Tsavo Industries™ Shipbuilding and design: The Kepler Fleet (Lots-o-images, be warned)

Hey there, fellow spacers!


I'm Tsavo, or ElectronicFunk, from steam and I'm enjoying the hell out of Space Engineers.



Anyways, I was crazy excited when I found the game and had to pick it up. Best decision ever. This allows me to satisfy a few needs, building things, building ships, building ships themed/influenced from WWII era fighting ships, crashing them together, and having fun with others and seeing what epic builds they can do. I've peeked into the various threads here and I gotta say, there are some really talented builders here.


Now this leads me to why I joined the forum and why I'm poasting this thread:

To show off some of the ships I've spent building. There are 6 ships and 1 fighter I'll post in this thread. Starting with the first ship I made in the first dozen hours playing the game.

Like I said, it's my first attempt at building anything in the game.


It's rough, lots of unused space, and had a bunch of not-so-well-though-out weapons and feature (like landing gear, seriously, who'd land that on something?)

Based off the Iowa Class (and planned Montana Class) warships, which is a theme I kept with both of my battleships.



So, it was a little rough, it has a modest hanger in it, but it's rather featureless on the inside and being made of light armor blocks, it's not all that durable.


(That and I made the hull mostly single layered, so it's very weak)


Oddly enough, the youtuber BaronVonGamez found it in the workshop and did a cool review of it here:

A lot of his input (like recessed thrusters and smarter weapon placement) lead to version two, which was built anew, with a lot experience and learning from the first one and lurking these forums.


Which lead to the Mark II Battleship: (it's the middle one in the next screenshot)






And the Mark II had a much better thought out hangar as well, one that was usable and could fit a fair dozen or more of the stock fighters.










So, after building that one I had a bit of a lull, where I built a few small fighters and one large one based off the SR-71. However, the more I learned and the more videos and builds I watched, the more that a battleship seemed inefficient and a gluttonous waste of resources.


After all, smaller ships are nimble, will probably be cheaper, and harder to hit than the big, slow battleships.




So, I took the Mark II battleship and cleaved off the super structure and flew it away (which was quite hilarious), gutted the hull, and made a carrier.


And I like it, maybe more than the Mark II battleship.



I probably shouldn't need to point out which one is the carrier


The carrier has three hangars. One, the main one, has entrances in the bow and just aft of amidships and runs about 65% the length of the hull. There are two smaller hangars as well. One behind the aft main hangar entrance (first screenshot) which is too small for the stock fighter, but was built with my small fighter in mind. The other small hangar in just under the flight deck at the stern, with a lot of space for fighters between the aft deck engines.




The main hangar has oodles of room and a few decks and platforms to add more space. There's also 4 refineries, a bunch of storage containers, and access to the other, smaller hangars and bridge.

Lots of room in the main hangar. Easy to get in and out of as well.


The aft hangar (ignore the dented wall, I may have misjudged my approach a bit)



A stern shot of the differences (and similarities) of the two ships. You can see some features that are the same between the hulls.


(biggest difference in the two hulls is the patching up of the battleship hangar.




Tiny Fighter, which is what most of the fighter capacity of my ships is based around. Small, cheap, and agile fighters.


Besides the main flight deck (and lots of space on the old whether deck), there's a lot of little perches and platforms to land fighters and other transpots whilst leaving the flight deck clear.


After the carrier, I built something that's a mix of carrier and fighting ship. It was originally going to be a cruiser, but the small amount of weaponry bring me to call it a destroyer or something like an assault carrier, I guess.


Anyways, it's the blue ship:



It's a bit stubby, but it's far more agile and nimble than the carrier and the battleship. It was funny bringing it into public servers and being nimble enough to swat the trolls trying to rocket me out of the sky with my own ship.

I can't wait until large ship weapons work.


But most of the ship if built of hangar space, reactors in a heavy-armor block casing, and a bunch of thrusts and gyros.




So up until now, my ships have generally been heavily influenced by surface combat ships, so I decided to try a ship that's a better mix of space ship and surface ship.



Bring on the Destroyer.


Okay, it's a little big for a destroyer and it's the size between the destroyer and cruiser that lead me to question the cruiser's status. Perhaps a Light carrier? I dunno, still up in the air on it.

