The Fighter Review: Issue 12

The Fighter Review is a weekly periodical which looks at starfighter designs submitted to the Steam Workshop, offering high-quality constructive criticism and balanced reviews.

If you wish to have your work appear in the Fighter Review, or to contribute reviews yourself, add me on Steam.

Issue #1: Mohel, lol.dk, AlexMcFacepalm, Z3RO, Sparky-Sparky Boom man

An Introduction

So what is the Fighter Review? I plan it to be a weekly multimedia look at original starfighter designs submitted to Space Engineers' Steam Workshop, a qualitative appraisal of ships based on their aesthetic appeal, the practicality and functionality of their systems, and their armament.

As for why I would do this, I just love fighters, man. I'm basically a professional aviation and militaria nerd in real life already. I also really like Space Engineers, so this gives me an opportunity to do both of these things simultaneously. Even if the reviews are seldom read, by the reviewed or otherwise, if I can find a great diamond in the Steam Workshop rough, or inspire someone to make or improve an awesome new fighter design, I'll consider my mission accomplished.

With that out of the way, on with the reviews! For this issue I'm currently "in the weeds" as it were, looking at fighters which were uploaded with just the name "fighter," maybe a screenshot, and little other identifying information, usually from the pre-thruster-damage days. Despite this, one still finds surprisingly good designs and Mohel's fighter is one such example.

Mohel

Aesthetics: ★★★★☆

I really like the design. Compact, lightweight, efficient, and evocative of the idea of a starfighter without leaning heavily on tropes. The crescent shape of its aft and wings contrasts nicely with the aggressive lines of the cockpit and weapon systems. My main criticism is that the aft could use more inverse armor blocks to make the shape smoother.

Systems: ★★★☆☆

The issues with this design are an artifact of the time; before thruster damage and some of the systems we take for granted today (conveyors, containers, etc.). Removing the six internal thrusters from the design and replacing its two main thrusters remedies most of the issues. That said, the absence of any side-facing thrusters does present control issues.

Armament: ★★★☆☆

Well armed for a ship of its size. However, the guns are limited to internal ammunition. The back-facing armament is of dubious utility.

Overall: 3.3 out of 5 ★. With improvements, however, this could easily get a 4 or better.

lol dot dk

Aesthetics: ★★★☆☆

The fuselage itself is a sound design; its squashed hexagon shape means business and offers ample room for reactors and other systems. The wings, however, are either unneccessary or bear a redesign, and combined with the livery are distracting.

Systems: ★★☆☆☆

Thrusters for all six directions are in place and balanced overall, which is good. However, there are no gyroscopes on the ship as published, which makes control problematic.

Armament: ★★☆☆☆

The ship's four cannons are grouped tightly in the nose and fit in well with the ship's profile, but with no other armament the ship will have difficulty doing serious damage to larger vessels.

Overall 2.3 out of 5.

AlexMcFacepalm

Aesthetics: ★★★☆☆

The winged fighter especially has a nice profile; the swept-forward wings and filigree design behind the engines give it an agile look that matches its handling. The fuselage of both ships, however, suffers from a degree of boxiness.

Systems: ★★★★☆

The swept-wing fighter handles splendidly; its ample gyros and thrusters allow for very tight cornering. The shuttle/fighter, however, has a thruster damage issue that bears redesign as it blows out one of the large thrusters.

Armament: ★★★☆☆

Both ships are overflowing with guns; it may make some sense to use fewer guns with more ammo storage containers instead.

Overall: 3.3 out of 5 ★.

Z3RO

Aesthetics: ★★★★☆

Both fighters are great original designs. The wedge fighter especially, bristling as it is with thrusters and given that bright racing stripe, gives off this sense of being like a muscle car.

Systems: ★★★☆☆

The double-bathtub fighter has a thruster damage issue that causes one side to blow out. With this fixed, and the armor upgraded, it would be a nightmare to dogfight against - it would be all but impervious to gatling guns.

Armament: ★★☆☆☆

The most serious issue is the armament. While the guns are fine, the placement of the missiles in the wedge is heavily flawed; on the first-trigger pull they backfired and critically killed the wedge, turning it into a spinning hunk of armor.

Overall: 3 out of 5 ★.

Sparky Sparky boom man

Aesthetics: ★★★★☆

All the fighters had original, memorable designs, though I think my favorites were the two at the end of the dock; the vaguely t-shaped one and the other that was shaped like a turtle shell. Their liveries were also well-done.

Systems: ★★★★☆

All the fighters seem to have thruster damage issues that bear looking at. Aside from that, however, they all handle fairly well and have good acceleration and maneuverability, and the up-armoring on vulnerable surfaces is a good touch.

Armament: ★★★☆☆

The weakness of this set of fighters is their armament; all but one are all-gun and the missile-equipped fighter has but one launcher. Swapping out a couple of the guns for launchers and adding extra ammo storage to the remaining guns may be a better solution.

Overall: 3.6 out of 5 ★.

The Wrapup

Of this weeks fighters, I have to pick Mohel's fighter as Fighter of the Week - despite the problems it's a good design that with a few minor improvements could easily be great. Z3R0's wedge fighter is a close runner-up, though - with more careful missile placement it would be an outstanding design.

Issue #2: Slim Hybrid, The Brick, zepoxi, [MEC]bilboswagginz, and (SSA) cj

Slim Hybrid by Z3R0

Aesthetics: ★★★★☆

True to its name the Slim Hybrid is a slim design, slightly thinner and shorter than the regular Keen Fighter. Despite working within this limited size, the Slim Hybrid doesn't skimp on shaped armor that accentuates its "rocket pill" shape.

Systems: ★★★★☆

The points in its favor are that, despite its compact size, the fighter is fully conveyed, from connector to guns to reactors, and exposes none of these systems but the connector. The battery can, however, wreak some havoc - if the battery is charging and the ship is not connected to a mothership or station with a more powerful reactor, its usage will far outstrip the ability of the fighter to charge it, pushing the reactors to 180% while idle. However, once the battery has finished charging, usage evens out, and it takes relatively hard maneuvering to push them to overload.

Armament: ★★★★☆

The ship is armed with three gatling cannons, which are very well placed to avoid damaging the ship during hard turns and fully conveyed.

Overall: 4 out of 5 ★.

The Brick by Shoes

Aesthetics: ★★★★☆

The two fighter designs I picked out are both smartly done - all the ships have been done in a livery matching that of the Blue Ship, and the light and heavy fighter designs share a similar design language and layout. They're evocative of the TIE fighter design without imitating them too closely.

Systems: ★★★☆☆

Both fighters are decently laid out, with room for some improvement. Opposing directional thrusters are all very well balanced, making the fighters supremely capable at navigating the tight spaces of a hangar. The large fighter is partially conveyed between its reactors and wing pylons; however, the internal space of the pylons seems underutilized overall, and its main armament is not connected, which limits its offensive potential. Both ships also lack connectors, which would increase their utility as carrier fighters. Replacing 6x small thruster blocks with a large thruster would also be meet.

Armament: ★★★☆☆

The large fighter feels underarmed for its weight and size at 2x cannons, which are double hobbled by not being connected to conveyors. The light fighter has the opposite issue, sporting 4x cannons and 2x rockets; the recoil from the guns tends to cause a huge amount of spin. Modifying the large fighter to utilize reloadable rocket launchers, while removing a couple cannons from the small fighter, would go a long way towards improving them.

Overall: 3.3 out of 5 ★.

zepoxi

Aesthetics: ★★★★☆

The shape is simple and effective, with form clearly following function but not being overwhelmed by the latter, each part smoothly flowing into the next. I also like the livery quite a bit.

Systems: ★★★☆☆

A gyro ratio nearing 1:1k-kg give this fighter hair-trigger maneuverability, though the unequal placement of thrusters can still make executing a course change a bit cumbersome. There are also some issues with thruster damage from the placement of two maneuvering thrusters.

Armament: ★★☆☆☆

The fighter is heavily armed but the guns are not conveyed; fewer cannons with ammo storage may be more effective. As well, the placement of the launchers near the rear of the fuselage makes it dangerously prone to backfire accidents while maneuvering, one of which critically killed the ship.

Overall: out 3 of 5 ★.

[MEC]bilboswagginz

Aesthetics: ★★★☆☆

Novel designs, if a little difficult to imagine piloting in a hangar. The best overall I would say is the F-99, which manages to balance form and function the best.

Systems: ★★★★☆

All seem to pursue the idea of form following function as an absolute; thrusters seem to bubble up out of the hulls and every ship (even the heavy ones) have muscular acceleration and maneuvering. Author also makes ingenius use of detachable armor and decoys which I haven't seen tried before on fighters. That said, little of the fighter's internals seem to be conveyed, including the reactors, and said internals also tend to be difficult to get at to refill.

Armament: ★★★☆☆

Each ship is armed to the nines with cannons and launchers. The launchers are carefully placed in the front to reduce the possibility and collateral of backfire, which is good, but the guns are not always conveyed. Fewer cannons and revamped conveyors would help.

Overall: 3.3 out of 5 ★.

(SSA) cj

Aesthetics: ★★★★☆

The overall shape of the fighter is a bit blocky but I like its profile when viewed from above, the lines are very clean and aggressive.

Systems: ★★★☆☆

This is what I'd consider a "nightmare dogfighter" - a fighter so heavily armored as to many any non-missile fighter useless against it. That said, it would be a good idea to replace some of the 2x3 small thrusters with 1x large thrusters, which are more effective.

Armament: ★★★☆☆

While the amount of armament is right for this ship, its placing is a little off - the grouping of the guns will make it difficult to bring them all to bear on a small fighter. This combined with the launchers which cannot be fired while maneuvering almost make it more suited for a bomber role.

Overall: 3.3 out of 5 ★.

The Wrapup

Hard choice this week, but I'd have to say that the large Brick fighters is my Fighter of the Week, with the runner-up being a dead heat between the Slim Hybrid and the F-99.

Interlude - Some Notes on the Administration of the Review

TFR is starting to pick up steam and get attention, so I figure I'd lay out some guidelines for the publication (and myself) that can be referred to in the future - as the need arises.

The fundamental framework of TFR is for it to be a review of about five ships, done once per week (anywhere between Wednesday and Sunday). This can change depending on either short-term factors (i.e. a special issue for the occasion of a holiday, anniversary, or especially notable reviews), and long-term factors (i.e. changing the review format, adding features, or adding on more writers).

Each issue I plan to take up to three requests, and two submissions that I pull out of The Great Backlog. I think this is a fair mix that keeps TFR from just being a way for people to advertise submissions - its goal isn't just to critique but also bring to light submissions that otherwise wouldn't see the light of day, whether they're old or because the author might not otherwise know or want to advertise their work.

Each review is generally restricted to 950 characters total; this is due to a limitation on Steam Workshop disallowing posts longer than 1000 characters (but which I've found, in practice, is actually 950). While I can and have once gone on a little longer on TFR's page itself, I find that the neighborhood of 1000 characters is good for a broad overview of each submission, and captures the most important points without going on ad nauseum.

