USS Polaris (Tiered USCM deep-space Frigate) beta 1.7.1 (+ mod)

Informations:
Updated for 1.0, not completly, the last update is quiete experimental but it work. And it was really painfull to update, my knowledge is definitly limited for this kind of stuff.
I'm currently facing big internet problem that can apparently be solved quickly (operator is doing some work on the line apparently), 20 Ko/s isnt a lot...
I adress a big thank to Lazarus78 for helping me to fix the files of the invisible backgroudn blocks, and make the current update possible...
Devellopment is back, I have some more plan of feature for a next future ^^

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Hello everyone....

Disclaimer: My english is actually really awful, so I will try to do my best to make this thread as clean as possible of language mistakes, sorry if it hurts a bit your eyes while you read this
This is also my first mod, not sure if Im willing to make another one, most of what I needed for starbound experience have mostly be already created by other modders ^^

Introducing here a bit ackward ship mod at the moment; a large USCM terran ship, designed for exploration, storage, and of course the needs of a small crew for long travels in uncharted quadrants of space...

But first of all, a little introduction, starting with.

Some pictures:

In game view:

the first old build version ^^



The current version on my main human character, Aleksei Rozenkho using it, lone captain lost in uncharted space.

(I will try to add an entire view, the dezoom from the mod "Zoom Improvement" isnt even sufficient, and I must stay in conventionnal formats ^^)
My laptop is a bit limited for screenshots too.

Raw design:

Disclaimer:

As you see, I'm not really an original designer. Its just another human ship mod assembled at 99% from vanilla files.
In fact, I worked mainly with photoshop an paint, taking sometime art from a lot of human style ship mods (Enraged Koala's), even from games like FTL.
[exemple of one of my first attempt to modify the Gilgamesh cruiser] (named Magellan before...)
I'm sorry for advanced if I havent read all the permission by downloading, about the fact that if I'm allowed or not to use/modify their assets.
If you are a modder and if you feel like i have abused of the permissions, feel free to report it and I will try my best to remove the incriminated part from the design as soon as possible.
So..thats also why this mod is totaly free of use, I dont keep any rights on it, you could modify it, use parts for your own designs, etc...

About the mod:

This ship is just a small project I started last year, with a view to modify an excellent mod; the Gilgamesh cruiser (from Plusquam), not big enough from my point of view, lacking of specialized rooms...but with already an excellent concept and general shape.
For me, its seems that making a ship is one of the easiest thing to mod.
So I started to modify it along the year; increasing the size, changing the general shape, small parts after smalls parts etc...until now. This mod feels actually very uncomplete and messy at the moment, but I'm on the way to fix the problems.
In fact I wasnt expecting to be able to release the mod, destined first for personnal use only.
But I received a lot of help from great people on the forum, and finally, I ended up with a quite stable build, tiered for an adventure (even if its not really usefull beyond T4, the ship start with definitive shape and is not really upgradable)...so...why not release it ?

Current improvement status:
Back online...kind of. Still need some time to learn about moding, but I'm planning some features for an update in the next future. Got already the graphic for custom ship equippment like doors, tech stations, teleporter etc...

About the Ship (features):

I have always wanted to run a large and multipurpose ship because I almost never play without a bunch of mods, I dont also like to settle on planets and prefer a nomadic lifestyle (rather than making U turns between the base and surronding systems to gather ressources, despite the fact that the studio improved a lot teleportation).
Yes I know there are skyrails, vehicules but theses are acessible too late in the game progression from my point of view).
Why Polaris ? just because its not the northern star itself, but maybe because its a ship trying to find its way in the infinite universe. Its also the name of a galaxy in the Ratchet&Clank video game serie, one of my favourites (so hilarious and absurd).
But In fact I strongly recommend you to redesign the name for a better one (I will let soon in the next upadate a place for you to rearrange the default name) if you would, the asset are also free for modifications, but you will probably wont be able to use it in multiplayer if accepted on any server..
If you want some exemple, I have tried to make a crossover between various ship, like theses ones:
Some ship from Star trek universe: Dakota, prometheus, Stargazeer or even Jupiter class for exemples...
Even babylon 5, the terran Destroyer-carriers are pretty nice too...
Terrestrial marine frigate/destroyers, and some submarines like the russians Typhoons.
The starship Odyssey from the serie Stargate and the recent upcoming Dreadnough game.

