Hovercraft

**Hovercrafts** are land vehicles that players can use in Starship EVO. While they are not the game's focus, players can traverse gravity-bound surfaces.

## Overview

Hovercrafts, as their name implies, are land vehicles that hover across the ground. Their lack of physical contact allows them to traverse difficult terrain. Hovercrafts can easily cross bodies of water and other obstacles that a wheeled vehicle cannot.

Players are introduced to Hovercrafts after starting a new game and finishing the tutorial mission. They can then teleport to the Hovercraft Platform on the nearby Space Habitat. This tiny outpost exists to allow players to test drive some basic hovercrafts.

Hovercraft can operate anywhere where there is gravity. When no one is operating a hovercraft, it will remain dormant on the ground. However, upon taking control of its Yoke, the craft's hover pods will activate, lifting it off the ground. Hovercrafts, for the most part, will move along the ground; however, driving over inclines may result in air time. Large jumps at high speeds may cause the hovercraft to fly too high and leave the entity's gravity box. Jumps can be hazardous to Hovercrafts as they are vulnerable to toppling over. Due to their lack of three-dimensional movement, it may become stuck if a hovercraft tumbles and lands upside down.

As of 22w44c, hovercrafts are a fun diversion from shipbuilding and do not have much content. There are plans for additional content for ground operations. NPCs will likely use hovercrafts as they do with ships, and celestial bodies will be added for players to explore.

### Default Hovercrafts

* Maijkmonster hoverbike 04
* Hovland fd

## Player Hovercrafts

Players can build hovercrafts if they so desire. Constructing your hovercraft can be just as involved as building a ship. Players must gather the appropriate blocks and begin construction, preferably within gravity.

Hovercrafts are built similarly to Ships and armed with all the same Weapons and Systems. Unlike ships, hovercrafts are subject to an object's Gravity well and **can not** move in three dimensions. When driving a hovercraft, the controls differ from those of a starship. Ascending, descending, and strafing are replaced with simply turning the craft left or right.

### Basic Setup

1. Begin By placing a Starter Block anywhere but the ground of the Habitat. If placed on the ground, the placement ghost will be green. **The Starter Block is not necessary for Hovercrafts to function. It merely exists to start construction and must be removed before the player can use the hovercraft. If not, the hovercraft will begin to float away even if it is within gravity.**
2. Next, place a Reactor to power the hovercraft.
3. Place at least one Thruster on the "back" of the hovercraft to give it some forward thrust. Additional thrusters on the back will give the craft more speed, while thrusters added to the sides will add mobility.
4. To give the hovercraft some lift, place Hover pods so the arrow faces downward toward the ground. Hover pods act similarly to wheels and should be placed around the craft to help distribute the load. Four pods on each corner of the craft should be adequate. Heavier hovercraft may need more hover pods to hover correctly. Pressing **[F]** on a hover pod will allow players to adjust the thrust strength of that individual pod.
5. Place down the Hovercraft Computer to designate the entity as a hovercraft once linked to a yoke. Players must place the computer on the base entity. Pressing **[F]** on the computer will bring up the hovercraft menu so that the player may tweak various stats.
6. Finally, place down a Yoke or other control block and link it using the link tool to the Hovercraft Computer.
7. Remove the Starter block if you have not done so already, and the hovercraft should fall to the ground.
8. The hovercraft is now ready to go.

### Advanced Setup

Every hovercraft is unique and may operate radically differently from one another. If players wish to see the thrust attributes of their hovercraft, they can use the link tool on the Hovercraft computer to make various arrows appear all around the craft. These arrows represent multiple aspects of the hovercraft's hover capabilities. Adding or removing blocks will affect these arrows. It will be up to the player to design their hovercraft as effectively as possible.

For more accurate hover pod information players can toggle the **"View Repulsor Anti-grav vectors"** option in the **[F3]** debug menu. This setting allow players to see in real time the hover pod repulsion effect. The red arrows represent when the hover pod is actively projecting and will shrink or enlarge depending on how hard that particular pod is working. The green arrows correspond to an above hover pod and represents the point where the repulsion effect is being directed.

Weight distribution is an extremely important aspect of hovercraft construction. As players begin to build their hovercrafts larger and larger they will begin to notice their crafts tend to dip to one side or another. Every block has weight and if too many heavy blocks are concentrated in specific areas it will weight the entire craft down in that area. To mitigate this players will need to either place additional Hover Pods in those areas or remove blocks to lighten the load. If the additional hover pods cause to much thrust in that area players can reduce their thrust strength through its context menu. The best place to test a hovercraft's stability is on a artificial surface such as a Space Station with a Gravity Unit installed. The flat surface allows players to see how level the levitation of their craft is.

## Blueprints

If players wish to save their hovercraft designs for future use, they may create a blueprint. It must be the player's currently selected entity. A player's chosen entity is the last entity on which the player has placed a block. Once selected, open the codex and click on the entity tab. Here players will have the option to save the design locally or upload it to the Steam Workshop.

If players want to load a design, they need to place a Starter Block into the void and press the **[F]** key to bring up the Blueprints menu. Selecting a plan from here will instantly spawn it into the world. Since hovercrafts must lack a starter block to function upon spawning, they will likely fall and hit the ground.

## Tips

* Hovercraft can not dock to Shipyards; however, they can be mag-locked, allowing them to be taken off-world.
	+ Hovercraft will work on entities with a Gravity Unit; however, if these entities were to move, the hovercraft will not proceed. They must be secured with Mag-Locks to be brought along.
* If a Hovercraft topples over, Mechanisms like pistons can be used to upright them.
* Through the use of another Yoke linked to a Starship Computer, players can create Hovercraft/Starship hybrids.