Machine's Creations - TSC fleet, UPDATED (8/29/11)

[Kiltric]

These latest do not disappoint at all. The modules on the Longbow as strings is brilliant. At this point, I'm definitely impressed with the construction, and I'd love to see them in action. Since they first came out I've been picturing them fighting Anna's Scott Pilgrim fleets.

Also, with all these ships, I'd love to see some kind of super-dreadnought just to top it off.

Thanks for the link.

[Machine]

I won't say I haven't considered it, since I have . I considered a Titan Class, but I always end disliking the attempts, and I either discard them or rework them into smaller ships. If I ever make one it's likely going to be a general purpose ship, like the Halberd, but it would also act as a carrier.

Ship Stats:

Strike Craft:
Size: 20 - 50
Acceleration: 0.10 - 0.13
Turning: 1.15 - 1.30
Speed: 3.25 - 3.75
HP: 50

Frigate:
Size: 50 - 100
Acceleration: 0.07 - 0.08
Turning: 0.90 - 0.95
Speed: 2.75
HP: 200

Cruiser:
Size: 100 - 175
Acceleration: 0.06 - 0.07
Turning: 0.85 - 0.90
Speed: 2.50 - 2.75
HP: 400

Dreadnought:
Size: 175 - 250
Acceleration: 0.05
Turning: 0.70 - 0.75
Speed: 2.10 - 2.25
HP: 600 - 800

Titan:
Size: >250
Acceleration: 0.04
Turning: 0.65
Speed: 2.00
HP: 1600

Coloured in green are the usual stats used by the ships of that class, other values in the range are used by one or more ships in relation to their roles; as an example the Claymore is meant to be a glass cannon so it's slower and has lower HP, the Sabre is meant to outflank enemies so it turns faster meanwhile Lances are sightly faster and also accelerate faster due to their short range.


The Longbow's strings are aegis deflectors linked to a 1 pixel section on the missile launcher, the section that makes the missile launcher has a red fake aegis effect and the missiles themselves have sightly better stats, this is because I tried to simulate a Booster which can't target other sections. The Longbow also animates after attacking with its torpedo, emulating a bow after it releases an arrow.

[Ninja-Scar]

I love these ships so much!! My favourite is most likely the Atlalt even though it has no weapons it still looks amazing. Your colours are perfect to since they go so well with eachother.

[Machine]

Hi, I've returned with presents .
The previous link is a download containing all my "human" ships which belong the the Terran Systems Coalition fleet, however it also includes a couple of pirate/corsair ships, which technically don't belong to the fleet. Among the ships included are also some new creations, specifically the Titan class vessel known as Broadsword, The Zhugenu (also spelled Chu-ko-nu) cruiser class carrier (which deploys Bolts), the Shuriken assault dropship and Switchblade light frigate in the frigate class, and the Pilum (Deployed by the Atlalt), Bolt and Boomerang strike craft, no new dreadnoughts however. I've also made some changes, which I hope I've included in the download, and I'm not uploading older files.

Titan Class

Well the Broadsword is the main addition, it's big and though, and also quite lethal. It's a general purpose ship in itself, although it's somewhat low in weapons for its size, however it's able to deploy Switchblades, Ayllo platforms and Boomerang bombers. But that's not all, the main weapon of the Broadsword is capable of destroying whole fleets in one attack, by using its apocalypse missile, a relativistic nuclear warhead originally meant for extrasolar planetary bombardment.
Gameplaywise, I find the ship fun to play against, as in a boss battle. As an advise, sacrifice a ship before dealing with this one. Also Dreadnoughts, or other ships with point defense lasers, tend to self destruct due to the explosion, so try not to send them. The missile is also inaccurate and quite fast, so it might miss your ships.

