Shuttle (New): FSB Retort #2930
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Love the name, obviously saw it while you were still in the early stages so no notes! |
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Love the design, only things I have of note is the lack of dedicated burn room (important for making tritium) and gas recycler board, useful for producing oxygen (gas bender and ambition both have one, think you can get away with it if you want) Additionally, some spare storage canisters, or a stack of plasteel to craft them might be nice to include. |
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Spent a few hours troubleshooting different solutions today before finally settling on a very simple system that I hope allows for quick adaptability by persons who know their business while not confusing those who are using this as a first time to experiment. I think there's still a long way to go but we're not suffering from a lack of time at present. |
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Thank you Shepard iona for the patience and feedback. I think we got in some really good data! |
ErhardSteinhauer
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About the PR
The Far Star Biotech corporation is pleased to (PR)esent the drumroll FSB Retort!
A huge thank you to the Frontier Atmosian crew for their feedback, support, ideas and practical playtesting to ensure this shuttle is good to go! Blackknight, Vyuga, Shepard and many others were awesome supporters in pulling the shuttle out and giving it a spin, kicking the walls and setting (practical) fires.
Thank you to Whatstone for investing the time and energy to make a novel gas mining system for Frontier!
Why / Balance
Due to some rather remarkable innovations Frontier has seen its atmospheric gameplay loop shift away from planetary gas harvesting and towards resource exploitation from asteroids.
My goal with this shuttle was to provide an access point to asteroid gas harvesting mechanics that did not rely on hulls optimized for mass harvesting of planetary atmosphere gasses. I feel that the Ambition and Gasbender are exceptional for the tasks for which they were designed but present some pain points when shifting away from planetary gas harvesting to asteroid gas harvesting. Furthermore, at present and for the forseeable future gaslocks are mapped items. Meaning that creating additional access points to these mechanics will generally require a specific shuttle be produced with the necessary infrastructure.
A challenge in designing such a shuttle is that gas harvesting is more involved and technically focused than a task which can largely be accomplished by placing a magic box.
Design considerations.
Every atmosian on Frontier has assured me that they all have their own preferences for how things are laid out and that the best default design is one which can capture gasses right out of the gate but otherwise stays out of their way.
My vision for executing this plan was to provide a large tank with a quick "pump in" access point for gasses and a secondary port that can be used to mass move, or selectively move, gasses in or out. The ultimate goal here is to provide a minimal footprint that is logical for new players and a "works out of the box" setup for experienced all.
The question of "where is the burner" is answered with "where you build it" (I retort, snicker snicker). The shuttle comes with a reasonable engineering setup and the expectation that modular rooms, divisions and spaces can be added to provide access to tools as required by higher skillsets and needs. My goal was to ensure that the initial intrusion of machinery in the main tank and the main floor was at a MVP level.
My experiences testing gas harvesting has revealed that you spend a LOT of energy moving multiple pieces of bulky equipment in and out of your shuttle. Repeatedly. Even the most optimistic spaces can quickly become cluttered with parts and movement can become a chore. So the workfloor is very generous and, yet, somehow feels like it's barely sufficient in practice.
The purpose of this room is to constantly pull, cool and allow to bottle and remove gasses from the holding tank. It can also be adapted to selectively filter gasses and generally do all of those things that you may want to do with manipulating where what gasses are going. This is a very useful feature on a shuttle with limited real estate and gasses that desire to occupy a very large volume of space. The challenges of adapting station mechanics to the floorplan of a shuttle.
My experience has shown that ships work better with power. So I have made sure this is available. It has worked so well that I plan to add this to all of my shuttles in the future.
A challenge here is that a forward located cockpit would make scanning from the cockpit a bit easier. However I opted to move the cockpit into a position where it could make best use of a space that "bridges" the different rooms in the shuttle and keep an eye on the main chamber. My hope is that we'll be able to incorporate a shuttle mounted scanner in the future. However a scanner in the hand of a player works a treat as well.
A good place to sit when you're done bleeding out, or are still bleeding out, need to SSD or just want to sit to get away from the clutter. I tried to make the space comfortable and functional for the purposes of staying hydrated and fed up. I think the view from the captain's quarters while the shuttle is underway is exceptionally nice.
The goal of the Retort is to start with the tools that you need to get started without frustration or delay and the means by which to expand that toolset as more resources become available to you. While it is presented as a gas harvesting shuttle with cargo space it is, at its core, primarily an engineering shuttle that is designed to allow players to interact with a novel set of problems, collecting and processing gasses, and the initial tools to do so but the understanding that they'll wish to expand upon those tools to make best use of what they've gathered. Or, if they choose, be able to profit and enjoy themselves with what is simply available at the start.
I hope that this summary explained my intent and vision. I hope you enjoy flying my shuttle!
How to test
Buy it, fly it. Go mining with it if you dare.
Media
Atmosian playtesting success!
Requirements
Breaking changes
Changelog
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