I’m trying to make things easier on myself with the main theme by changing up how the borders are organized. Instead of wrapping almost everything in its own box, I’m going to try wrapping columns in the same border. It should make things more seamless and also keep me from having to deal with the rampant margin/padding issues that come with the other method.
So that’s how today’s going to go.
I do have some more news coming up but my focus for today is site cleanup and a bit of prep work.
I planned to do a Code Fairy follow up today, but after some thought, I’m thinking it’s better to wait until the 18th.
Soon Eventually
If Sony lifts the scene blockers on Volume 2 like I’m hoping they will, I can actually provide some new screenshots. (They don’t always do that, sadly) I’m not even above recording some gameplay so you can see how terrible I am at playing Raid Type Zakus. I did complete Volume 3 today and it’s all good news as far as game impressions go.
This also means that on December 2nd or sometime around then I’ll be doing the same thing with Volume 3.
As much as I want to get into it now, I think it’s better to do a follow up specifically for Code Fairy on the 18th and the 2nd respectively.
Here’s looking forward to the 18th and beyond.
Fleeing Victory #8
Something coming way sooner is Fleeing Victory #8. That one should be ready this Sunday. The conflict between Cordaea and Munica will take yet another major turn with this issue.
I’m thinking 4 issues per [REDACTED] should be a good fit until we come near full circle to the titular part of this pantser series.
Space Engineers
Gut
This took way longer than it should have, but I did some stress testing on the Cosmo Stuka as well as gave her a paint job. Most of the painting was easy, but I ran into some major trouble along the way.
The fuselage was a piece of cake, but once I had to start dealing with the subgrids, two problems slowed me down or outright threatened the whole ship. Firstly, I couldn’t use symmetry mode on the subgrids. They’re separate entities in the game, so each wing section had to be done separately, as well as the landing gears.
That’s 8 subgrids painted individually.
The tail fins didn’t give me much trouble, but the wings, oh boy the wings! So I took a chance by detaching the right wingtip from its hinge, moving the ship away slightly so I could make some edits while also painting that section of the wing. Once I was finished, I carefully inched the ship close enough to the wing to reattach it. This went off without a hitch. I was dumbfounded by how easy it was. Once again, though, symmetry mode doesn’t work on subgrids; I needed to do the exact same thing for the opposite wing.
No problem, I thought. It worked flawlessly the first time.
Holy crap was I in for it this time.
Things were fine on the other wing right up until I tried to reattach it. Somehow, for some inane reason, the hinge connected to the landing gear’s hinge … even though it wasn’t in range … even though it wasn’t aligned with it … even though it was already attached to another hinge. The force of stealing another hinge head from a connected and locked hinge, and forcing it about 60 degrees in another direction at the speed of frame data sent my Cosmo Stuka spinning like a top. For good measure, the original detached wing got flung away into deep space.
Naturally, I was confused to ‘audible’ levels, but I knew something could theoretically go haywire, so I already made a copy of the wing just in case. I inspected the Stuka for damage and then tried to figure out what happened with the hinges. I didn’t know the hinge had been stolen the first time since it hadn’t moved back to the other hinge, it was just rotated to match the offending hinge’s position vertically. So I tried this nonsense again and the same thing happened. Oof.
I muttered to myself that in the time it would take to reattach the missing wing I could have built another one from scratch.
I was correct.
That’s also what I wound up doing because I didn’t figure at the time that I could get around the problem by just rebuilding both wings with the hinges farther apart. So this is a pretty weird and interesting design flaw in this subgrid ship. I probably couldn’t have learned about it in any other way so I’m glad it only wound up wasting a little of my time instead of half the day.
Anyway, this is likely going to be the A model of the Cosmo Stuka. I plan on making a few others with different configurations, including the G model, everyone’s favorite tank buster. I already found and tested the perfect weapons for it from Akiad’s defense mod. I just need to find a good gun pod design to build around them and the ammo containers. I’ll also be addressing the hinge issue in one of the subsequent models. Maybe the B model, but we’ll see.
You can find the article here. I watched this video earlier in the day after booting up World of Warships. I normally watch these videos on youtube, but this time I got to listen to Wargaming justify themselves while enduring a pretty laggy in-game interface. I do agree with some of their points. I agree with most of them, actually. The problem is, it’s easy enough to agree with what someone says when they’re just explaining themselves. WG explains their process in a way anyone would agree with taken by itself, but when you have an impression of them formed over months or years of playing the actual game, you’re not going to have such a charitable interpretation of what they’re saying. A lot of people probably just rolled their eyes throughout the video, if they even made it that far.
Even if these videos don’t convince as many people as Wargaming would probably like, it’s good that they’re doing it. The players, myself included, were sick and tired of having random incidents come up and Wargaming putting out one of their scheduled promotional videos instead of addressing it first. It always looked really bad when those videos came out at the wrong time. Videos made in response to what the community is saying and not just promotional materials are just as important as the dev blog and other announcements formats. Any time a game company goes on the record with something, it’s a good thing. The more they say they do and say they will do, the more the players and their shareholders can hold them to that. The more vague and nebulous they are, the harder it is to pin them down on any one issue. In those cases it really does just come down to each side’s interpretation.
On that note, they also released this on the dev blog. They haven’t forgotten about their commitments, thank goodness.
