I love the idea of a missile carrier. I like the idea of a ship dedicated to the roll of shooting missiles. Just like you have a dedicated laser ship and a dedicated cargo/supply ship. Edit: I think it'd be great to have the name be "Fire Ant Major" or "Fire Ant Soldier" to both reflect its role and its new bulk.
I can only imagine that this episode was difficult to balance. If you want an opinion on how you managed to balance building and action, i think you nailed it. this was super fun to watch. for me at leastthis was the right mix of the design process and some gameplay. thanks aavak
I love the ship design. It resembles another very strong shape. This other shape may also shoot what could be considered missiles.... I have the mind of a 13 year old. Carry on.
I see the Fireant was equipped with stealth hyperdrives, one minute they're not in the design, another - they appear ;) 29:40 The mightiest shape. (Sorry for taking your mind there of all places)
I like "Firefly". For a whole list of reasons. Nice episode. Keep 'em coming. Out of all the Cosmoteer content right now, I consider yours to be the very tip top!
@Aavak you can CTRL group your weapons (they control groups only exist for that ship so you can set them up for each ship if you want) so then you can turn off your EMP missile launchers so you're not using EMPs when you only want damage out of the Fire Ant
Also having EMP and HE in different groups lets you set different targets. e.g EMP on engines or something, HE on some unshielded weapons that EMP doesn't effect much.
@Aavak so on common theme you seem to have in a lot of videos is not enough crew. something to keep in mind is every station has it's own set of crew you can hire. so if you clear out one station go to another and hire from there. Plus you can hire crew from ships that have come to the station to trade. This should greatly help your crew issues.
I can't believe I never thought about pointing an Ion Prism at itself, and that sounds awesome. My immediate thought is that right at the beginning of this video you can actually utilize this without any changes to the ship, the final two prisms that fire into the main prism pointing out the barrel are barely pointed down. If they pointed at each other, they could achieve the effect, and then when you want to fire the laser, would redirect almost instantly and lose minimal amounts of damage to empty space while aiming the weapons from each other towards a ship.
I have bad news for you if seeing this twisty, spiky, be-mandibled shape conjures the aspect of a phallus in your mind... ... you may in fact, be a duck. XD
Eyyyyyy just as a heads up Aavak, when in build mode and looking at the crew. You’ll see a number like 15/72 or something similar. That left number is current crew, and that right number is how many bunks you have crew for! So when you said it needed 34, it actually required a WHOPPING 78 crewman! Of which you had bunks for only 34! You can find the needed crew recommended by the game, by hovering over that bar.
I am extremely excited to see you attempt my idea. Also at 20:20 your motorized walkways leading to the right hand side shield has the space next to the shield going the opposite way as the rest of the walk way.
Aavak, you’ve inspired me to pick up this game, and only partially because of the mind melting of your “form over function” design philosophy… All jokes aside, love the content, look forward to more episodes of this and other series!
@@zarnox3071 Right, but the game mechanics allow as far as i could gather to consider a piece as one different ship, which can then be repaired or rebuilt using the full blueprint?
I built myself a small self making nuclear missile ship properly called the “nuclear chicken” it’s painted like a chicken and armed with 6 total nuke launchers. It is flawed with little armor covering the thruster cluster. It has shields to cover its front and launchers and armor around the uranium and iron storage. It’s slow at reloading so it’s more of a strike and move ship. Operated by 32 crew
This was a really well edited episode Aavak. Very nicely balanced between building and combat. The new missile ship is larger than I thought it was going to be, but it looks really awesome. Thanks as always for the great content Aavak!
So Aavak after hearing the idea with the ion prisms feeding into each other to "Charge" the beam I did some basic tests and I have good news and bad news. The good news is it does technically work, and creates a absolutely massive beam in terms of beam width if you feed 8 beams worth of energy into it. The bad news is when fired at a target the charged beam is about as effective as someone shooting a pea out of a straw and lasts a even shorter time. Same result with the ramming variety you mentioned. Seems the devs expected people to try it too, as there is a interesting reaction if you stop charging the prism assembly.
i really needed this video today, thanks a lot! i was really impressed by the fire ant's performance, especially in how the PD handled the swarm of missiles! that ship was a run killer for me, somehow even when i replaced my entire side with flak i just couldn't stop the missiles! thanks for making inspiring videos like this
Hey Avaak, regarding the bit about thrusters being more efficient the closer their line of thrust is to the center of mass, this is actually technically false, or at least it should be. As long as the thrusters on the left are balanced by the thrusters on the right, they will be equally efficient. That being said, the design is far too cool to give up, and if a starboard engine is destroyed or runs out of power, then yes you will see the inefficiencies come up. Source - mechanical engineer Love this series! Scratches my need for designing pew pew spaceships!
The missile knows where it is at all times. It knows this because it knows where it isn't. By subtracting where it is from where it isn't, or where it isn't from where it is (whichever is greater), it obtains a difference, or deviation. The guidance subsystem uses deviations to generate corrective commands to drive the missile from a position where it is to a position where it isn't, and arriving at a position where it wasn't, it now is. Consequently, the position where it is, is now the position that it wasn't, and it follows that the position that it was, is now the position that it isn't. In the event that the position that it is in is not the position that it wasn't, the system has acquired a variation, the variation being the difference between where the missile is, and where it wasn't. If variation is considered to be a significant factor, it too may be corrected by the GEA. However, the missile must also know where it was. The missile guidance computer scenario works as follows. Because a variation has modified some of the information the missile has obtained, it is not sure just where it is. However, it is sure where it isn't, within reason, and it knows where it was. It now subtracts where it should be from where it wasn't, or vice-versa, and by differentiating this from the algebraic sum of where it shouldn't be, and where it was, it is able to obtain the deviation and its variation, which is called error.
in the ship editor settings you can deactivate automatic door placement (so you don't have to remove them and then add them where you really want), it also helps to be more aware where the doors are for more efficient pathing
I think one useful way of making a Laser Trap would be akin to this: 1> ^ 2> --------------- < god i hope that formats correctly the arrows represent the prisms. You trap the laser in the bottom row, then when you want to fire, you rotate the one on the RIGHT into the the one on the left side, top row. That one is attached to an aiming prism in the middle. That way you have to move them very little to release that burst.
