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Gyaar!

I thought it might be fun to create a thread for us to share our current projects with our fellow engineers. Here, we have a great deal more room to discuss our gear at length than we do in the workshop. So post your best/worst/fondest projects so the community can learn, critique, and help you improve!  

With that, I humbly submit my current flagship for your viewing pleasure:

Nimbatus_Screenshot_201811171539511760.thumb.png.45a7c658bca03ee17047327c4c967c52.png

Features:

-Automatic terrain avoidance

-Full shield coverage

-speed, Agility, and high stability.

-8 automated defense turrets capable of dropping multiple tough enemies at full throttle when weapon fire is most inaccurate 

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-16 long range fire support batteries

-Fuel and energy reserves for extended engagements 

-Surprisingly effective digging

-Hover mode

-On board fighter bay with replenishing fighters

-Automated Fighter launch sequence and bay doors.

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-Orbital Fire support mode

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Nimbatus_GIF_201811171014581187.gif.c04fe42aa0d195b1cc89c4be3896af2e.gifX
 

 

-Printed on demand "no frills" dedicated high capacity mining and recovery drone

-Logic blocks remain with the docking drone for increased ship space

Nimbatus_Screenshot_201811171621153546.thumb.png.772ebe21a6c69afc8d6fda3a324e44b0.png

The top photo features a hanger I've been working on, but it's looking like cpu performance may be an issue for now. 

I left the drone core in the ship so I'd eventually have the option to program the fighter to return and dock automatically. If I don't get around to it, I'll probably detach it into the ore box and automate the mining drone. 

Let me know what you think! I'm open to questions, critiques, and whatnot, such as how the turrets work. 

Till then!

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The turrets are interesting. A « why make it complicated » kind of interesting if I understand well, which is much to my taste seeing as how I am a lazy wolf. How do you target your fighter's area? Also, can the mothership turn or is it supposed to stay roughly horizontal to the planet's surface?

I have no such grand design to show myself (I get bored very easily), so I will be content with watching.

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Howdy! In fire support mode, the big ship uses an altimeter and a directional sensor to maintain a stable altitude and attitude relative to the planet, while a second positional sensor tracks the position of my mouse and tells the lateral thrusters when to fire, so the ship will continuously adjust it's position to stay above the location of my mouse. The fire support weapons aren't connected to the defensive turrets. I simply leave their rotation on "cursor" so they continue to aim at my cursor from off screen. It's basic standing order is -stay above the cursor, maintain position, obliterate anything I click on. 

In free fly mode, the main ship is setup for WASD flight. It can do anything the fighter can do. It can also dig right through a planet at a fairly respectable pace. The only tasks it's unwieldy for are ones where indiscriminate fire is a liability or the ground is too hard to dig. For those, the fighter has more than enough capabilities to handle the job. For snake missions, if I'm feeling lazy, I can do a full throttle orbit of the planet with the fire support system activated and that usually handles it. 

On the turrets, my original design for an automated defense system didn't use fast spinning turrets and incorporated lasers. The question was how to detect an enemy and then use that information to get a weapon pointed at them. In real life, we typically use radar and spin them for greater coverage, so I'm spinning proximity detectors to emulate one. Proximity detectors don't gather enough information to direct a weapon that isn't already pointed at the same target, so the weapon is mounted on the radar. When the sensor detects a target, it tells the weapon to fire. The significant recoil on the weapon is mostly absorbed by transferring the majority of the force into spinning the turret faster, and the whole thing is enclosed to prevent environmental interference, making the system extremely stable. It's accurate, responsive, and stable.

Thanks for the questions!    

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Thanks for the explanation.

For a mock contribution on my part: I recently realised (because I am slow) that we already had a rising edge of sorts, as modern processors do, and that it was extremely useful. It lets one e.g. use a switch to start a cycle of actions, and repeat said cycle until the switch is turned off. I suppose such behaviour can be implemented in various ways, but the possibility to use only two logic gates plus the switch made me a bit excited.

Walking.gif.40831b80a48ee6e54654686f05998857.gif

This almost AT-AT here continues walking for as long as the switch is on, and stops when it is turned off. It is small discoveries like that that I am interested in most of all.

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I am just itching for beacons or trackers. 

I have a project that is flailing - autonomous drones that maintain position left or right of your drone, matching its orientation.  Without a way to track the orientation AND direction of the body of the drone, its giving me serious issues. 

The idea is to manufacture sub drones that will rush to your side and fly in formation.  I want to be able to destruct them and manufacture replacements that will rush to your side, so I can dump missile weaponry for digging lasers, or harvesters with ore containers.  I hope that formation changes will be workable, too.

If you remember the option companions from gradius, you'll know what I'm going for. 

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I made one very long drone and had companions that used detection sensors to push in if they didn't detect your drone, and push out if they detect you; it sort of works, because it can't orbit out of position, but it won't stay on target while moving.

The key is I need TWO points of reference for a directional sensor.  That can give me orientation, distance, AND station.  Angled sensors tracking something fore and aft of the main drone can control formation, orientation, and distance all at once, without even requiring detection sensors to keep distance.  

