Slower Pace

The outline of deck 4 has continued to develop. I've plotted out the shapes of the crew quarters, library, grasers and Bussard ramscoop from deck 3, and the computer core. What I have left are: fusion reactors/impulse engines, matter/antimatter reaction missile (M/ARM) launchers, and the warp coils. This deck is definitely going to be big enough to fit deck 3.

As for the Minecraft World, not too much has been done. I placed torches strategically on Nippon so that aggressive mobs wouldn't spawn on it at night and I've got it almost perfect. Using a fly command I hovered over it to watch and saw a nice pattern of blocks growing dimmer then becoming brighter and repeating. I have torches placed roughly every 12 blocks, trying not to let any block be at or below light level 7. I cleared out some trees at the site that will eventually become Yusaria City.

In a desire to stop wasting time making unnecessary travel, I've used one of the more convenient commands in the SSP commands mod where I can set a point and then use /goto such that I'm teleported to the location. I have around six designated points now. Some may say it's sort of cheating, but I would beg to differ on two points: 1) This is my copy of Minecraft, and as such I feel I can do whatever I wish with it, be it play completely legit or hack to my heart's desire. If it were to hurt anyone, it would be myself. 2) There are rules I'm holding myself to, namely that I won't spawn blocks. How fast I get from place to place won't really affect how I construct things, so this rule is preserved.

In other news, I "met" Notch on a Classic server last night. Supposedly Notch himself entered and proceeded to chat with us. Indeed this person did have some powers that the typical person doesn't generally display, however I made a deal with this person. I would tweet him about this appearance and if it were really him, he would reply to the tweet confirming the visit. It's been 21 hours and no reply... was it a fake?

Beginning Deck 4

With the finishing touches of the docking port an decontamination room for deck 3, I finished that one. Next up is deck 4. My main challenge with this is to make it at least the width and height of the previous deck. I laid down the outlines for the crew quarters on the left side and the total length brings it to about 20 blocks short. What hasn't been added to that are the grasers which have their bottom halves on this deck. Also include the upper half of the impulse engine/fusion reactors, which should add around ten blocks. Length should not be a problem. My other concern is width. Again, the placement of grasers (and the hydrogen collector, aka "Bussard ramscoop") will sort of dictate a minimum width. I shouldn't have a problem with that, though.

This is also the deck where the warp coils appear. I wonder how long those should be. My original plan did not call for very many but given the size of the ship already, it doesn't seem like a small group of coils could envelop an entire ship into a pocket of warped space and propel it forward. I may need to increase the count of those.

In related news, I've already briefly considered a successor project to this, probably done in Beta: the Ruah class fighter carrier. It's like Battlestar Galactica meets Nimitz-class aircraft carrier meets my imagination. I want to throw in like TNT cannons and lava arrow dispensers. Maybe even redstone-wired TNT blocks for a self-destruct mechanism? It would possibly also be kind of more comfortable a place to live in for the thousands of people on it. The Ruah would be more like a flagship that the builders put a lot of money into.

Down Time

Not much to report recently. With Minecraft World repaired, I've taken a break from Elohim to get more resources for future expansion in the World. I've begun the third "node" (my term for a major branch) and in that same node mined two veins of 7 diamond. I've also accumulated plenty of iron, so much that I have somewhere around 200 of them. 153 of them have been lumped together in 17 iron blocks.

Concerning Elohim, I did some modeling for decks three and four. The third deck will be maybe 100 blocks long and maybe wide enough to fit the ship name on the outer hull. Deck four, on the other hand, it going to simply be enormous, unless I rotate the crew quarters. This would possibly widen the deck a little while greatly reducing its length. Still, it's packed with rooms and features including a few missile launchers, matter storage tank, and part of the sublight impulse engines. I can't work on it right now, because minecraft.net is down again.

Elohim's Internal Arrangements

Although I haven't laid down any final plans, I do know a little about what will go where. Rooms related to ship command and control will be placed together. Living quarters will be near that. Environmental control will be near the quarters, perhaps by the science department. Medical will be somewhere between the crew quarters and the engineering section. The security section will be near the meddeck but not as close to crew quarters (for good reason - would you feel comfortable knowing a criminal is on the opposite side of the wall you're laying by?).

As said before, Elohim is composed of three subhulls. This means that some things will need to be seen in all three of them, while some things will only appear in one. The shuttlebay will be in the back of Cain, like you'd find on Star Trek starships. Cain will also sport the main engineering room with the matter/antimatter reactor. The other two subhulls will have fusion reactors and banks of massive capacitors which are used as batteries. The primary meddeck will be in either Abel or Babel, but the other two will have smaller areas for medical purposes. A rather tricky part is going to be with their computer cores. I want to see if they can be lined up to form one core when connected, and not three scattered somewhere in the ship.

In a Classic file that I have on my hard drive, I've been making models of the ship's various rooms. It will indeed be a big ship, and maybe a little ugly at first. Deck 1, which has the main control center and briefing room, is 20x25 in size. Deck 2, which currently has the captain's and executive officer's offices along with another briefing room, currently doesn't look like it'll have to be quite as big. However, I've just barely begun making tentative deck layout plans, and that doesn't include larger constructs such as sublight engines, graser turrets, warp coils, etc. This ship will indeed be something when it's finished.