Naval Battle League 2016-2018

[HeroBrian_333]

Are there any videos of a turn?

[Spartwo]

 

[HeroBrian_333]

Thanks!

[HeroBrian_333]

Whole serues is very helpful.

[Piatzin]

I made a ship!

Still a prototype, as the interior is messy as crap and there's some structural improvements to be done, so the pics below are of a WIP. I'll put up the actual ship later in the week

The 'core' consists of some armor plating around four large batteries and a probe core. The rest of the ship is only lightly shielded (it's not a warship per se. More like the USS Enterprise than, say, a dedicated battleship or something)

Engine array:

The later version of the ship will have a couple dozen reaction wheels (no RCS) and additional engines on the bottom so that it can land on Kerbin without hitting the ground at kaboom-level speeds

Edited March 12, 2018 by Earthlinger

[HeroBrian_333]

Looks like too many engines. Also, armor is too light. I'll prove it. Can I see a craft file?

[Piatzin]

5 minutes ago, HeroBrian_333 said:

Looks like too many engines. Also, armor is too light. I'll prove it

Ahem:

35 minutes ago, Earthlinger said:

Still a prototype

35 minutes ago, Earthlinger said:

the pics below are of a WIP

35 minutes ago, Earthlinger said:

I'll put up the actual ship later in the in the week

35 minutes ago, Earthlinger said:

it's not a warship per se. More like the USS Enterprise than, say, a dedicated battleship or something

Ooh, typos

Edited March 12, 2018 by Earthlinger

[HeroBrian_333]

35 minutes ago, Earthlinger said:

(it's not a warship per se. More like the USS Enterprise than, say, a dedicated battleship or something)

The enterprise has only 2 engine nacelles, and was technically classified as a warship in the original series. So thank you for proving my point.

BTW, no disrespect is intended, so I am sorry if it seems that way.

[Piatzin]

7 minutes ago, HeroBrian_333 said:

The enterprise has only 2 engine nacelles

I was comparing them in terms of purpose and use, though I was not aware that the Enterprise was classified as a warship. I thought it was considered an armed, exploratory vessel rather than something built for war.

[MiffedStarfish]

Usually, a strong core is more important than external armouring. Most missiles phase part way through the ship before colliding, so how well it can dissipate the energy from that tends to make the difference rather than exterior plating, though it certainly does help, especially if placed a large distance from the core.

[Piatzin]

11 minutes ago, MiffedStarfish said:

Most missiles phase part way through the ship before colliding

Hm, that's going to be a problem with the prototype. I'll make future warships with a buffer space or something. And moar struts.

Also, are fairing weapons allowed? I've noticed that they're very strong in the face of collisions, and I've read a couple of posts that mention their discouragement.

Otherwise, I was thinking of a missile tipped with a wheel. There's one that has an impact tolerance of 325 m/s. Is that allowed?

[MiffedStarfish]

14 minutes ago, Earthlinger said:

Hm, that's going to be a problem with the prototype. I'll make future warships with a buffer space or something. And moar struts.

Also, are fairing weapons allowed? I've noticed that they're very strong in the face of collisions, and I've read a couple of posts that mention their discouragement.

Otherwise, I was thinking of a missile tipped with a wheel. There's one that has an impact tolerance of 325 m/s. Is that allowed?

Fairings no, they’re banned. Wheels I think are fine though, someone used them before I joined I think.

[Piatzin]

2 minutes ago, MiffedStarfish said:

Fairings no, they’re banned. Wheels I think are fine though, someone used them before I joined I think.

Hm okay

I like these:

It's pointy, and since it's a decoupler, they can be put in a clump and 'detonated' once they have gone through the ship's armor. Only problem is the 70 m/s impact tolerance, which is lower than the standard 80 for most structural parts

[HeroBrian_333]

As for me, I'm thinking fully modular ships.

I'm also going to be using the style of an order of battle used in the Honor Harrington series *cough cough totally not a book suggestion cough cough*

Anyway, Here it is:

LAC - Light attack craft, described as an eggshell armed with a sledgehammer; low armor, high weapons, low power (relies on LACC to transport)

Edited March 12, 2018 by HeroBrian_333
Please wait on expanded order of battle

[panzer1b]

1 hour ago, Earthlinger said:

Hm okay

I like these:

It's pointy, and since it's a decoupler, they can be put in a clump and 'detonated' once they have gone through the ship's armor. Only problem is the 70 m/s impact tolerance, which is lower than the standard 80 for most structural parts

Ive seen those used since they are a bit heavier then most structural crap, and ive also found wonky hitboxes to be good in missiles (no idea why, but having lots of angles makes it more effective).  That said, you are probably best off sticking to ibeams, girders, panels, and the grey wheel (larger one is obviously more powerful but insanely heavy and impossible to bring on a sub 2.5m weapon, and im pretty sure 2.5m weapons arent very popular among us since with enough mass and crap inside it you can kill any ship instantly nomatter the armor design or style (if your missile is 20+ tons it may as well be classified as a ship designed to ram something).

 

Anyways, if you dont have a good idea where to begin, i can suggest my own general purpose torpedo layout.  It runs on a aerospike, FLT-200, reaction wheel, probe core, RTG/battery (RTG heavier but inf electricity if you need something to be shot at extreme range).  Then just add structural junk atop it and depending on how you lay it out it works better or worse but is never useless.  You can try a variety of things, but i suggest having one central structural part to which other structural parts attach, which will create a pure AP warhead.  Ive found fragmentation rounds to be insanely weak against anything but a starfighter and even then the fragments need to be quite beefy to do anything to my insanely armored and redundified starfighters.  I have 1 starfighter where EVERY weapon hardpoint has its own control system, engine, weapon, and its all attached to a capital ship grade skeleton, in other words, you need to both destroy the core, AND take down 6 or so individual segments or else i can just reassemble or even use those segmenst as drones to attack with.

 

Good luck with your weapons/ship development, and if you need any help feel free to ask some of the more experienced veterans on here what works and what doesnt with regards to construction techniques.

 

21 minutes ago, HeroBrian_333 said:

As for me, I'm thinking fully modular ships.

I'm also going to be using the style of an order of battle used in the Honor Harrington series *cough cough totally not a book suggestion cough cough*

Anyway, Here it is:

LAC - Light attack craft, described as an eggshell armed with a sledgehammer; low armor, high weapons, low power (relies on LACC to transport)

 

Modular works, but be aware that you are going into very high part count if you intend a ship to be entirely made up of lots of smaller craft.  Ive found that the best option is to create a non-modular ship as tough to crack as possible, and outfit it with a few (2-4) claws so if its not completely vaporized, it is capable of both repairing itself by reattaching a component (say it gets split in half but both the front and rear are useful), as well as making it easy to salvage things in the field (its possible to grab stuff without docking ports with the claw).

Other then that, if you still want to go full on modular, you need to have ALOT of redundancy.  Having a modular ship with a single propulsion component (1 engine, or even a few engines attached to the same part) is a very bad idea, same with weapons or just about anything critical to function.  Another choice is to have what is basically a train ship (or at least thats what i call it), which is multiple 100% self capable ships glued together to make it act as a single ship in the rules.  Ive never see this deployed by anyone, but ive built this before in the old days just in case i wanted to deploy a single strong ship that required one to actually knock out 2+ mini ships which composed it (each had weapons, control, and power and none relied on the other ships in the connected set).

 

Finally worth noting is that the entire glass cannon has been proven time and time again to not work well in practice against a good opponent, since itll be identified and focused as the first kill.  I can see it working as a sort of 1st strike vessel (if you are attacking 1st you can always make your 1st ship one of these since its guaranteed to not get shot before it deploys its guns), but outside of deploying a single such craft, you really are far better off focusing at least some effort into armor protection.  At the bare minimum, your capital ships need to be virtually immune to light weapons launched by fighters, and they need to hold up against anything but dedicated high end 1.2m torps.  This means that your enemy cannot take a fighter and knock out a starship with it (insane luck aside, sometimes crazy stuff happens like a pocket ibeam powered by 2 sepatrons splitting a 200t warship clean in half, but generally speaking fighters shouldnt be able to consistently take down heavy vessels, or well you can expect to loose the fight when the enemy is guaranteed a kill every turn while you may or may not do the same to the enemy (what ive found is that with the best armor layout, no weapon thats legal is guaranteed to kill a target).

Edited March 12, 2018 by panzer1b

[HeroBrian_333]

2 hours ago, panzer1b said:

Finally worth noting is that the entire glass cannon has been proven time and time again to not work well in practice against a good opponent, since itll be identified and focused as the first kill.

