Well, I spent way more time on the Hipper’s internals today than I meant to, but overall it was time well spent. With a few areas I might need to rework slightly, the interior is just about finished, design-wise. Now is the interesting part. I’m going to repaint the entire ship starting from the outside and working my way through the interior.

The ship only has about five decks because each one is no shorter than three blocks tall. The idea there was to make sure I could color any floor whatever color I wanted and the ceiling of the next deck down wouldn’t be affected. There are some areas where this isn’t possible for various reasons, but in general the interiors are going to have a varied and unique look to them when I’m finished. Much (more) inspiration is going to be taken from SBY on this.

One thing that’s been giving me trouble while trying to finalize the Admiral Hipper‘s externals is the weapon loadout. I don’t like having one more than one weapon mod, but Northwind has the right type of main battery gun I need for most of the Hipper class. If the SBY mod by ribera manages to fix whatever’s wrong with the small grid of the shock cannons, I might be able to make working custom turrets, but for now it’s a waiting game.

I’m not just waiting for him to fix the small grid shock cannons–that’s probably a tricky combination of factors. What I’m waiting for is the phase 1, or Garmillas update. Adding those weapons will give me a much better selection of possible primary and secondary weapons for the Kaisers and KI. I still want the Kaiser energy projectiles to all or mostly be red, so there are a few weapons I’ve got my eyes on.

I’m also lowering the number of CIWS on the Hipper since, big or small, no weapon in the SBY mod costs less than 300 PCU. Since the torpedo/missile count is fixed at this point, the only way to dial down Hipper’s PCU cost and try to keep it below 70k is to trim down the AA as much as I can get away with. Fortunately this limitation is making things interesting on the outside. You can tell there’s room for upgrades, as if the Kaiser’s own economy was catching up with them during the building phase and–like me–they had to cut back on a few ideas to make the whole thing work.

It’s far more annoying on the inside. With the interior rapidly filling out, it’s getting harder and harder to stay under the 70k PCU cap I’ve set for Kaiser cruisers. I still have several major areas to do, including the 2nd bridge, and I’m already in the 65-70k PCU range. A few too many interactables and doors here could make all the difference, and I need a good deal more of them.

I don’t expect the phase 1 update to help me fix the PCU budget, but the closer I can get the ship to how I want it as a whole, the easier it’ll be to whittle her down to her most necessary parts and then polish things up.

I only meant to spend a couple of hours reprogramming the carousel, but somehow the hangar AND the maintenance bay are nearly finished.

I can’t say the day hasn’t been productive, but it was just as frustrating. Easy Automation gives me trouble sometimes, but trying to make a MArmOS crane (rather a twin linked pair of them) was an absolute nightmare for most of it. They still don’t quite work like I imagined, but they’re functional and don’t take up too much space in the maintenance bay, so that’s a win.

A few things to note are that the carousel has had all of its functions reversed and slightly refined. The centrifuge now rotates clockwise (according to the ship’s facing), and the docking plates rotate counter-clockwise. Docks 2 and 4 have had their positions swapped accordingly.

I also added magnetic plates and manual release buttons to the face of each docking plate. This helps me get around the problem of the Cosmo Messer E having its magnetic plate in a different spot. Trying to accommodate both E and F+ models would require two different docking guides overlapping each other. I figured it was just better to add some locks on the plates themselves and see if I can’t automate them later. Either way, the manual releases are there if needed, and both versions of the Messer can dock using their own magnetic plates. There’s just no precision guide for the ventral camera right now.

I can already tell I’m going to be coming up on the PCU limit I set for this ship right around the time I start trying to iron out the crew quarters, but I’ll figure something out. For now I’m just glad that the ship’s most important areas are coming together so well.