Space Engineers General

[Zeno~SPARTA~]

I built a mini welder for tight spots

 

 

This is a Rover Cent found, It looks like a modified version of the one from the splash screen, It had no power source at all, so would only have worked in Creative, it now has 10 small reactors and 4 batteries.

 

 

The Rover was built from a projection in Cents welding room, once all the corrections were made it needed to be lifted down, its all heavy armour block!

 

[custard~SPARTA~]

That mini welder was the sort of thing Luggage wanted I think, the mods you are using are very good

[Zeno~SPARTA~]

He is welcome to it, I have an idea for a smaller one.

[Zeno~SPARTA~]

This is the Hot Seat, its the smallest I can do it. It only has the connector for cargo, There will be a slight redesign but here is a visual aid against a big block

 

 

Here its head on.

 

[Zeno~SPARTA~]

I've been busy building.

 

Here is the Mountain Base control Room. The observant among you will notice there is a transporter.

 

 

I have been working alone so I engaged a helper, the Nanite Control Factory, this finishes off anything incomplete within a radius of 350m, including Projections (although the welders are much faster, but its great for reaching the fiddly hidden blocks). Of course you have to have the resources for this to work.

 

 

This is the entrance to the Mountain Base

 

 

I have also added a shield generator (its turned off for now) that adds 200,000 hit points to the base. I haven't turned asteroids on yet but the mountain base defences are pretty much ready.

 

 

 

I have ventured into space using my Ascent Ship, I found an asteroid with a convenient hole reasonably aligned with gravity (0.07G).

 

 

With the cargo I took with me I established Asteroid Base 1

 

 

It also has a nice view

 

 

I originally used the ascent ship wit a couple of drills to survey and gather some resources. I then built a second ascent ship and transformed the original into a dedicated little Hydrogen powered driller.

 

 

Eventually I gathered enough resources to build a Nanite Control Factory at the Asteroid Base and with a bit of a struggle a large block Driller

 

 

The main limitation was Platinum, as I only found one load in 13 surveyed asteroids. Lateral thrust is a but weak, but when I can I will enhance that. The Driller is nowhere near as good as the Magnificent pyramid driller that Slain designed and we built, but it is good enough to significantly boost resource gathering and surveying, it also has a transporter pad, though it has only worked well for my Z3NO character (the host)

 

Anyway that's all for now

 

 

 

[custard~SPARTA~]

Very nice mate, I like the way you build particularly the ascent ship it looks like an Eagle from Space 1999

 

Didn't realise platinum would be so hard to find

[Zeno~SPARTA~]

Thanks but the ascent ship only looks that way from that angle, it's much wider than an Eagle I think.

 

Anyway Taledans inventory manager (a very handy script) constantly need recompiling and when that happens no refining or assembling happens, killing one of the biggest advantages of having an instance constantly running. I had hoped to add a timer to make the prog block recompile every 5 minutes, but that is not one of the instructions available on the timer block. Also now that I a have a biggish asteroid drilling ship the current asteroid base creates a few problems:-

 

1 The gravity, when the drilling ship is full it is easily double the mass, stopping in time for the base is not easy and I am concerned about being overwhelmed by the gravity if I overshoot. Once I had to angle the ship to get all of the bottom thrusters and the side thrusters before I managed to stop (even after more than doubles the lateral thrusters)

 

2 Dont want to ruin the asteroid to make room for more storage and refining.

 

3 Taledans Inventory manager keeps packing up.

 

Solution

 

1 Go up, Heading directly away from the base and the planet I found an asteroid in zero G

 

2 Build the most convoluted refinery station using sorting blocks and dedicated refineries

 

result my homage to Rube Goldberg

 

 

Eight Arc refineries and six standard refineries, four arcs dedicated to Iron, two each for Cobalt and Nickel, One standard refinery each for the rest, Ore goes in at the top, Ingots are stored at the bottom, TIM just manages the bottom 2 containers to pull the ingots into them.

 

This is my creative version, I will load up the asteroid driller with all the components and build it from a projection in the survival game. After this there is one other solution to help in docking that Adder built years ago.

[custard~SPARTA~]

TIM hasn't been updated since April which kinda suks, like your solution but managing that many sorters would make my head hurt

 

What is the block count getting too on your main grid in survival?

[Zeno~SPARTA~]

The planet base is just under 7000 blocks, I know there is a block limit, but apart from extending the refinery bay (which is not blocked in anyway) I only want to add a massive hangar for a ship I have yet to design. If that hangar pushes the block count past the limit I have a plan. So far only the entrance is built (and that is subject to change) it is only joined to the main base by one block. If the limit is a problem I only need to grind a few blocks and replace them with connectors. This will bypass the block limit. Epiktetus connected the planet to an asteroid 40km away. He reached the block limit at least twice and connected the lot with connectors and landing gear. The conveyors work all the way to the asteroid.

 

The refinery is not so complex when its being built, because you're only dealing with one sorter at a time. I have tested it in survival this is where I found I still need TIM to pull the ingots down to the bottom cargo container otherwise the refineries will just clog up and stop. TIM breaks down because it has to manage the cargo, refineries and assemblers, I hope limiting it to just ingots will bypass the problem.