I've tried the crystal charging thing, and done some tests: you only get about 2 ticks of extra damage. The one potential advantage is that you don't have any charge up time, so if you think the lack of a spooling up time is worth the extra crystal. Also, it's quite micromanagy to get it to work in a way that actually puts that little bit of bonus damage anywhere close to on target.
This was a great episode - as another commenter stated, you struck a perfect balance between ship building and battling! And I'm also in love with this new Fire Ant design, it was a beautiful thing watching it work :D
Watching the fireant's PD work its magic was cool to watch. I really wanna see like a sandbox battle between the fireant and a missile boat just to watch how well it can defend against it when the enemy isn't being cored alive by the Scarab
IMO, as Fireant is already asymmetrical, move missile stockpiles to directly outside the missile batteries on the primary side, as instant reloading is the ship's number one priority in a battle.
The DPR2 could use some love, and maybe a few more armaments! I know it’s not supposed to see combat but with how far apart you have DPR1 and DPR3 from it they’ll be unable to rapidly respond to an errant pirate hoping to stuff its coffers! It already has the resources and facilities to manufacture ammunition, plus that gap down the center would be perfect for a railgun…
Can slightly tweak the crystal array? You have the fore targeting crystal which is fine. You have the central focusing crystal, which you need, but maybe could shift more to the fore. Then you may be able to have each beam directed at the focusing crystal to reduce your total crystals from 12 to 10.
Because the 25% reduction always applies to the strongest ion beam received by a crystal, “charging up” a beam between two crystals by aiming them at each other very quickly hits a limit where it can’t store any more energy, and it turns out to be worth only a very small amount of bonus damage, especially compared to the large penalties which result from ion emitters going offline and disrupting the 2:1 equal merge tree. Putting in an extra reactor or two to feed the emitters (you could just split that one central reactor into two like a dividing cell really easily) would have a much stronger effect compared to trying to strike a balance between charging up a crystal and running out of power and heavily nerfing the dps output instead of increasing it.
On the Ion beams I actually think it's the people telling you not to merge them that don't understand. Your setup is perfect Tree setup to optimize merging. As you already covered the narrow gap makes it a LOT easier to defend the ship because you don't have as much open space. All that said the most important thing though is the focus fire. If you have a bunch of beams it creates an inverted cone of fire which means the damage is spread out over a larger area on the enemy ship. Have a single beams puts all that power into a single spot which makes it a lot easier to drill through an enemy ship and get to those critical systems. You end up losing a lot of damage potential because you have to go through more of the ship to reach the important part, and you'd get less salvage because your destroying more of the enemy ship. DPS means nothing, Effective DPS to take out target faster is more important.
Trap prism may be placed in the middle, between the collecting prism and the "barrel", and as close to centerline as beam mechanic allows. THis way it is protected just like all other central prisms, and to redirect the beam from it and down the barrel should be as fast as it gets. Even worth testing, if there is a way to turn them on and off and send the beam right "over" it without physical turning.
You know, I have to pause the video to say this. You already mentioned a drinking game about calling your ships the wrong name before, but for several videos now I realized a better one! Take a drink every time Aavak says "thruster cluster". Seriously, I would be hospitalized by the end of the episode. XD Thruster cluster! Also, I feel really bad for those people living inside the thruster cluster. All they have is a room surrounded by engines. Not really the kind of career they imagined, I figure.
LOL, not considering to hire them I had to be a system renowned space captain. They likely imagined a life of swashbuckling and adventure... instead, they sleep under an engine XD
If you "beat" this run of the game (not sure if there is an exact ending) or get tired, may I recommend the Steam Workshop, it already has a good chunk of mods, and ships too.
After watching how much the Hercules grew, got me wondering if a massive capital ship was a way you could play this game. But watching the Fire Ant grow into a missile cruiser larger than the Scarab has been real fun. Can't wait to see what blows up next. XD
A beautiful ship! Albeit the name seams a tad inaccurate now. I love the isolated sub structure idea, and am excited to see the experiments with them continue.
I like the idea of a railgun flanked by big ass lasers. definitely appeals to my sense of coolness. and you go from the 5.3 ion beams of power to something like 6.1 ion beams of power, albiet spread out.
It seems like the Fireant really would be best engaging with it's rear to the enemy (moving the shields there). It has very little thrust in any other direction and the missiles don't care too much about orientation. Having it face away would let the rear thrust easily boost you to your preferred range.
Eventually, it might make sense to offload the manufacturing process to what is essentially a space station, which only has shields and minimal menuevering thrusters, no offensive capabilities. Then a lighter to act as Fleet supply collier; heavy, fat, fast only in a straight line, point defence only, pure storage and minimum crew, A dedicated miner to supply the freighter that runs only to and from the station. Pretty soon you have a full economy going. Also, one point that I would like to see used more is the fact that its possible to push resource poor asteroids into position, encase them in scaffolding and trapped with four squares of armour, a single small cockpit, generator and 6 crew is enough to make a really big defended, hollow base with only minimal steel. This is essentially a shipyard, especially if parked near a friendly station in a very scary/high level solar system it makes a very good base. If you make a hook mechanism, you can link up such seperate bases mechanically to overcome the building size limits the game imposes on stations
A broadside missile cruiser is nice, but could've been a diagonal firward facing missile cruiser with walls of missile launchers at the sides pointing forward at 45° angle. That would both minimise the course correction (and travel time) for all missiles and also minimise the profile facing enemies. And since you don't need direct line of sight for missiles, you could stack as much missiles as you could fit.
