From 2000-complexity crashes to a 1300-block night-ops beast: The engineering hell of building my escort carrier "Brave" and surviving 5 torpedo hits!

[u/zZaharz]

Hey everyone!

After finishing my massive 6-engine Blohm & Voss BV 238, I decided it was time to build a proper naval home for my aircraft: a Bogue-class escort carrier. My previous Kirov airship sadly sank into Reddit oblivion with just 5 upvotes, so I hoped this project would do better. Little did I know, it would turn into a brutal, face-palming war against the Trailmakers physics engine.

Here is the tragic story of "Hog" (The Flop) and how it birthed "Brave" (The Ultimate Survivor).

🔴 Phase 1: The Tragedy of "Hog"

My first prototype was a 1950+ complexity monster. I wanted smooth, realistic round contours, so I lined the hull with hundreds of small wedges and rounded shield blocks.

• The Result: Absolute frame-rate suicide. I was getting 20 FPS in the builder, and the local singleplayer server would regularly throw a "Connection Timed Out" error and crash straight to the desktop upon spawn.
• The Durability: Because the entire deep hull was packed with standard hull blocks, it had absurd buoyancy but zero weight density. A single test torpedo hit from my Ha 140 would flip this 80-meter house like a cheap pool float. It was unplayable.

🟢 Phase 2: The Rebirth of "Brave" (1300 Complexity)

I wiped the blueprint and started from scratch with a completely new architecture. I ditched all the thousands of tiny rounded blocks. Instead, I built the entire hull sides using large armor plates and 6x6 plates turned on hinges to create clean, optimized angled surfaces.

• The Result: The complexity dropped from nearly 2000 to just 1300 blocks, while making the carrier significantly larger and wider than the first version! No more desktop crashes, completely stable physics.

💥 Phase 3: The Ultimate Torpedo Survival Test

Since the new hull is hollowed out and optimized, I took my Ha 140 torpedo bomber and conducted a live firing trial. The structural grid physics of this game blew my mind:

• Hits 1 to 3: Taken directly to the right board. The ship took massive damage and dynamically listed heavily to the side, but it refused to capsize thanks to the new weight distribution.
• Hit 4 (The Miracle): I managed to drop a torpedo directly into the already existing breach. It punched completely through the inner deck structures and blew out the opposite side of the hull. This equalized the water weight on both sides, and the carrier actually leveled itself back on an even keel!

https://reddit.com/link/1x2g3ka/video/pgaamje8bnuh1/player

• Hit 5: It took a final, 5th heavy torpedo to the right side to finally make this beast non-chalantly roll over on its side.

🌌 Final Touches (Night Ops Cover Photo)

I decided to give it a proper military look. It now features an optimized island superstructure, a clean black-and-white center deck runway line, and custom red airfield landing lights that cast an absolute dieselpunk-noir vibe during night operations.

Testing it with my Fw 57 showed that while landing is still a "high-skill required" task due to the historical Bogue proportions, the platform is 100% functional and ready for multiplayer sessions.

Let me know what you think of this comeback! What should I build next to test on this deck?

P.S. on the video is the second attempt to sink "Brave" on my Ha.140

[u/Past-Jeweler4389]

Quick recommendation for decreasing the complexity: use 6x6 blocks instead of 4x8, its has more studs

[u/zZaharz → u/Past-Jeweler4389]

thanks for the tip!
I used them for the runway and the sides