Naval Battle Club

[Noname117]

it is definitely a new, slightly unconventional ship. It looks to have a forward I-beam missile launcher and side launched missiles, with 2 to 3 engines.

[zekes]

it is definitely a new, slightly unconventional ship. It looks to have a forward I-beam missile launcher and side launched missiles, with 2 to 3 engines.

Bingo! It's definitely not conventional (at least in my build methods), but I feel it's a good ship, on par with the power of a Drekevak, in terms of firepower, slightly worse in terms of armor, and way better in range.

[panzer1b]

I'm just going to not tell you guys what it is, enjoy trying to figure it out

http://i.imgur.com/dSOMM1D.png

It looks interesting, actually not one of those conventional competitive ship shaped (although i do like the shape, those 6-8 sided ships seem to everywhere these days as its one of the most practical armoring schemes).

And as usual, i see its carrying overkill part count missiles, you need to find a replacement for those poppers thats under 20 parts and just as effective against armor. Id give you my Tripedo-M but its a bit less powerful and also larger so you cant stack as easily (currently 15 parts if i remember right, ~5t mass).

[zekes]

It looks interesting, actually not one of those conventional competitive ship shaped (although i do like the shape, those 6-8 sided ships seem to everywhere these days as its one of the most practical armoring schemes).

And as usual, i see its carrying overkill part count missiles, you need to find a replacement for those poppers thats under 20 parts and just as effective against armor. Id give you my Tripedo-M but its a bit less powerful and also larger so you cant stack as easily (currently 15 parts if i remember right, ~5t mass).

That's why the Popper is still a go-to missile - I designed it to have the punch of a long missile in the stacking space of a miniature one.

I also hate the radial symmetry ships, for me it's gotta be linear or it looks really strange, or boring, or both. And yes, it is a completely unconventional shape. The rear might need a redesign but the front is very strong and very effective use of space for fuel.

Edited August 18, 2015 by zekes

[Red- the Engineer]

Alright, I did a thing. I made a scrappy liddle fighter called the 'Devilfish,' as it has a TWR of .90, and three longlances. It also features sweet aesthetics (I'd like to think) and very good recoil management, as well as a decent range (~1.4 km/s) and an ejecting capsule.

It also features a probe core designed to control the craft like a stack rocket, as well as control the remains of the craft in the event of pilot death or ejection. I present to you...

THE FTC F-4B 'Devilfish'

[panzer1b]

Just something i noticed that may be worth mentioning, apparently physics slider makes a massive difference in weapon lethality. At certain settings weapons seem to become very prone to random desintegration of contact with vessels, and on different settings they seem to do more consiustent damage.

I need to do more testing, but it does appear that that slider can make weapons go from reliable to very unreliable at certain levels.

[LePadeaux]

Been following this thread for a while, never did bother to post. I've built some military ships over the past year although they're pretty simple and presumably ineffective. You can find them on my Lotus Corporation thread and play around with them, I never have the time to mess around with them myself. Here's a direct link to the zip file with all the craft files.

Here's some pictures as well:

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[Three1415]

They are pretty good, but they seem to have issues with high enough mass phased rounds (like every single ship ever made). That said, they are well armored, but sadly not part efficient and like many other ships, aint gonna see many battles until U5.

They are part efficient for me.

very very resilient to weaker weapons, and even stufflike my lighter Tripedo-S which seems to shatter when hitting very dense armor like this style (S/H still works wonders against anything including these though). Finally, the ships get instantly obliterated when a corvette class vessel is rammed into them at 2km/s (as does everything else including the corvette that collides at 2km/s), although i needed to reload alot of saves as at that speed its tough to actually HIT something, and you phase thru entire ships alot of the time at such velocities.

Alas, the phasing rounds strike again. I have a few more tricks remaining before I effectively give up on defeating phased ammunition, and I have given up entirely on stopping XL3-based ammunition from pulverizing everything--it is simply too overpowered.

As an aside, I wonder how difficult it would be to make a mod that, whenever a collision was detected with relative velocities greater than ~80 m/s, would revert to a second or two before in the gamestate and run the collision again with far higher physics delta, thereby reducing the incidence of phasing without severely affecting gameplay...