If Starbound realease one day some functionality of the mod "en espera ad astra", like space battles/events etc, this ship will probably be a bit overpowered ^^

But this ship was designed firstly to bear some mod, these ones particularly:

-Frackin'Flora (or recently Frackin Universe) from Sayter; an incredible mod completly changing the game approach and requiring a lot of storage because of the bunch of crafting material/biomes etc, it introduce in Starbound.
-Your Starbound Crew (by Luminaesthesia): because I need at least roleplay space and quarters for these awesomes npcs ...

Some other mod I really recommand to use at the moment:
-moveable ship part...By @Mikablu /same recent one from @matrix1368
-Horizontal hatches/Utility Doors mod...By @SeniorFight

I also would like to seperate the different room, according to their functions, real, or simply roleplay/esthetics, here is a litle description by deck, from left to right:

...above everything, the DRADIS/sensor control+mapping process inside the commmunication cupola (that is not a observation nest outside, as it could seems to be displayed)
Deck four:
-mechanical thrusters maintenance bay, Teleport pad room, Central control bridge, commandment bridge, piloting roof...
Deck three:
-lower hruster maintenance bay, Craft/mechanic aera/industry bay, officers quarter, corridor, Interplanetary Solarium nuclear fusion missiles silos+classic warhead silos, first hangar/chargement bay (used while the frigate is docked), Main vehicule bridge (though of adding a dropship design), observation corridor (and observatory above), medical bay and physic laboratory.
Deck tow:
Erchius fuel tank+jauge, oxygen bay, corridor, 2 armory/AI bays, main storage bay, bar (room related crew relaxing), *, stern storage (eventually escape capsules launching pad).
Deck one:
FTL engine and thrusters maintenance/control, lower storage/acess to the docked ships, airlock and depressurized bay, crew room, water reserve and recycling bay, crew room, kitchen and alimentary reserves, scientist crew room, hazard quarantine aera: exobiologic experiments (for Frackin universe of course ^^), lab, pod section, observation deck+ eventually secondary pilot control in case of captain quarantine.
And of course, tow green houses, one for alien plants, the other one for terrestrial ones.
The nacelles aboves are some kind of Alcubierre's warp engine remake, in the style of star trek's...
An insane number of artillery turrets for suppressive fire against fighters and misiles, especially a large railgun, taken from a cruiser ship never completed (maybe deleted by the author now), here is a link.
There are also some screen objects "borrowed" from Madtulips Modular ship construction mod, I will probably remove its if there is any problem...
A busar collector (an exotic princip of a ship propeller collecting the hydrogen it need to feed its acceleration while reaching almost light speed, but mostly used to collec nebulas gases, there are always ones of those below saucers of star trek ships), taken and modified from the assets of a really nice cruiser...
Athmospheric MHD deflector for navigation in the planets skys, or gas giants; landing thrusters+ antigrav platforms. Two lauchning pads (not displayed) on each side of the ship.
A main warp speed particle deflector
etc...etc...
For the rest, I let you try...

Of course, the mod doesnt come with all the stuff related to the rooms (only the minimum), I still let you choose how you would organize the room with stuff collected along your travels. or simply decorate it according to your tastes with the Creative mod...this chart is only indicative.

Just notice that most of the object included (except for science station, shiplocker, captain chair); platforms, lights, door could be moved...

Some lore:

Just an exemple of possible background:

(quite non canon, tentacle monster supposed to be there from a long time, in the sewers of a city on earth, I heard also about a protectorate in nightly build ^^)
You are the chief engineer working in the terran USCM working in the Earth shipyards, affected on the prototypes and new ship projects devellopments.
You were affected to the USS Polaris, and advanced light stealth frigate prototype (purposed for hit and run tactics), about to be released from drydock.
Its been a few years you were working on, and you are very familiar with the majority of systems, because you participed in the construction of most of them.
You were working on the transwarp computer, an experimental system able to generate a small wormhole between too locations of space, wether the distance, but at a very high energy cost....much quicker than classic hyperspace warp travel; when the red alert resound in all the ship.
Sensorsreadings are uncoherent, the AI is like panicked, and commandment is shouting stressed orders in the intercom, the crew is panicked, and ordered to occupy their post immediatly...
You quickly run to the closest turbolift heading to bridge and learn after crossing the strategic personnal running about between instrument and computers, that something unknown have been detected by the oort clouds tachyon satellite grid, heading rapidly to earth.
You protest, ask for more precision but it seems that even earth command center dont have precise informations, only a few uncoherent reports from scientific ships stationed at the edge of the system, some of them describing some kind of tentacle comet monster on long range sensors, reports that you refuse to take seriously.
The third destroyer fleet stationned in the solar sytem is immediatly mobilized to intercept and destroy this threat, while other orders are transmitted by quantic ansibles to all colonies outpost to stand down, and send reinforcment, if anything dont turn to their advantage.
The captain want the ship to be launched immediatly and assist the third terran fleet, but you just cant apply its order, telling that the ship is not ready, that the Talos gravity engine havent been calibrated and tested yet, and will likely cause a disaster if persisting. An even more for the tactical sytems...
The captain then give you the order to proceed to the modifications as fast as you can, telling that the object will reach selene orbit in less than 5 hours if not intercepted.
Despite of the great engineer team, and the assistance of most of the drydock personnal, dispatched in all the ship sytems, its still a difficult task to accomplish with a so limited time.
It doesnt take more than another hours to lose all contacts with the destroyer fleet, that were supposed to intercept the thing next to Neptune's orbit.
Same thing for Oberon's solar missile batteries and helium 3 mining stations in orbit of Ouranos (sick of uranus jokes, its the titan of the sky after all ^^)
The bridge commanders are febrile, champing at the bit,yelling orders in the intercom, requesting reports and more progresses as long minutes passes. The reports received from the USCM forces are not encouraging.
Earth population is also panicked,the military personnal is nervous, a lot of merchant and transport are trying to leave; the command center knowing the fact the second, 5th and 9th fleet are still at least at 12 hours from solar system at maximum warp speed.
Earth evacuation is decreted, and all the massive colonial ships of the sytem are all requisitioned, short range teleportations fuses from everywhere, a distress call is launched on frequences, trying to contact allied species ships in the neighborhood. the long range teleporters are rapidly saturated, as space elevators to adonis, the asteroid anchor for transit station.
At the end, unfortunally, only a few hundred millions of people are evacuated, leaving the remainings billions to their fate.
Governement responsible and politician, that consider there life much more worthy than the equivalent applyed of captain responsability are escorted in private evacuation shuttles, to be dropped in the admiral ship of USCM.
Everyone in a massive panic rush toward every shipyards, spaceports, trying to find any ship leaving the planet, but civilians are brutally pushed back from the gates , garded by sacrifiable USCM forces, trying to keep the classified folders before sending those, crypted far from earth, and installation safe to not prevent the last remaining ship, already full to leave. Riots start, soldiers anesthesied by sedatives and indoctrination, replies with gun volleys in the panicked crowd.
After four hours of hard work, tactical sytem is finally ready, but the Talos propeller is still not operationnal, fluctuations are still not calibrated in the erchius crystal matrix, and erchius plasma circulating in the warp nacelles can hardly create a stable FTL warp field.
At least, the ship is able to navigate under light speed, injectors now operationnals. Moroever, if the transwarp engine seems ready, but the computer is not ready for any jump for the moment, and the AI still not fully operational ...
Despite of this, the captain decide that the ship is sufficiently ready for an attempt of interception, placing its trust in the new solarium/antimatter warheads, now that the tactical system is operationnal, even only at short range. All the personnal quickly board and distribute in every part of the ships, while the grapnels release the ship and the dockstructures retracts. The large ship, helped by the antigrav platform, extract its massive structure from the dock and slowly lift toward stratosphere, athmospheric MHD deflectors at maximum power.
