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[T.N.N.S.F.]- Owl

Capable of Landing / Leaving surface / Surface navigation all at once
Doesn't need Hydrogen
Full Vanilla


Powered by pure batteries, compact and efficient.
Designed to scout and do basic exploration.



*Moon type planets limit the landing and surface navigation ability due to lack of atmosphere.*
*Landing is still manageable with rear thrusters, but not recommended.*

2020.06.06
● Paint renew

2015.11.16
● Make the ship already turned on when pasted from blueprint for convenience.

2015.11.15
●Add a group of front thrusters to hotbar.


Tips for Landing&Leaving surface

*Press 9 to turn ship on or off*
*Only press 8 when docked to other ships/stations(it sets the battery to recharge)*

< Landing >
Make sure the bottom thrusters are facing the surface.
Let the ship free fall to a certain height and turn on dampeners.
Ship will decelerate once the atmosphere is dense enough, height may vary between planets.
(usually around 5000m above surface)
If the ship is not decelerating when turning on dampeners, DON'T WORRY.
This means you are still higher than atmosphere, it will soon start to decelerate once low enough.
*Moon has no atmosphere, so face the ship tail towards surface to use rear ion thrusters to decelerate.*

< Leaving surface >
Use bottom thrusters to hover above the ground.
Turn ship tail towards surface and start pressing forward, make sure you are 90 degrees to surface.
Keep the ship at top speed by holding W.
After certain height, the speed will start to drop, DON'T WORRY.
Keep forward button pressed, speed dropping will slow down and finally start to accelerate again.

< Navigation >
Use hotbar to turn off front thrusters when doing long range flight is more energy efficient.
And your fingers can be more relaxed :)
It is purely personal preference, though.

*WARNING*
Using speed increasing mod will make leaving surface much easier.
But at the same time makes landing harder or even fail. Caution is advised.


Total weight is about ~ 48,700 kg
with 2 Gyroscopes

4 Large Batteries

NONE

1 Small Cargo Container
1 Oxygen Tank
1 Connector

NONE

1 Ore Detector
1 Air vent


Developed by the T.N.N.S.F. (Tir Na Nog Science Foundation) as a ship-based planet scout for the Druid Class science vessel, the Owl is proven to be a great success.
Modified from the abandoned Crow fighter project model, the Owl can land on planets and get back to orbit with pure battery power, without the need of any hydrogen.
With the hybrid engine design, the Owl is capable of atmospheric navigation with decent acceleration.
Its compact design also makes it a good choice for a large variety of ships with limited hangar capacity.

Though designed originally from a fighter model, the Owl's armor is reduced to the extent that almost serves no defensive ability due to the mass limitation to leave planet surface. Despite not intended to be a fighter, weapon customization are still available for those who doesn't feel comfortable when there are no guns on the ship.


This ship has probably the largest number of prototype during my creation process.
I've been planing to make a compact landing craft for my ship Druid for a long time.
With more information of planets getting released, I also keep refitting the design. Finally it is done.

At first I use a large Hydrogen thruster in the back and some small Hydrogen thrust on the bottom.
But when I tested the ship, I realized it only needs about 6 sec of Hydrogen boost when leaving surface.
And the landing deceleration fuel consumption is way more than a single Gas tank.
Even with precise calculation and manage to land, the ship serves no exploration purpose if it can't fly around.

So I decided to try if the combining power of ion and atmospheric is enough to bring the ship to orbit.
And to make ship flyable on surface, I must use Atmospheric instead of the ridiculously limited Hydrogen.

And it worked !
To my surprise, the ship got heavier with Atmospheric thruster than with the Hydrogen system.
Luckily after some tweaks the ship is still able to reach the goal of landing/leaving/flying :)

p.s.
The Skybox is called "Desert Planet" by iLavVex
Workshop Link