Reviews are not restricted to just one ship, but are done on a per-Steam Workshop submission basis. That said, the quality of my review is going to be better and more helpful the more I can concentrate on a single ship.

I have no prohibition against the use of mods - you can use whatever mods you want. Do note, however, that I may still mention and factor in the use of mods where they may heavily impact the aesthetic, systems, or armament judgements. It may thus be best to think of mods as something that can add spice and flavor to your building, but shouldn't necessarily be the main course.

Reviews are generally restricted to small ships. Just because it's called the Fighter Review doesn't mean I'll snub a dropship or bomber; that said, if it's getting over 50 meters in length or has ample room to walk around inside, or uses mods to give small ships large blocks, it's a bit of an abuse of the definition of small ship. I still might review it, but that fact can reflect on the score. I would be less flexible on the combat aspect, though - escape pods or mining ships do fall outside the scope of the Review.

With regards to SE survival PVP - I'm not well versed in the hard realities of it. I've got what I think is a good handle on general principles of it but my appraisal still might not be perfect where the cutthroat reality of "real" PVP is concerned, and I readily admit that. Anyone who would be willing to offer their take on submissions from that angle is welcome to contact me about working with the Review.

In general, where more writers are concerned, I am flexible there as well. If you're interested but don't want to make a commitment to a regular "staff" position, I'd be just as glad to have you be a guest writer. Add me on Steam and send a little sample of your writing.

Issue #3: Delabendus, Muravey, Nitel, Helikon, and (SSA) cj

Delabendus Class Dropship[/url] by FinnMacGul

JOURNALISTIC INTEGRITY MOMENT: Finn is an IRL friend of mine from my college days, when we were roommates, and also the excellent fellow who gifted me my copy of Space Engineers.Aesthetics: ★★★★☆This is one of those designs I would qualify as "gloriously ugly," like the F-4 Phantom II or A-10 Thunderbolt II (which is most assuredly a wonderful thing); it's rotund and chunky, but uses a sloped roof to avoid being blocky. My main suggestion would be to go for more liveries - only one of the five models tested had any, and both were monochrome. The designs using the corner thrusters were my favorite overall, as the thrusters complimented the overall shape the best.Systems: ★★★★☆The ship is an adventerous design - a light dropship/personnel carrier configured for a pilot and a gunner, most of its size actually results from the cargo bay in the hull set up to seat up to six engineers. A finely crafted conveyor system feeds every reactor and container onboard, allowing the ship to take on fuel and ammo and gives access to personnel in the cargo section as well.The effectiveness of the two-pilot design is the biggest point of debate. The upper cockpit is configured to control the weaponry, however, it can't be locked out of the maneuvering controls. A future patch might change this but, in the mean-time, it does open the possibility that when run by a full crew the gunner may consciously or unconsciously make unintended course changes.Armament: ★★★☆☆The ship is very heavily armed, bristling with gatlings sprouting out of the weapon pods, as well as reloadable rocket launchers (with even more facing downward on the dropship models). However, the placement of the latter proved a bit problematic - the forward-facing launchers were very, very sensitive to the slightest turn and would consequently often backfire, blowing the entire front half of the ship off.Overall: 3.6 out of 5 ★.

[url]I-24 "Muravey" series fighters[/url] by rossmum

Aesthetics: ★★★★★The Muravey has to be one of the best-looking ships I've seen to date. Aesthetically, it's got it all together - clean lines on the wings and fuselage that give it a unique and pleasing shape, combined with liveries that take full advantage of said design to give each ship a striking appearance. Open up the control panel, and you will see that the author has even given parts of the ship's systems unique names and terminology. This intricate attention to detail in my mind merits the full five stars.Systems: ★★★☆☆Where the Muravey suffers slightly is the design of its internals. The ship handles splendidly, maintaining excellent thruster balance, and its single large reactor insures plenty of power. However, access to those internals is split between two ejectors, a single one to the aft labelled Fuel Port and another next to the cockpit for ammunition. While they are less impactful on the design than the much larger and unwieldier connector, they are also less practical, and the isolation of each system from the other would make restocking the ship more tedious than it could otherwise be.Armament: ★★★☆☆For armament, the Muravey sports a single gatling cannon and four rocket launchers, which give it a fearsome punch against large ships. However, the lack of cannons could leave it at a disadvantage in a dogfight, and the lack of heavy armor also makes it more vulnerable in general.Overall: out 3.6 of 5 ★.[url]

Nitel

Aesthetics: ★★★★☆

The save contained an asteroid base and ships in various roles, and the base in particular was nicely made and fun to explore, though the focus will be on the fighter I found in it. It is a minimalist, very light design, and emphasizes its length over its width, which I liked.

Systems: ★★★☆☆

Despite being so small and light, the fighter was fully functional - all directional thrusters, gyros, and landing gear were present. The problematic bits were that none of the systems were connected, or easily accessible - supply doors were pointed towards the fuselage. It was also somewhat overequipped, with seven reactors when four was enough, and four landing gear where two was ample.

Armament: ★★★☆☆

At two guns, it is almost over-armed - the recoil from them was enough to give the ship noticeable spin. The guns also had their cargo doors turned towards the fuselage, and were disconnected, which makes restocking them tedious - a single conveyor and container does a lot to remedy the problem. The exposure of its systems would also make surviving a direct hit in a fight very challenging.

Overall: 3.3 out of 5 ★.

Helikon by Aerdoria

Aesthetics: ★★★★☆

The partitioned design of the hull and gull wings gives the Helikon a lean and mean look, and evokes classical aerofighter designs while still looking futuristic. The livery is also good, going for a jungle camo look using a lot of original shades. The use of incomplete blast doors as shaped framework is also a nice touch.

Systems: ★★★☆☆

The ship has great forward acceleration, though is a bit skimpy on maneuvering thrusters. The bit which puzzles me is the conveyors - the forward gun pods have visible conveyors lines going all the way to the back, but they don't end in a connector or access doors, nor do they connect to the reactors, even though it would not be difficult to accomplish this.

Armament: ★★★☆☆

The Helikon is decently armed with two cannons and two launchers, though the launcher placement makes them vulnerable to critical backfires when the Helikon is pitching down. The exposed conveyors are also vulnerable to damage, though the left-right redundancy helps mitigate this somewhat.

Overall: 3.3 out of 5 ★.

SSA (cj)

Aesthetics: ★★☆☆☆

This is one of the more unusual designs I've looked at, and there is no way around it - it's a little ungainly. It could be improved if the armor around the cockpit was shaped more to compliment that shape instead of mask it completely, or if the engine pods were more rounded, and less stubby.

Systems: ★★★☆☆

To its credit, this ship isn't lacking any critical systems - it has thrusters along each degree of freedom and gyros all in place. The decision to attach the landing gear to rotors is unusual, and makes it so using P as a shortcut doesn't work, but the author did make sure to group them together to allow them to be hotbarred. That said, only one reactor is hooked up to the cargo container which seems to be intended as its access.

Armament: ★★☆☆☆

The ship is also armed well enough with four launchers and four cannons, all fairly tightly grouped. The launcher placement below the cockpit, however, makes it vulnerable to backfire, and the guns are not conveyed. Heavy armor would also make the cockpit shielding more effective.

Overall: 2.3 out of 5 ★.

Wrapup

My Fighter of the Week goes to the Muravey for its aesthetic completeness, though the Delabendus and Helikon are the easy runners-up. Thanks to everyone who submitted!

Issue #4: Fighter/Carrier, Extricator Fighter, Black Widow, Slain, WhoDatNinja

Fighter/Carrier by schwem00

Aesthetics: ★★★☆☆

The ship has an austere, minimalist design, using a pod fighter layout. The aft section especially suffers from a degree of blockiness, and better use of shaped armor, and a livery, could help alleviate these problems.

Systems: ★★★☆☆

The ship is fully conveyed, thrust-balanced, and maintains a good gyro/weight ratio, which is good. The only point against it is that it must be manually reloaded; it has no connectors or collectors.

Armament: ★★★★☆

The ship is very well-armed, and the tight grouping of its armaments made possible by its pod design allow for a high degree of accuracy. It is also very heavily armored. The one issue that it has is the placement of the reloadable launcher - if fired while the ship is pitching up, backfire which destroys the cockpit is all but certain.

Overall: 3.6 out of 5 ★.

Extricator Fighter by Tripping Pug

Aesthetics: ★★★★★

The Extricator fighter immediately presents a heavyset profile, but don't let this initial impression color your judgement of the design. The Extricator is a finely sculpted machine, utilizing shaped armor and livery (with custom colors) to maximum effect - the design is such that using a mod like Armor Thrusters would actually take away from the design.

Systems: ★★★★☆

The ship sports a finely balanced thruster set and a 1:4k kg gyro ratio, and handles like a dream. A nose-mounted camera and remote control let the Extricator also do duty as a drone. Its power system is a hybrid reactor/battery setup, which, when the batteries are charged, provides ample power. The connector, however, only feeds the guns, and a single medium container. The fact that it charges the batteries mitigates the issue somewhat, but it could have been more effective if it also fed the reactors.

Armament: ★★★☆☆

Thruster redundancy helps insure that the ship will keep moving after a hit; however, the ship is lightly armored overall, and lightly armed. To its credit, the guns are very close to the center of mass, making spin almost a non-factor, and the missile launcher is well-placed to minimize the potential for backfire. That said, any hit with a missile could potentially be fatal.

Overall: 4 out of 5 ★.

Black Widow by Cyber_Donkey

Aesthetics: ★★★☆☆

The Black Widow is a very boxy design. It has a striking livery that helps reinforce the theme, which is good, and utilizes sloped armor pieces reasonably well, but it remains boxy to the point of distraction. Decorative, semifunctional elements like wings or empennages would help break up the boxiness.

Systems: ★★★☆☆

At 136k kg, the Black Widow is probably one of the heaviest fighters I've looked at to date; however, most of that weight is gyroscopes (of which it has 76). Whether this offers the Black Widow a serious advantage or not, I'm not so sure - it certainly handles well, and I was able to get it to maneuver in snug spaces. It also accelerated (and braked) almost twice as fast as lighter fighters I had built. However, despite having an underside connector, it is not conveyed to the other ship's systems.

Armament: ★★★☆☆

The ship is extremely heavily armed, with 18 regular launchers and 6 cannons. However, considering the ship's size, it should have been able to easily sport reloadable launchers - the use of regular launchers poses harsh limits on its total payload. As well, the cockpit is thrust forward between the two banks, increasing its vulnerability to backfire while yawing considerably, an issue exacerbated by the close placement of the launchers. As well, the wide spacing between the gatling cannons limits their utility in a dog fight.

Overall: 3 out of 5 ★.

Slain

Aesthetics: ★★★★☆

This svelte pod fighter is one of the standout examples of the type. Building regular thrusters and other systems into its overall shape, it is hard to tell at a distance that the ship is armed at all - if you even see it. On a dark skybox, its livery makes it very hard to make out, making it an excellent vessel for stealthy incursions.

