Stupid Fat Fingers

  Colonial Authority Frontier   Introduction This was one of those builds that just came together. I was itching to build that evening and I had some thoughts about how the "white space" of a ship is just as powerful as filling in the empty places with habs or structural pieces.  The head canon came because I had just finished to first few missions of the Vanguard questline and decided that I wanted to mount the Obliterators. I don't usually fall back on them, but this character is rather high level and I've used plenty of other weapon combinations. As I was talking to Vae Victis, it struck me and not for the first time, that he is criminal mastermind material left to rot as a glorified Mission terminal. Well, one thing led to another and the head canon was created. I figure, if Bethesda is going to create a multiverse of identical universes, it's up to us to throw in the variety.   Head Canon/Lore In one of the infinite universes that make up the multiverse, Vae

  Trade Authority Caiman   Introduction WARNING :  This ship uses extensive merging techniques to combine the Reactor, Fuel and Grav Drive together. The Engines are also merged together. Rather than try to explain each step, please visit Crimson Flyboy's  tutorial video on merging . I used Flip and Drop Merging technique on this build . The Trade Authority Caiman just started out as an experiment to see just how far I was willing to take the whole merging thing. I really didn't have a story for it. I made it, flew it around a bit, and went back to the Dependable, which is featured both as another entry on my blog and a Crimson Flyboy video. For literal months it just sat there in the character's roster of ships until I was scrolling through them one day and noticed that the Caiman and the Greenback had similar color schemes. As often happens, I started thinking about how they would work together and the connections became pretty obvious. The Caiman is very much an escort/

  Trade Authority Greenback Introduction The Trade Authority Greenback is the product of a Starfield Anonymous Discord Build-Off challenge. Crimson Flyboy challenged the community to build a Trade Authority vessel and the Greenback was my submission.   Head Canon/Lore The Trade Authority has always experimented with ships customized to suit their particular needs. A recent addition was a contract for a dozen ships that could move a large amount of cargo, to include delicate parcels. A sub-contract with Gal-bank necessitated the ability to encrypt data, so a Computer Room was included in the plans. Finally, the Trade Authority sometimes deals in materials of questionable legality. Counter-scanning measures with incorporated into the design schematics. This new class of vessel is known as the Greenback, after the period slang for the currency of the defunct United States of America, back on Earth. Each vessel was painted in the Trade Authority Green, Yellow, and Gray palette, reinforcing

  Copinger   Introduction We recently lost one of our members of the Starfield Anonymous Discord. Before his passing, he posted a Build-Off challenge to make ships based on the Expanse TV series. This prompted me to watch the Expanse and I can totally see why he wanted to build around this incredible series. This build uses Ballistics and Missiles only. The missiles are ideal for stripping shields and the ballistics are used to finish off the enemy. This wasn't built with fully developed in-game lore. I designed it to be a smuggler ship but haven't really developed any sort of cast of characters. I didn't know what to name it, so I looked up famous smugglers and came across a British character known as Cruel Copinger. Thus the ship got its name.   Components   (2x) 500 He3 Tank (4x) Hope 6 Landing Gear, 2 Fore/2 Mid (2x) Accu-Lander 11 Landing Gear Stroud-Eklund All-in-One Berth A 2x1 NG-6 Landing Bay (3) Supernova 2100 Engines Theta Pinch D9 Reactor (4x) Jishaku Nd RF Rapi

  Dependable-class Introduction Here is the Dependable-class. She was once the pride of the, now defunct, Deimos Commercial Fleet. Luckily, HopeTech purchased that division from Deimos and there is a lot of cross-compatibility. The Dependable-class is designed to hall freight as well as 2nd and 3rd class passengers  in berths that run underneath the fuel and power systems.  This particular Dependable-class, known as the Constant is one of the oldest examples of this model. It is run down, tired, and held together as much by faith as anything. It has a pretty limited jump range, but its power systems are so old that it has to divert power from weapons in order to jump. This is, in part, due to recent upgrades to the weapons and shield systems. For defense, the Constant is armed with two Disruptor 3320 Neutron Turrets and a Warden SG-100 Shield Generator. The old Nova engines have recently been supplemented with SA-4110 engines from Slayton Aerospace. The extra engine power provides enou