I need more. I need rear facing fire-at-will pods extended behind so as to mitigate spin-hits. I need full blown broadside missiles. I need the fire ant to be a nest of angry Bee's! That thing has so much potential to be your dps and the scarab being the tank.
You could expand the Hercules again, or you could make a sister mining/factory ship. Alternatively, you could just save and buy a second Hercules and have a twin. I think Atlas would be an awesome name to keep with the beetle and Greek mythology combination!
So some thoughts now that I actually watched the whole thing: I agree that more missiles look like what missile ships need, which might have explained a great deal of the Missile Fire Ant's first problems. You just need a certain weight of fire to do meaningful damage? Also, not sure how practical this is, but if you want to save space and power on your warships, can you make a brain ship? A ship that has a ton of bridges to give command points to make the other ships run? I'm not even sure if command points are a fleet wide resource, or if I'm misinterpreting what I'm seeing during the videos. Anyways, this is fun to see you play! It'd be cool to see proper strikecraft return at some point, maybe armed with heavy blasters or cannons as they make dives on the enemies, while your capital ships stay at range.
I know you addressed the rule of cool, and why you have your beams set up as so on the Scarab, as well as hinted that you have a future plan in store for that, but based on how the scarab looks atm, rather then losing all that power with the merging beams, I think it would look pretty nice (and be more efficient) if you were to have each side you your current beam set-up fire out the side you your ship over towards your thruster clusters where you then have a prism that aims the beams either back near the front of your ship for final aiming, or just have them fire from the thruster clusters directly although some range would be lost by this. I think doing this though would allow for better protection of the beams since you wouldn't have a front facing thermal port (so to speak). biggest thing you'd have to worry about then is your aiming crystals, but I'm sure you could figure out how you'd want to protect them. Just my 2 cents.
An excellent balance of build and gameplay. Explaining the plan first and then cutting away works fantastically. Questions though: did you unangle the flight direction? What about hyperdrives for the fire ant?
For the prism beam loop, my worries are how to stop the loop without wasting the stored power, either hitting your own ship or shooting nothing while the prism rotates. Maybe you can set up two prism at the front side to side, one at the back. One of the front prisms is set up as turret. The other aims to the back one, which aims back at it to make the loop. When you want to fire, you tell the back prism to target the other front one, the one in turret mode. While the back prism rotates, it will still hit the looping prism, keeping the loop working until it hits the turret one which will redirect it to the enemy. If there is a gap between the prisms and the beam goes momentarily between the two prisms, maybe locating the turret prism a bit forward and behind the loopìng prism fixes that.
i think it The fire-ant more reverse thrust to help it hold along side,or maybe come up on one side then circle behind the targat and come along side on the other side
I really like that self contained thruster design. I think I'm going to try it out on my ship... though that's mainly because my current ships top speed is 32... it takes a while to get across the system.
I had a thought, if you point two crystals at each other to gain a charge instead of aiming directly at an enemy, if you aim at a discharge crystal (out put crystal). This way the out put would go exactly where you want it, in theory, and the discharge path can be very close to the main path.
Those point defense could be doing more harm than you realize, Aavak. Say, for example, you're in a fight and your crew fills the power on the important systems, they're then going to start moving power to a point defense. During that entire back/forth trip, they aren't re-checking the important systems. So if it takes too long to refill a point defense, your important systems could be getting starved for power.
@@surgonan Do you mean the role job priorities or when you tell a bunk they can only work in certain places? Either way, for anyone who's able to do the power job on the PD, the instant they've finished all other higher priority tasks they're gonna run off and be tied up doing the PD task for some time. If they're also meant to sustain a shield or something important that could be an issue. It may be set up to for it to not be an issue but may also be like the OP said - more impactful than apparent. Do you know which is the case?
Wondering if you could run a test of the fireant at way less crew? Like 30-40? I don't think any of the engines will reach even half of the crew requirements most of the time, nor will the launchers. How about a design that can run one side at a time as a max?
There is a much more efficient way you can setup the crystals for your ion beams Move the center crystal down by one tile, and then make a sort of stair steps pattern with the rest of the crystals, all pointing towards the center crystal. That way the ion beams will go through fewer crystals to get to the center beam, and you can get more damage output from it. Also, it requires one less crystal per side so Its cheaper
It may work best to put your capture prisms back in the beam chamber, so your targeting prism out front can stay "on target." Have the capture prisms dump their energy into the aiming prism, which is not part of the capture array, I mean.
Specifically, your last two collimating prisms are perfectly arranged right now to be a capture pair that then redirects into the aiming beam prism(s).
A thought I had based on the various Ion beam things you said at the beginning of the episode: What if you did have multiple outlets for your ion beams, but it was designed to take advantage of a resonance chamber? What I'm picturing is that you have a set of crystals pointing at each other, but if you moved one slightly in a direction it would then shoot into a pre-aimed output in a given direction. I think that would allow you to use the supercharged beam quickly, thus effectively negating any losses via stored power and not sacrificing defense. Is anyone catching my drift?
Maybe the fire ant should be renamed "Army ant", as it sends out swarms of tiny things to devour all in its path? (At least until proper drone modules are added)
So. One of the big advantages to indirect fire weapons, (like missiles) Is that you don't have to present a wide part of your ship to be able to hit with many weapon positions. The reason for fighting with your broadside toward the enemy is to let as many guns as possible hit your opponent at once. Put cannons and/or lasers on one side, missiles on the other.
the biggest problem with ion buzzsaws (where you charge forward with two ion prisms pointed towards eachother) is that the initial damage is high, but once the beam gets interrupted, it just becomes two ion beams melting from either side, so you lose a lot of the damage almost immediately.