Systems: ★★★★☆

This is a ship that was built with survival in mind. While sporting no collectors or connectors, the ship is still fully conveyed, and comes survival-ready with ample supplies in fuel and ammo. Two large thrusters give it powerful acceleration, though its compliment of braking thrusters is a little lacking in comparison.

Armament: ★★★★☆

The ship is heavily armed, sporting ten cannons and three launchers. Normally I would perhaps suggest less cannons, but this design integrates them very well - they melt into the overall design, are tightly grouped, and fully conveyed, and synergize well with the ship's stealthy profile - the combination of guns and missiles could doubtless allow it to spring a deadly ambush.

Overall: 4 out of 5 ★.

WhoDatNinja

Aesthetics: ★★★★☆

Overall I really like this design. The lights are a bit of a distraction and I think the same effect could be achieved (with less strain on one's video card) with a good livery. The overall shape of the fighters are, however, excellent, both sporting a sort of gunship fuselage with engine pods.

Systems: ★★★☆☆

The ship comes together awesomely in terms of its handling - the engine pod design gives it powerful acceleration, dime-width braking, and cat-like agility. What I found puzzling, however, was the addition of thrusters on the fuselage - if there were only a few in all directions to act as backups to the pods, that would make some sense, but the stud the back, bottom and top of the fuselage and only add a little thrust to the already high-powered large thrusters on the pods, and additional downward acceleration. They, and the spotlights, are somewhat extraneous. As well, the reactors are inaccessible and not apparently conveyed.

Armament: ★★★☆☆

The two ships are both all-missile, one sporting 16 launchers and the other 14. This is absolutely devastating firepower, to be sure, and pulling the trigger and watching half a platform get blown away was good fun. However, the placement of the launchers in such close density, and staggered at that, exponentially increase the chance of backfire, even when standing still, and the number of missiles launched more or less insures any backfire incident is a critical kill.

Overall: 3.3 out of 5 ★.

The Wrapup

This was a really great selection of fighters this week. Strictly aesthetically speaking, I thought the Extricator was hands-down the most handsome ship, but I have to give Fighter of the Week to Slain's fighter - even though on each category there may have been ships which individually had Slain's beat, the ship was definitely more than the sum of its parts, and I could well imagine such a ship being deadly in survival.

Issue #5: stealth missile ship/heavy transport, B,I,S E/LE-Fighter, V2-M Fighter, stfrownee021, larluc08

stealth missile ship/heavy transport by jayden_shad

Aesthetics: ★★★☆☆

This stealth ship does look the part - painted solid black, it may be blocky but the flat sides minimize the number of exposed seams, making the ship harder to spot. It may not be pretty, but it should be effective.

Systems: ★★★★☆

The ship is smartly designed - although there are no connectors and the only exposed access point is the reloadable launcher itself, the reactor, cargo container, and missile launcher are all properly conveyed. As well, engines and weapons have been grouped and added to the hotbar, making turning them off in order to better camouflage oneself simple. I felt that more side-facing thrusters would be useful to make its handling better.

Armament: ★★★☆☆

Armament is the main category where the ship needs the most work. Considering its size, weight, and role, it should be able to sport more than one reloadable launcher. While that launcher gives it staying power, as a ship designed to spring an ambush, the focus should be on launching massive, devastating knock-out blows - to end a fight before it begins. Granted, a single launcher could do that to a fighter - if it lands a hit - but is at a disadvantage versus a large ship. As well, the armor uses a checkerboard pattern of light and heavy, and it may be more useful overall to commit to one or the other.

Overall: 3.3 out of 5 ★.

B,I,S E-Fighter, LE-Fighter by Tidus Klein

Aesthetics: ★★★★☆

Both ships make good use of shaped armor to liven up the shape of each pod fighter. The lack of livery does leave something to be desired, even if it encourages one to make their own designs.

Systems: ★★★☆☆

Both ships have great acceleration, sitting on two large thrusters that rocket their light frames forward; the comparitively lighter numbers of thrusters along the rest of the six degrees of freedom, however, give it somewhat sleepy turns and nerve-wracking braking. The connectors on both ships are good, and hooked up to reactors and guns.

There was, however, an incident with the E variant ship, which uses piston-based extensible landing gear. I was not sure how the landing gear worked, and activated the wrong block first - with disastrous consequences. It was only after looking at the hotbar again that I realized it was a two-step process, which had been obscured by the positioning of said steps in isolation from each other on the hotbar. Dedicating one of the spare hotbars to the landing gear and using a 1-2-3 step process using the same buttons, would also help.

Armament: ★★★★☆

Both ships have a balanced armament, one launcher and two cannons on the E and two reloadable launchers and four cannons on the LE. The E was designed best, putting the launcher up in the nose to minimize backfire. The LE, though it sports reloadables, also nests them in the fuselage, in such a way that the slightest pitch or yaw while firing could set off catastrophic backfire.

Overall: 3.6 out of 5 ★.

V2-M fighter+ Propulsion Ring mk2 by Vegathron

Aesthetics: ★★★★☆

Overall the design is excellent - the core fighter is a classical starfighter shape, and the white and red-striped livery is bright and bold. My main issue was with the symmetry of the engine ring - the lower half seems squashed in comparison to the upper half. A minor nitpick is that the shades of red used between fighter and ring also differ slightly.

Systems: ★★★☆☆

The central conceit behind this fighter's design is to utilize a thruster ring to augment acceleration that can be jettisoned to give the ship greater maneuverability. The jettisoning part works well enough - the use of merge blocks insures both a reliable connection as well as simplicity of operation. However, reconnecting the ship to the ring can be difficult - as wired up, the release shuts down the merge block on *the ring* instead of the fighter, forcing a manual restart of its merge block. Deactivating the fighter's merge block alone would be better. As well, squeezing the fighter back into the ring is a delicate process and there is not much room for error. This limited space also seems to be provoking an unusual bug, in that the primary large thruster on the fighter vanishes during the merging process (a seemingly random bug I wasn't able to get to repeat during recordings). Overall, I like the idea, and think with further refinements it could be made flawless.

Armament: ★★★★☆

The central fighter is suitably armed for its size, with two cannons and one missile launcher. The missile launcher in particular is well-placed - well ahead of critical systems in the nose, and also by itself, which simultaneously reduces the chance of backfire and minimizes its impact when it does occur. The guns are also tightly grouped, however, if fired while the fighter is yawing left or right there is a chance they will impact on the long nose.

Overall: 3.6 out of 5 ★.

stfrownee021

Aesthetics: ★★★☆☆

The fighter gives the impression of being like a turtle, wrapped as it is in heavy armor and sporting a rounded, somewhat shellish shape. Overall, though, I feel that the "cow-catcher" design of the nose lends itself better to verticality over horizontonality, and especially with the bulged sides the ship has an air of squatness to it.

Systems: ★★★☆☆

The fighter is slow to accelerate, only sporting five back-facing thrusters. That said, it sports twice as many top and bottom, and four on each side, which combined with the ample number of gyroscopes give it very precise handling. Its systems are obscured, however, which would make use of it in survival tedious.

Armament: ★★★☆☆

The all-heavy-armor design of the ship, combined with its recessed cockpit, could make this ship a formidable dogfighter, but its light armament of two cannons and sleepy acceleration count against it in that regard. It could, like Slain's fighter from issue 4, spring an ambush, but its light armament would limit the effectiveness of this attack.

Overall: 3 out of 5 ★.

larluc08

Special Note: This fighter uses the old Embershard mod IDs, and will not load immediately. I used the GypsyMODPack as a substitute.


Aesthetics: ★★★☆☆

There are two main problems with the design - the first is the livery. The use of red and blue on the fore and aft of the fighter give the impression that it's two fighters mashed into one. While that is something I did myself literally with the Reitschwert, I also redid the livery to give it a unified look. Secondly, it feels like the mods are what is giving the fighter shape. I'm not against the use of mods, but when you're building a ship you have to ask - if I took out every mod I'm using, could the ship still function at all? If the answer is no, the design bears some scrutiny.

Systems: ★★★☆☆

The ship lacks no critical systems, but the heavy use of the maneuvering thruster mod, in place of any other larger, more powerful thrusters, makes its handling a bit sleepier than I otherwise would have liked. The Sledge engines give it decent acceleration, though the overall weight of the ship likely dampens the effect. The connector is a good and appreciated touch, and it does run to the reactor - however, it does not feed the six guns, which consequently have to be manually reloaded.

Armament: ★★★☆☆

This is an all-gun fighter, sporting six out the front and four out the back. While certainly safe, it does tend to limit the ship to dogfighting. While the fuselage is wrapped in a heavy armor plate that gives it strength and durability, placing armament on the fragile cathedral and swept wings does make them more vulnerable, as the lose of any one wing block will take away a quarter or more of the ship's total payload.

Overall: 3 out of 5 ★.

The Wrapup

Fighter of the week for Issue 5 goes to Vegathron's V2-M - I do feel that, whatever issues aside, Vegathron's a modular fighter is standout. Tidus Klein's B,I,S E/LE fighters were the close runner up, though, especially when I did get its nifty landing gear figured out.

Issue #6: NSX-4450 by Nitel, Hornet by |SK|:Aarius, Cinnamon Toast Cat, Duffcrafter, Tick I and Manta I by Toryius

Foreword

It seems in the last patch or so that guns and missile launchers have both been modified somewhat - missile launchers now seem less likely to backfire (to the order of *never*), and fire a projectile matching the mesh of the missile item itself. Gun recoil is also now more or less non-existent. Most importantly, weapon modding is now in the game, in limited capacity, which has enormous potential for the modding community. This is not without some annoyances - as reloadable rocket launchers appear to be broken. That said, I think it will all be worth it if we can finally get a gun that actually has decent firepower!

NSX-4450 Gunship by Nitel

Aesthetics: ★★★★☆

The NSX-4450 has a lithe and slender design, evocative of helicopter gunships. Some design elements integrate well into this, such as the H-shaped empennage which functions as the primary thruster cluster. Others, like the armor cladding for the cargo-lifting merge block, don't seem to fit in as well.

Systems: ★★★☆☆

The ship has decent enough thruster balance, though braking can be a bit sleepy. However, the systems are not conveyed, and as the ship uses a large number of small reactors for power this makes refueling a bit tedious.

The main issue, though, is that the role of the ship seems muddled. At a featherweight 12k kg it is supposed to be a cargo hauler, but uses a merge block for that purpose (which will only latch onto specialized cargo equipped with merge blocks) instead of more flexible landing gear. Critical systems - such as the gyroscopes - are exposed.

Armament: ★★☆☆☆

The ship is lightly armored, which is not too much of a strike against it as the design is light enough that heavy armor would not be much help anyway. However, it has no pilot-initiated weapons - only two turrets from the Small Ship Mega Mod. While turrets can now be controlled by other players, this still requires other players to control them. Overall it seems the design would mesh better with reloadable launchers; this would put it in a good position to do fire support on large ships while lingering out of the turret killzone, and just give the second player a dedicated dogfighter to maintain air superiority.

Overall: 3 out of 5 ★.