But its already too late, faster than expected, the shadow of the gigantic comet cover the skies, slowly descending in the athmosphere, darting its terrifying tentacles and empty eyes around.
Next to the coast, after the first shockwaves, were it landed, the monster starts to corrupt soils and continents, tentacles creepings and growing like vines, destroying cities, forest, poisonning oceans, unstoppable...
Now that the thing is no longer in space, warhead solution become useless, an entire fragment of the planet crust would be teared appart due to the power of those weapons (hundreds kilogramms of antimatter in a single missile) if their were used...
Earth is quickly declared lost, a few remaining commercial ships escapes the tentacle trying to catch them...the lunar bases are evacuating.
The fleets incoming have received as last order to nuke the surface, lock the aera under quarantine, and not let this thing corrupt other planets, before USCM's central blackout...
But the Polaris frigate is still an prototype ship, a few malfunctions appears in the coolant sytem, propulsers starts to fail before even reaching outer athmosphere, the tentacles rapidly head toward the ship.
No way to start evasive manoeuvers, the commandment, panicked while seeing that artillery barrage have almost no effect on the tentacle growth, quickly decide, neglecting the risks to start an athmospheric transwarp jump before the systems runs completly out of order...
The computer's AI is confused, taered appart between Asimov laws, and can hardly define exit coordinates for the jump.
The captain, after a few second of hesitation, order the pilot and machinery to programm manually a quick jump to random coordonates, having no time to define one or check database, knowing that it could lead to any places, as empty spaces, or even the center of a star.
The Propellant runs, the ship structure vibrate and shakes, a part of the athsmosphere is violently aspirated in the breach...
As an unstable vortex opens, and the crew is expecting the worst, the ship warps in violently, and after a few seconds, the inertial dampeners apparently working, the ship immobilise itself in a unknown location.
But not even in a safe place; a violent radiation burst that seems to come from nowhere deeply strike the plating, ionizing sensors, and irradiating the crew.
All particules deflectors surcharges at first hit, a gamma burst ? No, the ship would have been already vaporized...
Nevertheless, the level of neutronic and ionized radiations becomes quickly critical, and a second burst strikes. Everyone aboard having even some astronomy knowledge begin to understand that the ship is in the close neighbourhood of a slow pulsar. The hull is deteriorating, andso the structural integrity, a few rooms have breachs, and are quickly sealed, trapping a few crewmembers in the void of space...
The transwarp sytem needing a cooldown, no retreat from this mean possible, the crew start to initiate the warp navigation procedure, to safely go out of reach.
The procedure takes some time to warm up, the erchius liquid starts to flow into the reactor chamber while the crew is continiously receiving radiation dosis approching to lethal at each burst.
The people starts dying from burnings, vomiting blood, medecine apparently uneffective for such level of radiation trauma... the urgence protocol is triggered in the ship.
You and a small group of engineers rushes to the lower decks and intent to modify the teleporter. A few people's print are charged into the teleporter's buffer. One after one, only a few designated as vital personnal is loaded in. Then comes your turn, before being dematerialized, between sparks of failings cables and cracklings of the hull flooded with charged particules bursts you hear the humming sound of the warp engine, activated by the autopilot. Maybe you are going to escape from this hell.
But who knows where it will lead the damaged frigate. (ST TNG : Relics reference ^^)
Most of the crew is now dead, you are hoping that the sytem will come back online in the future...
A few months passes; after the long jump, depleted of erchius fuel, the damaged FTL engine stops and the starship start drifting at the edge of a foreign solar system, at the edge of the galaxy, once in orbit of a class M planet, the last energy reserves snap the urgence protocol, and rematerialize you in the teleporting room, alls wiring pendings from the ceiling...
You want to wake up the others, but unfortunally, the other crewmembers buffers cells have been too much damaged with the computer surcharge to be able to revive them.
The ship is empty, most of the consoles and equipment was probably lost during the emergency depressurisation, in order to contain the blaze provoqued by the circuits overheat...only a few sealed rooms are still quite intact.
The air is thin, but the survival sytem are still working at minimum stance.
The heartsick for your dead camrades, you head to the central enginering bay, to try a reboot of the computer's AI, S.A.I.L...
Maybe the inboard computer will tell you where you are...You are quite dazed, noticing the amount of damages the ship took, its will be a long work to put everything online again.
Start repurposing the ship into a more scientific and colonial oriented frigate.

