ScriptKitt3h

SoonTM

I know, but the concept art I utilized was of the the Dawn (think it was the Halo 4 version), and it heavily resembles the ship above (though the Titan isn't entirely a replica, it's more-so inspired by such ships_.

700-ish, depending on weapons... however, in 1.1, 600/700's the new 400-450 (at least for me, and I'm referring to in-flight performance).

Decided to miniaturize the Infinity-Class' design, resulting in this prototype: ...which survived a direct high-speed 1.25 meter missile hit on its hull (I chalk it up to slightly offsetting the wing plating, making the "reactive armor" function of it actually work).

Yup, the Forward Unto Dawn was indeed a major inspiration in terms of superstructure design.

I saw a certain just-announced game's ships in its trailer and felt like somewhat imitating them- I'm not sure I've ever even seen your older ship.

Welp, I'm guess I'm in a warship-building mood today. Comes out to over 1000 parts with weapons loaded- though the firepower it can carry is more than worth it. (Plus an utterly MASSIVE internal fuel reserve and respectable TWR will hopefully make this a strong, if a bit laggy heavy hitter for my fleet of ships I've amassed.) I'm trying to figure out a way to take it to orbit without hyperedit, which is broken in 1.1.2 as of now (causes a few bugs relating to decoupling/EVAing for me).

I think the guys behind HyperEdit have a tool, it's experimental, but it should be on the website for their mods (kerbaltek).

Yeah, landing gear are a tad bit weaker now by size- medium-to-heavy gear might be needed on some heavier fighters from here on out, depending on how SQUAD leaves or alters the suspension system.

From a practical, in-game standpoint, you've got a few options, with major trade-offs for each: 1. Utilize lighter armor (wing plates) and/or less armor, as steel plating and/or custom hulls in general do indeed add dry mass to your ship. However, the trade-off is less survivability in combat, which as of now in stock KSP is effectively turn-based due to MP not existing at this time. 2. Improve your propulsion system- this could be cramming more fuel tanks inside your hull, swapping your engine(s) out for alternative designs, and/or adding "booster" modules that can be added or removed depending on whether the ship is engaged in active combat or not. The trade-off here is that varying engine setups come with varying sizes and dry masses, and more fuel tanks means more vulnerable, squishy, low-impact-tolerance stuff squeezed into the same size space within your hull. 3. Learn to plan your logistics around your ship's existing range- if this means having a fuel tanker/supply ship accompany it in a flotilla, then do so. If this means strapping drop-tanks to the outside docking ports, than you simply have to do what you have to do in order to take your ship where you want to.

As JT said, there's nothing strictly preventing you from making a demo-version craft and submitting it, but you'd be at a major disadvantage compared to users of the full version of KSP.

Nope, Prometheus. However, I am working on a ship called the Titan for someone right now... Hope you feel better dude, it sucks to be under the weather.

My computer's been sounding like a tiny turbine for the past hour+... Just about 1500 parts.

It's not worth trying to make an "invulnerable" ship- trust me, it's a time drain. Instead, it's better to make a series of ships, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, so that you can plan your fleets around who you'd be fighting, and have a nice variety of craft to field.

Yup, to an extent shots hitting angled plating are indeed more likely to bounce/deflect- but only to a point, as high velocities and varying impact resistances and designs can still let some projectiles deal damage (albeit negated a bit and sending the victim into a spin). As for maximum constraints, the way most battles are fought (turn-based, as per the rules in the OP) is for a number of reasons, namely that there is no stock MP, not everyone can handle the lag from massive fleets in close proximity (i.e. within loading range of each other), so we go ship-on-ship more often than not instead, and so on. Things will likely change if and/or when a stock multiplayer mode is introduced, but until then a traditional method of stock, turn-based combat prevails.

Working on a Dragon V2-inspired crew vehicle- -Just gotta work out a bit of flippy-ness it likes to go through just after the reentry heating subsides. It does store up to 4 kerbals though, through some clever capsule clipping.