SoK Hornet ALV3 01 by |SK|:Aarius

Aesthetics: ★★★★☆

The Hornet has a deceptively heavyset build, which nicely disguises the tightly packed systems of the vessel. The livery is nothing too adventurous, but is better than the default light grey.

Systems: ★★★★☆

The ship features blowout acceleration and with a gyro ratio of 1:3.5k kg, it feels much lighter than it is. The ship's reactor, guns, and storage are all conveyed, which is excellent, but there is no surface access, via connectors, access doors, or otherwise.

Armament: ★★★★☆

The ship has a decent mix of armaments, with four cannons and two missile launchers. The networking of said cannons and the capacity given by a medium cargo container give it enormous endurance, though the lack of heavy armor makes it vulnerable. It can afford up-armoring, considering the powerful acceleration and maneuverability.

Overall: 4 out of 5 ★.

Cinnamon Toast Cat

Aesthetics: ★★★★☆

CTC's design combines a compact pod fighter design with engine pods, and a nice green and yellow livery. It's nothing especially adventurous but still executes its design concepts well.

Systems: ★★☆☆☆

On initial import, the ship lacked gyroscopes, a critical design flaw. With those added, its performance is still not especially good - the engine pods could easily support a greater number of thrusters that would give it exceptional performance for its size and weight. Reactors are buried in the armor and cannot be accessed.

Armament: ★★★☆☆

The ship's two cannons are well placed, grouped together tightly under the nose. The lack of heavy armor, and heavier armaments, however, limits its utility. The guns could also be both easily conveyed - and gain ample storage - with a single small cargo container placed between them.

Overall: 3 out of 5 ★.

Duffcrafter

Aesthetics: ★★★★☆

Duffcrafter's fighter is an interesting little design - another highly compact, lightweight ship, it uses dual gull-wings to mount its main armament, and mounts two of its cannons on the empennage. It's an adventurous, if busy design, managing to be more interesting than a lot of pod fighters while not being substantially larger, heavier, or more impractical.

Systems: ★★★☆☆

The ship has some minor flaws in terms of its practical design but nothing show-stopping. One of the gyroscopes seems to have been destroyed before the ship was uploaded, so a 1:3.3k kg ratio seems to be what was intended. Combined with the good thruster balance, it makes the ship a spry dogfighter. On the ship's aft, it seems that one of the small thruster clusters could have been easily replaced by a single large thruster. Unfortunately, the reactors are neither conveyed or exposed.

Armament: ★★★★☆

This ship sports a fearsome armament of four cannons and a whopping eight missile launchers. Prior to this update (1.053), the concentrated placement and position of the launchers would have made them more dangerous to the ship than the enemy, but it seems backfire has been effectively elimanated in the last couple patches - I was unable to provoke said launchers into destroying the ship. The combination makes this ship a tiny terror - maneuverable, agile, and heavily armed, ships like these are primed to rule the day in SE, going forward.

Overall: 3.6 out of 5 ★.

Tick I[/url] and [url]Manta I[/url] by Toryius

Aesthetics: ★★★★★The Tick and Manta are both handsome designs. The Manta is shaped to evoke its namesake, with swept forward "wingelage" spreading out its critical systems. The Tick obscures a bulbous backend, like the swollen abdomen of its namesake, with two gun pods, which are conveyed but cleverly disguise that with shaped armor. This clever and mindful use of their animal motifs merits the five stars.Systems: ★★★★☆The ships are both very well-designed. The Manta's foward acceleration feels a little underpowered at 1x Large Thruster, but it is otherwise got a good degree of thruster balance. The Tick sports the same Large Thruster, but sitting on top of a much lighter frame, giving it blistering performance and maneuverability - but unfortunately, its reactors are not quite up to the task of feeding said thruster. The ships make up for these shortcomings by being fully conveyed, and both sport connectors to boot, which is a major point in their favor where I am concerned.Armament: ★★★★☆The Tick sports two cannons, while the Manta has four as well as two launchers, which are both decent loadouts for their respective weight classes and roles. Overall: 4.3 out of 5 ★.

Wrapup

It was another close call this week between the Hornet, and the Manta I and Tick I. Both were aesthetically excellent designs that were backed up by good internals and performance. Something about the Hornet, though, I liked the most.

Issue #7: UEMC Cutlass, F-94, Desert Scorpian, ragethunder101

Foreword

Apparently seven is not my lucky number - preparing the review this week was a taxing affair. This is a problem I've had issues with in the past but it came to a head this week. So it's time we had a conversation about use of mods in Space Engineers.

First off I'd like to establish my credentials: when it comes to modding games I'm a level beyond being a modder - I'd consider myself, more correctly, a modding supremacist. I don't just see modding as something that can make a good game into a great game - I see it as necessarily integral to any great game. This is a conviction born out of nearly twenty years of unbroken PC gaming on my part. So when it comes to modding, I have a hard time believing that there is anyone on Earth more pro-modding, than me.

Space Engineer's modding is, without question, probably the best I've seen to date - no other game I've played has made it as seamless as SE. Coming from the Elder Scrolls, whose modding can often devolve into a nightmarish nether-realm of esoteric scripting problems and directory hell, which has, if anything, been exacerbated by using Steam Workshop, SE is more than a breath of fresh air - it's like having air that's perpetually spiked with just enough nitrous oxide to keep you perpetually giddy. It's Air+.

I worry, however, that the ease of use lends, consequently, to overruse. Two of my schematics this week heavily indulged in mods - and one had so many mods, so many of which were now dead links, that it basically could not be reviewed, but I'm including it anyway as an object lesson. The other did not document which mods were used, necessitating a long trial-and-error debugging hunt to track down a working version of each of the mods it used.

The takeaway lesson, I feel, is this: Do not use any more mods in your blueprints than you are willing to carefully annotate, with links, as the first line item in the description. This doesn't mean just naming the mods, or taking a screenshot of the used mods panel in SE's UI; I mean going in there and putting the given name on Workshop and linking to said item, for each and every mod used. If your workshop items use so many mods that this is a daunting task that will take too long for you to do, then it's going to be ten times more daunting and tedious for your users to puzzle out when using your blueprints.

The other one is this: Do not use any more mods than are necessary. The entry that had the problematic mod issues used a couple mods for no reason I could discern; namely an Arc Reactor that put out more power than the ship ever needed (5% max usage when in flat spin at max thrust/dampers) and internal Sledge thrusters where large thrusters would have served just as well both mechanically and aesthetically. One of the weapon mods it was using was also not working, rendering the ship without armament; while this isn't strictly solely the author's fault, it still highlights why over-reliance on mods is problematic.

Finally, I'm going to make clear something I haven't before - these scores aren't to be considered final or engraved in stone. If you update or improve a design and want me to look at it again, I will do so gladly. I say this because I had to give out some blistering marks on ships that, with some minor changes, could have done worlds better.

Rant over; on with the reviews.

UEMC Cutlass by Ben (paladinHD)

Aesthetics: ★★★☆☆

The Cutlass is a wedge design with some good points and some bad. Things I liked included the use of shaped armor on the outsides of the wing; it gives the shape texture and volume. The black/red livery, while a little cliche is still a step above default gray. The issues it has are its use of the armor thrusters on the wing - they give it a jagged, blocky look that breaks up the ship's lines. The livery throws in an assist here by actually highlighting said blockiness, both along the wing's leading edges as well as with the doglegged red racing stripes. I'm not sold on the necessity of colored thrusters, either; they *do* match the livery but I've never docked a ship points for having thrusters which didn't match the ship, and anyone who would is, in my mind, an unbelievable pedant.

Systems: ★★★☆☆

The systems are extremely problematic to judge. On a strictly *technical* level, it really could be a five-star ship - it hits all my important salients (conveyance, connectors, thruster balance, good gyro ratio, landing gear, drone capability). That said, the mods the ship uses (and which the blueprint failed to document) seem largely unneccessary. The Arc reactor outputs more power than the ship could ever need - it never broke 5% usage. The inline Sledge engines could be replaced with large thrusters that would then allow more internal space in the ship's wings, for storing more fuel and ammo. So it is arguably hurt more than it is helped.

Armament: ★★☆☆☆

This is another case where modding has sabotaged the ship, though this is more out of highly unfortunate timing than anything. The Paladin's Hammer guns used by the ship are, as of 1.054, not working, another casualty of the recent addition of weapon modding by Keen. That said, with working weapons, it would go up to four stars - four cannons is still somewhat skimpy armament for a ship that weighs over 70k kg.

Overall: 2.6 out of 5 ★.

Mods used:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=320805665
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=297877000
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=301830183
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=305407372
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=320804757

F-94 by djkaplan

Aesthetics: ★★☆☆☆

The F-94 is a wedge fighter that is rather bare-bones - many of its sytems are exposed, which gives it a jagged, blocky look which clashes with the swept-wing aesthetic. Exposing systems can - and has - been done well (Helikon in Issue 3, Extricator in Issue 4), without the use of mods - it generally boils down to shaped armor and livery which obscures systems that break up the ship's shape.

Systems: ★★★★☆

The F-94 is generally solid where systems go, with some caveats. Without landing gear or connectors, restocking the ship is tedious, as the only access points are the partially obscured reloadable launchers. The ship also sports two large reactors, which is a bit excessive - draw never seems to exceed 30%.

Armament: ★★★★☆

The F-94 sports six cannons and four reloadable launchers, which combined with its extensive storage gives it enormous stamina. However, though reloadable launchers are now working they still seem bedeviled with the old backfire issues - launching while maneuvering the ship causes a critical backfire incident which destroyed the cockpit.

Overall: 3.3 out of 5 ★.

Desert Scorpian by $quidherder

Aesthetics: ★★★★☆

The Desert Scorpian is another great example of animal motif/design synergy (forgiving the spelling error); it sports two empennages which take the shape of a scorpion's tail, and even have their own "stings" in the form of twin cannons. The design also gives it a little verticality, which is rarely explored in ship designs in general. It also sports a tan and white livery using custom colors, another welcome departure from the blue-gray/red-black continuum, though some spots appear to have been missed.

Systems: ★★★☆☆

The unique design does have some costs re: practicality, however. The reactors are apparently buried in the armor, making it so the ship would have to be torn open to be refueled, and the guns are not conveyed. The ship also lacks landing gear or connectors, and negotiating it in a hangar with the tail would be tricky, especially while using it as a drone. That said, it has superlative thruster balance and a 1:2k kg gyro ratio.

Armament: ★★★★☆

The Scorpian is set up to be a dangerous dogfighter - it marries agility and balance with four cannons and a single launcher in its nose. It also wraps the fuselage in heavy armor, which helps make it surprisingly durable for its size and weight, though the use of light armor on the nose could prove a disadvantage in a head-on attack run.

Overall: 3.6 out of 5 ★.

http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/534002320351132637/DDB57B3A8A46C6D847F1CFAAA47835BEA8DEDDF3/256x0.resizedimage

Name Withheld

Aesthetics: xxxxx

Systems: xxxxx

Armament: xxxxx

Overall: Not scored.