Nice missile ship! Worked well, though TBH I reckon that other one at the end would've been a lot lot tougher if it just had a sensor so it could fire back from the start. I'm interested to know, what do you think of the idea of testing modules individually in a creative save? - Can use auto-fire to check how sustainable stuff is like engines, launchers etc - Focusing on a single thing will make it easy to optimize it and see issues e.g - That small reactor will only power those 3 huge thrusters for 80 seconds at best, less if firing other thrusters too - engine room buffed engines use 50% more power - it only says on the stats screen, not description - After first 3 shots launchers really benefit from ammo as close as possible (like right beside them) - that and the crew available to reload them determines their usefulness after the 1st strike - factories right beside launchers may actually be better for long fights (less carrying work (porter is it?:)) Anyway, cool design, worked great! I personally like when you do things really well, form and function, and I think if you purposely tested stuff under artificial stress (creative) it'd help that a lot. Dunno if it's your style or if you've tried it, but I'm interested in what you think. GL!
I think I would look at if it would be possible to have a Launcher/Storage/Launcher setup ... that way your people are only having to go a short distance to get the ammo needed ... other than that (and possibly downgrading an engine or two) I would say a truly functional design ... looking forward to the next upload
Considering that you have three Stages of combining two Beams together, you habe much less output. 8×0.75^3=3.375 Meaning your Output is just under 50% of the starting Output.
Love your videos btw And there is a full on detailed guide on beams and how to.. etc for people who try to be smart in your comment section :p But in a short way do whatever you like that's what's great about Cosmoteer If you wanna be efficient it is a 2 in 1 ratio which means at 2 emitters you wanna have 3 prisms, at 4 emitters 7, 6 won't work ^^, at 8 emitters 15 prisms and so on. Greetings from Germany! :)
A video I saw showed a similar design but used 2 beams both with 8 lasers, interesting that you both stopped at the same place :) I will say his ship used a lot of specifically assigned crew to make it good. Though I sure would have liked to see more combat. I saw another ship that used a railgun setup with a LONG railgun, enough for a 200% boosted damage, which they claim made the weapon do 30,000 damage, I do wish it fired faster and maybe that is an alignment speed issue or a crew limit to get the rails filled with batteries, not sure really, but it did nice through the ship/station type damage :) OK, it did not go through the station to be fair but it could shoot from outside base range and was in good shape when done.
If you are le tired from spending an hour and a half painting your missile ship, then you can take a nap... THEN FIRE Z MISSILES!
Bout that time eh chaps? right-o.
Aavak, the prism had no effect on the super shield. It's at the same angle it was at with the forward protruding armor before and after. o.O
That sounds like hell. Why do you do this to yourself? Oh wait... CONTENT
California has broken off from the continental US and is haning out with Hawaii. Alaska can come, too.
I love the idea of a missile carrier. I like the idea of a ship dedicated to the roll of shooting missiles. Just like you have a dedicated laser ship and a dedicated cargo/supply ship.
Edit: I think it'd be great to have the name be "Fire Ant Major" or "Fire Ant Soldier" to both reflect its role and its new bulk.
4:36 It actually has a name, they're called a fleet coiller, or just a munitions ship. Historically important in the age of sail/steamships
Aha, thank you! I should have remembered this as that's what they're called in Aurora 4X too XD
Fleet OILER..... although your mis-spelling is rather appropriate for Cosmoteer as keeping coils to repair damaged components can be vital!
@@Debbiebabe69 nope, I'm talking about ships that carried coal, not oil or fuel. Hence collier
@@jeandelaloza4317 Well, you did call it a Coiler not Collier, so easy mistake to make on both sides I guess!
@@Tilion462 lol true enough
I can only imagine that this episode was difficult to balance. If you want an opinion on how you managed to balance building and action, i think you nailed it. this was super fun to watch. for me at leastthis was the right mix of the design process and some gameplay. thanks aavak
Cheers, I /really/ appreciate the feedback!
@@Aavak I feel the fire ant needs a new name because it got so big I suggest the Centipede because it is long
I love the ship design. It resembles another very strong shape. This other shape may also shoot what could be considered missiles.... I have the mind of a 13 year old. Carry on.
the thrusters seem to be a glaring weak point
Yer i See the Same i think it needs a New Name fire ant doesent fit anymore
The best Part is the top frusters
yes the strongest shape of them all
i try so hard to ignore it... ahhhhhh
I see the Fireant was equipped with stealth hyperdrives, one minute they're not in the design, another - they appear ;)
29:40 The mightiest shape. (Sorry for taking your mind there of all places)
I was thinking, I didn't want to be crude but the Fire Ant is certainly reminiscent of a particular shape, haha
God, that last battle gave me such a The Expanse feel with all the PDC firing at the missiles. Awesome!
It may be too late at this point but I REALLY REALLY like the idea of a laser guillotine with tractor beams pulling ships into it!!!
Looks like the Fire Ant grew up into an Ant Lion!
at least a queen ant, but if this goes on, it might become the whole hive
Thinking of the missile boat as an Any Colony, and all the missiles it fires as the Ants, is honestly a really cool idea
I like "Firefly". For a whole list of reasons. Nice episode. Keep 'em coming. Out of all the Cosmoteer content right now, I consider yours to be the very tip top!
Wouldn't that be switching teams?
@@Woffenhorst autobalance
A good name for a munitions ship could be Belostoma, which is a giant water bug that carry their eggs on their back, almost like 'ammunition'
@Aavak you can CTRL group your weapons (they control groups only exist for that ship so you can set them up for each ship if you want) so then you can turn off your EMP missile launchers so you're not using EMPs when you only want damage out of the Fire Ant
Also having EMP and HE in different groups lets you set different targets.
e.g EMP on engines or something, HE on some unshielded weapons that EMP doesn't effect much.