Futur projects for the mod:

- Fix the last collision problems...(almost done)
- Patch the "apexshiplight" object...not showing a good animation while placed on the right side of a wall (thanksfully this was fixed by the Devs)
- Move the teleporter to a dedicated room (I forgot to move it, or make a way to change the actual spawn point)
-Allow to replace the background, by making sorts of almost invisible blocks (destroyables) to simulate a background (done 1/2)
(done by the devs finally; here is little trick to make invisible blocks, involving matter blocks and the paint tool, tutorial from reddit with this link, I hope its still functionnal)
- Fix the litlle shift of one pixel lengh in the forepart of the ship (done).
- Make fonctinnal dock and airlock while a UG version of the horizontal door mod will be released. (so you can jump to the planet...if you dont forget your jumpsuite+parachute of course ^^): (not possible actually in Starbound, jumping from the ship do not lead to the athmosphere actually).
- Even if the ship is already quite big and already laggy, I thougt about making a layered version, and vastly improve the design to make it less feel like "copy/pasted".
I will soon make a wrecked version of the ship for the firsts tiers, once the definitive T8 design completed.
- Fix the booster frame problem and the transparency of some windows.
- Maybe to add some more rooms, another carrier bay maybe, but also a crew bathroom/pool/sauna, something we could find on some submarine classes (typhoon), that I completely forget to introduce. Also maybe another vehicule bay for mechas and land speeders.
- Add some torpedos room (maybe I will have to make a special design here).
rework greenhouse to concept to let maybe grow small trees...(almost done)
Add a real progression by unlocking rooms along tiering, actually there is no locked door except for the need of the first tiers progression...(on the way I will have to make some locked versions of the existing doors).
Use custom object to render some equipements like wall screens and stellar maps.
Add a varient layout without background that you would be free to modify (and make actually impossible things like windows), but It will of course not be as cleverly designed as MadTulip Ship mod ^^
-add a real engineering bay and FTL room, and why not a small aboretum because the greenhouses where mainly designed for cultures (though of adding a way to water effectively (partly done).
-adding some kind of turbolift sytem to move much faster in the ship.
-and at final (why not), maybe another whole deck to fix the problem of the lengh not matching the width...making the ship a bit too long...but it will be moved then to a destroyer class.

Warnings:
-This ship mod havent been tested in multiplayer, so it wont probably work.
Its still a beta version (In fact its more like a 0.9 version than 1.0, a beginner mistake^^).
I dont even know if any server is able to run a vast ship like this.
-Design subject to be strongly modified, some parts removed, or the mod simply deleted, along the willing of modders, Copyrights etc...

This ship has no default background, so you cant actually put things (consoles, paintings) on the wall because of this.
At the beggining, the background was default and not removable, wich quickly became an issue for liberty of designing the decor.
If you want to make invisible blocks for your background, then follow this little tutorial on the reddit: link here
Basicly, the steps are; go to admin mode, spawn a arge number of matter blocks, put them as background, take your painting tool and paint every block, theses blocks will turn invisibles...
This doesnt prevent you from doing you custom backgrounds, but its the best way if you want to keep the default background design...
Maybe I shall add a few thousand of those in the human starter treasure pool

Special Thanks:

-Severedskulls : For helping me to understand the basic rules of ship modding, and correcting one of the first ship version under EK.
-Olxinos: For helping me a lot with patching system and taking a look at the file (an time) to correct all my mistakes, even going to create functionnal version of the mod while I was struggling to even understand where were the problems ^^
-xxswatellitexx: For his fast and precise answers to my numerous questions and asks about patching.
-AstralGhost: For your great advices...
All people giving me suggestion, bug reports, sometime advices to fix it, tutorial etc...
And many other people that I probably forget, thanks you so much again, you make the forum incredible for beginners in modding ^^

And of course, really important, Chucklefish for making Starbound, this game have such an incredible potential.

Mods credits for art parts used here:

A list of mod from wich I used/modified some assets to create this one.
If you are one of the modders mentionned, will certainly contact you soon to discuss about this (once the most close to definitive version will be released), but I you read this thread, please send me a message, I must know If you are against or not the parts I added/modified from your own ship design. I couldnt really deviate from the lore and original design for human ships, thats why I did all these copy/pastemodifications from the most beautifull human ships existing...all my apologizes for this mistake.
Then I will know if I must make some corrections to remove theses parts or not.
In all cases, every part present or not disserve at least a credit, even for inspiration ^^

I will try to add all the links as soon as possible.
All the vanilla ship stuff of course, space station included.

