A thing you have to do sometimes when you have people who follow your work and go a while without posting new stuff is let them know what you were up to.  You're not strictly required to do it, but it's nice to not leave people in the dark.  This is moreso true when you've made promises or suggestions of things and then simply never gotten around to them.  Even if they don't like what you were doing, at least they'll know.

That's sorta what this post is.  I don't have what could be described as a large, rabid fanbase, but I have my regulars whom I very much appreciate and want to let them know I haven't forgotten about them or this blog.  And who knows, maybe they'll find something I post interesting?

My first and biggest time sink lately has been Space Engineers, a game that just today got a big update that made everything look like ass.  So here's some shots of before it looked like ass as I played it over the last month or two.

Early experiments with ship building in this game (it's a survival game with Minecraft-like building) were... interesting.  I experimented mainly with atmospheric fighters, since survival is a non-issue playing in Creative.

But getting to space... man was it rewarding.  The ship I did it with was pretty bad, but it did the job, and it sure looks pretty up here...

Before long, after a few iterations, I was building large ships, and large ships I was proud of to boot.  This is the JXS Outrunner, a fairly simple generalized exploration vessel sporting an aft hangar and both atmospheric and space flight capability.  Unfortunately, she's lightly armed, lightly armored, and that dome bridge, while wonderful for visibility, turned out to be a huge vulnerability.

I should note these shots are from about one refit back.  I attempted a moon landing and discovered her engine setup as seen in these shots was insufficient for lunar flight, resulting in a rather damaging landing.  I managed to save her, but the damage was too extensive to repair, so I converted it into a station above the moon and copy/pasted a second Outrunner that underwent a refit to implement some extra hydrogen thrust.

Here's a pretty shot.

I mentioned the vulnerability of the dome bridge...  We came under attack from an NPC ship.  I was the only one on my server, so I responded with the Outrunner.  Turns out, glass doesn't take missiles too well.  Other than that, the damage was actually pretty minor and was repaired in fairly short order after I infiltrated and disabled the enemy ship (which I captured for the glory of the Bro Space Coalition).  But I knew at that point that we needed an actual battleship, something that would be able to answer a threat and not have its central control area immediately blown off.

To that end, I created the JXS Killstar.

Heavily armored and equally armed, the Killstar took several lessons from the Outrunner's fight.  Firstly, its bridge is buried deep in the ship, with no windows of any kind, preventing any insta-gibbing.  Four missile turrets and two gatling turrets serve as her main armaments, but she also wields ten rocket launchers, five on each side, making her an extremely potent broadsider.  Her maneuverability suffers a bit and her stopping power in most directions is a tad lacking, but so far she's proven herself a resilient and downright brutal warship.

Also, a smaller but still important time sink lately has been Star Trek Online, which I've been playing for a very long time now.  Got my hands on one of their gamble box ships by scraping together enough in-game currency to buy it off the Exchange.

My opinions on Star Trek: Discovery are mixed, but my feelings on its hero ship, the Crossfield-class, are clear - I love it so much you guys.

And... that's what I've been doing.  I haven't forgotten about Skyrim, I'll get back to it sometime (probably soon, seeing as Space Engineers' latest update is largely a disaster).  But strangely enough, it's been kinda... nice, actually, focusing my energy on something that isn't big tiddies.

But fear not!  This blog's focus is still my Elder Scrolls stuff, always will be!  I just have very cyclical interest in games, and right now Skyrim is not in cycle.  Hopefully these shots and some word of my continued existence will tide you over until I find my way back to Tamriel again.