@Aavak so on common theme you seem to have in a lot of videos is not enough crew. something to keep in mind is every station has it's own set of crew you can hire. so if you clear out one station go to another and hire from there. Plus you can hire crew from ships that have come to the station to trade. This should greatly help your crew issues.
I can't believe I never thought about pointing an Ion Prism at itself, and that sounds awesome. My immediate thought is that right at the beginning of this video you can actually utilize this without any changes to the ship, the final two prisms that fire into the main prism pointing out the barrel are barely pointed down. If they pointed at each other, they could achieve the effect, and then when you want to fire the laser, would redirect almost instantly and lose minimal amounts of damage to empty space while aiming the weapons from each other towards a ship.
Avaak made a very phalic ship, complete with nads.
I have bad news for you if seeing this twisty, spiky, be-mandibled shape conjures the aspect of a phallus in your mind...
... you may in fact, be a duck. XD
@@Aavak I might be a myopic duck😄, but take a look at the green miniature picture, and you might see what I see.
@@Aavak 🦆
Very impressive! Really cool dynamic. Now the Fire Ant can actually damage enemy ships.
Eyyyyyy just as a heads up Aavak, when in build mode and looking at the crew. You’ll see a number like 15/72 or something similar. That left number is current crew, and that right number is how many bunks you have crew for! So when you said it needed 34, it actually required a WHOPPING 78 crewman! Of which you had bunks for only 34! You can find the needed crew recommended by the game, by hovering over that bar.
from my experience with the game. that isnt a great indicator
it display the ABSOLUTE minimum IF you have HORRENDOUSLY BAD crew management
I am extremely excited to see you attempt my idea.
Also at 20:20 your motorized walkways leading to the right hand side shield has the space next to the shield going the opposite way as the rest of the walk way.
God I love those Enterprise style thrusters for the DPR3, I don’t care how stupid they are lmao
You get a like just for that thumbnail. Well played, sir. Well played.
Aavak, you’ve inspired me to pick up this game, and only partially because of the mind melting of your “form over function” design philosophy…
All jokes aside, love the content, look forward to more episodes of this and other series!
I somehow like the ideea of making these independent ship parts growing into the full blown ship whenever they get separated from the main body..
However, without their own control rooms, they won't be of much use if they get disconnected.
@@zarnox3071 Right, but the game mechanics allow as far as i could gather to consider a piece as one different ship, which can then be repaired or rebuilt using the full blueprint?
Captain! I have a good news and a bad news. The good news is we destroyed the Mothership. The bad news is we are facing a fleet.
I built myself a small self making nuclear missile ship properly called the “nuclear chicken” it’s painted like a chicken and armed with 6 total nuke launchers. It is flawed with little armor covering the thruster cluster. It has shields to cover its front and launchers and armor around the uranium and iron storage. It’s slow at reloading so it’s more of a strike and move ship. Operated by 32 crew
This was a really well edited episode Aavak. Very nicely balanced between building and combat.
The new missile ship is larger than I thought it was going to be, but it looks really awesome.
Thanks as always for the great content Aavak!
So Aavak after hearing the idea with the ion prisms feeding into each other to "Charge" the beam I did some basic tests and I have good news and bad news. The good news is it does technically work, and creates a absolutely massive beam in terms of beam width if you feed 8 beams worth of energy into it. The bad news is when fired at a target the charged beam is about as effective as someone shooting a pea out of a straw and lasts a even shorter time. Same result with the ramming variety you mentioned.
Seems the devs expected people to try it too, as there is a interesting reaction if you stop charging the prism assembly.
i really needed this video today, thanks a lot! i was really impressed by the fire ant's performance, especially in how the PD handled the swarm of missiles! that ship was a run killer for me, somehow even when i replaced my entire side with flak i just couldn't stop the missiles! thanks for making inspiring videos like this
Hey Avaak, regarding the bit about thrusters being more efficient the closer their line of thrust is to the center of mass, this is actually technically false, or at least it should be. As long as the thrusters on the left are balanced by the thrusters on the right, they will be equally efficient. That being said, the design is far too cool to give up, and if a starboard engine is destroyed or runs out of power, then yes you will see the inefficiencies come up.
Source - mechanical engineer
Love this series! Scratches my need for designing pew pew spaceships!
Yes! Get to watch some Avaak before tree clearing an hurricane prep. Cheers from the Sunshine State!
7:48 RAILGUN TIME!!!!!!!!!! I feel useful now for suggesting it a few episodes back. :)
I like how the fireant just does a sick drift to get into position before barraging the enemy with missiles
I love me some complex detached nacelles, Aavak. Probably my favorite ship of the series based on that alone.
The missile knows where it is at all times. It knows this because it knows where it isn't. By subtracting where it is from where it isn't, or where it isn't from where it is (whichever is greater), it obtains a difference, or deviation. The guidance subsystem uses deviations to generate corrective commands to drive the missile from a position where it is to a position where it isn't, and arriving at a position where it wasn't, it now is. Consequently, the position where it is, is now the position that it wasn't, and it follows that the position that it was, is now the position that it isn't.
In the event that the position that it is in is not the position that it wasn't, the system has acquired a variation, the variation being the difference between where the missile is, and where it wasn't. If variation is considered to be a significant factor, it too may be corrected by the GEA. However, the missile must also know where it was.
The missile guidance computer scenario works as follows. Because a variation has modified some of the information the missile has obtained, it is not sure just where it is. However, it is sure where it isn't, within reason, and it knows where it was. It now subtracts where it should be from where it wasn't, or vice-versa, and by differentiating this from the algebraic sum of where it shouldn't be, and where it was, it is able to obtain the deviation and its variation, which is called error.
