Zeno~SPARTA~

I am continuing to work on the "Ring" station. I have added 1 small ship landing pad (and will probably add 3 more) I have added an internal refinery complex using Adders 10x refineries and sorters I have added several "barracks" with beds. bathrooms, mess hall, lockers and armories. As one would expect there is an area for more senior staff with individual quarters and dining area. There is an area dedicated to cryo chambers, but I wonder if it is appropriate for a fixed station. Finally there is a medical ward, although this is a work in progress.

There is a new rotor mod with a central passage, this has some interesting potential!! https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=1851669773

Thanks Adder I didnt manage to snag it yesterday. Worked on it a bit more. added a bunch of chargers for your weapon and tested it. As I think about it though it is a relatively limited weapon (the station) since it can only hit the planet. So maybe I should put one on top as well.

There are a bunch of refineries in one of the pods so we can scrap the complex. Look forward to adding the turret. I have been working on the glass sections between the upper and lower pods, using them to add a barracks with beds, bathrooms, armoury, kitchen and large dining area in the outer sections and a large cryo area in the center section. All of the glass sections are connected directly to the center via passageways.

I haven't added a safe zone yet. J and I worked on some interiors (crew quarters) and I didn't notice any slow down. I added the latest elevators by VCZ, its really cool. I was thinking of scrapping the refinery complex and replacing it with the a turret for your gun so we can shoot the planet. Latest update, added docking extensions.

I have more than doubled the number of pods and added a refinery complex to the bottom as well as a control tower pod at the top. There are dedicated docking ports at the bottom of the refinery complex for refined products.

Adder and I have been working on a space station. Using a combination of his modular blocks and an octagonal "pod" we have come up with this so far. Four "arms" will extend from the ring for docking ships.

I'll ask Floyd about this when I see him next. I think the game has got too far ahead of me.

Adder has been working on an energy weapon mod. It is big and in some forms capable of orbital annihilation. Here is one we shoehorned into one of my destroyers (a broadsword replacement). This includes a lot of reactors in as compact a form as we could manage. This is the ship we squeezed it into. Its is a tight fit This is the business end In testing it proved very destructive, I'll let Adder discuss its potential.

Actually Adder and I have had a bit of an arms race, which I always lose. Whatever I come up with Adder anticipates and counters. I would have to build a death star to beat Adders Dreadnought, however a brace of smaller ships, like the Broadsword. do have a chance. Having said that Adder has probably already devised a counter for that too. Still having problems with my guns hitting my own ship!!!

We certainly had some fun blowing ships up!!

Watches where you can see the movement through the face are called skeletonized watches and there are some, with automatic mechanical movements (all be it made in China), priced in the hundreds of dollars. The problem with that sort of price point is how deep the watch is. I recently discovered the reason for the price difference between an excellent watch (say $4,000) and a stupidly expensive watch (say >$50,000). I always thought it was the complications, perpetual automatic watches for instance will show the correct date until the end of this century. That is not cheap to accomplish mechanically. but even two equivalent watches can be that far apart in price. My next cynical thought was trading off of the name. To some extent this is true, Tag Huer's using the Seiko movement sold for more than the Grand Seiko. However apart from prestige its the workmanship. An ultra expensive watch has every part of its movement, scribed, etched bevelled or polished by hand under a microscope. I read that preparing one part of the movement in this way takes as long as it takes to make an entire Omega. That is why there are watches over $100,000. Here is a video that highlights the differences

Not sure whats going on but I just launched the game again with the mod and it works!!!

My latest Battleship the Indefatigable is almost finished, it just needs some more point defence and its control rooms tidied up. My other fighting ship Broadsword has had further enhancements and just needs some tidying up as well Dannyboy was designed as a base ship with some defence capabilities (4 fighters hanging in the side blisters and some turrets), but it was always designed to fly with Broadsword (which could originally merge with it. It has two Eagles in the rear hangar and a 5x5 asteroid driller. The alternative to Dannyboy was my modular ship. The front module is a planetary lander, carrying an atmospheric driller and welder as well as an eagle. The last three modules have jump drives and space welder and 5x5 asteroid driller as well as a defence module Then there are 2 planetary landers and The latter carries some support ships Finally my large asteroid driller. This has been quite successful for me and now it is even more compact.

Adder something weird happened today. Any ship using the old liquid hydrogen mod does not appear when the game is loaded and cannot be brought in from a blue print. I went through the mods I use and it seems to be the liquid hydrogen tanks that cause the problem, I was last able to use the mod last night. Any thoughts?

