UNSF-Praeferox

Introducing the UNSF Praeferox class medium destroyer - a single player friendly, small yet well armed cap ship.

After updating my personal ship (the venerable and drunkenly named BUCK SWASHLER), with some fancy new blocks, one of my mates requested that I make it available to the public.

So here it is - 7.15 kt of heavily armed, compact, overcrowded-with-devices, yet reasonably cheap if you remove all the expensive bits, warship.

Requirements:

Level 20 (less if you create a more sensible version by removing the fixed weaponry and turrets in creative).

• Iron: 28210
• Silicon: 3780
• Cobalt: 2150
• Copper: 2080
• Sathium: 830
• Neodymium: 340
• Zacosium: 120
• Erestrum: 120
• Wood Planks: 80
• Plastic: 60
• Growing plot: 5[/list]
• [h1]About:[/h1]
• I designed the Praeferox as I imagined a smaller, long range warship would be designed - cramped corridors, lots of guns, little wasted space. Then, awesome new blocks appeared and I started wasting the space inside it to make it appear more lived in. It's still far less open than some of the city sized ships intimidating their way across the workshop.
• ►NOTE◄
• Despite the textures, it's all steel. I prefer spawning it as steel in SP and then upgrading as I gather more resources, which allows me to selectively (and cheaply) improve vulnerable bits, rather than increasing the mass of the vessel to that of a small moon with all combat armour. The ship is considerably more expensive with all combat armour.
• It's undergone constant upgrading and tinkering throughout version changes, including lots of dark muttering as new blocks prompted new revisions, and I finally like the way it looks with these new shapes.
• It has all the bits you'd need in a mobile base, including cargo storage, engineering, and shooty things. You can fit reasonably proportioned fighters or hovercraft in the hangar. It can also land on planets.
• There are at least 2 or 3 blocks between the cold vacuum and space and the majority of the ship's juicy internals, with more protecting fuel and other vulnerable items. Sometimes. Generally. Protection from the bridge is sketchy. You can pilot from the CIC though... or any of the bedrooms if you get lost!
• [h1]Can it PVP?[/h1]
• SURE CAN. Just needs some adjustments:
• [olist]
• Spawn the ship in creative, and replace at least the outer layer of blocks with combat armour, or use the console to replace the lot in one go. Fare thee well, textures.
• Delete all superfluous rooms, especially the toilets. Real PVP'ers NEVER poop.
• In fact, delete all the internal rooms.
• Put everything in the middle of the ship's now exposed internal cavity. Separate fuel tanks and other particular explodey bits if you're feeling particulary saucy.
• Sheathe the core with around 8 blocks of combat armour.
• With the exception of a single access corridor, fill the remaining space with blocks.
• Once done, leave the ship. The exterior needs work too.
• Approach the prow. Add 5 or ten blocks to the front, then plant 10 or eleven blocks straight up.
• And down.
• And left and right.
• Make them into a wall.
• Do the same everywhere else.
• PUT ALL THE THRUSTERS INSIDE.
• Garnish your cube with as many turrets as can fit on the surface. Profit. [/olist]
• Hope you enjoy it. If you're having performance issues, my esteemed colleagues advise me that removing some of the (apparently excessive) lighting from inside the ship seems to help. A lot.
• [h1]STORY TIME![/h1]
• [i]The United Nations Space Force was losing the Great Solar War.
• With the loss of key supercapital ships, fleet power had been decimated, and hastily commissioned replacements were years away from completion.
• Desperate to plug the holes in their defensive lines, UNSF fleet command requested tenders for a small, cheap, and (quietly) expendable destroyer class capital ship, with the key performance variables being that it was fast, moderately well-armed, and easy to reproduce - all other aspects were to be considered secondary. It wasn't required to sustain itself through protracted engagements, as fleet supply lines were stretched so thin that protracted engagements couldn't be sustained anyway.
• Fleet needed these ships on the front line in an entirely unreasonable six months. Few companies were willing to commit to such a tight development timeframe.
• Though there were some submissions from high profile corporations, a small, hitherto unknown company called CoreTech won the contract.
• Unbeknown to the UNSF, CoreTech had been quietly working on the design of a compact warship for years, but lacked the capital to produce a prototype. The design already complete, assembly began immediately, though compromises were made on some of the more advanced design elements.
• Less than two months after securing the bid, the first Praeferox class destroyers rolled off the CoreTech assembly lines and were presented to an immensely skeptical fleet command.
• Initially, the Preaferox, or "Fox" as it later came to be known, was assigned as an armed escort vessel, designed to operate in packs of 2 to 5 ships, protecting friendly supply craft or vulnerable capital ships. Though a low unsupported range and lack of serious firepower hampered their overall effectiveness, the soundness of the design proved more than capable of making up for the shortcomings of its technology.