I could listen to Aavak say 'thruster cluster' on loop all the time... x
in the ship editor settings you can deactivate automatic door placement (so you don't have to remove them and then add them where you really want), it also helps to be more aware where the doors are for more efficient pathing
Good grief, the Fire Ant turned into the whole damn colony, impressive
I think one useful way of making a Laser Trap would be akin to this:
1> ^
2> --------------- <
god i hope that formats correctly
the arrows represent the prisms. You trap the laser in the bottom row, then when you want to fire, you rotate the one on the RIGHT into the the one on the left side, top row. That one is attached to an aiming prism in the middle. That way you have to move them very little to release that burst.
That makes perfect sense, thanks for the suggestion!
I've tried the crystal charging thing, and done some tests: you only get about 2 ticks of extra damage. The one potential advantage is that you don't have any charge up time, so if you think the lack of a spooling up time is worth the extra crystal. Also, it's quite micromanagy to get it to work in a way that actually puts that little bit of bonus damage anywhere close to on target.
Keep up the good work
Always nice to see a cosmoteer vid
This was a great episode - as another commenter stated, you struck a perfect balance between ship building and battling! And I'm also in love with this new Fire Ant design, it was a beautiful thing watching it work :D
Colour me impressed! Two thumbs up! Great video. Thanks!
Watching the fireant's PD work its magic was cool to watch. I really wanna see like a sandbox battle between the fireant and a missile boat just to watch how well it can defend against it when the enemy isn't being cored alive by the Scarab
The Fire Ant went from being the Ant to being the whole colony sending swarms out
This is an awesome mental image XD
St. Algrothmus: Hey everyone on the interwebs... come see this one!
A scholar and a gentleman you are!
IMO, as Fireant is already asymmetrical, move missile stockpiles to directly outside the missile batteries on the primary side, as instant reloading is the ship's number one priority in a battle.
The DPR2 could use some love, and maybe a few more armaments! I know it’s not supposed to see combat but with how far apart you have DPR1 and DPR3 from it they’ll be unable to rapidly respond to an errant pirate hoping to stuff its coffers! It already has the resources and facilities to manufacture ammunition, plus that gap down the center would be perfect for a railgun…
Can slightly tweak the crystal array? You have the fore targeting crystal which is fine. You have the central focusing crystal, which you need, but maybe could shift more to the fore. Then you may be able to have each beam directed at the focusing crystal to reduce your total crystals from 12 to 10.
3:00 btw you could just add another reactor where one of the sensors is for now
8:00 heh... railgun moment
9:35 so auxiliary for the auxiliary
It's fascinating watching you update the comment in real time XD
Because the 25% reduction always applies to the strongest ion beam received by a crystal, “charging up” a beam between two crystals by aiming them at each other very quickly hits a limit where it can’t store any more energy, and it turns out to be worth only a very small amount of bonus damage, especially compared to the large penalties which result from ion emitters going offline and disrupting the 2:1 equal merge tree. Putting in an extra reactor or two to feed the emitters (you could just split that one central reactor into two like a dividing cell really easily) would have a much stronger effect compared to trying to strike a balance between charging up a crystal and running out of power and heavily nerfing the dps output instead of increasing it.
On the Ion beams I actually think it's the people telling you not to merge them that don't understand. Your setup is perfect Tree setup to optimize merging. As you already covered the narrow gap makes it a LOT easier to defend the ship because you don't have as much open space.
All that said the most important thing though is the focus fire. If you have a bunch of beams it creates an inverted cone of fire which means the damage is spread out over a larger area on the enemy ship. Have a single beams puts all that power into a single spot which makes it a lot easier to drill through an enemy ship and get to those critical systems. You end up losing a lot of damage potential because you have to go through more of the ship to reach the important part, and you'd get less salvage because your destroying more of the enemy ship.
DPS means nothing, Effective DPS to take out target faster is more important.
Trap prism may be placed in the middle, between the collecting prism and the "barrel", and as close to centerline as beam mechanic allows. THis way it is protected just like all other central prisms, and to redirect the beam from it and down the barrel should be as fast as it gets.
Even worth testing, if there is a way to turn them on and off and send the beam right "over" it without physical turning.
Imagining the Fire Ant evolving nukes is delightful.
feeding the ion beams around the edges of the ship to make angry red laser armour sounds hilarious though but angry web spitting also cool.
You know, I have to pause the video to say this. You already mentioned a drinking game about calling your ships the wrong name before, but for several videos now I realized a better one!
Take a drink every time Aavak says "thruster cluster". Seriously, I would be hospitalized by the end of the episode. XD
Thruster cluster!
Also, I feel really bad for those people living inside the thruster cluster. All they have is a room surrounded by engines. Not really the kind of career they imagined, I figure.
LOL, not considering to hire them I had to be a system renowned space captain. They likely imagined a life of swashbuckling and adventure... instead, they sleep under an engine XD
@@Aavak At least it's dry and warm, and as long as you hear humming, you know you are safe. It's when the engine falls silent you need to worry.
From the Fire Ant to a Hornet's Nest. I like it.
If you "beat" this run of the game (not sure if there is an exact ending) or get tired, may I recommend the Steam Workshop, it already has a good chunk of mods, and ships too.
After watching how much the Hercules grew, got me wondering if a massive capital ship was a way you could play this game. But watching the Fire Ant grow into a missile cruiser larger than the Scarab has been real fun. Can't wait to see what blows up next. XD
A beautiful ship! Albeit the name seams a tad inaccurate now. I love the isolated sub structure idea, and am excited to see the experiments with them continue.
I like the idea of a railgun flanked by big ass lasers. definitely appeals to my sense of coolness. and you go from the 5.3 ion beams of power to something like 6.1 ion beams of power, albiet spread out.
