No prob, Bob.

Once the judges are done judging, it'll be posted in the main contest tread. It just takes them a while to finish, so you haven't seen it yet.

Originally posted by Baconblitz:

Ill try to update my progress as i design it

Well good luck. I know I'll be interested to see how it pans out.

I imagine it's a posibility. Maybe. You would probably need to know a lot of programing though, and find a way to make sure the correct blueprint was loaded every time so it could duplicate.

It would probably be super dificult, but would make one hell of a proof of concept if you could pull it off.

I kind of like the ramp/panel/glass mods sometimes though. They might not add any functionality (other than aesthetically) that the vanilla blocks don't cover, but they can make some ship designs look waaaaay better. I especially like that 1x1 block with the square base and ramp sides. There's no real alternative to it in the base game.

Here's an idea, though I'm not 100% on what all of the restrictions should be or how it would be graded. A modified ship.

Basicaly, the host would pick one of the vanilla large ships to start with or give us one that was made to be used with the contest. The contestants would then, using at least 50% of the original ship or so, make a new one. Add on engines, build on some extra weapons, etc. The idea would be to turn the original ship into something better with as little work as possible on tearing apart the original ship itself.

I think it should probably be a totally vanilla contest. I also would love it if there wasn't a strict catagory you had to stick to, and people could just build whatever kind of ship they wanted out of it with a few restrictions for the size and what not. There would also probably have to be some basic ship requirements, like using 50% of the ship (75% maybe?) and the crew areas needing to be pressurized. The ability to land on a planet shouldn't be required, but as an added feature it should give you more points.

Other than that, I don't know. I also don't know if this idea, as I'm thinking of it, is even viable, but I think if it's not it could probably be addapted somehow into something that was.

Originally posted by Surtur:

I really like the idea of the colonization ship.
Currently, i am planning to build a generation ship for a web-story. But i think given the cryo pods, those are a better solution.

But then we should also think about genetic diversity.
According to relatively recent studies, generation ships should carry at least 10.000 - 40.000 humans at the start.
Those could be distributed over several ships, so that if disaster strikes on one ship, the chances of survival for the others are higher.
But they should also be able to dock with each other for trade, social gatherings and "gene swapping".
All that for a long term healthy gene-stock.

10.000 cryo pods on a single ship would obviously be too much. Would already have more than half of the blockcount of the current contest for the pods and plumbing alone.

After a little googling, i found estimates that a population of 80 men and 80 women is enough to come by for a few generations. Would be enough to wait and prepare for another "wave" of colony ships that was sent a few years later, if just one ship from the initial wave survived.

So I would suggest at least 160 cryo pods per ship with the ability to either land or have a shuttle(-bay) that can bring the colonists to the surface. Also should be able to dock to other ships.

Obviously, we have to remember that solar panels and oxygen farms wouldnt work as well if the nearest star is very far away. So it would need vast amounts of both oxy tanks, as well as maaany batteries and/or generators with enough uranium to last for a few hundred years.
Also materials for a martian colony and ammo for defensive weapons (hope for the best, prepare for the worst)

Instead of putting all 160 (or the 10,000) on one ship, you could also go the route of just launching a ton of tiny, cheap ships with ten or twenty pods in them. That way if you launch enough for the 10,000, even if half of your ships fail you would still have enough to last plenty of generations. You'd probably need to plan for them to remain in cryo sleep until they were at the planet though for that to work instead of actually having a working colony on the ships themselves though.

Originally posted by Copycat80:

or mabe get a mod that decreases their power to realistic output, the most powerful ion engines today put out only about 40 lb of thrust.

Well... a thruster that weak would probably not work very well with actually moving a ship, with the in-game small thrusters being over 60 times stronger. Maybe it would be better to just restrict it to hydrogen. Though I wonder how realistic they are. I tried to find some numbers for them, but whatever I type it in it always gives me SE hydrogen thrusters. Must be called something else in the real world or something.

I really wish I knew the first thing about real space ships. Maybe I should read up on current tech one of these days...

I do really love the idea of 'What would the current world use against aliens if they attacked?' Probably we'd just end up retrofiting our current jets or something (or just use railguns from the ground), but if we actually had time to build them from scratch, they'd have to be pretty cheap and disposable no matter what just so we'd be able to make enough fast enough to fight off superior alien craft. And would probably be unmanned.

Well, maybe I'm overthinking it, but I love the idea.

Originally posted by Copycat80:

I would love to see an experiment in practicality, say we were threatened by alien invasion today, what kind of ships could a NASA type space agency field against them, (mabe dissable gravity and ion thrusters) ?

Why disable electric thrusters if we have them now?

Originally posted by Occultum ZIS:

Completely modular fighters:
Requires: Cockpit module, Wing module, Engine module, Weapon module.



Modular Stations:
Important notes: All subsystems (Reactors, Thursters, gyros, etc) has to be able to be repaired without take the station apart to get to it. Only Large ship blocks for Station, Small ship can be used for turrets or ships for the station.
Requires: Starting hub, Extention module, Reactor module, Cargo module, Docking port, Hanger module, Defence module, Solar array, Power storage, Processing module, Factory module, Shipyard, anymore?

Starting hub - Pressurized, some storage, Airtight doorway, at least 4 expansion ports
Extention Module - Just something to expand the station cheaply
Reactor module - A Nuclear power plant that can be accessed inside the station
Cargo module - A storage unit that can hold 8 LCC
Docking Port - a place where large ship can dock at
Hanger module - a place that can hold 3 small fighters (idk what ship for refence)
Defence module - A unit that has drones and/or turrets for meteor/invader defence, At least 4 turrets or drones
Solar array - a module that has at least 8 solar panels
Power storage - module for storing mass amount of power, at least 12 Batteries
Proccessing module - module for ore processing and componet manufactoring
Factory module - A place a small ship constrution
Shipyard - a place where frigates can be repaired, and ships can be built



Please comment on this, I would love to hear any of your responses to this

I like both ideas, but having all those required modules for the station would make it pretty big all put together. And if we were required to submit a blueprint like we have been in the last few contests, those of us with weaker computers (like me) probably couldn't participate. Or we'd have to get people with better computers to submit them for us.

Maybe it could be more set up like this. A control module, a reactor module, and a cargo module are required, or are built into one base module that you would stick all the others on. Beyond that, you have to pick two or three other modules out of the other types of modules to make. For example, a power storage module, a solar array, and a hanger module. Or a factory module, a defence module, and a proccessing module. Something like that.