LAC is not a glass cannon. If it gets close enough, it can one-shot your heaviest ship.

 

My Order of Battle:

Light Craft:

LAC - Light Attack Craft - described as an eggshell armed with a sledgehammer; low armor, high weapons, low power (relies on CLAC to transport)

FG - Frigate - Smaller than a light cruiser, more defense than a LAC

Screen:

DD - Destroyer - Light, fast, and maneuverable; 65 to 80 tons

CA - Heavy Cruiser - Optimized for combat against light craft; 90 to 150 tons

BC(P) - Battlecruiser (pod variant) - Carries ordinance and countermeasure pods, extremely dangerous; 150 to 250 tons

Capital Ships:

BB - Battleship - Modular weapons systems, extremely versatile and well-armored; 250 to 350 tons

SD - Superdreadnought - Built-in and modular weapons systems, most powerful armor, high delta-v; 350 to 500 tons

SD(P) - Superdreadnought (pod variant) - Arsenal ship, loaded with high-damaging weapons pods; 350 to 500 tons

CLAC - LAC Carrier - Carries LACs, frigates, cutters, and pinnaces; no determined weight

Support Craft:

Cutter - Utility craft, carries cargo to a planet's surface, a damaged warship, or munitions freighter; No set weight

Pinnace - extremely light weapons and armor, acts as a ground assault dropship or crew shuttle; no set weight

Munitions Freighter  -  Carries salvaged weapons, fresh weapons pods, and new crew; no set weight

Ground Assault and Bases:

Mining spire - Spire set up to mine resources from a planet's surface; comes with anti-air defenses; no set weight

Sting Ship - Light atmospheric strike craft to obliterate or take over ground targets; no set weight

Ground Assault Transport - A fancy name for a fancy tank, designed to storm a ground target no matter what terrain; no set weight

Artillery - Long-range cannon capable of knocking a target out from cover; no set weight

Edited March 12, 2018 by HeroBrian_333
Afternote - Tonnages scaled down and all craft after pinnace are custom classes

[HeroBrian_333]

By the way, does anyone have any crafts with good armor that I can use as cannon fodder missile testing?

[Piatzin]

9 hours ago, panzer1b said:

the grey wheel

https://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/LY-05_Steerable_Landing_Gear

These look better.... ^

[MiffedStarfish]

8 hours ago, HeroBrian_333 said:

LAC is not a glass cannon. If it gets close enough, it can one-shot your heaviest ship.

Distance is fairly irrelevant as long as you have a decent amount of Delta-V. And you don’t know it can destroy anything yet...

Currently, the meta is against huge battleships. Many small ships with an equal tonnage almost always win, as due to the scale and damage of weapons the small ships will have the same amount of stopping power as the battleship, just can’t be attacked and potentially destroyed in one turn.

Edited March 13, 2018 by MiffedStarfish

[HeroBrian_333]

We'll see. Anyway, the munitions pids are my advantage. Also, my school district is on a nirmal schedule while every other district in the county is on a 2 hr. delay.

[SG Aero]

Might as well post an editorial on making missiles too. The two most important things: the acceleration, and the warhead.

 

Acceleration should be obvious. My approach to attacking is to get up close, like 200-300 meters away, and fire one of my “heavy weapons. If you are going for this approach then you need a high TWR, kinda like mine, which is powered by dual thumps and only weighs five tons. You can also use these sorts of missiles from long range, I just prefer not too. On the other hand, if you don’t want to get close to your enemy you can try a really heavy missile that will smash the opponent with kinetic energy. You do have to deal with the higher inaccuracy from the distance however, and if you are using a bulky missile you most likely won’t have the maneuverability to handle quick changes.

 

The second thing is the warhead. This is the part that makes first contact with the enemy ship. Usually people use things like I-Beams, Vernors, and other high impact tolerance parts. Most missiles I’ve seen, even if they have multiple parts making up the warhead, have some sort of point. This means that the impact is concentrated on a smaller area, making it harder for the enemy ship to dissipate the damage. Depending how you set up the warheads determines how the warhead will react upon collision. My aformentioned missile uses a triple warhead, with one slight ahead of the others. The way this works is that the front I beam tears a hole in the armor, and the side ones scoop out the insides of the ship. It can be a little unreliable, but works more often than not.

