The Praedian Records

J.G. Phoenix

Current Projects

Riaz Royals

Yamato 90%
Yorktown 80%
Essex 50%
Cleveland 90%
Blücher 95%
Prinz Eugen 50%
Seydlitz (Redux) 40%
Lützow 80%
Type 34 Destroyer 99%
Type 36 Destroyer (Redux) 50%

Space Engineers Updates

I’ve finished a decent number of projects since 2024, but I haven’t been updating the site with that information.

Time to fix that.

First up is Version 1 of my Space Battleship Yamato. It’s still a work in progress, but I wanted to have something posted for it by my birthday, so I went ahead and pulled the trigger. There’s still a lot of work to do and I’d like to make a second version for Space Engineers 2 when I have the time.

There are also the latest (and probably last vanilla) variants of my Cosmo Messer series.

These were pretty good, but they’re already kind of outdated thanks to some improvements I made to the vanilla version of the Cosmo Messer T. I needed it to be just a bit smaller to comfortably fit on any carrier and that reduced weight goes a long way. I’m probably not going to release the vanilla Cosmo Messer T though. I prefer the modded version and want to start having these fighters be able to stand up to modded ships.

Lastly is my VoidCat series. Same as with the Cosmo Messers, this batch is all vanilla.

I released these all together to save some time and get on to some other projects I wanted to focus on, but for this size, they’re all fairly well armed and easy to fit on carriers.

As for what’s currently in the works, this picture should just about sum things up.

I’m Awake

2024 was easily the worst year of my life and a bit of that misery followed me into 2025. Fortunately, it’s starting to taper off now. What this means for PR is that I’ll be actively working on the site again. Posts will be a regular thing again, but I should point out that my interests have both shifted and broadened. Most of what I used to cover will still be covered.

That’s it for this post. It’s time to get the ball rolling again.

M.A.S.S. Builder: 0.11.0 WIP Zenith Z Preview

While VD does state that they want to emphasize certain aspects of the Z variant of the Zenith armor, that almost doesn’t explain the off feeling I get with this one.

Admittedly I’m not very good at explaining what bothers me about designs that have scaling issues, but hopefully it’s enough to just say the proportions just feel odd with the Z set compared to the X and Y. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, though. One issue I have with M.A.S.S. Builder is that the proportions of all builds are tied to a customizable (but still limited) inner frame. That limits what kinds of builds and replicas you can make. Thankfully there’s some customizability to begin with or builders could only compensate by scaling their builds up, which isn’t practical in a lot of cases.

For the Zenith Z set, that means people looking for more ‘leggy’ proportions can use pieces from this set to help get that look instead of relying solely on stretching out the legs and keeping the torso sections short.

On a side note, I like the feet. They’re very reminiscent of Armored Core style light builds, and while that’s an insanely impractical way to handle feet in real life, it looks amazing in video games and other media.

M.A.S.S. Builder: 0.11.0 Balance Changes and Zenith X

With weeks of new things being shown, we’d like to dial back to some balance changes we’re planning to make to improve the game in 0.11.0 First, let us remind you that we’ll be unlocking tier 7 units and sub-units in the development tree and their unlocking materials will be dropped from later waves in challenges and latest missions. We expect them to provide tons of power to the player and we’ll keep watch to modify them if any of them are game breaking.

Now, for a more specific balance change, we aim to increase the power of tanky tech sub-units in the coming update. We’d improve them in 0.10.0 and while they are well received, their power is too low to be competing for a sub-unit slot. In 0.11.0, we’re increasing their power by a significant amount.

Units that improve shield regeneration cooldown are mostly buffed by around 50%. Think nodes that currently lower time before shields start regenerating by 25%, all of them will be changed to a 40% reduction, allowing players to easily slot in one of two for constant shields regeneration. This should make them more dependable and more competitive for a slot in any build that rely on the regenerating shields.

On the same note, we’ll also be improving sub-units that straight up improve shields regeneration and regenerate shields through other means. Things like Perpetual Generator will proc more frequently. Arms S. Battery will recover more shields. Things like that.

And lastly for this goal, we’re also improving durability tech sub-units that are overshadowed by their peers, such as Metals Replacement and recovery nodes such as both the Nanorobotics variant.

What do you think about these tentative changes? We’d like to discuss about it so if you have any opinions on what we’ve listed, we’re more than glad to hear from you through our discord, linked below. See you next time!

