[WIP] Research Saucer Shuttle
Royal Scribe
🖼️ 372 images Mapmaker
I've never really used Cosmographer much, other than borrowing starfield bitmaps or planets as backgrounds for other maps. Here is the beginnings of my first spacecraft.
It's a small saucer shuttle, 50 map units in diameter. (I think the map units are in feet but not entirely sure.) My thought is that it's capable of flying through a solar system but not capable of interstellar flight. Usually attached to a space station or larger interstellar vessel, used for getting a closer look to study planets, entering the upper atmosphere or even landing planet side, collecting flora and fauna for closer study.
So far, I've just done the outside from above and the top-most deck -- the Command and Scientific Research deck. There will be two more decks: the Habitat deck in the center, and Engineering & Cargo on the bottom. I will also do a view from below.
From Above
Here it is from above, with windows shuttered and dome closed, defensive shields activated.
Windows unshuttered, dome uncovered:
I did a lot of experimenting on the windows, including experimenting with using Blend Mode. That worked out, but I ended up settling on using a Color Key cutout (of course) -- but instead of using the traditional magenta color (#6), I used the light blue (#5) and set it with a 20% opacity. I figure it's slightly tinted.
Here it is with retractable thrusters out:
Those gray discs are meant to be retractable hatches for weaponry and sensors. Here it is again with the four weapons (two lasers, two torpedo weapons) and four sensors out:
Top Deck: Command and Scientific Research
I was going to divide this floor into separate rooms, but it looked funny with the "skylight" windows. I suppose it makes sense for a research shuttle to allows the scientists and command crew to be together, since the scientists will really be directing the mission.
I played around with different stair options but didn't really care for them. I ended up settling for an elevator lift on the southern side, with an emergency ladder shaft on the northern side. Command/flight stations on the eastern side, scientific study stations elsewhere. Labels to come.
That's it for now. The other two floors and the bottom view still to come.
Comments
Here is the saucer shuttle from below.
I named this shuttle The Osprey. It is of a class of saucer ships that I've named a Nimbus Class. These shuttles are assigned to either a space station or larger interstellar vessel. In this case, it is part of The Perception, a research ship from a class of ships that I am calling the Copernicus Class.
On the left side, the airlock hatch can be opened planetside to extend a ramp. The very center has a docking ring for connecting to The Perception or other vessels or space stations. The twelve glowing disks are meant to be some sort of magnetic propulsion thrusters (the side thrusters are more for steering and course correction, not liftoff or acceleration). They were made using one of the sun symbols that come with Cosmographer. And the six metal disks are meant to be places where retractable legs can extend when on planet.
The text labels on the right are for toggles in the FCW file. They are off the map border and normally don't print, but I wanted to show it to you. They are mostly on/off toggles, but the Tractor Beam is a little more complex, which I will get to. Here is the syntax for the thrusters, as demonstrated in Remy @Monsen's recent Village Battlemap tutorial. It toggles between hiding and unhiding the layer called "Symbols - Thrusters".
As Remy's tutorial explains, the GOLAYER line is done to make sure you aren't on the layer you're trying to hide, because active layers cannot be hidden. And the NULL line is to make sure that toggling a layer is not your most recent command.
Here's the map with the center docking ring open:
The docking ring is actually two separate symbols, with the closed hatch symbol on top of the open hatch. The "Docking Ring" toggle hides or unhides the sheet that the closed hatch symbol is on, allowing the hatch to go back and forth between open and closed.
In addition to using the center hatch for docking with other vessels, a tractor beam can be activated to lift cargo or specimens into the shuttle (like cows or battered pickup trucks in the deserts of Nevada). Here is the tractor beam activated (it's one of the varicolor suns):
The toggling of the tractor beam was a little tricky. I suppose I could have made it just be on top of the hatch symbols, but I decided to make it as separate "on" and "off" options. Clicking "on" simultaneous hides the layer that both docking hatch symbols are on while unhiding the layer that the tractor beam is on. Here's the syntax for turning it on:
Clicking the "Off" link reverses this, hiding the tractor beam layer and showing the docking hatch layer.
On to the Habitat and Engineering decks!
Pretty cool. Nice use of the buttons.
I won't mess around with Cosmographer...well not anytime soon. Got so many other things on the go.
Thanks for sharing what is going on with it.
Hmmmm moon on the the underside view of the ship could give it a little punch.
I thought about doing a sun far off in the distance for the underside map, but a moon might work better.
I should note with the hotspot macros that the rows should not be numbered. The forum software inserted those numbers automatically (along with the bolding and font colors).
I am sure a person with massive geometry and astronomy would give you all the math why the sun couldn't be present in the map.
I kinda wish I had those kind of math skills so I could be uber snooty. LMFAO.
But hell if it was a different planet.... they couldn't say bananas.
edit:(different planet in a different solar system)
Oh yeah, the sun would have been small, the equivalent of seeing it from Earth. But a moon would probably be better.
I intended to have three decks, but ended up pushing it to four because it was hard to squeeze medical and living quarters into a single deck. And even then, I had to make compromises (like bunk beds, and deciding to have a standard crew of six rather than eight).
Deck 1: Engineering & Cargo
This is the lowest deck. On the left side is an airlock door with an (unseen) retractable ramp, for planet surface landings. The center has a ring hatch for connecting with other space craft. A tractor beam can also pull objects into the craft from here. The ship's main computers and engineering systems are here, including life support, artificial gravity generators, shield deflectors, the cloaking device, propulsion systems, sensors, weapons, communications, and more.
Cargo (mostly specimens collected from the planet) can also be stored here wherever there's a little spare space.
Deck 2: Medical & Cryo
This floor is dedicated to medical care and biological research (including a lab table where local fauna can be...examined). There are four cryogenic tanks here for emergencies -- not enough for the entire crew because this is not an interstellar space craft and the cryo tanks are for emergencies. Usually that means keeping an injured crew member on life support until the ship can return to the parent vessel or space station. Sometimes if a shuttle is stranded, it can keep the crew alive (in rotating shifts) until help can arrive.
Deck 3: Habitat
This is where the crew lives when they aren't on duty. As this ship is only intended for short missions of a day or so, sometimes a week, the living quarters can be more cramped than on their parent ship. The crew even has to sleep in bunk beds in a shared room. There are two bathrooms with showers.
The other floors were already posted and haven't changed. I'll see if there's any feedback and then post the final set.
Full set of images in my galleries: