"Scarab" Missile Boat - Low Priced, large grid ship. Update: New Video

The "Scarab" Missile Boat is a low priced, large grid ship that is only slightly larger than a default rescue ship.
With a weight of just above 600.000 kg and a block number below 500, its is both affordable in survival and very performance friendly.
It is a vanilla creation and uses no pistons, rotors or scripts and is therfor multiplayer-friendly.

Steam Workshop Download

Special Feature: Buddy Link System

The buddy link system allows two fighters to merge together and fight as one.
Make sure you disable the up thrusters before you try to merge the two scarabs, or the 2 ships will damage each other via thruster damage.



Special Feature: Kamikaze Mode

The Kamikaze mode is basically a high tech version of a brick on a gas pedal: this will override the forward thrusters to max speed, fire the rocket launchers in permanent

loop and also open the doors automatically to allow the pilot to hopefully escape before the Scarab crashes into its victim.

The Kamikaze mode is likely the best option for seriously damaging a superior, much larger foe.

Lore

The "Scarab" and other gunship sized ships are considered to be a intermediate step between fighters and proper capital ships (corvettes and upward).
They are generally used whenever fighters don't possess the necessary range and true capital ships are considered too expensive.
Unlike fighters Scarabs do not require a carrier, they can operate independently for months thanks to the Cyropod and decent storage capabilities.

Scarabs are often deployed by police, millita and corporate security. Used in small packs of 2 or 4 they are more than enough to defeat pirates and their inferior ships,

usually civilian ships with sloppily attached additional weapons.

In a millitary context Scarabs are mostly used as a fighter replacement in smaller battle group, when no carrier is included into the group.
They act as escorts for larger millitary ships and can also perform long range recon missions.

During desparate times Scarabs are sometimes ordered to perform suicidial missions versus much larger capital ships. In the most extreme circumstances Scarab pilots got

ordered to ram enemy capital ships using the Kamikaze mode, escaping in space suits only seconds before impact.
A safer way to perform the kamikaze mode is evacuating the pilot before battle and using its remote control instead.




Features

- Full Conveyor network
- Oxygen
- Medbay and 1 Cryopod provided
- Remote control, antenna and cameras provided.
- 4 Rocket Launchers

Steam Workshop Download

Special thanks go to Sinbad and iN5URG3NT for helping me to find a suitable name.

EDIT: new video, showing me destroying a much larger frigate with some Scarabs. I wanted to find out how many I would need until I manage to disable all weapons on the frigate. Not as many as I expected ...

 

This is great @Brenner. I really like the shape. Rated and Subbed.

 

I like it.

 

Really neat ship!

 

Glad you like it guys!
I usually build huge ships, with realistic interior (crew quarters and so on), but I enjoyed the challenge of building more minimalistic this time.
I think both building styles have their right to exist.

Also, I was interested to see how much 600 ton Scarabs I would need to actually destroy that Revenge frigate (11000 tons) shown at the end of the original promo video.
Attacking the frigate sequentially with Scarabs that is, summoning a new one when one gets destroyed or disarmed.
I expected to need a two digit number of Scarabs, but the real result surprised me.

Here is the video showing the entire combat (felt a bit like a boss battle in a old style action game):

That was with me being a terrible pilot, not training for this combat at all and attacking sequentally with one Scarab only.
Imagine the destruction if I had attacked with 4 other players manning the other scarabs .. I imagine that frigate would have got steamrolled in under a single minute.
Makes me wonder if having heavy armor everywhere is really that useful. Once you get disarmed, no armor in the world will protect you. Unless the game is running in survival and the other guy runs out of ammo, maybe.

Does anyone have experience with the self repairing weapons I mentioned at the end of the video?
Like, how much do they really help? And whats the best way to place them? I noticed the welders will even repair themself but does that really keep them from getting destroyed?

 

It can be hard to make good self-repairing weapons due to the fact that the welders won't go two blocks deep and you need at least two per weapon to really do anything. So, my group has opted to use self repairing decoys in armor instead.

 

Hmm, self repairing decoys .. that sounds like a great idea, at least vs. turrets. In this combat it would have been great for the scarabs, but useless for the revenge (as human players will obviously not concentrate on the decoys).
I'm thinking of building a larger missile boat that also features a decoy launcher, using a projector & welder combo, probably using small ship parts to save material costs. Might be of great help in fights like this.

Maybe self repairing weapons are great if you have huge modded weapons, like mexpex battleship cannons for example? The Mk3 has a enourmous surface area (7x7), so you can place loads of welders under it. Plus you will likely not have many of them on one ship.

 

Yeah it does change if you have access to weapons of much larger sizes and footprints. You can do better seals so you don't have to try and seal around the welder so much.

 

What you have here my good sir is a fast attack craft -- and a very good one at that.

My suggestion about defending larger vessels from ships like this is to actually build another ship as an escort -- specifically, a corvette or a destroyer. If you can afford an 11,000 ton frigate, you can afford another vessel that's 2-3,000 tons; and if you're facing wolfpacks of ships like this, it's safe to say we're talking factional PvP. At that size, you can build something that's agile enough to evade the kamikazi attack/PMWs, but tough enough and toothy enough to take out smaller vessels like this. It'll be pretty much limited to escort work due to the size, but still worth the cost.

That, or I'd launch Vipers to intercept this before it got in range.

 

I have a modified version of this ship outfitted with the 5" naval guns mod. (Which is allowed on our server) It makes this thing insane with the amount of firepower it can bring.

 

Yeah, I think that would work. I wouldn't expect my ship to do very well against fighters considering it is only armed with rockets. Hard to hit an agile fighter with it.
Although, if you do manage to land a salvo of those rockets that fighter won't be a problem anymore.

Sounds awesome!
I hope Keen will implement a large ship version of the gatling gun at some point .. having only one frontal weapon for vanilla projects like this is a bit limited.

 

How did I miss this going up?
Glad its published @Brenner I've been looking forward to trying this ship out now I have to get through work... no sleep tonight