Vermillion Digital

So, “Raise shields!” basically. That’s probably a good idea. Tank builds have always been in a weird spot in this game, since the best defense is a good offense. You don’t really want to take a lot of damage in the first place, so it’s better to just blast everything ASAP and play more evasively against bosses.

VD’s proposed changes should make tanking more relevant on higher difficulties, but for lower ones, it’s not hard to evade most incoming damage by just running around–not even boosting, just running around. It’s that easy. Fighting bosses is where changes like these are really going to shine since they trap you in relatively small areas and throw out enormous, fast hitting AoE attacks. Playing evasive is easy enough with shooter builds, but for melee, you’ll definitely want to be able to take more than a couple of bad hits.

So that’s my 2 cents on that for now.

Next up, the Zenith Armor Set. Yeah, this one’s going to be a 2 in 1.

Look at this armor set.

Look at it.

This one’s coming along wonderfully. I’m particularly interested in the head and shoulder parts.

The Zenith X set feels like something between SRW’s more slender robots and Zone of the Ender’s orbital frames. I don’t know what impression I’ll get when I see this colored, but either way the Zenith X is going to be a great new addition.

Begin (2024)

2023 ended weirdly abruptly for me, but I got the shot in the arm I needed in order to hit the ground running in 2024. This year’s going to be absolutely crazy, but for me personally, I feel my worst years are finally behind me. I’m ready to stop drowning in a sea of projects and aspirations and just learn to live and breath those things. After all, my kind of work doesn’t have to be boring and my personal deadlines don’t have to be stressful. All of that can just be … me.

For now the focus is going to be LGT and the Yamato project, but there are plenty of other things I’m working on between those sessions. Any big or noteworthy updates will be posted here like always.

Quick Update

This is a general update and not project specific. To start, I’ve been pretty sick the last couple of weeks. That nuked almost every end-of-the-year plan and goal I had for 2023, including the Yamato project. Even as I write this, I’m only just ‘recovering.’ There’s no way I’m going to have anything ready in time for my birthday or even early January. With just the Yamato I’ve already lost more than 100 hours of potential work time and that could have at least given me a comfortable January release window.

With that said, I’m going to just keep working and see where I wind up by early February. Initially I was going to post a Phase 1 version of the Yamato just to give the people who are excited about it something to play around with, but after some thought, that’s way too risky in terms of me actually finishing the project.

Yamato

The 5.0 carousel design is finished and it’s just barely stable enough to be used on the Yamato. Unfortunately it’s not compatible with the Cosmo Falcon I made due to some incredibly tight spacing between the platforms. That means I’ll need smaller, fully modded versions of the planes in order to pair them with the Yamato. I’ll post pictures of that in the next dedicated Yamato update post.

There’s also the ventral hatches. They’ve both been installed, but they still have to be programmed to open and close. With those in place, Yamato’s only missing about eight of the planned subgrids I initially planned for. They might not all get added, and even the ones I install might get removed from the final version, so it’s going to be very touch and go to keep the ship stable.

Lydia’s Golden Treasury

Just like with the Yamato project, I couldn’t get much done on this front. I’ve got the last three chapters of the story outlined, but need to find a way to get them written.

AI Articles

I haven’t been able to work on these like I wanted either, but I’m almost thankful for that since my views on the topic are changing (still in favor). I’ll try to squeeze in posts for this when I can, but the Yamato and LGT are my top priorities right now.

M.A.S.S. Builder: WIP 0.11.0 PILE BUNKER

Words … I can’t even.

Just embrace the visuals for a minute.

A lot of people–myself included–are wondering if VD picked this idea up from a certain recently released mech shooter. Even if that’s not the case, this in your face weapon is a welcome addition. I’m absolutely going to be using this one when 0.11.0 is finished.

Recent Pinned Posts

I’m Awake

2024 was easily the worst year of my life and a bit of that misery followed me into 2025. Fortunately, it's starting to taper off now. What this means for PR is that I'll be actively working on the site again. Posts will be a regular thing again, but I should point...

read more

Begin (2024)

2023 ended weirdly abruptly for me, but I got the shot in the arm I needed in order to hit the ground running in 2024. This year's going to be absolutely crazy, but for me personally, I feel my worst years are finally behind me. I'm ready to stop drowning in a sea of...

read more

Quick Update

This is a general update and not project specific. To start, I've been pretty sick the last couple of weeks. That nuked almost every end-of-the-year plan and goal I had for 2023, including the Yamato project. Even as I write this, I'm only just 'recovering.' There's...

read more