Cosmo Messer Progress
I’ve decided on the designation BfC 109E. The only difference between that designation and the original plane is the C, which just stands for Cosmo. The E is the first production model of the Messerschmitt that I’m aware of so it’s the model number I’m going with for mine.
Here’s what they look like currently.
These two are parked on the Admiral Hipper’s aft arms. They can’t be serviced from these spots but it lets them hitch a ride over extremely long distances without obstructing the weapons. It also looks cool, so there’s that, too.
There are some visual mods working in the world I’m using but the Cosmo Messer E models are still modless. Not scriptless, but scripts always get a pass if they’re set up properly.
I won’t be able to do it this month since I’ve got a bit more testing to do and not a lot of time to do it, but sometime in March they’ll be ready for prime time on the Workshop.
Also I want to make at least one drone variant of the Cosmo Messer based on pro’s XB-2 combat drone. I’ve got some of them working ‘okay’ with the Admiral Hipper, so it’s looking promising. One step at a time and eventually we’ll get there.
Clan Battles
Tonight was W-P-A and W-P-O’s first official outing in Clan Battles. All in all it wasn’t too bad. We didn’t go positive on wins, at least not in the W-P-O div, but I think we were only down two losses. I didn’t check in with the W-P-A div but they were apparently doing alright.
I’m not sure how things are going to go throughout the season; my initial impression isn’t helping me make up my mind on that one way or the other, so here’s hoping.
One More Thing
I just wanted to share these because they’re each uniquely amusing.
P.R. is back up and running again. Things were down a lot longer than I planned, but now’s as good a time as any to dive back in. With that there are some things to cover.
February Goals
I spent way too much time overhauling layouts, moving things around, and just generally trying to get the site up to a good working standard. While February won’t be a complete bust goal-wise, I’m still well behind where I wanted to be on most fronts.
Lydia’s Golden Treasury
There hasn’t been any new writing done for LGT so far; I’m disappointed in myself for that one, but it’s not all bad news (or unusual). Part of the reason there hasn’t been any new writing is because I pulled the trigger on something important in the story’s chronology.
In short, I was missing a chapter.
LGT was always planned as a seven chapter story, and that’s not changing, but there are two problems I need to address to tie things together more neatly and put the Emancipating Blade further up the timeline like I wanted. First, there’s a missing chapter between Chapter 1 (The Armor of the Unburdened) and Chapter 3 (now The Atoning Mirror). That chapter needs to be written soon, preferably before Chapter 7 (Eisenwolf).
So eight chapters? No, The Golden Ticket and The Class Array were the second problem I needed to address, and now I have. The Golden Ticket and The Class Array need to function as an A and B plot together in the same chapter. That’s what I didn’t realize sooner. The Golden Ticket’s opening scenes are the inciting incident for The Class Array, but Enya’s involvement in the original outline is too small. Since the Class Array doesn’t even feature the usual artifact, it’s better to roll them in together and bridge the gap between Enya’s introduction in Chapter 1 and the Item Exhibit in Chapter 3.
So that’s the plan.
Incidentally, if I felt like cheating a little, I could count the 1st draft of Chapter 5 as finished since The Chronicles of Proxima got bumped up a spot. I don’t think I will, but it’s a fun thought.
Fleeing Victory
I’m closing in on the series of events I want to write about for Chapter Two. I wish it hadn’t taken two thirds of the whole month, but I’ve had a lot on my plate. Anyway, since this is one of the goals I still have time for before March, I plan to at least get this done. It may or may not be in multiple parts; I’m not sure of the overall length of this chapter or the chapters going forward.
The Virtues of War
This goal is coming along fine even though I started about eight days into February. I’m about 3/5 of the way through the book, so I should finish on time. Steven Pressfield’s style of writing is interesting, though definitely odd and just a smidge anachronistic in places. The quirks are charming enough and his take on Alexander the Great is pretty compelling.
I’ve heard Gates of Fire is his best work, and while I do plan on reading that one this year, it’s not going to be March’s read. I don’t want to read the same author back to back unless it’s a series.
Space Engineers
The Prinz Heinrich is going to need another month at least before she’s ready for the workshop, but the Cosmo Messer is nearly finished. I’m basically at a point where I’m deciding which improvements need to be made now and which ones should be saved for future models. A thorough conveyor and printing test in a survival game and the ‘BfC 109E’ model should be ready for prime time.
I’m still sad I can’t get wheeled landing gears on this thing without mods, but it is what it is.
I should also point out that a new drone hit the Steam Workshop recently, the XB-2 Combat Drone. I’ve been testing this with the Admiral Hipper. While my awful attempt at integrating it is indeed awful, I’m hoping to get to a point where I understand the program enough to make drone variants of the Cosmo Messer. That would just be divine~
Updates on all of this as they come.
World of Warships
There were some major developments earlier this month that I should probably mention here.
I was part of a clan called Special_Circumstances (S_C) until just recently. Our leadership had been in talks with Wolf Pack Alpha about a possible merger of sorts. The whole thing was horrifically mishandled on S_C’s end, and while the Wolf Pack is full of friendly and welcoming commanders, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t tempted to walk regardless.
I wasn’t actually with S_C long enough to be miffed over becoming a sub-clan, but I have been around long enough to know ‘careful maneuvering’ when I see it. The opinions of anyone who might have possibly objected to this never mattered to begin with. Being asked for input on ‘A’ with no knowledge of ‘B’ and then asked about ‘C’ with no knowledge of ‘D’ is worse than just being blindsided.
Joining up with Wolf Pack Alpha isn’t a bad idea in and of itself, but we were deliberately mislead just to keep potential objectors quiet long enough to get it done. I’m not even one of the objectors, I just hate that kind of chicanery on principle. The overall situation doesn’t leave me excited for Clan Battles, and that’s after our best season, too.
I’ve gotten used to seeing W-P-O next to my name ingame now, but I’ve definitely got mixed feelings about it. Strange as it sounds I almost want to join W-P-A directly despite being an aspiring competitive player (which is what W-P-O was ostensibly for), just to get a comfortable distance from ground zero.
I’d like to think there’s a way to throw something positive into the mix, maybe a compromise of sorts, but I haven’t really had time to think about this in detail or talk with anyone from the Wolf Pack about it. Maybe that will change in the coming weeks.
For now I’m just going to give them my best this coming season and see if I’m a good fit for the group as a whole. They’ve been nothing but good to us so far, so I want to at least give them and myself a chance to make this more than just a clumsy merger.
The Site
The updates and redesign were rough and the latter isn’t quite finished yet, but even with the setbacks I think it’s worth it. I’m definitely going to be repeating that one to myself throughout March while I struggle to get editing sessions going and 1st drafts written up again.
With this update I was looking for a more long term, uniform look that’s easy for longer stretches of reading. Dark theming isn’t as straight forward as it looks. I learned some very useful things putting it all together, so future changes won’t be nearly as time guzzling.
There are a few more things I’d like to try and some visual bugs I need to work out in some areas, but this is the overall look I’m going for, or at least what I settled on when trying to bring down the site’s loading times. There might be a few more plugins to look at. We’ll see.
Closing
That’s all for now. Like always, I plan to post daily (at least on days when the site isn’t on extended maintenance). Either today or tomorrow I’ll try to get some more info about the Cosmo Messer up. FV2 should also be coming soon, either in parts or one big piece.
My sleep schedule was already in tatters, but I had to test the new weapons and features out as soon as the Broadside update came out.
The Biggest Update
Broadside is definitely one of if not the biggest updates Space Engineers has ever had, but something tells me this isn’t always going to be the case. I caught the last hour or so of the update stream while trying things out for myself and there was plenty of good news regarding the future of the game, particularly in 2022.
My Favorites
My favorite new part hands down is the Searchlight. Over the last few weeks I had been turning over designs for a rotor search unit using sensors to track movement. It’s the classic solution but involves subgrids, something even large builds are better off having as few of as possible. Basically this searchlight brings that functionality into a ready made unit you can slap down anywhere and it’s completely stable. It also has a built in camera, so it can be used as a mono-eye in robots and the like. There are plenty of valuable and standout additions to the game now, both free and premium, but the search light just barely wins out over my second favorite.
The Custom Turret Controller only loses out to the searchlight for me because it’s been getting much easier to set up scripts that accomplish basically the same thing. Bringing that kind of functionality makes this one of the best new additions by a fair margin, and it doesn’t stop there. The turret controller is downright gorgeous to look at and will fit seamlessly into a ton of different designs. Along with the searchlight, I’ll be using this new block on all of my ships. The Devs really outdid themselves with these.
One other new addition I want to mention that I like in particular is the Helm station. Similar to some mods that have come out in the past, it’s a standing control station for ships. Useful in a lot of different situations and another standout addition.
My Current Builds
One major reason I had to test the update as soon as it came out was to figure out how much of the new content I would have to work into both the Cosmo Messer and the Prinz Heinrich. The answer is … about half of it. The new content is just that good. While the Cosmo Messer should only take a few days to touch up, the Heinrich is going to take significantly longer to retrofit. It’s worth it though, and maybe I’ll find some time to put up some more content for that.
Honorable Mentions
Light Panels
The new light panels are going to be showing up everywhere, I’m sure of it. I would have used them frequently in my older battleship builds, back in the days when things were way too big and sluggish. We’ll see where they fit in nowadays.
Sliding Doors
These almost made it into the favorites section. They’re very well designed and I love the almost vault-like reduction in speed. They look really heavy (so I hope they’re made of heavy armor). I’ve already been incorporating them where I can into the Admiral Hipper and it’s looking good.
Hangar Doors
These were needful and timely. Part of the Prinz Heinrich updates I’m considering involve these hangar doors. These things can be mixed and matched pretty seamlessly, so they’re a good choice for both cleaning up and prettying up hangar doors. Alas due to its design, the Heinrich won’t be using the windowed version. I’ll have to try that on another vessel.
The Guns
This blog doesn’t cover guns much, which is because of the modded weapons I tend to use, but all of these are great, even the reskins. I particularly like the aesthetics of these. They outshine plenty of the modded weapons I’ve seen, even some I currently use. I also saw a rotor turret in the livestream that I’m pretty desperate to get my hands on now. It would fit perfectly on so many builds, it’s insane. All in all, a fantastic update.
Bridge Windows
I’m going to try to incorporate these into either my Cosmo Union (Space America) or New Imperial (Space Japan) factions to see how they look with my own designs. They look promising, but I didn’t get the chance to even look at these today. They were thoroughly demonstrated on the livestream, so I’ve got a pretty good idea of what I can do with them.
Closing
That’s all for my thoughts on the update. Aside from our poor XBOX users, the update was really smooth. Things worked out for them too, so nothing to wait for now but bug reports and awesome new builds on the workshop. I was worried that my saved world would be broken but everything, mods included, loaded in just fine. The new blocks were present, the performance was ever so slightly better than yesterday, and I got to experiment before finally getting some sleep.