This fighter was Exhibit B in the dangers of overmodding. Unlike the Cutlass, however, I wasn't able to puzzle out the mess of broken or removed mods which the ship's world used, rendering the ship inoperable, and as such I've foregone scoring it, though I will touch on the issues in detail.

As you can see from the screenshot, the ship appears to use some structural parts which I was not able to find and replace, which left its main armament floating free in space. The mods which *did* work - namely, Armor Thrusters - aren't used to good effect. The ship is blocky and jagged.

Perhaps it's missing other parts from other mods which made it more impressive, but that's not an excuse - mods shouldn't be used to prop up a design that, on its own, still wouldn't otherwise work or look as good. Mods are not a replacement for good design, in aesthetic or gameplay terms. The litmus test is this - if you remove all the mods from your blueprint, if it falls apart, explodes, or otherwise fails to operate due to that lack, you haven't made a sound design - the mods are a crutch. I know many may disagree with me - I in fact had a vehement argument with a good friend of mine on the matter the other night - but I am steadfast in this conviction.

Again, this does not mean I will factor in mods negatively simply on the grounds that they are mods - but it does mean that if a mod is negatively impacting a design, that it will reflect.

ragethunder101

Aesthetics: ★★☆☆☆

This ship is another wedge fighter, but is little more than a fuselage, wings, and a tail. It needs more substance - more texture, a livery, something to make it distinctive.

Systems: ★★☆☆☆

The world in which the fighter came was a bit odd; meteors were turned on, to the Apocalyptic level, and pretty much everything was worse for the wear. The fighter was no exception, and as pictured is only how I assume it was set up - the cockpit, and its braking thrusters in the nose were missing, along with what I presume was a large thruster at the back. Even restored, while functional, it's still a bit underpowered, and unconveyed.

Armament: ★★★☆☆

The entire ship is made of heavy armor, which certainly makes it a bit durable, but the use of it on the wings especially is of dubious utility. It seems it was intended to have ten cannons and two launchers, but the lack of conveyors and storage limits their capacity and endurance.

Overall: 2.3 out of 5 ★.

Wrapup

This week the clear fighter of the week is the Desert Scorpian. Reined in, however, I could see the Cutlass also being a contender.

Issue #8: Shadow Lynx, Di-Ceptor, Half Lance Mk3A1, Devildogkos, GuiSilvaPT

Shadow Lynx by VestedGamr

Aesthetics: ★★★★★

The Shadow Lynx has a highly distinctive look, combining another thoughtfully executed animal motif (that is delineated and enhanced by the livery, no less) with unique decorative elements - armor corners along the wings' leading edges resembling "claws" and a twin-boom empennage that evokes the real-life OV-10 Bronco.[en.wikipedia.org]

Systems: ★★★☆☆

The ship is generally solidly designed, with a couple minor annoyances. Gyro balance is 1:10k kg, which isn't sleepy by any means but still seems underpowered for a dogfighter, but it's helped on that front by generally good thruster balance. The only thing the Shadow Lynx is light on in that department is brakes, sporting only two small thrusters opposite two large thrusters. The ship is conveyed, and has two access points - a rear-facing ejector and the reloadable launcher riding under the belly. Fuel and gun food can be loaded through either, while missiles will only load through the launcher.

Armament: ★★★☆☆

The ship sports two cannons and single reloadable launcher, fed by a medium cargo container, a design that gives it a great degree of stamina. The main issue I encountered was the return of the Missile Gremlins - firing the launcher, sometimes even at rest, would cause a backfire. I took out the reloadable and swapped in the box launcher to see if it made a difference, to the same result; so it would seem that while backfire from lateral or missile/missile collisions has been reduced, couching a launcher directly adjacent and behind other blocks can still provoke backfire.

Overall: 3.6 out of 5 ★.

Di-Ceptor by SGC Gambit

Aesthetics: ★★★☆☆

The ship has a unique look, and isn't stereotypical by any means. Uniform black livery helps it blend into the background on a dark skybox, while it defeats boxiness by adding armor texture to the edges of its diamond-shaped hull. Some design elements do seem to clash, though - the fighter cockpit and long nose seem to stick out oddly; the steeper, original cockpit (or the Orb Cockpit mod) seems like they could have blended better with the diamond-shaped design.

Systems: ★★★☆☆

The Di-Ceptor is very practically designed - a rear-facing connector feeds its reactors and guns, and the diamond hull has a 1:5k kg gyro ratio and almost perfect thruster balance and handling. Where it struggles is power generation - going into a turn while accelerating pushed its reactor cluster to overload, and acceleration in general felt a little sleepy. Lack of designated landing surfaces, combined with its spindly fins, could also make hangar handling a bit awkward.

Armament: ★★★★☆

The ship is well-armed, with four cannons and four box launchers, the former being fed by two medium containers, giving it obscenely good capacity. The main improvement that could be made is optimizing the ship's action bar more for stealth attacks - i.e., toggles for the engines and antenna to help the ship blend in better with the skybox, which would also help compensate for its relatively slower acceleration.

Overall: 3.3 out of 5 ★.

Half Lance Mk3A1 by Squatter Eggs

Foreword

Squatter Eggs made a bold claim with the Half Lance Mk3A1 - calling it the "King of Fighters," he started a flurry of discussion in the community as he dismissed other designs and the focus of the Review for various reasons. So naturally, I made sure to give the fighter a thorough test.

Aesthetics: ★★★★☆

The Half Lance is, aesthetically speaking, not bad at all. From a distance it looks a little boxy, but closer inspection reveals a carefully crafted ship - its lines flow well, and where they disrupt there tends to be a logical reason for it (cowling or shielding for thrusters, for example). It is also tastefully liveried, with stripes of light gray and deep, blood red on a black base. Where other fighters can sometimes look and feel like race cars, Squatter Eggs has made a ship that evokes a sturdy and dependable pickup.

Systems: ★★★★★

Flying the Half Lance was a pleasure - the design eschews using small thrusters entirely and uses large thrusters for everything, which are overall well-balanced, giving the Half Lance peerless acceleration and handling - my attempts to wreck it by flying it through asteroid caves at full acceleration were unsuccessful, a feat I was unable to duplicate in my own Valkyrie V-Wing. Reactor load is almost perfectly balanced, pushing the high 90s only during steep turns. The ship is also equipped for drone operations, and its action bar is carefully designed, giving quick access to multiple cameras and critical systems. While the ship has no connectors, it is fully conveyed. As an excellent final touch, the ship is also fully-stocked for survival.

The Half Lance also includes two merge blocks, giving it good utility - though I feel trading one for a connector might not be a bad idea either.

Armament: ★★★★☆

The Half Lance bristles with armament - 18 cannons and 6 launchers total. Each cannon is conveyed, and the ship thunders with each pull of the trigger. Everything is well placed - tightly grouped and forward on the ship to reduce backfire. A reloadable launcher or two, however, I felt would have completed the design - though as is the ship is well qualified to take on cargo ships, able to erase turrets with one or two volleys.

My main objection is his designation of the ship as a "light fighter" - at 60,000 kg, it's a radical stretch of the imagination to call it "light." A fully loaded real-life B-29 Superfortress[en.wikipedia.org] weighs a mere 54,000 kg, and I'd personally peg the light fighter end of the spectrum in SE being anywhere between 10-20,000 kg. Without doubt, it's a formidable design - but light it is not.

Overall: 4.3 out of 5 ★.

Devildogkos

Aesthetics: ★★★★☆

The fighter has a striking white design, and generally makes good use of shaped armor, though the flow around the cockpit is a bit compromised. I feel it owes to much of its shape to its mods, though - without the swept-back wing pieces, it would look a bit boxy.

Systems: ★★★☆☆

The ship suffers on handling and acceleration - being built out of heavy armor, its twin Hellblade engines struggle to get it to speed, while the other armor thrusters dotting its surface are often overwhelmed by the ship's inertia. A 1:30k kg gyro ratio also leaves it a bit sluggish to turn. Finally, no containers are exposed, making restocking the ship a matter of open-heart surgery.

Armament: ★★☆☆☆

The ship also suffers in terms of its armament, relying completely as it does on the currently broken FarEasternIndustries cannon and launchers. Were its weapons working, it would still suffer due to the fact that none of them are conveyed, making reloading a cannon-by-cannon affair, and limited to their internal stocks. In the ship's favor, its heavy armor makes it very durable, but its ponderous acceleration leave it too vulnerable to more nimble ships.

Overall: 3 out of 5 ★.

GuiSilvaPT

Aesthetics: ★★★☆☆

The ship is heavily built, flat and wide. The livery and cluster of engines give it a racy feel, but overall it seems to lack something that makes it really stand out; between the engine cluster and the Cathedral Wings, it seems very busy. I feel it would almost work better without the wings, and letting the powerful-looking engine cluster, painted black but glowing a sinister orange, stand alone. The cockpit also gives the sense one is sitting in a bathtub, which can be a little disorienting.

Systems: ★★★☆☆

The ship is positively squirrelly - with a 1:1.5k kg gyro ratio, the slightest movement seems to send it spinning. While it has acceleration to match with five Sledges, its maneuvering thruster balance is not as meaty, which mean the ship only practically executes turns long after the heading has changed. Braking is similarly tepid, and I feel the ship could have reversed its outermost Sledges to give it better braking, at not much of a cost to its acceleration.

Armament: ★★☆☆☆

The ship is another victim of the currently broken FarEasternIndustries cannons and launchers; currently only one vanilla gatling in the nose is in service. The ship is not conveyed, so were those weapons working, it would still be tedious to restock.

Overall: 2.6 out of 5 ★.

Second Look: The Cutlass by Ben (paladinHD)

Aesthetics: ★★★★☆

I was not expecting a redesign of the hull, but I quite like the slightly different direction the redesign takes it. It retains the old wedge shape but dissolves into a three-hulled shape which is quite striking.

Systems: ★★★★☆

The paring down of mods and adjustment to the systems is excellent - the two Industrial Thrusters flow well with the engine pods. My only caveats are that the reactor will sometimes overload during a steep turn, and having no accelerating thrusters but the two Industrials could leave the ship adrift if they get shot out.

Armament: ★★★★☆

The eight (functional!) cannons are a good loadout, and their tight grouping - which synergizes well with the Cutlass's maneuverability - give it great potential as a heavy dogfighter.

Score Adjusted to: 4 out of 5 ★.

Wrapup

This was a tough week to pick, coming down to a dead heat between the imaginative Shadow Lynx, sturdy Half Lance, and the redesigned Cutlass. Overall, though, I have to give Squatter Eggs and the Half Lance their due - while I didn't appreciate the row that started in the comment section, I still have to admit that the Half Lance is a well-designed piece of machinery. Well done, Squatter Eggs!

Issue #9: Azimuth, KMF-SF-07, Y1-B, ms. daniella crumpstone, SoftcoreScarf (Anna)

Foreword

Another week, another issue! This week introduces I.N.A. Issoudun, which will be my TFR testing world from here on out. Not only will I use it to test ships, but I also plan to update it every week with each of the featured fighters, to allow you, the reader, to give them a shot yourself, without having to do any of the debugging! I hope you like it.