Dreadnought Class Ships
Cruiser Class Ships
Frigate Class Ships
Strike Craft and Space Platforms

The Zhugenu, does not have a special ability module, unlike the rest of the cruiser class ships, however it's still quite strong, and has an EMP torpedo launcher, and deploys Bolts which are railgun bombers. Like all carrier ships it's equipped with small suicide drones (basically fast turning missiles; If we could change the image of demeter drones I would change this).
The Shuriken is kinda a big helicopter, spaceship hybrid. It was made just because I like helicopters and fluff reasons, as I don't see any of the other ships as an atmospheric vessel, besides some strike craft (any, besides the Buckler and Arrow). It also acts similarly to a carrier, but it doesn't deploy strike craft, it deploys 4 small powersuits, meant for ground combat, with limited space combat utility.
The new strike craft, are the Bolt (already mentioned), the Pilum, an upgraded version of the Javelin and the Boomerang, which is quite dangerous for ships without point defenses, as it fires 2 small torpedoes.


Well, hopefully this release is without bugs, if you find anything (errors or missing sprites) please notify me, so I can update the download.
I tried to keep the ships relatively balanced, but I admit I didn't test every combination, and neither did I test against a human player, which I would have loved to, as the AI doesn't use all the tricks, like rotating a Maul so it can fire its torpedoes continually.
I don't mind suggestions in relation to the ship balance, but keep in mind this was never meant to be perfectly balanced and many ships were designed to work in combination, like the Pavise and Sabre, as an example.

Finally I hope you have fun playing with them, destroying stuff with them, and also destroying them, as much as I had fun building and testing them .

[Kiltric]

I just have to say I'm thrilled to see you post these. They were great and I very much look forward to playing with them when I can put them on my better computer tomorrow. I'm glad to see this place isn't totally dead, and I hope you build more.

[jwa8402]

Agreed, glad your building! And what a build! It is very late for me so I will play with these later but I like a lot of bits on the broadsword, and the missile is quite nicely designed as well!

[Machine]

I thought I would start a new "fleet" after the precious release, but I guess I got carried away. I was playing around trying to get minelayers to work in a way I liked, without using the ship deployer, and also have destructible mines. They're not perfect, though they work as I wanted them to, and also probably nothing new, but for me they were enough motivation to make some extra ships.


As you might notice the naming pattern for the 3 main ships, the Warhammer, Scythe and Falx, is based on weaponized tools, well sort of, I just didn't want to call the Scythe, Warscythe, which is the same thing with the blade in a different angle, and the Falx, which actually means sickle (though it's commonly used for sickle swords). The idea is that these ships are either re-purposed industrial/transport vessels or mobile factories in times of "peace".


The Warhammer, is shown here deploying its mines (triggered by pressing "," for the HE Mines, and "." for the Nuclear Mine), it's a Dreadnought Class ship, with limited manufacturing capabilities. The Nuclear Mine is based on a Nuclear MIRV, so it can be used as a mine or a bomb, depending how close is the enemy at the time of deployment. It also deploys Chakram fighters.
The Warhammers in times of peace would be used as a mobile factory to build the components for bigger "stationary" defenses like Onager, Oxybeles or Scorpion platforms.


The Scythe, shown here in a similar way to the Warhammer, deploys HE mines, based on torpedoes, so they'll explode only if destroyed, or if they collide with an enemy vessel, It also deploys Tribulus point defenses (they're shielded, have an impeder module and a point defense laser), meant as an annoyance, well just like caltrops the origin of their name. Knife defense platforms are quite harmless, and only good at dealing with fighters (I'm likely going to rename them, so suggestions are accepted).
The Scythe cruiser class ships are meant to be civilian freighters retrofitted to transport armament, in this case, mostly mines. They're kinda good at making minefields fast in comparison to the Warhammer and Falx.


Finally the Falx only deploys 2 mines, based on the conventional MIRV, it deploys them quite fast, not as fast a the Scythe (a Scythe would deploy 12 mines in the time it takes the Falx to deploy 6). However cluster mines have a wider explosion radius, as they actually spawn missiles on destruction, if the mine is placed near an enemy, just like nuclear mines, they would act as a bomb, immediately detonating and spawning several seeking missiles. The missile deployer that's the cluster mine is also found on the Chakram fighters. Outside battle Falx frigates would be used as component transports, not unlike Scythes, but in this case they would be proper military vessels, meant to resupply carriers, and space stations with construction parts.


