Overview
Thank you for using the Basa Chroma Civilian Exploration Mobile Base. This guide should help you understand and utilize the various aspects and unique functions of the ship.
Controls
I.
- Landing Gear
- Cruise Mode
- All Thrusters
- Gravity Align
- Ore Detector
- Antenna
- Headlight
- Turret On/Off
- Turret Control
II.
- Gravity Mode
- Aux Thrust
- Hydro Thrust
- Atmo Thrust
- Ship Drill
- Deploy Drill
- Auto Landing
- 9. Landing Gear Piston
III.
- Station Connector
- Bottom Connector
- Decrease Up Thrust Override
- Increase Up Thrust Override
- Parachute
- Solar Align On/Off
- – 9. Jump Drive
I.
- Start Drilling
- Pause Drilling
- Retract Drill
- Station Connector Throw Out
- Bottom Connector Throw Out
- Drilling Mode
- Drill
- Turret On/Off
- Turret Control
II.
- Battery Recharge
- Reactor
- Hydro Engine
- Extra O2/H2 Gen
- Ship Projector
- Server Projector
- Landing Gear Projector
- Exterior Light
- Interior Light
Landing Gear Deployment
When you’re on a planet, the landing gear and stairs will automatically deploy when your surface altitude is below 30m. Press 7 on page 2 in the flight seat to turn off auto-delpoy.
Be VERY GENTLE when you land since the small-grid landing gears are very delicate, as in reduce your velocity to 2m/s or below. If you do break the landing gears, go to the control seat and press 7 on page 2 to turn on the landing gear projector so you can repair it.
When you’re in space and wish to lock onto an asteroid, first press 8 and 9 on page 2 of the flight seat to adjust the landing gear piston to an appropriate length; then press 1 on page 1 to turn on auto-lock and proceed to slowly approach the asteroid with your landing gear.
The ship will automatically turn off all thrusters when you land; if you’re on a planet, the stair rotor will also lose torque so that the stairs drop down to touch the ground. While landed, press 1 on page 1 to unlock landing gear and turn on all thrusters.
Smart Thruster Management
This ship uses both atmospheric and hydrogen thrusters, which makes thruster grouping a bit cumbersome if you want to be able to manage the forward and upward thrusters. Therefore I have written a custom script which manages that for you.
In the flight seat, on page 1, press 2 to toggle Cruise Mode, which turns on or off the forward thrusters. Press 3 to turn on/off all active thrusters. When you turn the thrusters off and on, it remembers your previous thruster state, such as what type of thrusters you had on and if the forward thrusters are on, etc.
On page 2, press 1 to turn on Gravity Mode, which turns off the top thrusters so that you can descend with gravity only. Press 2 to turn off Auxiliary Thrusters, which is that one big hydrogen thruster at the bottom. This way when you’re in space, your upward and downward thrust are the same, and pressing space bar won’t yeet you up too quickly. 3 and 4 are for toggling hydro and atmo thrusters respectively, which is pretty straight forward.
The atmospheric thrusters also switches on and off automatically when you enter/exit the atmosphere. However, when you spawn in the ship the atmo thrusters will be on by default, even if there isn’t an atmosphere; turn them off by pressing 4 on page 2. After this, you can rely on the script to automatically manage the atmo thrusters for you.
Automatic Airlock System
The airlocks will automatically engage when the atmospheric pressure drops below 60%, and automatically disengage once the pressure goes above 60%. Disengaged means that the inner airlock door will not be automatically closed and you can leave it open for easier entry and exit.
When you spawn in the ship, the airlock will be engaged by default, even if there is breathable atmosphere. Exit the atmosphere and then come back down to see the airlock system automatically disengage.
DRILLS
This is, in my opinion, the highlight of the ship. There are three drilling modes: forward, downward, and manual.
Use this on asteroids and low-gravity moons.
If you’re on a moon, disable auto landing gear deploy(see Landing Gear section above) as well as gravity alignment (see Mics section below). Then rotate the ship 90 degrees so that the drills are facing the ground, and continue to the steps below.
Position yourself so that the drills are directly above the place where you would like to mine, e.g. an ore patch; lock your landing gear onto the asteroid (or the ground of the moon) according to the procedures mentioned in the Landing Gear Deployment section. Then on the control seat, first make sure the screen on the right says Forward on the first line; if not, press 6 on page 1 to switch drilling mode.
With your ship locked and drills in forward drilling mode, press 1 on page 1 in the control seat to start drilling, 2 to pause, and 3 to retract the drills. This drilling mode uses Kezeslabas’s mining platform script with some modifications to better suit this ship.