So what do ya think of my guide?

 

[panzer1b]

4 hours ago, ShadowGoat said:

Might as well post an editorial on making missiles too. The two most important things: the acceleration, and the warhead.

 

Acceleration should be obvious. My approach to attacking is to get up close, like 200-300 meters away, and fire one of my “heavy weapons. If you are going for this approach then you need a high TWR, kinda like mine, which is powered by dual thumps and only weighs five tons. You can also use these sorts of missiles from long range, I just prefer not too. On the other hand, if you don’t want to get close to your enemy you can try a really heavy missile that will smash the opponent with kinetic energy. You do have to deal with the higher inaccuracy from the distance however, and if you are using a bulky missile you most likely won’t have the maneuverability to handle quick changes.

 

The second thing is the warhead. This is the part that makes first contact with the enemy ship. Usually people use things like I-Beams, Vernors, and other high impact tolerance parts. Most missiles I’ve seen, even if they have multiple parts making up the warhead, have some sort of point. This means that the impact is concentrated on a smaller area, making it harder for the enemy ship to dissipate the damage. Depending how you set up the warheads determines how the warhead will react upon collision. My aformentioned missile uses a triple warhead, with one slight ahead of the others. The way this works is that the front I beam tears a hole in the armor, and the side ones scoop out the insides of the ship. It can be a little unreliable, but works more often than not.

So what do ya think of my guide?

 

Your first point is spot on, and i use both approaches for my weapons, high TWR on unguided weapons, and lower but still respectable TWR on guided LRMs and Torpedo style weapons.  Basically i make all of my missiles to allow a impact of ~500-600m/s when starting from 3km out.  This gives me options, as i can make a round thatll allow very high impact velocity if hitting a thick target, but still allow me to engage at a shoter distance against thinner or weaker ships.   Ive actually found that 250m/s is perfect for most targets as it cuts down on the phasing and thus doesnt make the round pass through without doing squat, while ~450-600 is best for very thick targets like battleships.  Also, like you mentioned, battleships and any super massive craft are at a severe disadvantage tactically because they are easier to hit, and larger ship doesnt make your armor magically become stronger (every ship is still prone to core damage via precise phasing rounds).  In that regard, ive actually created a handful of sub 15t starfighters that are HARDER to kill then a capital ship (size and built around a structural core/skeleton), and carry 6+ SRMs allowing them to at least knock out the engines on a capital from shorter ranges (or if lucky split the ship in half outright).

 

As for warheads, ive found that a compact stack of structural parts works the best (at least for me).  My torps are actually built not that dissimilarly to a starship core, a single ibeam in the middle, and then a few ibeams coming off of that ibeam usually in a cone like pattern.  The reason the cone works, is that is combines focused damage at the tip with a slightly wider profile which helps if the missile doesnt quite hit spot on exactly where you wanted it to (which happens more often then youd think, 100% spot on shots are incredibly rare outside of like point blank mass accelerators).  You can also try shrapnel or some sort of frag round, but ive just never had any results doing it since its rare for enemy ships to be built in such a way that shrapnel works, and air space-burst shotgun ammo is terrible unless the target is super tiny like a fighter that makes it very hard to hit with a normal round or is completely unarmored and in such a case ill just use a couple SRM-Ps (pocket ibeam) which weigh nothing and are perfect for that job.

 

Still, im currently working on my new G9 torpedo which is a dual stage impactor, and will in theory be far deadlier then older weapons but with the downside of being a good deal heavier and much larger (so easier to knock it out).  Basically its a missile with 2 separate AP warheads, one in front of the missile, and one behind the engine.  This is designed to take down MK-2 armor since ive found a single AP warhead is too luck prone with regards to whether it hits at all.  If the base model works well, ill make a ER variant which will have a 2nd stage and launch from orbital defense cannons located on the surface of planets like Duna or Laythe (where i currently have extensive AKS bases).

[HeroBrian_333]

Ok, can i please have some craft files to fight against? I need a target. Also, what is the meta right now? Fighters, light craft, or capital ships.

[SG Aero]

@panzer1b You make some good there. Something is kinda going on right now, so I’ll probably be fine. But if my account suddenly disappears and you don’t hear from me for at least 2 years, you know what happened.

[HeroBrian_333]

@Spartwo please help me. I need a fairly recent craft file for target practice please.