Monday, February 9, 2015

Light Assault Frigate - USS Quell - User Manual



This is the start of a user manual for my recent Space Engineers design.  I've named the ship USS Quell, but you can call it whatever you want.  She's just here to please you.  Oh so many jokes to be had here.  Anyway, let's move on.

The ship is designed to operate fairly intuitively but the torpedo system may require a little explanation.   First, let's breakdown the assigned seats at the bridge (see picture below)


If you can't read the text in the picture above, going from the left to the right, the seats are Engineer seat(controls torpedo launch system), Pilot seat (controls all hatches), Engineer seat (controls countermeasure launch system), Engineer seat (controls frontal dual canon and repair system activation).  Also notice the four red lights directly above the command consoles.  They are indicator lights for the torpedos.  After one has been launched, the corresponding light will be turned off.

So if you want to unleash some torpedoes, go ahead and get yourself seated in the far left seat.  See picture below for an explanation of the hot keys that shows up once you are seated.


Again, if you can't read the text in the picture above, here's the launch sequence.  

(1) Press button 1 to open the missile bay door (if it's not open already).  
(2) Press Button 2 to feed the torpedo into the tube then wait a few seconds as the torpedo goes into position (WARNING: if you press button 3 immediately, the torpedo thrusters may burn through the holding block thus ending in explosions, mutilation, and a whole range of other bad stuff).  
(3) After the torpedo is in position, press button 3 to ignite the torpedo.  At this point, the operator still has the option to cancel the launch system but pressing button 3 again to kill the thrusters on the torpedo then pressing button 2 to retract missile back.  
(4) But if you want to ahead and launch the torpedo, press button 4.  This will disengage the holding system on the missile, then retract the holder and rotate to the next missile.

There are a total of four missiles, each one is launched with separate buttons.  Use the same launch sequence on buttons 5, 6, 7 and 8.  (WARNING: button 5 is simply for rotating the torpedo system, which is actually automatically done after pressing button 4.  So do not press unless you want to retain a missile and cycle to the next one instead).  Buttons 6-8 launches missile 2.  Missile 3 and missile 4 controls are on the second control page (Press "Shift + 2" to get to the second control page).

This concludes the whole launch sequence explanation.

The counter measure launch system follows a somewhat similar pass but slightly simpler.  Go to the counter measure control seat and open the counter measure hatch.  Reverse counter measure rotors to get them into position.  Ignite the countermeasures then launch.  No pictures yet but you can always press "G" when in the seat to figure out what each button does.  The names for the buttons should be fairly intuitive.

That's it for now kids, more to come later (if necessary).