Ultimate space simulation software

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SpaceEngineer
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Online spacecraft editor

23 Jan 2017 11:50

Created and originally posted by SHW on the Russian forum here. This is a repost of the HarbingerDawn's repost on this forum. This is a slightly updated version (with some new modules) running on the SE website hosting. A WebGL-capable browser is needed.

Run online spacecraft editor

Download offline version

This is a prototype spacecraft editor for Space Engine. You can use it to create a spacecraft model from pre-made modules.

Modelling video tutorial
It is in Russian, made in old editor and with SE 0.962, but good anyway.


Interface

The whole interface consists of a single window with a workspace for constructing the ship, and several toolbars.
editor.png
- In the upper left panel are the file options:
  • Create new spacecraft - clears the workspace of all modules
  • Open spacecraft from file - loads a previously saved ship from .json file
  • Save spacecraft to file - saves the ship to a .json file to share with other players, or to edit in the future
  • Export spacecraft to SpaceEngine - exports a .sss script of the ship
- In the top center are buttons to toggle the modes of symmetry with respect to the main axis of the ship. The options are no symmetry, two-symmetry, three-symmetry, and six-symmetry. This applies to both adding and removing modules.

- In the top right are buttons to toggle showing/hiding of:
  • the main axis of the ship;
  • the reference grid;
  • shadows
  • Performance info
- Several sliders to control the grid and shields:
  • the upper slider moves the reference grid along the ship in 10-meter steps;
  • the Circular shield button changes the shield geometry from hexagonal to circular;
  • the Flip shield button flips the shield (used to make a backward shields);
  • the lower-left slider changes the angle of the conical-shaped shield (adjusted separately for each shield layer);
  • the central slider changes the curvature of the paraboloid-shaped shield (adjusted separately for each shield layer);
  • the lower-right slider changes the radius with respect to which the shield is curved (15-meter steps).
- Left panel - list of ship modules (top button has no module)
  • Longitudinal truss girder (x1, x3, x9) - the basis of the design.
  • Crossbeam - structural reinforcement.
  • Meteoroid shield (various materials).
  • Hyperdrive - old concept of the FTL engine (local time accelerator).
  • NEW! Ring hyperdrive (6 different sizes) - new concept of the FTL engine (Alcubierre warp drive).
  • NEW! Thick ring hyperdrive (6 different sizes) - new concept of the FTL engine (more physically realistic design).
  • Fusion engine (single- and double-sided) - main propulsion and energy source.
  • Shunting engine - small engine used rotation and fine movements of the ship.
  • NEW! 5-directional thruster (use it instead of the old 'Shunting engine' module, because it has front- and backward-directed thrusters).
  • Heat radiator (double-sided and one-sided - twice as heavy at the same performance).
  • Propellant tank (Metallic hydrogen) - main reaction mass.
  • Fuel tanks (De + [sup]3[/sup]He) - thermonuclear fuel (used for fusion reaction in main engines).
  • Toroidal habitat - can be joined like train cars.
  • Cargo module.
  • Shuttle docking ring (two directions) - attaches to habitat unit.
  • Navigation and communication module.
  • Photon torpedo.
Making a ship

Controls:
  • add modules - left mouse button;
  • remove modules - Ctrl + left mouse button;
  • moving the mouse while holding the right button - rotate camera;
  • moving the mouse while holding the middle button - move (pan) camera;
  • mouse wheel - zoom.
The ship is build from modules mounted to a framework. The framework itself, in turn, consists of longitudinal bars for the transmission of loads from the main propulsion engines to other elements, and crossbeams are used to increase the stability and rigidity. All modules are attached to a triangular grid with 15-meter steps in the transverse axis and 10-meter steps in the main axis of the ship.

The components can be divided into four classes with different ways to add them:
  • longitudinal beams - these are inserted into the reference grid or into the end of existing longitudinal beams
  • crossbeams - these are attached to the ends of two longitudinal beams (click the left mouse button on one beam, drag to another, and release to add)
  • functional modules - these are inserted into the reference grid or attached to one of the side faces of the longitudinal beams. At all mounting points are pieces of longitudinal beam structure for further growth; If they are not needed they can be removed (Ctrl + left mouse click).
  • meteoroid shield - added to the reference grid only, can be bent using the sliders.