That reminds me, gotta finish my FK-141 ramming fighter. It has no weapons, but its frontal protection is so insane it can cut anything but the heaviest ships in two at ~200m/s impact with usually minor if any damage to itself. Its heavily inspired by something i saw in a movie at friend's house, forget the name, this assymetric craft that basically attacked stuff by ramming it, buildings, fighters, whatnot and if i remember correctly flew through a building without suffering any real damage. Still dont remember what that movie was though, just remember this one ship that rammed stuff and could cloak.

I do hope you know ramming is banned, and for good reason...

Ive found these things to be all but useless from a practicality perspective. Ive tried them myself (railguns, mass accelerators, whatever you want to call them), and sofar they are neither lower in part count or better in lethality then a very generic long ibeam+2 sepatrons unless you are using excessive engines liek clipping 10 KR-2Ls inside themselves, which will make it lethal at the cost of loosing any practicality. A nice gimmick to play around with, but ive yet to get anything out of them in a competitive environment. That said, i do have a frigate in duna orbit (current AKS flagship) that is equipped with a skipper cannon that can do something with luck, although its just not very practical and uses alot of fuel (well the ship its on is a LFO engine powered anyways so i just added the 2 extra skippers to each side as it isnt that much weight for a ~100t ship already, and its a nice utility that ive used many times to launch fighters far away).

Actually, the smaller engines are usually much more effective; that is how my fighter/bomber chainguns work, and I have been trying to generalize cannons' applications to larger vessels, with a surprising degree of success. Practical mounting is still under development, however.

I'm just going to not tell you guys what it is, enjoy trying to figure it out

A most interesting vessel. Highly distributed internals, I presume? This should be interesting to shoot at...

I also hate the radial symmetry ships, for me it's gotta be linear or it looks really strange, or boring, or both. And yes, it is a completely unconventional shape. The rear might need a redesign but the front is very strong and very effective use of space for fuel.

Welcome to the world of strange-looking vessels--you have entered my domain. Enjoy your stay.

Alright, I did a thing. I made a scrappy liddle fighter called the 'Devilfish,' as it has a TWR of .90, and three longlances. It also features sweet aesthetics (I'd like to think) and very good recoil management, as well as a decent range (~1.4 km/s) and an ejecting capsule.

It looks quite nice, and will probably be at least decently effective--survivability concerns are more or less negligible for fighters, anyway, as they are more or less "one and done" affairs. As such, it is probably quite decent.

I need to do more testing, but it does appear that that slider can make weapons go from reliable to very unreliable at certain levels.

This is known, and is why using Physics Warp when firing weapons is banned--higher physics delta values make ammunition far more prone to phasing into things, whereas lower ones increasingly approximate reality; thus, adjusting the slider up will make things strange and inconsistent.

Finally, has anyone ever experimented with stacking plate--i.e, connecting one layer of plate directly to another by simply attaching it to the armor plate's connection node, effectively making it much thicker? If so, what results did you obtain?

Edited August 18, 2015 by Three1415

[Canberra Gaming]

This is what 7 hours of a design team arguing in my head has come up with.

(Yes that's a Drekevak P)

Expect my entry soon.

[Mr Tegu]

Just something i noticed that may be worth mentioning, apparently physics slider makes a massive difference in weapon lethality. At certain settings weapons seem to become very prone to random desintegration of contact with vessels, and on different settings they seem to do more consiustent damage.

I need to do more testing, but it does appear that that slider can make weapons go from reliable to very unreliable at certain levels.

yup... if you're referring to the delta time rate that is, not the time warp function. You'll also notice that you will get different 'sweet spot' ranges where your projectiles will perform consistently depending on where you set the slider.

- - - Updated - - -

'Finally, has anyone ever experimented with stacking plate--i.e, connecting one layer of plate directly to another by simply attaching it to the armor plate's connection node, effectively making it much thicker? If so, what results did you obtain?'

pretty useless, if the projectile phases through one sheet it phases through both, much better to leave a gap between the plates to increase the chances of one of the plates catching the missile

- - - Updated - - -

Low part count popper:

- - - Updated - - -

Ke=1/2 MV^2, we have a hard limit on V, phasing prevents realistic impact speeds so, once you hit the limit, increasing mass is the only way to increase the damaged caused. Hence the radial engines which weigh an awesome 1 ton each.... (there is nothing preventing me from stacking more and more of them pretty much indefinitely if armour ever improves).