And again, a reminder: please annotate the mods you use, especially with blueprints! This week wasn't as bad as seven but I still had a few times where I had to double back to hunt down a mod which wasn't linked. Users are typically not going to be half as patient with this as I am!

Finally, there has been a slump in submissions lately, and I am coming up on the end of the backlog, both in terms of fighters I've mined myself from the workshop's depths as well as requests. It's certainly not hard to find more, but if you've been waiting to jump in because of the backlog, now is your chance!

Azimuth Fighter by Valkyrie Ice, TumbleTV

Mods used:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=330397602
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=300571927
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=309057836

Aesthetics: ★★★★★

The Azimuth fighter was designed to showcase the Azimuth series of mods and definitely succeeds at that - its overall look is something of a futuristic, chibi A-10 Thunderbolt II[en.wikipedia.org], and the combined effect of the Azimuth mods used means that there is an organic harmony to its design, which helps reduce the "frankenstein" effect that can occur when a ship uses blocks with radically different aesthetic styles. The downside is that the Azimuth blocks, while undoubtedly superb work, are also more resource-intensive graphically than vanilla blocks, which can be an issue if you're trying to build a squadron of ships with them.

What I was actually the most impressed with was the use of the shaped blast door blocks - the potential there to make all kinds of different wing and tail shapes without using single-block mods seems incredible.

Systems: ★★★☆☆

Systems are where the Azimuth had the most trouble. Though it sports a spritely 1:5k kg gyro ratio, the thruster balance on the Azimuth is not great, which sends it into sliding turns and slow stops. As well, the combination of reactors (two Azimuth reactors, and a V8 and V8 turbo) used by the ship produces power far beyond any conceivable need the ship would have. As well, I wasn't convinced of the need to use special mod connectors on the ship - they only seem to serve an aesthetic purpose, and are neither placed nor sized to interface with standard connectors.

Armament: ★★★☆☆

The ship is decently armed, packing four Azimuth gatlings (probably my favorite Azimuth mod) and three Azimuth launchers. Two are placed along the wingtips, while one is underslung, giving it a look reminiscent of the gun pod Stukas.[upload.wikimedia.org] That said, there are some systemic problems - guns 2 and 3 are not linked to the ship's inventory, and the underslung launcher, which looks like it should be conveyed, is not. Even if it was, the issue would likely be moot as the smaller-circumference connectors and conveyors cannot carry missiles anyway.

Overall: 3.6 out of 5 ★.

KMF-SF-07 by Kite_Roofae

Aesthetics: ★★★★☆

This sporty little fighter is an interesting design - bristling with exposed systems, it has something of an unfinished look to it, but in a deliberate, Millenium Falcon kind of fashion. Combined with its orange, blue, and dark grey paint scheme, it has a kind of roguish air to it.

Systems: ★★★★☆

The KMF-SF-07 is a meticulously efficient design, worthy of the most stingy survivalist - its inventory connects each gatling, launcher, and reactor to a central medium container, giving it exceptional endurance. Coming just under 20,000 kg, it's still technically a light fighter. The main issue it has is thruster balanced - while its primary four large thrusters give it surprising acceleration, smaller, weaker thrusters elsewhere make it less spry in terms of turning and braking. As well, four large thrusters on 20k of ship makes for surprising acceleration - which can get you in trouble inside of a hangar or carrier.

Armament: ★★★★☆

The ship combines two launcher boxes, two reloadable launchers, and two cannons for a truly formidable loadout for such a light ship. The two box launchers are more ingenius than they'd initially seem - they can be used to cover the gap while the reloadable launchers reload, and the cargo capacity of the ship means it can throw a lot of punches before going back to restock. Its main weakness is durability - the exposed systems and minimal armor mean the ship is easily knocked out with only a few hits. Its blinding acceleration is its only defense.

Overall: 4 out of 5 ★.

Y-1b Compact Fighter by Yatem

Aesthetics: ★★★★☆

I have to give Yatem credit for presentation - on loading the world, I was presented a little showroom like you'd get to show off a luxury car. The Y-1b itself is an average starfighter design with a twist - two of its armor panels expand out with pistons, giving them an "attack foil" feel a la the X-wing. The white and grey livery is well-executed. More use of shaped armor - especially corners and inverted corners - to round off some of the edges might be in order.

Systems: ★★★☆☆

The ship is generally sound but could use some improvement - its 1:9k kg gyroscope ratio makes it feel substantial without being too ponderous, but thruster balance is uneven; laterally it's okay, but up and down tended to skate a bit. As well, while the ship has a connector none of the systems are conveyed, which is a shame because doing something like working the pistons into that system would really have been clever. As well, the landing gear is attached to the armor panels on the pistons, which makes it so that using the gear shortcut key doesn't work and they have to be locked and unlocked from the action bar.

Armament: ★★★☆☆

The ship is armed with two cannons and two box launchers, which is a modest loadout, especially for a fighter over 20k kg, and without conveyors its capacity is limited. The ship is entirely shrouded in heavy armor, though, making it a tough customer in a gun battle.

Overall: 3.3 out of 5 ★.

ms.daniella crumpstone

Mods used:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=302496574
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=302440328
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=320547733
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=297487723

Aesthetics: ★★★★☆

I really like the shape of this ship - the oversized tail fins, combined with the swept wing fins, and purple and black livery give it a sort of fanciful, playful look, like something out of Guardians of the Galaxy.

Systems: ★★★☆☆

The ship is another good argument for economy of mods - when I made my testing world, with 73 of the Workshop's most popular mods, I figured there was nothing I could throw at it that that would break. I was wrong - this ship uses four different mods for its thrusters, only one of which being all that effective, and could in just about every case be functionally and aesthetically replaced with armor thrusters. As is the ship drifts considerably in turns and is very slow to brake. Its inventory is also neither conveyed nor exposed.

Armament: ★★★☆☆

With two cannons and one launcher, this ships feels rather lightly armed. If it was more maneuverable it could almost get away with that, but it is not, and the use of the single-block fins means that, should they be damaged or destroyed, critical parts (two of the engines, and both cannons) are lost immediately.

Overall: 3.3 out of 5 ★.

SoftcoreScarf(Anna)

Aesthetics: ★★★★☆

Each of the fighters presented here are striking designs - wrapped up in heavy armor, sporting bulky engine pods, and bristling with weapons, the ships seem like they've stepped out of the Warhammer 40K universe. The plain grey livery is a bit disappointing, but the strength of their design goes a long way to make up for it.

Systems: ★★★☆☆

Systemically the fighters are very sound - good acceleration, turning, maneuvering, etc. - with two glaring defects. One, thruster placement - these ships are clearly designed with no thrust damage in mind, and began having issues the moment I started flying them. Now, if you want to play NTD, that's your prerogative - but I think if you plan on publishing, especially now in the age of blueprints, your base assumption has to be that the end user will have thruster damage, and to build accordingly. The other issue was conveyors - the ships, at first glance, look conveyed, but each gun is actually only feeding to a nearby small container - nothing is networked.

Armament: ★★★★☆

Each ship sports a formidable loadout - the Mauler with 10 cannons (plus two launchers in the normal variant), the Hunter 14 cannons and 2 box launchers (and 6 small ship turrets), and the Aggressor 6 cannons. That said, the total effectiveness of all that firepower is diminished by not being fully conveyed, which is going to make reloading laborious. Which is a shame, because I think that otherwise these monsters are probably one of the few that could take the Half Lance from Issue 8 on in a straight fight.

Overall: 3.6 out of 5 ★.

Wrapup

A lot of good contenders this week, and I have to end it in a weird split. I know historically the cover fighter has been Fighter of the Week but I've never codified that as a "rule" for TFR, and really, how could you not put the Azimuth on the cover of something? It's damn fine looking. Overall, though, I have to pick the KMF-SF-07 as Fighter of the Week - of all the ships this week it struck the best balance between form and function, and in the right hands, could be a downright deadly instrument.

Issue #10: I-71K "Fantom", Black Widow, ASF-73 Eagle, Raptor, Sharkdude

Foreword

I hope everyone had an enjoyable Thanksgiving - I was out of town, myself, and while I did have a computer with me I was short on time. Some nice developments in SE recently - as I predicted, weapon mods are proliferating on SE's workshop, a few of which I'm working on integrating into my own works. Projector blocks, which are able to 'project' holograms of blueprints in survival mode, have also been added, which is huge, and it makes building ships for survival a more sensible strategy than ever before.

I-71K "Fantom" Light Interceptor by rossmum

Aesthetics: ★★★★☆

The ship has something of an elongated wedge, stretched to accommodate the many systems the ship contains. The heavyset build seems to belie the idea of being a light interceptor, but shaped armor keeps it from being too blocky. The dark grey livery with red wing tips is reserved but refined. Some uses of sloped armor thrusters did not seem to mesh with the design. As with the Muravey, the Fantom has renamed its systems for immersion and flavor. The navigation lights are also a nice touch.

Systems: ★★★★☆

The ship is well balanced in terms of its systems. A 1:4k kg gyroscope ratio makes it almost squirrelly, and while up/down thrusters are well-balanced against its impressive accelerating thrusters, the lateral thrusters seem a bit more sparse. All systems are conveyed in a single network which ties in to a bottom-facing connector, making the Fantom a great carrier fighter.

Armament: ★★★★☆

The Fantom is armed with six cannons and one reloadable launcher, slung under the belly, as well as an ejector facing aft that has been repurposed into a chaff dispenser - the idea being that a pilot being pursued could eject stone or other junk from it and block missiles and other projectiles. Its one issue in this regard is the launcher, which suffers - like most belly launchers - from a tendency to backfire while maneuvering, especially while pitching downward.

Overall: 4 out of 5 ★.

Black Widow (and Azimuth variant) by Toryius

Aesthetics: ★★★★★

Toryius's Black Widow is a straightforward design - a fuselage with two engine pods attached - but does a wonderful job giving the design personality with shaped armor. The use of inverse corners to create mandible-like shapes is a great invocation of its arachnid motif.

Systems: ★★★☆☆

Toryius cleverly decided to hedge his bet with this submission by using two variants - a more vanilla variant using armor thrusters and an Azimuth mod variant with the corner thrusters and Azimuth gatlings. Ironically I ended up having more trouble with the vanilla variant than the Azimuth - the vanilla ship fell victim to the mysterious "disappearing large thruster" bug which also plagued the V2-M from Issue #5. In general the Azimuth variant accelerated and handled much better than its vanilla counterpart. On the flip side, the conveyor situations inside either ship are a little unusual. Two containers (17 and 19) in the vanilla variant don't seem to be hooked in correctly, while the majority of containers on the Azimuth variant are disconnected, including some that feed the gatling guns.

Armament: ★★★★☆

The Black Widow is a robust platform, shrouded in heavy armor and sporting 8 cannons and 4 box launchers. This heavy-hitting combination is somewhat diminished in the Azimuth variant, as a few of the cannons are not properly hooked into the conveyor system. Overall, though, the Black Widow is a decent ship-killer, and I successfully used it to take down a minelayer with the loss of only a couple launchers.