Not sticking with the limits that surface-themed ships gave me opened up room for creative thruster placement and, in my opinion, cool looking aft ends of the destroyer and frigate (frigate to the left)



All the ships except for the frigate have internal hangars, something I think will be required of most ships should you want to survive an encounter in space.



Then, lastly, I wanted to make a large ship focused on nothing but being fast, nimble, and small-ish.



Which brings us to the smallest large ship I've made. It's not an independent ship, being there's no room for crew or other things (like storage, med rooms, hangar space, or even space for new content), but it's not meant to be without a fleet for support. Think of it in a raiding or flanking role as part of a combat fleet.

(left to right: Frigate, Destroyer, Cruiser/Assault Carrier, Battleship, Carrier)

Even though the frigate is "small" it's still fairly large, but outruns most large ships I've raced it against in multiplayer so far, which is the entire point of it. Quick, agile, and with a little bit of a punch.


Anyway, thanks for taking the time to read this, if you enjoy it look them up in the workshop.


Ideas, input, and critiques are welcome!

Thanks,

ElectronicFunk






*NOTE* quickie answers will be added here, I'm including a few that I already get a lot.



QUICKIE ANSWERS (as these are the ones that I get a lot, either in my workshop files or in replies on Baron's video of my ship):

No, I'm not doing turrets right now. I don't want to do them as a second ship. I don't like how they look and the fact that you can't copy them with the ship, making experimenting or adding the ship to a new world a pain in the ass. I'll wait to see future content before I start dabbling with turrets.

Yes, I know the Iowa's only had 3 turrets, it's not a copy of an Iowa but a ship INFLUENCED by an Iowa.


No, it's not a Montana either, shut up.


Yes, I am open to opinions on the ships, designs, and flaws. No, I'm not open to debating if it's an iowa, montana, or whatever class or not.

 

Nice fleet dude.

 

I saw your ship in Barons vid and I agree that it is pretty snazzy although impractical. I do really like your carrier conversion aswell, mostly just because it reminds so much of how many WWI/II carriers were made by just chopping of the superstructure and slapping on a flight deck

 

Good looking ships. I like the blue in the middle, most.

 

Great work although my only critique would be that you may want to adapt them to for space.

You could still keep most of the ship but alter the design from having the boat like hull on the bottom to something more space-practical.

Still, great work.

 

While the Strongstown (Battleship) and the Anchorage (Carrier) will stay reminiscent of surface ships, the blue Assault Carrier (Khandahar) I am unhappy with, the rest I'll build will be more space-like and along the lines of the Wilksburough (Destroyer) and the Cassin (frgiate).



I may do a future battleship with dirigible like qualities as an experiment, but I've never really liked the looks of, say, the warships in the Halo universe or even the WarHammer 'verse.


Not to say they aren't cool, just not my style.


We'll see where my future designs and ships go from here...

 

ElectronicFunk again, presenting the latest edition to the fleet: The Poot Mk. II.

Small, agile, and very annoying to it's enemies, it is designed to be a cheap, reliable fighter. Emphasis on space saving measures were taken, as to maximize your ship and it's ability to hold offensive or defensive fighters.




At just under a two large block width, the Poot can be stowed almost anywhere you have a flat surface that's 2 x 2 square. Small storage containers make sure your battery of 4 rocket launchers and 2 gatlings stay fed in combat and an extra small container for feeding your reactors.




Even with the small footprint, there is still plenty of visibility to your flanks and ahead for when the SHTF. The small, nimble nature of the fighter allows for quick maintenance and easy repairs should a battle not go your way.



And if you find yourself in a battle you cannot win, why not just run away at 105m/s? You can get to top speed in just a tick under 8 seconds.




The Poot Mk II, Tsavo Industries first combat fighter.



Also features are two new ships, the Heavy Cruiser KNS Cascade and the work-in-progress hull that is the KNS Agamemnon.

 

Every time I see "Poot" I automatically change it to "pootis" in my head (I blame Valve). You may want to work on the acceleration, 0-104 is 8s is really slow for such a small craft.

Nice work on your bigger ships, though!

 

I just timed it, dunno why I thought it was 8 seconds. It's about 3 seconds.