It seems like the Fireant really would be best engaging with it's rear to the enemy (moving the shields there). It has very little thrust in any other direction and the missiles don't care too much about orientation. Having it face away would let the rear thrust easily boost you to your preferred range.
Eventually, it might make sense to offload the manufacturing process to what is essentially a space station, which only has shields and minimal menuevering thrusters, no offensive capabilities.
Then a lighter to act as Fleet supply collier; heavy, fat, fast only in a straight line, point defence only, pure storage and minimum crew,
A dedicated miner to supply the freighter that runs only to and from the station.
Pretty soon you have a full economy going.
Also, one point that I would like to see used more is the fact that its possible to push resource poor asteroids into position, encase them in scaffolding and trapped with four squares of armour, a single small cockpit, generator and 6 crew is enough to make a really big defended, hollow base with only minimal steel. This is essentially a shipyard, especially if parked near a friendly station in a very scary/high level solar system it makes a very good base. If you make a hook mechanism, you can link up such seperate bases mechanically to overcome the building size limits the game imposes on stations
16:28 I belive my reaction was "IT'S THAT ONE STAR WARS SHIP FROM EPISODE ONE POG"
A broadside missile cruiser is nice, but could've been a diagonal firward facing missile cruiser with walls of missile launchers at the sides pointing forward at 45° angle. That would both minimise the course correction (and travel time) for all missiles and also minimise the profile facing enemies.
And since you don't need direct line of sight for missiles, you could stack as much missiles as you could fit.
An idea about the ion beam loop is to use a throw away prism attached with an explosive charge and detonate it to release the charge
Just started playing this game and I'm finding yout videos very helpful. Thank you for making them.
I need more.
I need rear facing fire-at-will pods extended behind so as to mitigate spin-hits.
I need full blown broadside missiles.
I need the fire ant to be a nest of angry Bee's!
That thing has so much potential to be your dps and the scarab being the tank.
Hi Aavak have u notice the new ''build a new ship from scratch'' button? Upper left corner. Love the series!
You could expand the Hercules again, or you could make a sister mining/factory ship. Alternatively, you could just save and buy a second Hercules and have a twin.
I think Atlas would be an awesome name to keep with the beetle and Greek mythology combination!
So some thoughts now that I actually watched the whole thing: I agree that more missiles look like what missile ships need, which might have explained a great deal of the Missile Fire Ant's first problems. You just need a certain weight of fire to do meaningful damage?
Also, not sure how practical this is, but if you want to save space and power on your warships, can you make a brain ship? A ship that has a ton of bridges to give command points to make the other ships run? I'm not even sure if command points are a fleet wide resource, or if I'm misinterpreting what I'm seeing during the videos. Anyways, this is fun to see you play! It'd be cool to see proper strikecraft return at some point, maybe armed with heavy blasters or cannons as they make dives on the enemies, while your capital ships stay at range.
I know you addressed the rule of cool, and why you have your beams set up as so on the Scarab, as well as hinted that you have a future plan in store for that, but based on how the scarab looks atm, rather then losing all that power with the merging beams, I think it would look pretty nice (and be more efficient) if you were to have each side you your current beam set-up fire out the side you your ship over towards your thruster clusters where you then have a prism that aims the beams either back near the front of your ship for final aiming, or just have them fire from the thruster clusters directly although some range would be lost by this. I think doing this though would allow for better protection of the beams since you wouldn't have a front facing thermal port (so to speak). biggest thing you'd have to worry about then is your aiming crystals, but I'm sure you could figure out how you'd want to protect them. Just my 2 cents.
Something this game needs; anti-missile missiles. That'd be fun to see.
An excellent balance of build and gameplay. Explaining the plan first and then cutting away works fantastically.
Questions though: did you unangle the flight direction?
What about hyperdrives for the fire ant?
For the prism beam loop, my worries are how to stop the loop without wasting the stored power, either hitting your own ship or shooting nothing while the prism rotates.
Maybe you can set up two prism at the front side to side, one at the back. One of the front prisms is set up as turret. The other aims to the back one, which aims back at it to make the loop.
When you want to fire, you tell the back prism to target the other front one, the one in turret mode. While the back prism rotates, it will still hit the looping prism, keeping the loop working until it hits the turret one which will redirect it to the enemy.
If there is a gap between the prisms and the beam goes momentarily between the two prisms, maybe locating the turret prism a bit forward and behind the loopìng prism fixes that.
Aavak: The Fire Ant...has grown rather long!
Me: Stop bragging, giggity😜
i think it The fire-ant more reverse thrust to help it hold along side,or maybe come up on one side then circle behind the targat and come along side on the other side
I really like that self contained thruster design. I think I'm going to try it out on my ship... though that's mainly because my current ships top speed is 32... it takes a while to get across the system.
You should build a nother Hercules if you're having storage trouble.
I had a thought, if you point two crystals at each other to gain a charge instead of aiming directly at an enemy, if you aim at a discharge crystal (out put crystal). This way the out put would go exactly where you want it, in theory, and the discharge path can be very close to the main path.
Those point defense could be doing more harm than you realize, Aavak.
Say, for example, you're in a fight and your crew fills the power on the important systems, they're then going to start moving power to a point defense. During that entire back/forth trip, they aren't re-checking the important systems. So if it takes too long to refill a point defense, your important systems could be getting starved for power.
That's why there is a priority system for refueling/charging and is independent from operating equipment
@@surgonan Yeah, but notice my example. Even with priority elsewhere, if they take too long on that job it could interfere with more important jobs.
@@surgonan Do you mean the role job priorities or when you tell a bunk they can only work in certain places?