The only way I got real walkers that lifted their feet to work well was when I put thrusters on their feet to hold them down.  But I got one or two that would even climb the inside of the test chamber.  They didn't do as well with real terrain, though.

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Prepare for ludicrous speed!

Nimbatus_GIF_201811200040307517.gif.7f7d766af4943118416701f102a4c824.gif

Meet Death Blossom, also known as The Angriest Snowflake.

This little guy forsook thrusters all together and embraced the pew. With weapon mods emphasizing massive amounts of recoil, Deathblossom propels itself with nothing but guns. 

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Deathblossom packs an insane amount of speed and firepower into a small package. It's ridiculously effective. I uploaded it to the workshop for those who like a little hilarity. Search for "extremely fast"

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I have one bot I use for snake eggs missions, as well as destroy transmitter, destroy lab, destroy hives (significantly less effective there), destroy hammerhead (single and shoal), and freeze lava fountains. It spawns freezethrowers (a freezing flamethrower, really?) mounted on spinning-tops, and all such tops jump in the direction they are facing from time to time. It is not particularly efficient, but if I were looking for efficiency I would just make a large cruiser.

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It is named "Party Animal", because it spins me right round.

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So, I figured out that push and pull lasers generate massive amounts of kinetic energy. I have some hilarious training vids of what scores of tractor lasers do when you pull a large enemy into a wall of blocks. The noise alone is worth it. The weird part I noticed was when you pull an enemy into yourself with a tractor beam, it pushes you backwards......

much trial and error later, I figured out a way to blow off parts of myself, isolate them, and shoot them with tractor/push lasers to generate propulsion. The "fuel" parts tend to be unstable and blow up, even with the -100% damage mod, but freeze lasers keep them more stable. 

That prototype is actually really stable, but I built an automatic system that replaces my  fuel parts when they eventually blow up. 

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THIS IS MAGNIFICENT.

Nimbatus_GIF_201811231528378411.gif.8610da7429ffefd5d7def86fc99ee189.gif

Also, I suppose the lasers apply a force to your craft that is supposed to counterbalance the one applied to your target. Otherwise, targeting terrain for example could, I imagine, drag you into it. Which I would not mind in the least.

Science fiction comes at the price of physics it seems.

On a side note, I will praise your nickname for ages to come.

Edit: it indeed is a little tricky to get these parts not to be destroyed by the jittery movement. Otherwise, this is an excellent way to bypass transmitters that reduce thrust.

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Nice! you're already using the same "fuel" and basic enclosure as me. This is a closeup of what I added from there. You can use quite a few lasers when it's mostly stable, but more than this was a little less reliable than I desired. You can use proximity sensors set to terrain to detect when your block gives up the ghost linked to a factory to auto build another one. In some designs, I had to put the auto build on a short delay because existing momentum could auto pop the new block. 

The other tricky part after the device is stable is working out an offensive weapon system that doesn't blow up your own fuel 😆 

Nimbatus_Screenshot_201811231049302952.png

Nimbatus_Screenshot_201811231050010290.png

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For sake of posting ridiculously powered things that probably need to get fixed, and that there is a discussion active about factories, I give you the World Slayer.

Nimbatus_GIF_201811231152211795.gif.a371047ff53ee257bb7de8aeb22450ea.gif

Directions:

-Descend to planet

-Push "Exterminate"

-Make the scary eyes 

-Watch the boom

(optional- fly around and marvel at the shattered husk of a dead planet)

-Return to Nimbatus

 

 

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What is a planet, beside an infinitely refurbished training ground for the Nimbatus' rocket scientists?

As for lasers, they have an interesting behaviour. Especially penetrating lasers: adding a number of blocks to shoot at increases the total weight of the craft... but it increases the lift of each laser as well.

Want to speed up your craft? Weigh it down.

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That pick up is pretty smooth :D 
I messed around with using penetrating lasers on multiple blocks. It's way more energy efficient, but I suspect it places significantly more strain on the blocks. My guess is it's either through compression caused from the additional blocks stacking force on one another, or by way of slight fluctuations in the laser being more pronounced at longer ranges, causing the block to experience a more erratic force. I'm currently using two blocks without penetrating lasers. It's mostly just two clones of the same enclosure loosely connected. 

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2 minutes ago, Garheardt the Black said:

My guess is it's either through compression caused from the additional blocks stacking force on one another, or by way of slight fluctuations in the laser being more pronounced at longer ranges, causing the block to experience a more erratic force.

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My first guess would be that each block compounded adds the force exerted upon it to the next block in line.  But I don't know exactly what layout you're using, so I'm only guessing.

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It seems to be a problem of stability rather than force, or number of blocks. Blocks pushed forward collide with the frame that keeps them from going sideways, as seen in the following examples.

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Struts may not be absolutely rigid, but they are not extensible in the least. Which is extremely useful in this sort of situation, as it lets one craft an extremely rigid frame that is not necessarily heavy.

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