Overall: 4 out of 5 ★.

ASF-73 Eagle Fighter by HvyArtilleryBTR

Aesthetics: ★★★★★

The Eagle is a simple, striking, and gorgeous design - with design reminiscent of Battlestar Galactica's Colonial Viper[en.wikipedia.org], the Eagle differentiates itself by using the hard lines imposed by the voxels and underlining them with its livery.

Systems: ★★★★☆

Systems-wise the Eagle is more of a mixed bag; gyros are fine, as well as the thruster balance. Overall the ship handles like something markably smaller and lighter, which is impressive given its 48k kg weight. However, nothing seems to be conveyed, nor has access from the outside, but two cannons, which makes restocking it a nuisance to say the least.

Armament: ★★★★☆

The Eagle possesses 3 cannons and 2 box launchers. The cannons are tightly grouped but have a tendency to impact the ship during tight maneuvering, but the box launchers are well-placed to minimize the damage caused by backfire. The cannon surmounting the cockpit also muzzle flashes directly in your field of vision, which can be distracting in a fight. The Eagle is deceptively tough, as its entire fuselage, sans the armored thrusters, is heavy armor.

Overall: 4.3 out of 5 ★.

Raptor Fighter by Rifle_Shaman

Aesthetics: ★★★★☆

The Raptor is a compact, almost sporty ship. The corner thrusters mod is used to good effect to give it a shape and layout like a twin-engined jet fighter. That said, the use of shaped armor elsewhere feels uninspired in comparison.

Systems: ★★★☆☆

The ship is generally sound - no systems are missing and it's mostly conveyed. Positioning the bottom-facing connector on the ship may also be a tricky affair, as the ship's landing gear is very close by. As well, while the corner thrusters give the ship excellent acceleration, they far outmatch the capacity of its other maneuvering thrusters, which leads to a lot of sliding turns and slow braking.

Armament: ★★★☆☆

Armament is light at two cannons and one launcher, both from the Azimuth mod. The bug where Azimuth launchers do not properly convey, even with their dedicated conveying part, reared its ugly head again here, which is especially annoying as the Azimuth launchers have only the one access point, making the launcher effectively impossible to reload. That said, I was surprised to find the launcher actually didn't backfire often - it seems to be angled just right that even while pitching up as fast as possible, the missile just skirts the nose.

Overall: 3.3 out of 5 ★.

Sharkdude

Aesthetics: ★★★☆☆

The design is clearly patterned after an aircraft, complete with airfoils and empennage. While that isn't necessarily bad in and of itself, the execution here could be more interesting - corners and inverse corners could be used to make the leading edges of the airfoils sharper and to give the fuselage better flow, for example. Right triangles, where two of the angles are 45 degrees, also give an appearance of blockiness.

Systems: ★★★☆☆

Systems are mostly sound - no directional thrust is missing, gyros are present, the reactor is accessible, and it has landing gear. Indeed, though the overall acceleration of the ship is slow, the thrusters are more or less completely balanced, so that it brakes and executes turns readily. The main issue is that its single reactor is inadequate to power the ship.

Armament: ★★★☆☆

The ship possesses two box launchers, which doesn't seem considerable at first, but the ship only weighs 6k kg. The combination of light armament, armor, and acceleration do not well suit it to combat, but it could be an excellent trainer - its simple, straightforward design and forgiving flight characteristics are especially well-suited to that role, while its limited ammo capacity encourages carefully aimed shooting.

Overall: 3 out of 5 ★.

Wrapup

There were a lot of really good designs this week - but ultimately I have to hand Fighter of the Week to HvyArtilleryBTR's Eagle. Aside from its singular design, I was also surprised at just how nimble it was for a fighter mostly built out of heavy armor.

Issue #11: Hellblade Fury, Wratheon Interceptor Mk II, The Skyre, Meinerheiner, Percy the Pig

Foreword

Another week with some mod annoyances. While in the past I've ranted about undocumented mods in blueprints, this week I'm taking aim at world saves. World saves have one advantage over blueprints in that they preload mods, but as an author this isn't a blank check to cram whatever you want into the world save and then publish it without tracking what your ship actually uses. We're well over a few months into blueprints being an established feature of the game - now to the extent that they are now part of gameplay, via projector blocks. People still need to know, up front, what's integral to a ship, because they're going to be moving that ship around.

Using world saves to share ships is now just twice the work for users - they have to load worlds twice (once to get your ship, and once to get back to the one where they actually want to use it), at least - if you haven't tracked the mods your ship uses, the number of loads goes up as the user tracks them down and adds them to the intended world save. This adds up to no feedback or negative feedback for you, the author.

Again, only use as many mods on a project you're publishing, as you're willing to document for your users. To that I now add - use worlds and blueprints as they're intended. If there is a good *reason* to publish the world - say, a cool base acting as a display stand for your ships, or accessories for a modular ship that can't as easily be expressed through blueprints - by all means, do that. But the age of empty worlds holding a single ship needs to be over.

Hellblade Fury by Valkyrie Ice

Aesthetics: ★★★★★

The Hellblade is a singular design that overcomes a lot of aesthetic quandaries, the principle one being modding and aesthetic style. It's a common problem that a lot of mods like to use a style that can clash or "stick out" from the vanilla aesthetics of Space Engineers, and using them in conjunction with parts from the base game (or other mods) can make ships look "stuck together" or "Frankenstein" - a mismatched pile of parts. Sometimes this is intentional, but most times it is not. Some mods overcome this by simply providing an alternative to every system or part in their style - such as Azimuth and ShadowFlux - but many do not.

The cleverness of the Hellblade is that it takes these disparate parts but shifts the beholder's focus away from them through the use of the exotic shape of the wings. Their large size and unusual shape both gives the Hellblade a unique profile while capturing the attention away from the various disparate parts at its core, and the use of a monochrome, red livery actually helps instead of hurts here, as that use of a single color helps reinforce the uniformity of the design. So in that sense, the Hellblade is not just a good example of the wing shapes that can be attained through using the Blast Door Sections mod, but also of how to put together different mod styles into a single coherent whole.

Systems: ★★★☆☆

Systematically the Hellblade is more of a mixed bag. Nothing is altogether missing - it has gyroscopes, all directional thrusters, and a cockpit - but thruster balance was somewhat lacking. The four Hellblade thrusters which are its main engines provide great acceleration but the other directional thrusters are always hard-pressed to keep up. Thankfully its Azimuth fusion reactor provides ample power for the whole. The other issue is lack of conveyors - every part of the ship carries only what it can be loaded up with, and each part must be loaded separately.

Armament: ★★★☆☆

The Hellblade is armed with four Azimuth launchers and four gatling cannons, which isn't a bad loadout but still feels light for its size and weight. While the use of blast door sections for the wings insures that they are very durable, the delicate fuselage is not, and one missile is enough to critically kill the ship.

Overall: 3.6 out of 5 ★.

Wratheon Interceptor MkII by [UESC]Coxzee=FILTH=

Aesthetics: ★★★☆☆

The Wratheon is a wedge fighter of tremendous size - weighing in at 180k kg with a 36-block wingspan. The use of colored blast door sections to create fins on the ship is a good idea, but on the Wratheon it seems almost a bit much - the shape of the ship is already exhaustively textured by the shaped armor, and the additional fins makes it even busier. There is also a randomness to the angles on the armor, that while, altogether, they do form a distinct, logical shape, when one gets up close the effect can be bewildering.

Systems: ★★☆☆☆

The Wratheon is propelled almost entirely by small, sloped armor thrusters, and is one of the first ships I've seen use such a setup. Unfortunately, thruster balance is still an issue; while acceleration and pitch is generally balanced, its lateral and braking thrusters are lacking. As well, its internals are a mystery - while the ship has an aft-facing connector, there is a set of reactors and containers attached to it which are not connected to another system in the front, which has its own access door in the form of a small cargo container on the port and starboard edges of the wings, near the guns. Finally, there are the landing gear - the Wratheon uses a set of rotor-driven retracting gear. The first issue is that they are not set on the action bar, which forces the pilot to go into the terminal to find them, rendering him unable to control the ship while thus preoccupied. Secondly, I believe the rotors have an affect on the ship's handling themselves - I was frequently bewildered by my inability to get the ship to roll at a standstill, even though it would roll just fine while already moving.

Armament: ★★★☆☆

The Wratheon is armed with seven cannons, four box launchers, and one reloadable launcher, but this is, considering its extreme size, a very light loadout. While the cannons are networked with the forward conveyor system correctly, the reloadable launcher is not, which renders it somewhat moot, and negates the principal advantage the ship could have - sheer endurance as a result of its enormous size and cargo capacity. The placement of the remote and camera at the tip of the nose makes its use as a drone dubious, as this area tends to take the most fire from turrets. A couple hits would immediately cut both the camera and remote out of the picture. Though it has two mounting brackets marked as torpedo launchers, without any example torpedoes or any indication as to how they functioned, it was not possible to gauge their effectiveness.

Overall: 2.6 out of 5 ★.

The Skyre by ~Shiro~

Aesthetics: ★★★★☆

In general with small ships, I'm leery of using mods which give them large ship blocks. I feel that even though at times the divisions between which type of block large or small ships can use what seem arbitrary, that overall it's been well-balanced by Keen, and helps reinforce the advantages and disadvantages of each type, and any serious deficiencies will be redressed at some point by Keen. The Skyre is, to date, the ship which has best challenged this belief of mine. Climbing into its cockpit the first time, I was struck by its clever use of glass as well as the AI block mod, which come together to give it a very pleasing pilot seat.

The Skyre also uses a mod which adds armor blocks that do not have the borders regular armor blocks do, which I'm not as enthused about - I've never really nitpicked about the effect which the borders make, and using a mod that adds a custom block - instead of a mod which acts as a texture replacer - adds another potentially serious point of failure in its list of dependencies. A texture replacer being a recommended mod for the Skyre, using the vanilla armor blocks, would be a better alternative. The Skyre seems to be using two slightly different shades of near-black, so the borderless effect is more or less rendered moot as is.

Systems: ★★★☆☆

The Skyre's systems are sound enough. A single large thruster provides ample acceleration for the light, 14k kg craft, while its Azimuth maneuvering thrusters give it decent thruster balance; however, the use of a single vanilla thruster for braking makes slowing the ship back down a bit white-knuckle. As well, while the reactors are all conveyed via a single cargo container access door in the ship's aft, they do not also feed the guns, or have access to two cargo containers inside the ship. As well, I personally took some issue with the Sanchincorp landing gear; while they are small, I missed the color indicators used on the vanilla (and some mod) LGs.

Armament: ★★★★☆

Armed with two gatlings and two box launchers, the Skyre has a decent loadout for a ship its size and weight, but the lack of extra cargo capacity for the guns limits its endurance. That said, I was able to successfully use it to capture a Private Sail, so it still has some chutzpah.

Overall: 3.6 out of 5 ★.