Exporting ships to SpaceEngine

To transfer your ship into SE, select "Export spacecraft SpaceEngine *.sss" (4th button from left on top) and save into <SpaceEngine directory>/addons/models/spacecrafts/ (create the folder if it does not exist). Then you must slightly edit the .sss file, because editor is a bit outdated. Open it with a notepad, and you will see a code like this:
Name    "Ship"
Class   "Starship"
Mass     17876000
MainEngines     328.9326471246364
RetroEngines     0
CorrEngines     21.928843141642428
HoverEngines 0.0
Hyperdrive   true
Aerodynamics false
Length   0
Offset  (0 0 0)
Albedo   0.3
Exposure 2
Color   (1 1 1)
Module  "cargo1" { "Modules/cargo.cfg" ( -1,0,0,0,0,1,0,0,0,0,-1,0,0,0,-110,1 ) } 
Module  "antenna1" { "Modules/antenna.cfg" ( -1,0,0,0,0,1,0,0,0,0,-1,0,0,15,-80,1 ) } 
Module  "antenna2" { "Modules/antenna.cfg" ( 1,0,0,0,0,-1,0,0,0,0,-1,0,0,-15,-80,1 ) } 
<...many modules here...>
You will need to change (see details about *.sss scripts here):
Name "Ship" - to the name you want to give to the ship;
Class "Starship" - to the class you want to give to the ship ("Starship", "Planetship", "Shuttle", "Drone", "Station", "Astronaut");
Hyperdrive   true - change to false if you ship has no hyperdrive.
Then you need to add this:
Pack     "SpaceEngine" - the pack which you want to assign to this ship;
Faction  "SHW Corp" - the faction which you want to assign to this ship;
WarpBoostLog 12 - if your ship has a hyperdrive, this is the maximum boost exponent of the drive (i.e. multiplier to the physical velocity of the ship is 10[sup]12[/sup]).

All other parameters in the code are okay. Example of the updated code:
Name    "Probe"
Class   "Probe"
Pack     "SpaceEngine"
Faction  "SHW Corp"
Length   294.9072
Offset  (0 0 0)
Quat    (1 0 0 0)
Mass     18402000
Albedo   0.3
Exposure 2
Color   (1 1 1)
MainEngines  326.052
RetroEngines 0
HoverEngines 0
CorrEngines  17.3894
TurnEngines  0.002
WarpBoostLog 12
Warpdrive    false
Aerodynamics false
Module  "cargo1"  { "Modules/cargo.cfg" (-1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 -1 0 0 0 -110 1) }
Module  "antenna1"  { "Modules/antenna.cfg" (-1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 -1 0 0 15 -80 1) }
Module  "antenna2"  { "Modules/antenna.cfg" (1 0 0 0 0 -1 0 0 0 0 -1 0 0 -15 -80 1) }
<...many modules here...>
Save the updated file and try out your ship in SE. You may change global orientation and offset of the model using a ship editor which is built-in in SE. Read more about this here.

Examples

Updated Y-ship
Image

Interstellar cargo ship
Image

Torpedo warship
Image

Small cargo ship
Image
 
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DoctorOfSpace
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Online spacecraft editor

23 Jan 2017 14:03

Very nice, looking forward to even more interesting designs people come up with 
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Mosfet
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Online spacecraft editor

23 Jan 2017 14:29

The new thruster module does it need to be placed somewhere in SpaceEngine in order to be used/loaded in game?
"Time is illusion. Lunchtime doubly so". Douglas N. Adams
| My mods: http://forum.spaceengine.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=80 | My specs: Asus x555ub - cpu i5-6200u, ram 12gb, gpu nvidia geforce 940m 2gb vram |
 
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SpaceEngineer
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Online spacecraft editor

23 Jan 2017 14:36

Updated probe (one of the default ships). Very lightweight unmanned craft, capable to reach 33G acceleration (even thrusters are capable of 1.7G).
scr00200.jpg
Probe.json
(1.5 KiB) Downloaded 1141 times
Probe.sss
(55.53 KiB) Downloaded 1210 times
 
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SpaceEngineer
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Online spacecraft editor

25 Jan 2017 10:21

Heavy gauss gun ship (600 thousand tons). Capable to reach 14G acceleration with reversible engines, which enable high manoeuvrability. Does not has warp drive, it must be carried into the system by a large warp carrier (in development).
scr00201.jpg
scr00205.jpg
The gauss gun (coil gun) passes through entire ship along its axis (I used old warp drive module as a coils). This means that to aim the target, you have to rotate entire ship. This allows to protect it with shields only from the nose side. Shields does not cover the engines though, because they are reversible. The ship is capable to perform even if lose several engines. Shields are made from hi-reflective material to reflect enemy laser fire.
scr00203.jpg
The ship has a lot of shunting engines, but they are capable to achieve only 0.5G - the ship is too heavy. To make a dodge, you have to rotate the ship a bit and make a burn with main engines. This limits the ship's tactical capabilities, because it lose aiming on the target while doing this. The ship also has a several missiles to protect itself in a close-range fight.
scr00204.jpg
The ship has just two tanks with main propellent, which limits its delta-V capability. Taking into account powerful engines, tanks can be dried out within just few minutes. But this is okay for such type of ships, delivering to the target attack vector is performed by the warp carrier.