On a sidenote, I would like to know if the previous download worked perfectly, as I fear I might have missed some sprites, specially since the game apparently added sprites I didn't use to the folder.

[Kiltric]

Missing sprites in the previous download

Custom sprites\misc-lasersightbeam2.gif, which seems to have been thrown in the main directory
On the Power Suits, all the sprites. The folder with them was empty in the download.
Custom sprites\Machine_Sections\TSA-Logo.gif
Custom sprites\Machine_Sections\Kae_shn251mod.gif
Custom sprites\TBE\th_TBE_Shield11b.gif is the "th_" maybe some kind of typo?
Custom sprites\TBE\TBE_DooBeacon1.gif

I also noticed that your fraxy folder doesn't have a space in the name, I think it's supposed to.

Edit: also, four sprites were dumped in the main directory, spheretiny, spheretinyblue, spr_1px, and spr_2px

Anyway, as to the latest ships. I was pretty disappointed when I saw that the HE mines weren't saw blades, but otherwise these are fantastic. They go perfectly with the rest and your quality hasn't slipped at all. A download would be great.

[Machine]

Thanks for your help Kiltric, it seems like the export function has problems with gifs, which is good to know.
-I'm renaming the fraxysprites folder to just fraxy, as the ShipMakerRepack5 says.
-th_TBE_Shield11b.gif was named as that by the author, so I left it alone.
-spheretiny, spheretinyblue should be a part of DDC_Flares, so I'm fixing the ships that contain them.
-misc-lasersightbeam2.gif, spr_1px.png, and spr_2px.png, weren't made by me, and were included in the download of another ship (Dunno which one(s) actually). I guess I'll leave them on the main folder as they were, unless there's something wrong with that, that I don't know. Meh... according to the repack, they should go into a Misc folder; there goes my afternoon, I'll be fixing all the ships that use spr_2px.png to hide weapons, as counters, or as custom pivot points for section rotation, which means almost all of them.

Anyway I'll be adding the new ships to the download once I finish fixing the other ships.

[Kiltric]

You're more than welcome. It's too bad the community couldn't agree to go back and rename old packs according to the naming convention. It would make everything from that point onward so much easier.

[Machine]

Well it's done, well at least I think it's . I finished fixing the errors in the previous download.
The older link still works and it's updated, since I just updated the file in dropbox.

I also decided to have a secondary clean install where I would make my ships and test them, and that I would start using my own "repack", basically the full custom sprites folder of my clean ship making/testing install of BSF. I'll be updating this file for compatibility with any newer fleet/ship I make (it won't be compatible with my first ships, since then I would be just copying the shipmaker repack). It my current bioship sprites (which has some tentacle weapons that were released separately) it also contains a "Machine_Shiny" folder which includes some sprites I've found might be useful when building shiny ships, many haven't been used yet, and most are from the SNES game Metal Warriors.

>>Custom Sprites Download<<


Even if the previous link has been already updated, I'll include it here anyway; you'll also need to download my custom sprites folder, as any ship I make from now on will have its sprites stored there, and won't be included with the actual ships download.

>>Terran Systems Coalition Fleet Download<<

I previously said I got my minelayers to work almost as I would like them, the only problem I couldn't fix with them was that the first deployment waits for the "missiles" reload time (35 frames), next deployments are at the same time as the mines reach their final position in the deployment animation. I could have fixed this issue by setting the reloading to 0 frames, but that might have been easily exploited to spawn several mines as fast as possible.


I hope this "update" works perfectly, again if there's any error, please notify me so I can fix it .

[jwa8402]

These are awesome and beefy and military looking. Sorry for not playing with them up to now but I just downloaded so I'll spend some time pew pewing.

[mato9020]

When i opened this in bsf tehre was a ton of glow also how did you get the engines on the broadsword to look like actual engines without the module?

[12321YYH]

Hey machine, you know your minelayers right, well I was wondering if you could post how you got them to spawn/lay.

[E-Swat]

These ships are amazing, And the Broadsword reminds me of another ship I have seen.

Also I Don't know if its just me but some of your screenshots on page 2 are not showing up right