Every time I try to poke around with other factions’ ships or vehicles, I get a burst of inspiration for the Kaisers, instead. Rather than gripe about it I’m just going to roll with it. So, until the pendulum starts swinging toward the other factions or the inspiration whiplash stops favoring the Kaisers specifically, I’m just going to focus on them. I’ll be trimming down and updating the projects progress bars accordingly.

While I’m not going to be able to get the kind of text to lcd responses I wanted in time for the initial upload, I did want to do at least a couple of things to differentiate Hipper from her sisters. Since only the Hipper and the Eugen have fully fledged AIs, they were meant to have more interactivity via scripts and the like. Hipper’s got the easy commands script I was planning to use to ape some of those responses, but I’m still learning how to use it in conjunction with sensors and timer blocks to get the results I want.

In short, it’s not ready.

Still, I should have one or two things ready in time. I at least want Hipper to give a text response any time the ship changes modes. Once I refamiliarize myself with easy commands I can probably handle that in a couple of hours.

Another thing I did was recolor an old sprite I made to act as a visual representation of the AI.

The colors aren’t perfectly matched, but I wanted to make sure the idea was even worth doing, first. I’ll get a more precise match and some extra bits later.

I need to make a few more edits and the interior paint scheme could use some more work, but we’re nearly there.

Cosmo Messer F

The Cosmo Messer F is … finished. I’m not the least bit comfortable saying that, but after some Pertam tests, there’s nothing more I can do to iron out or improve the design without time and distance. At this point it’s better to just get it ready for the workshop and take some notes for the G series, which is coming somewhere down the line.

Admiral Hipper

She just needs commitments on the paint scheme both inside and out, and maybe some superfluous blocks removed. That said, I managed to get her down to 64k~ PCU which is extremely reasonable for a ship this size, especially one that includes over a dozen subgrids.

Kaiser Turret Names

The Germans used to name their turrets from front to back alphabetically: Anton, Bruno, Caeser, and Dora. I’ve been doing the same with the Kaiser ships in Space Engineers. Turrets are named the same way, Anton through Dora, but it’s not only front to back, but dorsal (top) to ventral (bottom). So all the dorsal turrets, then all the ventral turrets.

For the Admiral Hipper class this is no issue since they only have four turrets. The dorsal turrets are Anton and Bruno, and the ventral turrets are Caeser and Dora. Simple.

… Magdeburg on the other hand has twelve turrets, three forward dorsal turrets, three aftward dorsal turrets, three ventral forward and aftward. So here’s what the crimson gunslinger has forced me to do.

Straight from my Kaiser notes:

HEAVY TURRET NAME LIST
Names are ordered from bow to stern and then from dorsal hull to ventral hull, or port side to starboard side following.
(Name from the top front to back, then the bottom front to back, or the left side front to back, then the right side front to back.)
Dorsal – Ventral Names
ANTON, BRUNO, CAESER, DORA, EDITH, FABIAN, GEORG, HANS, INGRID, JASMIN, KONRAD.
Port – Starboard names
ALFRED, BERTA, CARL, DORIS, ERICH, FRIEDA, GUSTAV, HEINRICH, IRENE, JAKOB, KARL.
Note: No Kaiser ship has more than 12 heavy turrets in any configuration, so only these names are provided.

Thankfully there will probably only be two ships pushing those numbers.

I’m feeling a lot better now, but still not back to 100%. Even so, I’m getting really close to finishing the Cosmo Messer F. Once that’s done, the Hipper won’t be far behind.

Two wonderful things happened at about the same time. One, I managed to replace the landing gears with some good looking ones, though the smoke puffs that show up during maneuvers are still there and they still annoy the tar out of me. I’d replace the wheels with something else if I could, but for right now I’m just tolerating the smoke.

The second thing is the external hardpoints. Those have been installed which means the Messer F can carry things like drop tanks and extra weapons. Even thruster pods are an option now, which is just fantastic. I’m really looking forward to see what I can pull off with the F series modules.