Edited August 18, 2015 by Mr Tegu

[Frozen_Heart]

I love your shipbuilding design - it reminds me of some of Daemon's ships, but yours are lighter and far better range. What does that one get?

I can manage just over 7000m/s without drop tanks. With them I can bring it up to 9000m/s.

I base my builds on Donlokimon's. but Daemons do often look quite similar.

[Zamovinar]

Kraken Technologies presents the Cruiser-Carrier a new idea for a ship-engine layout. 12 detachable fighter-engine pods on the side with its own armament and serves as the side armor and engine itself, and featuring fuel filled center hull. I might swap the engines and fuel tanks for the more efficient liquid fuel and nuclear engines though. Any comments? It can act as a close range brawler or long range carrier. A truly multi-purpose ship. It can evade fast with enough fuel to last a fight. The only thing it lacks though is a dedicated anti ship weaponry such as the Kraken Tirepedo (But I can arrange that for later development of the ship)

With a special hull layout, still experimental if anyone wants to test it please send me a message. I really do want to know how tough it is using other weapons.

It may look like a regular elongated ship but its more than what it looks. The pods are stacked pretty efficiently at the sides.

It can line up diagonally for moving using all engines and engage hostiles (do not worry it's got a lot of fuel reserves at the center that can be transferred that why it looks fat)

Alpha Attack, all shots in one go (the side pods can be detached though for a more precise attack but its got a pretty limited range so the common tactic for it is to close in on the enemy)

Detachable fighter pods (seen here are used fighter armaments though) Each fighter-engine pod serves also as side armor. But after everything is spent it's pretty much a sitting duck. Imma further develop this to lower partcount and include an engine on the center.

I know it's a great innovation for ship design because everything here is pretty much the same. This is a refreshing idea.

[Mr Tegu]

but will it blend?

[Zamovinar]

but will it blend?

not sure, the real problem is if the side engines get hit I need to remove the others to balance it out.

[Spartwo]

I don't see it...

[kStrout]

New design for a reaction cannon I'm working on, it fires 5 (or more) decoupler+plate projectiles, which are very low profile and only 2 parts, at 129m/s, consuming about 10-5 fuel per shot(depending on how good you are at using it, 10 per shot is turning it on and spamming the space bar) total mass of entire assembly is 4 tons, pictures and more results later. I am yet to do experiments regarding optimal engine placement or field effectiveness or resistance to attack. But I have the current prototype mounted in a new ship I am building.

[Alphasus]

too low speed. Needs to be faster for real damage, above 200 or it won't do much damage.

[Mr Tegu]

500m/s is what i aim for, 600 is good on thicker targets

[Spartwo]

(1/12)

Just a friendly reminder that if you talk .... about mass accelerators you will get hit, most likely from 20 metres away.

(4/12(+1 misfire))

[panzer1b]

http://i.imgur.com/AhuL0lZ.png

(1/12)

Just a friendly reminder that if you talk .... about mass accelerators you will get hit, most likely from 20 metres away.

http://www./convkey/dde5/40kx8c72euhua58fg.jpg

(4/12(+1 misfire))

Thats the number one selling point of the entire concept, instant or near instant velocity as if it was a conventional cannon. Sadly, after i started equipping every single new AKS vessel with manual targeting systems it allows me to be accurate enough to target specific sections (not quite a particular weakspot but i can choose the general area the shot lands), and the whole get up to point blank range to hit reliably is nolonger even needed when every one of my ships can just use IVA to aim at enemy ship with near 100% guaranteed accuracy at 500m or farther even (MK1 inline is the next best thing for targeting with its crosshairs, well you dont aim directly at corsshairs but there is still a spot u can aim at to get hits reliably, or add antenas on teh front to make it even easier to hit stuff).