Meinerheiner

Aesthetics: ★★★☆☆

The ship is a straightforward design - two engine pods attached to a fuselage. The monochrome yellow livery is a bit bright, and makes any chance of an unseen approach nearly impossible. What I liked most was the shaped armor around the cockpit - it made for a shapely nose, and utilized the angles of the fighter cockpit very well.

Systems: ★★☆☆☆

The design uses a great number of hidden internal thrusters, but does not mention that no-thruster-damage is needed, causing the ship to more or less self-destruct on takeoff. As well, the use of sixteen (possibly more, before engine meltdowns) gyroscopes on the design seems excessive - I think most of its own weight must be gyros. Finally, the inventory of the ship is not accessible through any connectors or cargo doors, which makes refueling it difficult.

Armament: ★★★☆☆

The ship is armed with three box launchers, which is a good amount of firepower, but the lack of guns impairs its ability to dogfight and gives it less endurance. As well, the use of the thin pylons to mount the engine pods creates a critical point of failure should they be damaged or destroyed.

Overall: 2.6 out of 5 ★.

Percy the Pig

Aesthetics: ★★★☆☆

The ship has a jagged, spiky appearance, which for the most part eschews corner pieces in favor of bold, aggressive slopes. This style can often work, but here conspires to give the ship a stubby, blocky appearance, which is only slightly alleviated by the long tailboom. A longer, fuller tail section, with cargo space or additional engines, would give it a better profile.

Systems: ★★★☆☆

The ship works enough in terms of its systems, with ample reactor power and gyroscopes. It could use more thrusters overall, though - the eight small thrusters providing acceleration did so rather slowly, while the lateral thrusters were oftentimes not sufficient to turn the ship. Two gyroscopes to 45k kg is also not quite enough - another one or two would help considerably. Finally, without access to the reactor, refueling the ship is difficult.

Armament: ★☆☆☆☆

Judging the armament is difficult as there is none present to be judged; it appears that there is some battle damage near the ship's wing roots, so I'd wager that was where its armament was mounted before its blueprint was published. Otherwise the ship might work as a ram - its heavy armor construction makes it durable, if nothing else.

Overall: 2.3 out of 5 ★.

Wrapup

This week it was a tossup between the Hellblade Fury and the Skyre for Fighter of the Week, as they both represented aesthetically interesting - and successful - departures from the norm. The Skyre wins out, in my book, for making me reconsider some of my own ideas about the game.

Issue #12: The Bolt, Writer, Death's Dream Machine, xklaus, and Walrus

Foreword

Some really exciting things going on in Space Engineers that are making it tough to concentrate on writing about it! First of all, the Sound Block. To shamelessly plug, I've made my own mod for it, and I'm very excited to see what people do with it, especially with fighters. Combined with a sensor, one could very easily make a collision warning system for fighters that would be especially useful on, say, a dark map, but also in general.

Secondly, weapon mods have really sprung into overdrive in the past few weeks thanks to the efforts of NinjaPirate. His excellent series of cannons is definitely worth checking out, and I've incorporated them into a few of my own creations, though I've yet to try his interesting bomb launcher and afterburner. I'd really like to see what other people do with them (just make sure to link them in the description, ha ha!)!

Finally, there will be no new issues until the New Year, in observation of Christmas and New Year's itself. See you all in 2015!

"Bolt" Class Fighter by Zapness

Aesthetics: ★★★★☆

The Bolt is an extremely tidy design - using the Armor Ramps mod to great effect, as well as a strategically placed livery around any visible seams, its nose gives the illusion of being one seamless piece. The overall flow of its shape, a kind of slender v, also serves to underline its own speediness; the shape evokes the function.

Some elements seemed out of place, though; the braking thrusters in the nose are one particular example, though a part of that is simply owed to the fact that the Armor Ramps mod does not (yet) have an Armor Ramp Thrusters mod. As well, stylistically the Azimuth and vanilla/Armor thrusters did not seem to mesh particularly well; I found myself wondering what it would look like committed to either one or the other style.

Systems: ★★★★☆

I was initially caught off guard by the Bolt's blinding acceleration, nearly smashing it into the opposite wall of the hangar on its first flight; I would suggest an action bar arrangement that allow the pilot to toggle its powerful Azimuth large thrusters on and off, to allow for easier flight hangar maneuvering.

The Bolt lives up to its name - its acceleration seems to be a little over 20 m/s/s, and at max thrust tops out at 105.1; my thruster-encrusted Möwe is the only other ship I've flown that compares. That speed does come at a cost, particularly its braking, though along the other axises its acceleration helps brute-force turns.

Armament: ★★★★☆

The Bolt is a well-armed ship, sporting eight networked gatling cannons, all tightly grouped. While it has no launchers to speak of, their absence just serves to underline the Bolt's implicit purpose - interceptor and dogfighter, and with the ability to carry a medium container's worth of bullets to boot. The only achilles heel the ship has may be in its large Azimuth thrusters - the loss of even one of these engines would significantly diminish its acceleration and top speed.

Overall: 4 out of 5 ★.

Writer' Fighter by Tripping Pug

Aesthetics: ★★★★☆

The Writer is simultaneously a highly conventional, yet unusual, design - a fuselage with two engine pods which handle acceleration and turning, but on closer inspection many more details become evident. There is an almost gothic intricacy to the details of its shaped armor; it is covered in crenellations and filigree. Its main shortcoming is its monochrome black livery - especially when it's pulled out of the hangar, all those details are swallowed up and lost in the blackness that surrounds the ship.

Systems: ★★★★☆

The Writer is a well-balanced, sound ship. While its acceleration feels a little sleepy, it makes up for it with decent thruster balance, and in general handles well. Everything is conveyed, and the ship includes landing gear and drone capabilities. There are some design flaws, though - the "hump" shrouding the topside box launcher is likely to interfere with another connector, and two landing gear seems too few for its size, opening the possibility of accidentally see-sawing it into the tarmac.

Armament: ★★★☆☆

Armament is where the Writer seems to come up shortest - its loadout of four cannons is fair enough, and with a medium cargo container, they should definitely last a while. The four box launchers that come with, however, are quickly exhausted - and without heavy armor, and somewhat slow to accelerate, that could be hard. As well, the placement of the topmost launcher is alarming - while problems with backfire have been reduced, they haven't been completely eliminated, and during hard pitching up, the top launcher was prone to catching on the ship's nose.

Overall: 3.6 out of 5 ★.

Death's Dream Machine by schwem00

Aesthetics: ★★★☆☆

Wider than it is long, the Machine is heavyset and blocky; in its favor, the dark gray and red livery is tasteful enough. But its overall shape makes it look ungainly. The exposed bases of the thrusters also frequently conspire to work against the shaped armor. A longer, pointier nose would help a lot.

Systems: ★★★☆☆

Systematically the Machine is sound. Acceleration is okay, as is thruster balance, and a 1:7k kg gyro ratio gives it a solid feel while turning without being too slow. I was puzzled by some of the choices of thruster placement, though - there are a few spots where it seemed that a single large thruster, which would have been more effective than six small thrusters, would have worked with a little tweaking.

Armament: ★★★☆☆

The Machine sports four cannons, two reloadable launchers, and a turret with two cannons and a box launcher - combined with its heavy armor plating and numerous containers, that gives it considerable staying power.

The turret I'm less sold on, however, and has a few issues. Most serious, is its tendency to rip off the ship during steep pitches down. Secondly, it isn't configured at all on the action bar, and neither is its remote control, but even if it was, it would still require another person to run it, and is limited to a horizontal arc. Finally, it's sitting on a simple rotor instead of an advanced rotor, which means it cannot feed off the ship's other containers.

Overall: 3 out of 5 ★.

xklaus

Aesthetics: ★★★★☆

The Klaus fighter is a refreshingly simple, straightforward design - a wide, flat wedge fighter, it avoids blockiness by sweeping back the leading edge of its wings. Its livery, a white base with blue racing stripes, is simple and pleasing to the eye. Its only problems are the shape of the thrusters breaking up the flow of the design elsewhere on the ship.

Systems: ★★★☆☆

The Klaus fighter's wings aren't just for show - they support three large thrusters which give it good acceleration, and conceal a conveyor system which connects together the ship's internals and guns. The only improvement I'd make to it is in thruster balance - its maneuvering thrusters are woefully outmatched by its forward thrusters, and braking and turns skate for far too long. Trading the underpowered small thrusters along the wind edges for some large thrusters would help considerably.

Armament: ★★★☆☆

The Klaus is armed with 8 networked cannons; combined with its heavy armor cladding, it could be a formidable dogfighter, but without the maneuverability to match, it is still somewhat hampered in this department.

Overall: 3.3 out of 5 ★.

Walrus

Aesthetics: ★★★☆☆

The fighter is a pod fighter with two vestigial wings attached; without a distinct shape, and bearing nothing to enhance the ship's functionality, they are, in my estimation, 700 kg of dead weight that give the ship an awkward profile - it is better, I believe, without them. Either that, or wings with a more interesting shape, and/or more meaningful contribution to the ship's performance as a whole.

Systems: ★★★☆☆

Thruster balance is an issue, which makes its turns and braking sluggish. Its large reactor also puts out far more power than it needs, and it seems like the ship could be slimmed down, or filled with more useful systems, if it used a few small reactors instead. The reactor is also buried in the armor, and cannot be accessed without cutting the ship open.

Armament: ★★★☆☆

The fighter is armed with a single box launcher, which seems light, even for a super light fighter. A bigger compliment of launchers would make it more of a force to be reckoned with, while cannons would make it a tiny dogfighter. Using multiple small reactors over the single large reactor would also make it a bit hardier when hit, as the single large reactor, once dead, will leave the fighter wiped out.

Overall: 3 out of 5 ★.

Wrapup

For Fighter of the Week this week, I pick the Bolt - it's an attractive little design and was just fun to fly around, even if all the power tended to go to your head - and then bury you in the side of an asteroid. That's why thruster balance is important!

[[Spitfyre] kjs]

Why has this not been uptated? Just asking

[JCapt]

If this is running, could you put my Carnaevon Fighter in this fighter review? I do hope that it is still running...

[The_Prince_Of_Fails]

Hello There! Thought id post my first fighter, its still a little bit... meh, but heck, I even made a video! :D

Heres the link- http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=594772841

[Baddieus]

Thought I would share mine too ...
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=562219113

[DivideTheZero]

If this is still running I would like to post my fighter: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=525414322

[Coxzee]

Is this review still running ?

[Squatter Eggs]

it sure has been a while since you released an issue. you still doing this? I have to make a damn video for my fighter, so i havnt released it. here is a photo of this beast http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=356897113 - The Lance

[☠ dream]

Hi, here's a vanilla heavy fighter / gunship for review, called the Lootmaster 4000. It has an enclosed cockpit design - would be interested to see how it fares in your tests. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=375127511

[xenolego]

Would you be willing to review my fighter?
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=339746023

[King Maelstrom the Esoteric]

I have a question. You once reviewed one of my fighters, is it okay to post again?