Armament idea I want to share

[Othuyeg]

So I was just having a walk and thought about KSP. I know some of you are into creating weapons in KSP and possibly using them in multiplayer.

So my idea, I believe, allows you to make your enemy probes inoperational without blowing any nasty holes.

All you need to do is make a probe with a normal engine and ion engines, attach it to the enemy ship with the claw and turn on the ions. This will quickly suck their batteries dry unless they have massive amounts of RTG or solar panels.

It works as a virus, taking over the probe.

Feel free to annoy your enemies in multiplayer.

[Zeroignite]

Can't the other ship turn the ion engine off, since it'll have become part of their vessel?

[xrayfishx]

A more reasonable way would be some large rocket engine that sucks all the fuel out of the enemy ship. Or something with a crapton of small parts to increase the part count until the spacecraft is no longer usable.

[sumghai]

Can't the other ship turn the ion engine off, since it'll have become part of their vessel?

If stock ion engines are used, then yes, the target vessel's owner can simply shut off the parasite vessel.

However, if the ion engine's ModuleEngine is modified to include the allowShutdown = false argument, then once activated, the (modified) engine will work as the OP intended. (This is assuming that certain multiplayer plugins would permit the use of non-stock parts).

[_Aramchek_]

Meh, I'll stick with ballistics. A 40km/s projectile works much faster than draining the batteries.

.

[Streetwind]

However, if the ion engine's ModuleEngine is modified to include the allowShutdown = false argument, then once activated, the (modified) engine will work as the OP intended. (This is assuming that certain multiplayer plugins would permit the use of non-stock parts).

You can still throttle down. Shutdown only refers to "un-staging" the engine. And even if it did prevent you from throttling down, which it doesn't, you can still decouple the claw and get rid of the parasitic vessel.

No, the idea here is that the other player in that multiplayer session simply isn't aware of the attack. You basically need a few minutes during which he isn't looking at your target vessel to perform the rendezvous (if he is looking he will simply dodge you anyway), and then another few minutes for the ion engine to drain the batteries.

If the target craft is unmanned, the power virus wins when the batteries deplete fully. Without power, you have no more control over the craft, and without control you cannot throttle down, cannot shut down the engine, and cannot decouple the claw. The ion engine simply consumes every last scrap of power, indefinitely, until it runs out of xenon (which can take a long time if the power output of the target is minimal).

[Sirrobert]

And if you look to your left, you will see why people don't want multiplayer in this game

[vexx32]

Seeing as this apparently has very little to do with the actual development of KSP... Moved to General Discussion.

[Othuyeg]

Seeing as this apparently has very little to do with the actual development of KSP... Moved to General Discussion.

the funny thing is, this is the forum I originally made the thread in

it was moved back and forth.

[cantab]

In my experience as long as there's still some power generation, control is maintained, even if the electrical engines are sucking up the juice as fast as it comes.

When multiplayer is implemented, I imagine there'll be a server/host option to disable sabotage, making it so that both players have to agree in order for their ships to interact. Unlike say Minecraft, in KSP it's pretty clear whose stuff is whose.

[Seret]

If it's implemented anything like the multiplayer mod you won't be able to interact with other players' ships unless they let you.

[coolitic]

Or just attach to enemy ship and use your rocket thrust to drain and damage their parts.

[Streetwind]

In my experience as long as there's still some power generation, control is maintained, even if the electrical engines are sucking up the juice as fast as it comes.

You can test this fairly easily on the launchpad. Just add a probe core, a battery, a xenon tank and a PB-Ion, and attach it to a launch clamp. The launch clamp constantly supplies a small amount of electricity. Throttle up the ion thruster, wait till the battery is dry, and then try to throttle down again. Or rightclick any part and look for the detail options like "shutdown engine" or "toggle torque". You'll find that nothing you do can affect the ship anymore - it's as if you were completely out of power, even though the ion engine will still be running (at a vey low output level). This will continue until the xenon runs out, at which point the battery starts to recharge and you regain control of the ship.

Last time I tried this was in 23.5, and it worked exactly like that.

[NASAFanboy]

You could also just knock off the solar panels.

When in combat in space, always target the solar panels, then the engine.

[cantab]

You can test this fairly easily on the launchpad. Just add a probe core, a battery, a xenon tank and a PB-Ion, and attach it to a launch clamp. The launch clamp constantly supplies a small amount of electricity. Throttle up the ion thruster, wait till the battery is dry, and then try to throttle down again. Or rightclick any part and look for the detail options like "shutdown engine" or "toggle torque". You'll find that nothing you do can affect the ship anymore - it's as if you were completely out of power, even though the ion engine will still be running (at a vey low output level). This will continue until the xenon runs out, at which point the battery starts to recharge and you regain control of the ship.

Last time I tried this was in 23.5, and it worked exactly like that.

Tested in my clean .23.5 install and it seems build order matters. With a ship built from probe core, battery, xenon tank, and ion engine, with the clamp attached to the probe core, I retained control. It "came and went" a bit, occasionally the throttle would stick, but more often than not it responded. Attaching the clamp directly to the ion engine, things seemed less responsive, so electricity source position may matter, but I was still able to kill the engines with X.

When I built the ship in the reverse order, ion engine first, with the clamp attaches to the engine I could still kill the throttle with X but the engine kept running, but not forever. After a minute or two I noted my electric charge reserves refilling again and had control.

I built another craft powered by an ox-stat, and was able to get that to be uncontrollable for at least a few minutes once, but on a repeat test I retained control, so there may be some unpredictable factor at work. Throttle setting on the ion engine might be important as well; on the same craft I could reliable lose control only if I had the ion engine down so it just barely drained the battery, and remained in "Status: Nominal". I suspect it's the engine "flaming out" that allows the probe core to get some electricity.

Even then, there's another way to regain control. Right-click the xenon tanks and disable them. That's something you can always do, to all resource storing parts, even when you don't have control. The attack craft can make this difficult by using a large number of hidden xenon tanks, so they can't be clicked directly and not all show when clicking the resources pane, but even then appropriate camera manipulation might allow the rest to be right-clicked and disabled. (Clipping tanks on top of each other will prevent disabling them all, but if debug menu abuse is allowed the defender can simply enable infinite fuel.)

[merendel]

Seems like it would be easier to just attach a drive core to the rocket and give it a few thousand dV in some random direction that wont cause an imediate crash. particularly if you manage to accelerate it solar prograde it will very quickly reach a point where it will be years before it returns to a recoverable location. If you make sure you burn off or otherwise depleate all fuel that probe is effectively dead unless the owner either quickly sends out a rescue mission with very high dV to retrieve it before it gets to far or waits till it swings back around

[Cmdr. Arn1e]

hmmm, this has given me some other ideas though... wonder if anyone could create some sort of limpet-mine or something! might work better than just draining the power...

[Kasuha]

I think it is a big question if clawing to the other ship will be possible at all in multiplayer. Clawing will merge them into single ship, but - who will be the owner? Who will be in control of that ship? You can't really let two people control the same ship in multiplayer.

[Kruleworld]

maybe a landing gear claw would work better than ARM claw? Another option for griefing is to fire up the engines, then detach them. so long as it has fuel, it'll continue to burn.

[DerpenWolf]

You could just attach a a claw to a probe core, RCS system, and an SRB and use the system to deorbit other craft. You will have to line up the SRB with the center of mass but that shouldn't be to hard. If the klaw was disabled you could also make a large 'catcher' out of beam and heavy cubic struts that would help the sabotage system stay held against its target.