FleshJeb

I've got no problem with the turrets. I can smoke those Berzerkers every time in 3v3. (I haven't tested vs the Ordnance drones yet). The 50 cal bullets are slow, and don't have much punch. I think it adds an interesting dimension to the challenge. Thus far, in my own 3v3 testing, I've been able to reliably win against: Bryntroll, Sanngrior, Tasich, Dorito, and the Berzerkers. This has been at different AI Pilot tunings on the same plane, so I'm going to have to find a compromise that works. I have it turned on. That wasn't the problem. It was that the plane is hyper-maneuverable, and forcibly rolls itself into missiles that would have been clear of the plane if they'd lit up sooner.

You can use Mark's numbers as a starting point. This will be an iterative process: Find out how much delta-V you want to have remaining in orbit. Use the Rocket Equation to figure out how much more fuel it would take to add that dV. Add this amount of fuel to your "dry mass". Run it through Mark's rules of thumb again. Repeat process. The craft will keep getting bigger, but it should eventually converge to a solution.

I blame TAPE and Beardy for making them this way. Perhaps I should deploy my 6000 pts of Raven Guard...

Do you want me to run tests for you? I'm busy kicking the crap out of your Dorito with my new plane. EDIT: I figured out why the Dorito is suiciding occasionally--The Drop Time on the missiles should be lower (0.5). It's releasing them and turning into them as they fall. You might even be able to get away with offsetting your gear and ECM farther into the fuselage, and setting the missiles to eject forwards with no drop time.

Pump fuel to the front. Manually or with TAC Fuel Balancer Remove draggy parts from the front and add to the back. I use the cheat menu a lot to look at the drag values for parts in flight. Air intakes can be really draggy. Using RCS Build Aid and Correct CoL together is a really excellent way to build stable plane.

Check the video description for the list of mods:

Yes, those are the Airborne Lasers. from BD Armory Continued. They have a 60 m/s crash tolerance, and none of the stock nose cones are that good anymore. Also the PEW PEW PEW factor is cool. What Galane said regarding the wings. Although I did it mostly for aesthetic and part limitation reasons. I also figure we're ramming a fair amount of air into that constrained box. Unfortunately blown wings don't work in post-1.0 aero. I fake it by having flaps on each wing segment. Thanks for the info. I've always been curious about that disparity. They're certainly a challenge to build and tune to get them to turn flat, as well as not being over-controlled so that they pitch into the water. I somersaulted the second one by digging the nose in a few days ago.

Thanks, mate. Got it downloaded, and I'll put it through its paces this weekend. I got the landing script structured. Now I just have to figure out which bloody reference frames to use for the various readouts. EDIT: I've just checked out Throttle Controlled Avionics again. I think I can make it do this without writing it myself. That takes the fun out of it, but I'd rather get it done.

Don't listen to them, do it anyway. There's nothing like screaming over the wavetops at an altitude of 3 meters. For when you want to circumnavigate the planet with 80 tons of munitions (WIP): When you want to move half that mass, half that distance, and do it fast (WIP, the part count on the other was getting out of control): I still have to add the cruise missile rails, and finish designing the micro-tanks, and micro-subs that go in them. Between the batteries and the fuel cells, they can fire the seven lasers continuously for about 2.5 minutes. All aspect radar and sonar, and enough bombs and missiles to level a city. In addition, they can handle being blown into pieces, and front, rear, and pontoons can still defend themselves independently from air, sea, and ground threats.

If you have Module Manager installed, this will work: //Allow deflating inflatable heat sheield //Author: Chris97b @PART[InflatableHeatShield]:AFTER[Squad] { @MODULE[ModuleAnimateGeneric] { @allowAnimationWhileShielded = true @disableAfterPlaying = false } } From this thread, under "Allow Deflating Inflatable Heat Shield":

I ran it through my range-estimation spreadsheet (which has a few errors), and it looks like it might. I'll have to tune it up, but I can't do it today. Hmm, something's screwy...I'm calculating a dry mass of 6.9 tons, and your engines should weigh 11. Is that 48 tons in the hangar, or in orbit?

I'm a little tired to check for bugs right now, but this will make it a bit prettier. Mind you, I just started learning Python a couple of weeks ago. (so I can use kRPC) print("{:6.0f} s : {:6.2f} m/s : {:6.2f} m (height) : {:6.2f} =TWR".format(i,v,h,twr))

That would be much appreciated. You're certainly under no obligation--I just figured if that you couldn't design and fly a nearly optimal atmospheric portion, very few could. Also, while I was staring at the ceiling last night, I had the very same thought about thrust-limiting the Rapiers. FYI, I think you were right about designing the Tylo lander and working backward. So, hold off for a bit. 4 Nervs and 1 Rapier look much better, but that's never leaving Kerbin without tossing parts. Before my laptop expired, I had a very accurate spreadsheet for computing CALs. I was able to predict dV expenditures and halt over my landing area to about 2% So, I made a new one. Using approximate numbers for the SSTTs I've already got (around 55 tons in Tylo orbit), I attempted to calculate several varieties of CAL. I'm burning somewhere around 9-12 tons of LFO just for the CAL portion, and not counting the suicide burn. This is looking pretty bad. The numbers below are for 2 Rapiers and 3 Nervs. I can run the Nervs as high as 60 degrees off of retrograde and still be more efficient than the Rapiers. It's pretty tedious to change variables and track outcomes. I'm still trying to determine a combination of residual horizontal velocity and TWR to begin the suicide burn at. Prior experience says efficiency falls off badly after TWR 1.7. This would be better done programmatically. Since I'll be having kRPC doing the landing for me, I might as well do it in that. A handy diagram (3x vertical exaggeration):

I just HAD to run out of "likes" for the day, didn't I? @Aerospike Thanks for the reminder.

I finally got a faux-helicopter working. No odd settings on the AI, I just de-tuned the ailerons. Shockingly, it will regularly kill two of my "Be Gentles". Apparently, minimum altitude + ECM is quite good. It also turns out that the rotor provides excellent ablative armor--It's tanked quite a few missile blasts, with no damage to the rest of the craft. It might even fly better without it. Here's the "Thwop Thwop": https://www.dropbox.com/s/9kcbm6ksze8n5f1/Thwop Thwop.craft?dl=0 WARNING: If you stage it and leave it idle, it's only got 4 minutes worth of batteries before the ECM drains it dry. It refuses to function after that. Also, the cockpits are angled, and I haven't tried it with a crew. I believe the correctly-oriented probe core will take over anyway. It's in the upper service bay, at the front, if you need to find it. EDIT: I have "MechJeb And Engineer For All" installed, so they're embedded in the command units, and are probably required.

Time to fire up the spindizzies, it's the Vegan Orbital Fort. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cities_in_Flight

I've been attempting this with various combinations of Rapiers and Nervs. Primarily with a 3R x 2N. My payload is a service bay with an OKTO 2, 4 mini reaction wheel, the smallest battery and an RTG. I'm assuming there's a comms infrastructure at Jool, and have CommNet turned off. I haven't succeeded yet, and I don't think it's possible without ions to do the Jool transfer. Maybe not even then. The testing involves: Flying the plane to LKO. Thank you to @AeroGav for forcing me to get MUCH better at spaceplanes. Dumping the appropriate amount of fuel for a highly-optimized gravity-assisted transfer and circularization at Tylo (assuming 1850 m/s). Cheating minimum orbit for Tylo (45.xxx km) Attempting a Constant Altitude Landing, and finishing with a short LFO burn from the Rapiers. Thus far, I'm coming up short, and won't be able to finish lifting again. I have a spreadsheet that calcs remaining delta-V at each phase, and I'm coming up AT LEAST 1500 m/s short for the return. (assuming Tylo - Kerbin = 1000 m/s). @AeroGav, If you're willing, could you: Build a 2 Rapier, 3 Nerv plane that has 12 tons of LFO in reserve for Tylo operations, with as much LF as you can pack on it. Fly it to LKO (90x90) and tell me how much LF is remaining. Share the craft. I believe I can fly it down to Tylo and back up. (I'll need to install HyperEdit to get a lower Tylo orbit.) The testing time is killing me. I'd prefer to try a 3R x 4N, (arranged as 1N + 3N + 3R for tail-sitting stability) but I think the mass fractions start to get suboptimal after 1R : 1.5N.

Some excellent background info and costing here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarTram I recall seeing some discussion somewhere of Kilimanjaro (stratovolcano) as a site for mass-driver launch tubes. An extinct shield volcano would probably be better, due to the consistent and gentle slopes.

Hey man, I enjoy your stuff, and I like land-training as well. I've just upgraded from 0.25 to 1.3.1. Perhaps the following fix will work? I'll try it out when I get the chance, and report back.

Have you seen THIS? Also, I've discovered that trying to dogfight helicopters results in them rolling upside down when dodging missiles, and plowing into the ground with the help of the now-inverted VTOL engine. They can't be operated at low altitude, which ruins the point of them being VTOLs in the first place. I'm going to try setting the Steer Factor to minimum and the Steer Damping to maximum and seeing if they can avoid killing themselves down low.

Why do you need landing gear? Start that sucker on its tail.

This is just me weaponizing a old proof-of-concept -- Using Goliaths as VTOL engines. Unfortunately BDA closes all cargo bay doors when combat starts. It still did a lot of killing and it taught me how good the ECM is. @HeroBrian_333 do the rules allow the Vulcan turrets? They only say lasers and Goalkeepers are not allowed. If not, I'll go back to the Hidden Vulcans.

Much thanks. I'll edit my post.

@HeroBrian_333If you haven't run mine yet, would you mind changing my settings to Interval 5, Burst 5, Missiles/Tgt 4 and default alt to 1500, Min alt to 500? If not, I understand. @Eidahlil gave this noob some good coaching