I have a passing fascination with watches. I am not creative and have no sense of style but the watch and the tie are two thing I made a bit of an effort for. I dont really wear either anymore, although I will wear my solar powered Pulsar when I get it back (currently being repaired due to my clumsiness). When I was working I did treat myself to a pretty decent watch, an Ebel 1911 automatic. When I was an up and coming executive I was always a bit out of place, I competed with people from Eton/Harrow and Oxford/Cambridge or american ivy league schools. By comparison I was educated and lived in the east end of London. For whatever reason I detested the yuppies (as we called them then) and yet I worked with them. Back then the yuppie aspired to a BMW /Porsche and a Rolex so of course I would have nothing to do with either. By the way BMW's were rarer back then. So I bought a Ferrari instead of a Porsche and an Ebel. Ebel's were and still are looked down upon by Rolex owners. Actually even I wouldn't consider an Ebel today. Ebel were considered watches you bought from a jewellery chain. But Ebel had a hand in saving the Swiss watch industry in the eighties. First a bit of history. Originally the dominant time keeping devices were made by the French and the British, with the Brits eventually creating the most accurate. This was because they were essential for accurate navigation. The Swiss reputation was for cheap knock offs. Over time and the move to pocket then wrist watches the Swiss made it their speciality and focused on making more and more accurate mechanical watches with more and more features (complications). Indeed annual competitions were held to find the most accurate movements, these are still held in Switzerland and were always won by a Swiss watchmaker. It is not well known but a lot of watch manufacturers do not make their own movements, indeed there are companies that only make movements. For example Tag Huer use (this may have changed recently) a Seiko movement and Omega used a Valjoux ETA movement. Then Seiko arrived. Until 1873 Japan varied the length of the hour at different times of the year, making life hard far anyone trying to make a timekeeper. But in 1873 the Japanese adopted the same time and calendar as the the rest of us. In 1892 Kintaro Hattori started making clocks and watches under the brand Seikosha using imported movements. In 1924 watches were produced under the Seiko brand. By the 1950s Seiko were making their own movements and by the 1960's had two competing watches (The Grand Seiko and the King Seiko made in seperate factories competing with each other) to fight the Swiss. Just as they were about to take the crown the Swiss won with a Quartz chronograph. Although the timekeeping potential of quartz was discovered (by Bell engineers) in the 1920's, it was this action that almost killed swiss watchmaking as well as Seiko's mechanical watch aspirations. There is still a bit more history before I get to the relevance of Ebel. For ten years an engineer at the Watchmaker Zenith developed a high beat automatic chronograph movement called El Primero, it was comparable to Seikos movement but with a higher beat (which leads to a smoother movement). Unfortunately the quartz revolution arrived and Zenith had financial difficulties and were bought by an american company, who, like everyone else told them to focus on quartz and bin all the mechanical parts and tooling. But the engineer who crafted the movement , Charles Vermot, safely wrapped them and hid them in the attic. When Zenith inevitably failed as a quartz watchmaker they were sold back to the Swiss. In 1981 Ebel were convinced by a Zenith exec to buy all the remaining El Primero movements over the next three years. Ebel did this to test the waters for a return to mechanical/automatic watches. Then in 1982 the same guy heard that Rolex wanted to revive the Daytona and pitched them the El Primero. The Daytona was a manually wound watch and Rolex needed an automatic that would fit in the case. The El Primero was Automatic and thin so Rolex agreed to a ten year contract if Zenith could resume production and they would slow the movement and eliminate the date complication . Thanks to Mr Vermot Zenith had everything it needed and the contract was signed. These events (especially the Rolex Daytona) contributed to the resurgence and now dominance of high end mechanical/automatic movements. But Ebel kept Zenith alive. Now the relevance, my Ebel 1911, looked down upon by Rolex owners, has the El Primero movement that basically saved Swiss watchmaking. Amusingly the Daytona with a worse version of the El Primero movement is worth 10 times more than my Ebel today. Despite that I really prefer the look of my Ebel and still like it today, I only regret that it doesnt have a glass rear to see the movement. With that said I cannot wear it since it needs a service (every 5 years). I have shared this with you because its a way of collecting my thoughts and research on this topic and hope you find it as interesting as I do.

I tried smart targeting for the turrets. I enabled smart targeting from the turret menu. First I tried it for all turrets (6 XB3's and 12 XB1's), result 93-97% cpu usage and 13% sim speed. Then I tried only the 6 XB3's, it was better but not much. Let me know how you get on with it.

Thanks Adder, I will try that today. Actually I am having a bit of trouble with the turrets. 1. When they detect a target they are painfully slow to turn. 2. If I take control (when the turrets turn quickly) I can't fire them with the mouse, I have to take control to aim, but then leave control and select shoot. Even if I activate the weapons from the G menu. I have a station for each turret to make life easier but it still doesn't work.

Great to see your ship Adder it will be truly awesome. I fixed the thruster issue on my pocket battleship the indefatigable, still more work to do, especially finding the script that stops the ship carving itself up!! Here it is giving Dannyboy a pasting with the pulse turrets Here it is firing a pulse from its nose cannons

Nice, look forward to having a look at that in game, I'll be on from tomorrow.

My internet is back in action, but now my family will be visiting for the next 2 weeks so I still will not be around much. However yesterday Add and I had some fun building vectored thrust ships that can carry the habitat pod from the wheeled vehicle. They operate in space and the atmosphere (Ion and hydrogen thrusters). This is my version

Sorry I havent been around. There has been a fire in the field next door. It destroyed the power and telephone cables. I have limited 3g until its fixed. No internet = no fun. I'll get on when I can.

Have a great day!!!

That was good fun yesterday, especially messing about with the fighting ships. I thought my broadsword was tough until your battleship shredded it in short order.

It's impressive that they keep adding to the game, I would have thought they would just go for Space Engineers 2.