The Gilgamesh Cruiser: By Plusquam
UTC cargo Ship: By Piratefromvoid
The Albatross: By 4haus (not connected for a years :/)
The Trident ship: Shawkab
Dreadnough human cruiser: By Boogy
MST3K satellite of love: By Okash
The Pirate Ship: By DwunkyPengy
KRI Hantu Laut: By Olekaban
Multiversal mothership: By Punisherbr
Human Battle cruiser HBC-2000: By BUDDYBOY (second version)
Miniknog scouting vessel: By Tiltos
Absolution cruiser: By Surrioc
The Green Goblin: By Piro.
Logistic Frigate: By Beeftime (inspiration)
Merryos Ferry: By Cgeta
Horstjs Larger Ships: By Horstj.
Capital ship Roseretina.
WIP cruiser T14 (never updated): By DelosX
Human Layered Shuttle: By Storm_UK (maybe the greatest idea for the ship, I had the idea to layer the frigate too...but the lags came and despite of the recent improvement with chunk separations for the ship, it makes the project really hypothetics, or reserved to high end computers)
Human vertical ship (finally found it after examinating all outdated mod folder)
Star trek Olympic class cruiser: by @Alsehr (inspiration only, this ship is awesome for a star trek fan)
Spacebattleship Shinano: By Saon
...

Some other ships on the nexus.

some pieces from Madtulip's ship mod.
...
Etc...I'll find the missing name of the authors to complete the list...

Installation:

1) Unzip the mod in an storage folder
2) Just copy paste the folder "USS Polaris" in your mod folder: adress here.
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\Starbound\giraffe_storage\mods
(under Windows 7/8 of course, I cant make a MAC version, since my computer isnt running it)
3) Run the game.

Asset variant:
(none at the moment)

Important notes:

- Dont worry if you got a black screen at the launch of a new save, its perfectly expected and normal. This ship is rather big, and the game tends to make some time to load it completely...
The average loading time is actually between 5 and 30 sec....
But, if the ship still does not load after a few minutes, check at the game crashlog, and post the error you may get, if its a problem with the ship, I will fix it as soon as possible, or try to explain what caused the crash withy my limited knowledge ^^

- Also be careful, since the ship take some time to load, teleporting aboard is a bit slow at the moment; so dont try to use teleporting with few health remaining, pursued by a mob because you will probably die during the animation time (5-7 second), where you are not invincible. (fixed in Spirited Giraffe).

-The Ship is spacious, thats obvious, but Starbound client have some difficulty to bear big shipworld files, so expect some lags, or freeze if you have got a low/medium end computer config...

- Beyond tier 4, with the actual build, upgrading the ship doesnt change anything in its shape. Its more a "creative" version than tiered at the moment. I dont know if I will make one, because its difficult to know wich rooms to close or not along progression, and for RP purposes, it sound easier to let everyone acess all ship once FTL reactor is repaired.

-Its strongly recommanded to start a new character to use this ship mod...But its not mandatory.
If you want to have this ship with your already existing character ; then follow this tutorial from @GBK214 wich will explain to you the necessary process much better than me ^^

End:

Sorry for this wall of text, but I had to make sure every information would be inside. I will try to make this text much clearer later, when studies would let me some more time ^^
If there is any problem, bug, unexpected crash, leave me a comment in the dedicated thread, with eventually your crash log, then I will see what is going wrong to eventually patch it (if its possible)...
This is still a beta version; I'm actually testing it to see and get idears to improve the design (like eventually add or remove some rooms, udate functionnalities), I you have got any suggestions, to embetter/fix the design, feel free to post its...

Im curious of the way you will decorate inside of your ship, if I find some good pictures, then I will also know what to eventually change to embetter the design. I will also make an album on the thread.

I also need your ideas for the next tiering updates, I'm not sure wich room would be locked first, and at wich tier...

Thanks by advance if you downloaded it; hope you will still despite of the eventual problems quoted in this description, enjoy your travel in this ship.
Have a nice journey across the stars ^^

Edit: thank you everyone for all your positive reviews and comments, its really encouraging (even if its not positive, if its argumented, then I will know whats going wrong, and its always great), I will do my best to finish this project ^^

Mod Pack Permissions:

Anyone can use this mod in their mod compilation without the author's consent.

Mod Assets Permissions:

Anyone can alter/redistribute the mod's assets without the author's consent.