Also, I’ve been thinking about the Black Friday sales coming up. I really, really want Yoshino B, not even a quarter as much as I wanted an Enterprise B, but as a coal ship, it would save me a very long grind to get the ship. I’m still leaning heavily against this Black Friday list of ships even though my personal beef with Wargaming is over, but that ship in particular really bothers me. I’d be having the same problem if the tier 10 ship was another coal ship like Immelmann or Marceau. I haven’t made a decision yet, frankly because that’s pointless before the sale actually goes up, but I’m still leaning no right now. I’m taking my thoughts down here just to be on the record as time goes on. It’s helpful to be able to look back and objectively see how things have changed.
I’m still pretty disappointed with the event though. Saipan B instead of Enterprise B? I can’t quite parse that one yet. Saipan isn’t a bad ship by any means, I just don’t understand. Enterprise B seemed like such an obvious move this year. Oh well.
The scouting variant of the Cosmo Messer I made is more or less finished barring some minor internal tweaks and systems for the second cockpit.
Since I probably won’t be making a Cosmo Zero or anything based on it anytime soon (maybe when I get around to another faction) I wanted to see how the color scheme looked on a Messer. I even threw in whatever those pod parts are the Zeros always carry. They had to go on the top instead of under the wings to save space for the landing gears and any potential heavy weapons, but it actually looks fine. This version of the ship doesn’t take up any more space on a dock or in a hangar than the slimmer base model. As long as everything stays within height and width dimensions without getting in the way of the landing gears, you can do a heck of a lot with this ship.
Internal thrusters remain a must whenever and however possible
This version of the Cosmo Messer is designated A.R. but I forgot what the acronym was for. It’s something reconnaissance related. This is a ‘cosmo’ version of a catapult launched recon plane or ‘spotting craft.’ It’s not meant to fight, but it’s as well armed as the base model and can be equipped the same as all the others if that’s needed. Naturally it’s got an extra camera in the front since the nose camera is actually for runway landings and has an obstructed upward view.
These long cylinders are recon pods with an extra camera, a spotlight, and two sensors on the back ends
Two sensors for two different search profiles; too bad their range is pathetic …
The sensors just didn’t look right mounted in the front, and I needed something to ‘cap’ the back ends of the pods, so this configuration worked. Plus, if a bigger spotlight was going to be going on the AR model, it should be on the front of a recon pod.
The second cockpit isn’t programmed yet, but its monitors are mostly done.
Next up is the Cosmo Stuka.
Not to be mistaken with the Snuka from Star Blazers (though credit for the inspiration where it’s due)
The DMB87 Snuka is based on the Ju-87 Stuka, and the Cosmo Stuka takes design cues from both
The Cosmo Stuka took surprisingly little time to build up to this point, and this monster is even more customizable than the Cosmo Messers. I call it a monster not because it can carry much, much heavier weapons than the Messers, but because this is a subgrid heavy ship. I nearly wound up with 10 subgrids when I decided to try to approximate the shape and angle of the rear stabilizers. That still left me with 8 subgrids in total, including the landing gears, which are two layers deep. I’ve done minimal testing with the Cosmo Stuka, but she can fly and maneuver well without upsetting Lord Clang too much. Every now and then there’s a hinge related noise I don’t like to hear, but no actual damage, drifting, or shaking. Like with any ship, it’s generally better to just not fly like a crazy person.
The Cosmo Stuka has some unique landing gears and enough room to mount numerous and devastating weapons
I hate the way they look, but in the end I decided to add a connector to the bottom of the ship. It can’t dock with the Heinrich with this connector due to the landing gear/pods, but any ship with enough room and a raised connector should fit just fine. Since the Stuka’s a fast bomber, any ship meant to carry it will have the raised connectors it needs for refueling and rearming. Also yes those are basically Jericho trumpets (stuka sirens) on the front of the landing gears. I had to.
Side profile
The cooling system, or in this case, some parts to disguise the internal hydrogen thrusters (faced forward), had to be kept slim and short to not get in the way of any ventral weapon mounts the ship might need. On an unrelated note, I like how the lancer turret (Akiad Defense mod) and the landing gears fit perfectly right at the center of the Stuka. That was my intention, but it wasn’t always looking to turn out that way. I had no idea how long or how short the ship was going to be while I was building it, so I kept the AR Messer nearby for reference. It couldn’t be shorter, but it couldn’t be too much longer, either.
The only visible rear thruster is a large one beneath a tail shroud.
The back end is the least interesting as far as I’m concerned and I’m likely to change it up a few times before I call it finished. It’s not bad for a first attempt, it just needs more work. I would like to keep it to being a single engine ship though. That’s a cue from the Stuka that needs to stay.
I don’t have any particular reason for putting two extra gyroscopes on the outside by the tailfins. They’re not helping or hurting the look so I left them on there. The maneuverability is right where I want it to be, so it’s easier than stuffing two more inside before I know where any extra internal thrusters might need to go. Then again, there’s plenty of room in the nose.
The paint schemes should be interesting
This has been a great challenge to get right, but the subgrids are working out. This thing will probably never be survival ready, but I still love it.
I had so many ideas for today but none of them quite panned out. Sometimes you need that extra day–or in this case, that extra evening–to make something come together.
On the bright side, with a few extra days, there’ll be plenty that’s ready to go. At the very least this week will have a Fleeing Victory #8 and some site updates.