The other issue i have against reaction guns, mass drivers, whatever u call them is the part count. The ONLY make sense with extremely high ammo capacities, since it is alot of parts/mass for the gun assembly (most decent ones use mutliple stacked engines instead of one large one), only does the part count drop below that of conventional weapons once you start having in excess of 20 shots for the weapon, and in general ive still found your classic long ibeam+2 seps to be plenty adequate against almost any vessel that had armor wea enough for a cannon to actually kill.

Ive yet to see the weapons get powerful and reliably enough to take down anything that is well built and has a armored core without insane luck (ive split a drek 12P one time and one time ONLY with a pocket ibeam, never managed to recreate it but it happened). They are great at phasing thru and crippling ships, but all my designs (and all ones ive downloaded and tried) just fail at dealing with heavy armor. Perhaps if the projectiles were XL-3 tires, but thatd be one bloody large weapon to fire those at anything but low velocity.

Basically they offer very little incentive to use, are more complex, tend to be easy to disable with a well aimed shot, and most of all they kill your dV in general. My recent corvette design has around 2.5K dV fully armed, and 3.5K dV with all weapons removed, and the cannon armed version has very similar dV fully armed, but gets less then 3K dV with ammo and cannon fuel used up. That is a very big difference, and while i know in the style of combat we have here, this doesnt matter at all since once out of ammo who cares, but in more realistioc games, real time, ect, these things make a difference. that and the cannon armed version i use has ~20 shots total of ammo, whereas the conventional one has 30 bloody shots, some of which are actually more powerful then the cannon on the other version. The only improvement on the cannon one is part count, but since it doesnt have drone missiles (S drones have 4 parts, 8 carried, M drones have 7, 8 carried, ibeams have 4, 8 carried, and RT-5s have 3, 2 carried), its less parts, but is in general less effective, easier to destroy due to extremely vulnurable cannon shooting system and ammo feed, and well, its just a for fun ship, with little use unless ur killing fighters, carriers, or stuff with low to no armor.

that said, they are very nice to have on carrier hybrid warships, as i can actually propell a fighter for very little fuel useage and cut down the dV the fighter itself needs to use up allowing for shorter ranged fighters to get farther out then you would normally expect. Ive even managed to slow down an incoming fighter with such a cannon, its tough to aim and took some save scumming, but i did manage to actually stop a incoming fighter at ~80m/s with a quick tap of the trigger for the cannon. It has nice utility useage, but as a weapon is not exactly ideal.

Also Spartwo, i hope you dont mind me stealing your weapons to use on my fighters. That multi-shot thingy u have on some of your smaller ships is kinda cool, its short, stubby, easy to stack, and small profile, and most of all actually kills anything with garbage armor. Until i develop my own super small weapons, i hope u dont mind seeing AKS utilizing some of your tech.

Ohh, and a bit of a unrelated topic, i found a great use for crewed pods in armor protection. It appears that if you have anythging crewed, regardless of what your root part is, the autoaim and target marker will target the pod and not the actual root part. Yes i know its horrible to have sacrificial kerbals sitting on a ship, but it seems to be a good way to make it difficult for people who use unguided weapons to hit the root part without 100% manual targeting (actyually its borderline impossible to target teh root part without a IVA+antena system that actually lets you choose where shot lands). This was accidentally discovered after adding a crew pod to the SK-CRV-III, apparently the target on the navball aims at the pod despite it not being the root part, who knew?

Edited August 18, 2015 by panzer1b

[Spartwo]

Yea, ok.

[Mr Tegu]

Ohh, and a bit of a unrelated topic, i found a great use for crewed pods in armor protection. It appears that if you have anythging crewed, regardless of what your root part is, the autoaim and target marker will target the pod and not the actual root part. Yes i know its horrible to have sacrificial kerbals sitting on a ship, but it seems to be a good way to make it difficult for people who use unguided weapons to hit the root part without 100% manual targeting (actyually its borderline impossible to target teh root part without a IVA+antena system that actually lets you choose where shot lands). This was accidentally discovered after adding a crew pod to the SK-CRV-III, apparently the target on the navball aims at the pod despite it not being the root part, who knew?

you've already stolen the pointystick^tm so this no longer applies to you.... (now what was it they said about imitation and flattery?), (there's no such thing as copyright in a arms race )).

[Canberra Gaming]

I love it

[Mr Tegu]

I'll fight it

[zekes]

I'll fight it too