 

I tested a cargo parachute system to get cargo from the asteroid to the ground, but a full small block large container is too heavy and smashes the container on impact, I tried a small bloc medium container with 6 parachutes and this worked, But the container was impossible to dock using the recovery ships I had to hand, so I dumped it on the ground and put a deconstruct beacon on it and let the nanites take the lot.

 

I am looking for a big block ship that is capable of planet and space work with a big lifting capacity and without Hydrogen, I recently saw a video on youtube by w4stedspace that featured a ship called the Falcon, it looked to fit the bill for me, but I cannot find it in the workshop.

[custard~SPARTA~]

I just disabled the block limit in world settings bud, it's a stupid limit for them to add

[Hunter~SPARTA~]

Sad I'm missing all this. Looking good.

[Zeno~SPARTA~]

Hopefully we will still be playing when you get back!

[Zeno~SPARTA~]

The Refinery station is coming along!!!

 

[Zeno~SPARTA~]

I am very happy with the refinery, it works as planned except for TIM not pulling the ingots down. But I just do it manually. I left room to add another row of 3 refineries, so I did that and dedicated them all to platinum, due to its pathetic yield (even with the 4 yield modules). This made me think about another slight change which will let me expand downwards ad infinitum, with 4 refineries per row instead of three.

 

I also did a redesign of my ascent ship, trying to eliminate the Hydrogen thrusters, but they are very powerful, so I can descend with a full cargo but can only ascend with about 2/3. It can also bring a couple of people along fro the ride. I am going to do another version of this that stays in space but with double the cargo

 

 

Having said that I think I only need to bring ingots down and nothing up, as I have everything I need at the refinery station and the asteroid station.

 

I am going to dismantle all the refining at the asteroid station as they are redundant, only assembling will take place there.

[Cent~SPARTA~]

looks like a pretty ship Zeno - Nice design.

[Zeno~SPARTA~]

Thanks,

 

So Cent I am going to lay a platform on a zero g asteroid next to the refinery. It will be equipped with a large reactor, large cargo, oxygen generator, 2 assemblers and a welding ship. I was thinking that from here you could build your big ship printer (as big as you want). This could be the launch point for the planets, once you find a suitable ship.

[Zeno~SPARTA~]

Cents Donut (or doughnut). It is next to the refinery (3.5km) so you can nip over there for ingots. Your base is easily expandable and can be moved into the asteroid if you want

 

 

Your choice which is top or bottom

 

 

 

 

Nice view, better when the suns up.

 

[Zeno~SPARTA~]

Killed my backup computer trying to upgrade the ram, so I am running the game on my main PC.

 

I have found the Falcon ship I had referred to earlier, its called GyrFalcon by Texfire, but I had already started work on my first attempt. It is huge were as the falcon is smaller with fewer thrusters, so I will definitely be building more versions of the Jump Ship

 

 

I have also been working with autopilot for delivering ingots from the refinery station to the Asteroid Base, I have built a cargo drone and carried out a couple of cargo drops, I rode along to make sure the cargo was not lost. The next step will be to use the timer and programme blocks.

 

 

 

Ideally I would load the cargo at the refinery station and send it on its way. I need it to do the following

 

Disconnect from refinery station

Advance to Asteroid Base Approach

Advance to Asteroid Base Dock in Precision mode

Connect

Unload cargo

Disconnect

turn off precision mode

Advance to Refinery Station approach

Advance to Refinery Station Dock in Precision mode

Connect

 

I think I know how to implement most of the steps and if TIM worked all the time it would be easy to unload, anyway an interesting challenge

 

Along the same lines I have also built a defence drone for the Mountain base.

 

 

 

I have made it run a patrol pattern and after turning on the wolves for a while it was reasonable at engaging them. However I need to figure out how to make it connect at the base when either its battery or ammo run low.

 

Once I get the jump ship to its final state I want to go the moon to set up a base there.

 

 

I knew I should have stayed away from this game!!!!!!

[Cent~SPARTA~]

Looks excellent mate. Got a basic blueprint ready for the ship printer, May need to enlarge it some though - its big enough for Slains planet hopper so its a good start. Hopefully be on this weekend playing SE.

 

Bad news on the spare PC though

[Zeno~SPARTA~]

I am sorting out an area for your printer adjoining the refinery station, this will give you almost unlimited access to raw materials.

 

At some point I will rebuild the spare pc on a budget, probably around an AMD processor which offers better value apparently.

[Zeno~SPARTA~]

Bad news!!! the planets and moon have disappeared.

 

I have to work out how to get them back. If not I will blue print all the stations from the latest version and go to a save I have that does have the planets. Then try to copy the stations back in.

 

That means trying to integrate the Mountain base, Asteroid Base, Donut Base, Waypoint baselet as well as all the ships.

 

Apparently the problem arises when you switch to a manual save instead of an auto save.

 

Insert appropriate expletive here!!!

[PANiC]

hmm that's an annoying problem

[PANiC]

would i have an auto save of it from playing yesterday?

 

/edit, just went to load game and all the ones i have are from 2014, but if you have any ideas let me know

Edited October 16, 2017 by PANiC

[Zeno~SPARTA~]

I found the distances to the moon mars and Alien planet (150km, 1500km and 5600km). I did my first jumps ever and using space master switched into creative and spawned the planet into the game. They are not where they were originally but at least the distances are the same.

 

Hopefully wont have to go through that again.

[custard~SPARTA~]

The save system is a total balls up, gj on getting the moon and planet back