Use this to gather stone or ice.
First land at a spot where you’d like to mine, such as on an ice lake. Then on the control seat, make sure the screen on the right says Downward on the first line; if not, press 6 on page 1 to switch drilling mode.
When everything is ready, press 1 on page 1 in the control seat to start drilling, 2 to pause, and 3 to retract the drills.
You can also use this entire ship as an over-sized miner—fly around and control the drills manually.
In the flight seat, on page 2, press 6 to deploy the drills, select them with 5, and you can start drilling. If you’re on planet and drill near the ground, you might want to disable auto landing gear deployment by pressing 7 on page 2.
Connectors and Ejectors
There are four connectors on this ship, one front, one bottom, one at the rear in the middle, and one station connector, which is at the rear on the right, and has grated stairs leading up to it.
The station connector and bottom connector can be used as ejectors. They are not connected to sorters; instead, I use Isy’s Inventory Manager to move stones into them automatically. Toggle throw out by pressing 4 or 5 on page 2 in the control seat.
Since I’m not using sorters for the ejectors, there is potentially a risk for items other than stone to end up in the connector and get ejected, but theoretically that would only happen if you overflow the ship’s storage container. Nevertheless, as a precaution, turn throw out off for the connectors when you’re not using them.
A small ship can be parked on the front connector and the rear middle connector.
Front Deck
The front deck has a different orientation from the rest of the ship, and is mostly for usage in space, not really usable on planets, semi-usable on low-gravity moons. It has a connector and 0.3g of gravity. You can park a small ship on there. The gravity is only 0.3g so that ships that aren’t equipped for 1g can still take off. You can crank up the gravity if you like. This gravity field is also used for propelling stones ejected by the bottom connector away from the ship.
Turret
Since this is only a civilian ship, there isn’t much in terms of weaponry.
There is only one custom turret slaved to an interior turret. I’m using turret slaving rather than MART so that if you fly solo, you can have the custom turret follow the AI’s targeting and defend the ship automatically. You can still aim the custom turret manually by taking control of the interior turret—although when you do so, the muzzle flash is blindingly bright and I feel like I’m getting epilepsy. KEEN PLZ FIX THIS! The gatlin turret’s muzzle flash isn’t as bright but I couldn’t fit it in this design.
LCDs
There are various LCDs on the ship. Most of them are pretty straightforward. There are a couple that are pretty interesting that I’d like to point out.
In the cockpit area next to the control seat, there is a screen that shows you how much of each ingot you’ve got. When a certain ingot is below 1k, it will print that ingot’s name at the bottom of the LCD so that you know which ores you need right now. If you wish to disable this function, edit this LCD’s custom data and delete the very last line.
To the left of the resources LCD is the autocrafting LCD. This ship uses Isy’s Inventory Manager to manage the inventories and autocrafting. I recommend reading Isy’s guide on this script if you aren’t familiar with it.
The flight seat’s LCD shows you the current flight mode status, your stopping distance so you know when to start braking, as well as your jump drive charge time.
To the right of the flight seat, next to the couch, there’s an LCD that shows some general information such as the current GPS coordinate, the current gravity, etc. On that LCD there’s a progress bar showing your maximum cargo capacity. This is your maximum take-off weight on Earth.
In the center of the room, on the console, below the projection is a floor plan, which also shows damaged blocks if there are any.
Miscellaneous
4. Gravity Align
Toggle the Gravity Aligner script on or off. Very useful for flying on planets.
3, 4. Decrease/Increase Up Thrust Override
Use these to adjust the override on the lifting thrusters. I use this combined with gravity aligner to leave planets efficiently.
5. Parachute
The parachutes alone won’t slow you down enough for a safe landing, but they do help save some fuel.
6. Solar Align On/Off
While in space, you can use this to activate Isy’s Solar Tracking script in gyro mode, which means that the ship will automatically adjust its orientation to get maximum sunlight on the solar panels. It only functions when no one is in the flight seat.
1. Put the batteries on recharge
2, 3. Toggle hydrogen engine/reactors on or off
4. Extra O2/H2 Gen
Press this to turn on/off three of the four O2/H2 generators. I like to have one O2/H2 generator always on.
5. Ship Projector
Turn this on when the ship is damaged so you can repair it.
6. Server Projector
Most of the ship’s scripts are on small-grid programmable blocks on a rotor, which I dub The Server. It’s in the center of the ship and shouldn’t need repairing unless you suffer catastrophic damage. So don’t worry about it.
7. Landing Gear Projector
Use this to repair the landing gears.