The Dependable Custom Habs Tour The short video below is just to show off the new blank Habitat modules that can be decorated. The Dependable is a tramp freighter that takes on 2nd and 3rd class passengers, as well as cargo. The video clip only shows the scale of the vessel and the interior Habs that are custom.  I was unable to get the video small enough to publish directly to the blog, but instead had to publish it to YouTube. It will not appear in searches and can only be accessed by the Link:  https://youtu.be/x5fg8jj23N4 I did not narrate the video. It starts out at the front of the vessel and continues down the middle section, around the back and into the Landing Bay. The first thing you see is a passenger check-in. From there, it shows off the 2nd class staterooms, 3rd class bunkrooms, and Infirmary before heading up to the second floor. There you can see the common Mess Hall before the video ends. All of the Habs above the second floor are standard, pre-decorated Habs. A full b

  XVB-12 Vertibird   Introduction WARNING :  This ship uses extensive merging techniques to combine the Reactor, Fuel, Grav Drive, Shield, and Docker together. Rather than try to explain each step, please visit Crimson Flyboy's  tutorial video on merging . I used the drop merging technique on those pieces . Just for kicks, I decided to make a kind of Vertibird to celebrate the Fallout 4 Remaster that is about to be released. Obviously, it isn't going to be a 1 to 1 conversion. The scales are completely different. I was more interested in getting the general feel of the Vertibird down.   Head Canon/Lore In one of the many universes out there, Earth was not destroyed by the tidal gravitational forces created with early grav drive technology. No, it's demise was the product of more direct means, by way of global thermonuclear war. In the centuries that followed, mankind began to recover. It was a glacially slow and painstaking progress, often set back by the petty squabbles of

  Nova Galactic Vault-Tec: Star Vault   Introduction Okay, @Mtfreeman (on the Starfield Anonymous Discord) made a passing comment about making a Vault-Tec space vault. Here is my answer to that comment (he never made it an official challenge). I give you the Star Vault.  My operating hypothesis is that Vault-Tec got a hold of some Zetan technology and did their absolute best to duplicate form and function within the scope of then current technology. They paired up with the Nova Galactic in their version of reality to create the most powerful ship that they could and put aboard a  small compliment of Vault occupants. Head Canon/Lore In the spirit of the malleable Fallout canon, this ship is equipped with anachronistic Engines, Reactor, Grav Drive, Weapons, and Shield. It's insidious experiment was to test the occupants' ability to adapt by Grav Jumping once every 24 Standard/Earth hours to a random star. The very few occupants exited the Star Vault after a few of these random j

  Ship Scavenging: Part 1   Introduction One of the methods I use to build my ships is to cannibalize the parts from one ship to make another ship. There are several advantages to this, the first being that you can very quickly change manufacturers/style without a great deal of cost. You can also build a nice starter ship that, over time, you can add to and upgrade into your end game beast. For this discussion, I am going to do a very quick and easy transition from a Crimson Fleet Phantom II to a HopeTech Hopper custom build. If you have 10k credits and a Phantom II, this should take you about five minutes. This is a really basic example of scavenging one ship to make another. I might cover the entire process of scavenging the parts to make an entirely custom ship in a later article   Head Canon/Lore The HopeTech Hopper is a small, light, short-range fighter designed to quickly intercept incoming enemies. It is HopeTech's answer to the Deimos Achilles and even shares many of the sa

 Making Your Own Junker Ship Introduction I was thinking that "Junker" builds don't necessarily have to be entirely scratch made. Perhaps you want to roleplay as a Junker type but it's just too much effort to build out an entire ship to do it. Well, while I've done that with earlier builds on my blog, just about any ship can be transformed into a Junker with minimal effort. Most Junker ships would actually not be full builds like I made. Most would be the salvaged wrecks of vanilla ships that might have been repaired using non-standard parts. As in the title photo, you might take an Ecliptic Falcata and junk it up. The head canon can simply be that the captain of the vessel salvaged a very damaged Falcata (or the civilian equivalent) and pieced it back together with whatever parts were at hand.   Techniques Junking up a vanilla ship is really quite easy. You can  Replace standard parts with parts from another manufacturer. Add extra parts purely for visual impact.

Raba   Introduction This is the final entry in the Pocket Cargo Vessel series and was the most difficult one to finalize. I have rebuilt this time and time again until I settled on this version. If I'm being honest, I am juxtaposed between not liking the end result and not being sure that I can make it better. In my head canon, this is just one of those duds that somehow makes it to market. Now that the series is complete, I can move on to other projects. Made with 70k Cr and Ecliptic Stiletto/Bounty Hunter at Taiyo Astroneering on Neon.   Head Canon/Lore "In summary, Taiyo was caught flat-footed by HopeTech's unexpected innovation. They had to rush both design and production. The end result? A purely functional offering that sacrifices the essence of what it means to be a Taiyo vessel. Oh, don't get me wrong. It fits right in with the sudden surge of compact, entry-level consumer cargo vessels. It's got plenty of cargo space, decent crew accomodations, and all tha