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Vagabond-XT

Introducing the Vagabond Mobile Base. (CV Class 2, Unlock level 20)

Role: Survival PVE, Mobile Base, Small HV/SV Carrier, Farm.

Overview:

The Vagabond is a complete mobile base with a small footprint and relatively low resource requirements. Fully warp capable, gravity & O2 for when in space, construction facilities, hangar bay, landing pads, repair facility, and a food production garden. It's not a combat vessel but does come complete with defensive armaments and a hardened steel shell to keep you safe in most all circumstances outside of a war-zone.

Intended as a first starter CV, the XT version is the endpoint and a survival player will probably want to start initially with the ST version that is available at level 15 and requiring fewer rare resources. The ST can easily be upgraded to the full XT as resources and level allows.

Features:

• Automatic flight systems activate and deactivate when entering or exiting the helm.
  
• Automated lighting systems throughout.
  
• Separated storage for: Ore (Harvest), Components, and Main. (volumes: 48k, 145k, and 320k respectively)
  
• Two advanced constructors, and one small constructor.
  
• Drill turret for harvesting asteroids for resources.
  
• Small hangar bay for HVs with frontal 6x3 hangar door, complete with repair systems.
  
• Two small landing pads for SVs with access hatch.
  
• Automatic boarding ramp deploys when landed, but has a safety lock for hostile zones.
  
• Complete suite of medical facilities.
  
• Garden with 36 grow plots, fridge and food processing station.
  
• Outer skin constructed from hardened steel.
  
• Four upper defence turrets (2 cannon, 2 minigun) and one lower minigun. (auto-retracts when landed)
  
• Eight external sentry guns for ground defence.
  
• Dual fixed rocket launchers.
  
• Oxygen system and gravity generator for space travel.
  
• Warp drive and fully warp capable.
  
• Small crew compartment with 4 racks, table and desk.
  
• Able to lift over 8k tonnes of cargo with no trouble.
  
• Boost thrust can be disabled for fuel efficiency when unladen or outside of a gravity well.

Design Objectives & Constraints:

The genesis of the Vagabond was playing survival in alpha9.5 with weights and volumes enabled. My play-style is to use a mobile base CV rather than have a fixed base, and for this play-though I didn't want to even bother building a base in early game so I converted a farm with minimal work and saved up for a starting CV. Intended to use the Nomad again like I did for A8, but although there're several A9 updated versions of it on the Workshop I didn't like any of them enough to use. Also, while I absolutely loved the Nomad, I did find it a little bit big and expensive so I decided to build my own CV instead.

At this point in my survival game I'd salvaged two large thrusters from wreckages, as well as a warp core, so decided I would base the build around these and make the smallest practical mobile base I could. Constrained the build to use only medium thrusters in addition to the 2 large I had found, and also base the hangar bay on the smallest hangar door size 6x3 and make the hangar just large enough to fit my IronGiant hover tank, scarab and a miner HV.

As is probably obvious from the pictures, the Vagabond was heavily inspired by original Nomad XT by JRandall. ( https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1395383670 ) Thanks so much to him for sharing such amazing creations, especially this one! Whenever I was stuck I'd look at his build and copy elements of both structure and styling. I think I ended up with half a dozen various Nomads floating around my build in progress on my creative world!

Another inspiration was Thunderbird 2, hence the hangar bay door underneath the cockpit and portly shape.

One aspect of the build that proved quite tricky and that I didn't anticipate initially is that the large CV thrusters are 2 blocks wide and using one for downward and another for rearward thrust meant that I needed them central which gives the craft a very unusual central line that is between blocks instead of the more usual central line of blocks. This caused many small design issues later on. For example the upper turrets spoiled the lines when separated by 2 blocks, but are a bit too close without any block spacing. Also, had to use the single availiable 2 block wide cockpit for the helm to get the FP visuals to be centred.

Related Builds by me:

ST version - Starter version for mid-game survival, fully upgradeable to XT. ( https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1699668296 )

The Waystation - Ground Base with deconstruction and smelting facilities and a landing pad for the Vagabond. Place this near a body water for a stop off point for the Vagabond to get quick ore smelting and water. ( https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1698484191 )

Runabout - Great little utility SV with 8k storage capacity. Fits perfectly on the Vagabond's smaller SV pad, and is very useful for collecting from auto-miners or running little errands. ( https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1702392126 )

IronGiant - Combat tank HV fully capable of taking out heavily fortified enemy positions. ( https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1699696312 )


Hope others find this a good mobile base for survival games. I've play-tested this extensively. It survived being attacked unawares by a Zirax cruiser while mining an asteroid. When I heard explosions it took me 10-15 seconds to run away and lost 2 thrusters in the initial barrage. After plugging the holes, the Vagabond still completed the mission and another on a lava planet before heading back for repairs. I was pretty happy with this performance since it's not a combat vessel. I think this is about as small as a fully functional & practical mobile base can be before being too cramped.

Feedback welcome.


Pictured Builds from other authors (credits):

NSI Havoc Alpha 9.xx (HV) - Great little tank that fits nicely by Ann|e Noa|m.
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1612028631
Reaper 20 XL - High level miner by Zovya.
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1696989227
XM-903 Drillbug A9 - Compact miner by Trig, with cockpit changed.
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1596537019
Merc-MX5E - Explorer SV by JRandall and modified / repainted by me.
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1400275796