Astral-class Battlecruiser
! Fully vanilla !
A spaceship pretending to be a submarine. High-tech features and a sleek, futuristic design are sure to impress, with barebones starting equipment and balance geared towards campaigns (modded or not). Comes in a neutral black/white finish with customizable accent lighting to configure the visual appearance to your liking, defaulting to a neon blue.
- Automatic Doors and hatches with water water pressure and enemy detection. The doors have lights embedded that show the mode: Accent color = Automatic, Red = Manual, Green = Open. The light color can be changed from the command room: Change the memory component to any RGB value you want.
- Smart duct system that locks down rooms that have a breach that would flood the ship. Requires opening a door after leaks are fixed to reset. Ducts show lock status.
- Moonpool for easy EVA access.
- Automatic reactor controller and information displays at the reactor room. (If you want to modify the controller, run it through the two labeled components.)
- Back and middle coilguns are linked to single periscope per pair. The gun will automatically switch depending on periscope rotation.
- High-power hexa-battery capable of powering the main guns and the engine on overdrive mode.
- Central bilge design: Almost all rooms route their water to the moonpool or cargo with large pumps. Note the hidden water channels that might require hull repairs!
- Three fabricators: Two next to the cargo hold for the mechanic, one by the reactor for the engineer.
- Two deconstructors linked to a cabined for easy salvage handling.
- Medical lab with a fabricator and research table that can be disabled to save power.
- Spacious armory with 12 gun holders and two locked cabinets that only security officers can access.
- Command bridge with battery indicator and periscope for using the spinal railgun. Railgun can be switched to automatic mode, firing when enemies are directly at front. There is also a lever to force all doors into manual mode in case of invaders.
- Both the gunnery and command room have a 12-point motion detector disply showing enemies or walls that are close to the ship. Also detects crew, don’t depend on it for targeting!
- Five different modes changing the gun status, engine power and reactor.
- Lighting that changes color depending on current mode. Normal and combat mode have neutral lighting to not be annoying for extended use.
- Heat mechanics! The primary weapons can store a few charges, but sustained firing requires heating up the loaders. The longer the trigger is held, the faster the weapon will start firing. However, the guns are only enabled on combat, siege and overdrive modes: Combat mode heats the weapons at very slow speeds, acting more as a slow-reloading shotgun. Siege mode disables engines, but diverts full power to the main guns: Maximum fire rate of around 1200 RPM is reached in ~10 seconds of continuous firing. Overdrive triples the heat buildup, allowing massive damage output at a moments notice. However, overdrive mode has a different heat mechanic, named the "flux".
- Overdrive flux! By activating the overdrive mode, full engine power is unlocked, allowing speeds of over 60 km/h underwater. However, be mindful of the flux buildup: The more power the ship is using, the faster the flux will build up, up to 10000, shown in the command room. Each point of flux forces the reactor fission rate to increase, increasing fuel rod burn rate. Starting at ~2000 flux, the reactor starts to overheat. By staying at high flux for too long, the reactor will eventually melt down!
Flux will decrease on its own as long as overdrive mode is deactivated at a steady rate.
Without using the engines or primary weapons, the flux buildup is very slow, however no benefit is gained. The real loads come from the engines, drawing 40 GW of electrical load at full speed and causing moderate flux buildup, and from the primary weapons, drawing a staggering 100 GW of load at full heat, leading to unsustainable flux buildup in just a few seconds. Overdrive mode will automatically shut itself down if battery levels drop too low, but the flux will remain… - The two primary weapons are powered by an oversized volatile fulgurium fuel cell found next to the reactor. Caution must be taken when working near the reactor or repairing the loader, as the containment field cannot contain all the radiation. Resourceful engineers are known to utilize the massive fuel cell to power the reactor during non-combat operations, although this is ill-advices without proper safety equipment.
- The ion thrusters are animated depending on the current direction and speed, and the color can be changed similar to the door color. (Leave out the fourth [alpha] value.)
- When engines are at maximum power during overdrive, they electrify the shell, causing similar effects to an electrical discharge coil. The ionic field takes some time to dissipate, so this effect can only happen once every 20 seconds per thruster. Intuitively, going full speed forwards will shock the backside, and going backwards will shock the front.
If you are using Performance Fix, add the following items to the priority list:
The front has a drone bay, but no drone is provided. The ship was already starting to have too many components, although I might make one later.
The ship hasn’t had nearly enough playtesting to iron out all the weird stuff, if you find anything that you think is broken, let me know!