Either way, for anyone who's able to do the power job on the PD, the instant they've finished all other higher priority tasks they're gonna run off and be tied up doing the PD task for some time. If they're also meant to sustain a shield or something important that could be an issue. It may be set up to for it to not be an issue but may also be like the OP said - more impactful than apparent. Do you know which is the case?
Wondering if you could run a test of the fireant at way less crew? Like 30-40? I don't think any of the engines will reach even half of the crew requirements most of the time, nor will the launchers. How about a design that can run one side at a time as a max?
If you could, I'd love to see sped up mining montages! I'd love to see the Hercules at work, even if sped up
There is a much more efficient way you can setup the crystals for your ion beams
Move the center crystal down by one tile, and then make a sort of stair steps pattern with the rest of the crystals, all pointing towards the center crystal. That way the ion beams will go through fewer crystals to get to the center beam, and you can get more damage output from it. Also, it requires one less crystal per side so Its cheaper
Fire Ant misses the scale… that is an Inferno Ant
It's not "strip mining" it's "clearing space for safe intergalactic travel", the environmentalists can't complain that way 😁
LMAO
It may work best to put your capture prisms back in the beam chamber, so your targeting prism out front can stay "on target." Have the capture prisms dump their energy into the aiming prism, which is not part of the capture array, I mean.
Specifically, your last two collimating prisms are perfectly arranged right now to be a capture pair that then redirects into the aiming beam prism(s).
22:08 don’t forget to change those crew movers to their correct orientation, some are facing the wrong way
A thought I had based on the various Ion beam things you said at the beginning of the episode: What if you did have multiple outlets for your ion beams, but it was designed to take advantage of a resonance chamber? What I'm picturing is that you have a set of crystals pointing at each other, but if you moved one slightly in a direction it would then shoot into a pre-aimed output in a given direction. I think that would allow you to use the supercharged beam quickly, thus effectively negating any losses via stored power and not sacrificing defense.
Is anyone catching my drift?
Maybe the fire ant should be renamed "Army ant", as it sends out swarms of tiny things to devour all in its path? (At least until proper drone modules are added)
Thank you I was really looking forward to this
You're more than welcome :)
So. One of the big advantages to indirect fire weapons, (like missiles) Is that you don't have to present a wide part of your ship to be able to hit with many weapon positions. The reason for fighting with your broadside toward the enemy is to let as many guns as possible hit your opponent at once. Put cannons and/or lasers on one side, missiles on the other.
I considered that, but then we'd just have to get even closer to engage.
@@Aavak presenting your broadside is nothing but a bad idea for a pure missile boat. Your making yourself a much bigger target with minimal advantage.
@@Aavak it wouldn't be hard to add forward defense with this setup. You'd want more side thrusters though.
the biggest problem with ion buzzsaws (where you charge forward with two ion prisms pointed towards eachother) is that the initial damage is high, but once the beam gets interrupted, it just becomes two ion beams melting from either side, so you lose a lot of the damage almost immediately.
"But I'm le tired"
Only og's will get it
We'll take a nap... ZEN FIRE ZE MISSLES
Nice missile ship! Worked well, though TBH I reckon that other one at the end would've been a lot lot tougher if it just had a sensor so it could fire back from the start.
I'm interested to know, what do you think of the idea of testing modules individually in a creative save?
- Can use auto-fire to check how sustainable stuff is like engines, launchers etc
- Focusing on a single thing will make it easy to optimize it and see issues
e.g
- That small reactor will only power those 3 huge thrusters for 80 seconds at best, less if firing other thrusters too
- engine room buffed engines use 50% more power - it only says on the stats screen, not description
- After first 3 shots launchers really benefit from ammo as close as possible (like right beside them)
- that and the crew available to reload them determines their usefulness after the 1st strike
- factories right beside launchers may actually be better for long fights (less carrying work (porter is it?:))
Anyway, cool design, worked great!
I personally like when you do things really well, form and function, and I think if you purposely tested stuff under artificial stress (creative) it'd help that a lot. Dunno if it's your style or if you've tried it, but I'm interested in what you think. GL!
How in one fell swoop the Fire Ant went from plucky fighter sidekick to making the Scarab its sidekick in terms of size.
The fire ant now has a VERY strong shape if you know what i mean
I love how the fighter has effectively become the cruiser :P, it's bigger then the scarab at this point, clearly it is the flag ship
I think I would look at if it would be possible to have a Launcher/Storage/Launcher setup ... that way your people are only having to go a short distance to get the ammo needed ... other than that (and possibly downgrading an engine or two) I would say a truly functional design ... looking forward to the next upload
got to love a good missile barrage 🚀
As I see, at this rate Hercules will need to be expanded at least double its size. Have fun.😁
Considering that you have three Stages of combining two Beams together, you habe much less output.
8×0.75^3=3.375
Meaning your Output is just under 50% of the starting Output.
Love your videos btw
And there is a full on detailed guide on beams and how to.. etc for people who try to be smart in your comment section :p
But in a short way do whatever you like that's what's great about Cosmoteer
If you wanna be efficient it is a 2 in 1 ratio which means at 2 emitters you wanna have 3 prisms, at 4 emitters 7, 6 won't work ^^, at 8 emitters 15 prisms and so on.
Greetings from Germany! :)
The backwards conveyors in the C&C section 😱
A video I saw showed a similar design but used 2 beams both with 8 lasers, interesting that you both stopped at the same place :) I will say his ship used a lot of specifically assigned crew to make it good. Though I sure would have liked to see more combat. I saw another ship that used a railgun setup with a LONG railgun, enough for a 200% boosted damage, which they claim made the weapon do 30,000 damage, I do wish it fired faster and maybe that is an alignment speed issue or a crew limit to get the rails filled with batteries, not sure really, but it did nice through the ship/station type damage :) OK, it did not go through the station to be fair but it could shoot from outside base range and was in good shape when done.