The ship has little amount of heat radiators - they are unable to cool all 14 engines during a continuous acceleration at a 100% thrust. But this ship must never be used in such mode - real battle is performed in a series of short powerful burns. Losing of several radiators does not affects ship's performance significantly.
scr00202.jpg
Note that the ship is rotated by 90° in the SE built-in editor (the rotation data is stored in sss). Take this into account if you want to re-import it from json.
GaussShip.json
(7.82 KiB) Downloaded 1191 times
GaussShip.sss
(357.24 KiB) Downloaded 1215 times
 
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N0B0DY
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Online spacecraft editor

26 Jan 2017 11:23

Interstellar explorer ''Apeiron'':
► Show Spoiler
Originally named ''Explorer'' - not very unique name..
Explorer.json
(4.91 KiB) Downloaded 1203 times
Explorer.sss
(258.77 KiB) Downloaded 1244 times
MSIX299MB,[email protected](8C/16T),[email protected](CL16),GTX1080Ti@11GBGDDR5X,OS:WIN10x64@2xSSDSATA3RAID0
 
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problemecium
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Joined: 30 Dec 2016 15:13

Online spacecraft editor

26 Jan 2017 15:54

YAY new spacecraft editor / update! Wait - this isn't new at all! In fact it's old. Why has this one been linked instead of the more recent one from last November?
BTW, where would one such as I go to make feature requests for this?

Also, whenever I try to go to any thread in the Russian forum I receive a "403 Forbidden" error page. Is the website configured to disallow plebian American nubs from accessing the glorious Russian forum threads? xP
ᴩʀoʙʟᴇᴍᴇᴄɪᴜᴍ﹖
 
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Hornblower
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Online spacecraft editor

26 Jan 2017 19:22

I bring to you...The Fjordmaker!
(An absolutely ridiculous design)
scr00033.jpg
scr00034.jpg
Fjordmaker.sss
(407.09 KiB) Downloaded 1181 times
Fjordmaker.json
(10.24 KiB) Downloaded 1156 times
"Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space." - Douglas Adams
 
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Ostarisk
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Online spacecraft editor

26 Jan 2017 19:24

Wait - this isn't new at all! In fact it's old.
Yeah, where are the live cargo and military cargo modules from the update posted in the old forums?

Anyways, here's a ship of mine. I call it: Vega X
scr00020.jpg
scr00021.jpg
This one was made with the november ship editor update.
My Mods(Old Forum)
My Mods(New Forum)
"I think of space not as the final frontier but as the next frontier. Not as something to be conquered but as to be explored." - Neil Degrasse Tyson
 
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DoctorOfSpace
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Online spacecraft editor

26 Jan 2017 21:02

(An absolutely ridiculous design)
Not even sure how that one is supposed to work
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Hornblower
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Online spacecraft editor

26 Jan 2017 22:12

I refined the design! Fjordmaker MK II (Still sort of unrealistic, but it looks cool)
► Show Spoiler
Addition: Did I mention is outputs a crushing 27 Gs of acceleration?
Attachments
fjordmakermk2.sss
(805.21 KiB) Downloaded 1076 times
Fjordmakermk2.json
(19.39 KiB) Downloaded 1057 times
"Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space." - Douglas Adams
 
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DoctorOfSpace
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Online spacecraft editor

27 Jan 2017 04:30

Hornblower,a better design but somehow I don't think it would have that level of capability given how much mass that ship has.
CPU: Ryzen 9 5900X @5Ghz - RAM: G.Skill Ripjaws V 64 GB (2 x 32 GB) DDR4-3600 CL18 - GPU: MSI RTX 40​90 GAMING ​TRIO 24G
Quando omni flunkus, moritati
 
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SpaceEngineer
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Online spacecraft editor

28 Jan 2017 08:46

Hornblower,a better design but somehow I don't think it would have that level of capability given how much mass that ship has.
Editor computes maximum acceleration by dividing summary thrust of all engines by summary mass of all modules, and writes it to sss file. Engines has ridiculous thrust of 6000 tons-force, but otherwise ships would be as slow as a probe powered by ion engines.
 
jasperhb
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Online spacecraft editor

03 Feb 2017 21:10

I refined the design! Fjordmaker MK II (Still sort of unrealistic, but it looks cool)
► Show Spoiler
Addition: Did I mention is outputs a crushing 27 Gs of acceleration?
Image
 
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ePayload
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Online spacecraft editor

21 Feb 2017 12:10

SpaceCraft editor 3.0 coming soon. So, i will be happy while ending it.
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