From my experience, I've divided missile-type weapons into 2 "families", with 2-3 classes in each. 1. Unguided: -Fighter/light missiles (used on fighters and for backup weapons on large ships): Lightweight weapons like RCS/LF+O-propelled rounds, short i-beams with separatrons, etc. Light, easy-to-spam, and only effective against armor when fired off in large quantities (causes kinetic shock to overload multiple weak points on a hull/spine, but only works some of the time). -Capital Ship missiles: Consists of unguided missiles (normally RT-5/10-based, or using a simple LF+O engine setup) normally with some sort of "warhead"- either a specialized penetrator tip or a fragmenting tip designed to "inject" shrapnel into a target. Somewhat easier to spam-fire than guided missiles, but also is less effective and accurate at range. 2. Guided: -Fighter/light missiles: Smaller 0.625 meter LF+O and/or RCS-powered missiles, controlled via probe core almost always using either a nosecone tip (only effective on fighters lacking armor) or some form of structural part tip, either designed to penetrate, explode into shrapnel, or otherwise knock-out or spall armored hulls. These also are often equipped with RCS thrusters/vernor engines for fine-tuning impact trajectories at range. -Capital Ship missiles: These are what is often referred to as "shipkiller" or ASM (anti-ship missile) weapons: guided, (normally) 1.25 meter-ish weapons, often with multiple LF+O engines (RCS is not really used as the main propulsion on these from what I've seen) and plenty of SAS/RCS/Vernor control for precision strikes at range. Warheads and missile designs range from advanced penetrator systems to "popper" style weapons that explode into clippy shrapnel+provide strong kinetic impact damage, to slug-style missiles that strike with enough high-speed mass to fracture hulls. Guided 1.25 meter ASMs are more often than not a serious threat to most warships, as the designs currently in use by many players are often based around defeating the most durably-armored ships out there (a good example is how Zekes' Drek-series warships essentially lead to an arms race for a bit, in order to defeat his armor design). Guided ASMs are also often used in smaller numbers than their unguided brethren, as they pack a much larger punch per shot than simpler, unguided munitions, and also are higher part count per unit. In addition, there's also rocket cannons (rocket engine(s) propelling objects out at high velocity via thrusting), which generally come in two varieties: scatterguns and mass drivers. Scatterguns function much like their IRL namesake- shooting high-speed clouds of high-impact shrapnel at a target, making it hard to avoid incoming fire and easier to score multiple hits in quick succession. These cannons often can be fired quite rapidly, via ammo "clips" of launchable projectiles inside the cannon's launch tube/barrel. In addition, mass drivers function much like their spread-shot cousins, but instead fire unguided and/or guided rounds individually, allowing for more precise shooting (guided rounds could be equipped with RCS/vernor/LF+O thrusters for course correction). EDIT: I will mention, though, that rocket cannons do pretty much require line-of-sight on the target within a decently close range, unlike guided ASMs which can be fired from even beyond visual loading range if one is skilled at guiding them in.

1-Something you'll hear a lot in regards to armor but that you'll generally also need to keep in mind: First, make sure you don't just slap wing/steel plates on a ship's outside and call it done. For truly effective (or at least functional per se) armor, you need to build your ship off a structural part spine/skeleton and build it out from there. It not only provides a degree of shock absorption/force load distribution, but also lets you layout your ship's internal and external space however you like. To finish, put in your internals (fuel, weapon mounts, etc.), mount your armor to the outside edges of your spine (have the armor connected to actual attachment points on the main spine, not radial-attached, and then build off the "root" armor plates to complete the hull), and make sure to leave openings for your engines and internally-stored weapons to fire out of. 2-So, there's really 3 "main" armor classes in here: light, medium, and heavy. Light armor is essentially wing plate and wing plate/parts only, meant for aesthetics, increased speed and dV, and for ships that aren't too concerned with taking severe damage. It's semi-effective against lighter weapons (like i-beams/fighter weapons), but otherwise is easy to obliterate. Medium armor is normally a single layer of steel plates, interlocked together to form a near-seamless hull/shell with openings for engines/weapons/etc. It's almost always effective at deflecting or negating severe damage from light weapons, and marginally effective against heavier slugs/rockets/shipkiller weapons. Heavy armor is the next step above medium, with two or more layers of steel plate (often through external "shields" and/or internal false/secondary hulls that catch stuff that phases through or punctures the outer layer) and lots of reinforced sections of the ship. Something increasingly common with medium/heavy armored ships these days (I use this on pretty much all of mine) is to coat the outside in wing armor OVER the steel plate hull, as it can act like ablative "reactive" armor, and cancel out the kinetic force from lighter weapons and/or shrapnel, while making the ship look much better in the process (as an added bonus). 3-Generally, the most valuable parts are your fuel, engines, and crew storage, as well as your power generation/storage. Without fuel, power, or a viable method of propulsion, you're dead in the water, so to speak. Additionally, it's a good practice to either try and keep whatever crew you have alive or go full drone ship, with only probe cores. Next, you really want to make it difficult to shoot out your weapons, as getting all your fancy 1.25 meter guided missiles knocked out by a simple i-beam can be quite irritating. I personally solve this by having 2 or more vertical or horizontal launch bays, with 1 or more missile per bay, all with some form of armor protection. While engines are probably the hardest "internal" to protect, some go about it by having protective cowlings or gratings covering up engine nozzle (leaving enough space for the thrust cone to get through), while others install backup thrusters like small LF/O rockets elsewhere on the ship as a redundancy. A few more tips- never clip armor and fuel tanks through each other. EVER. It's asking to have your internals shredded. Just as well, try to keep clipped armor panels to a minimum, as sometimes the colliders can glitch out after hard hits and cause kraken attacks to ensue (not saying to never clip, just be careful). Also, adding internal bulkheads (armor panels sectioning off internal areas from each other) can help in reducing the damage projectiles deal when they phase through your armor at high speeds, as it will stop shrapnel from traveling the length of your ship.

One potential technical reason is that much like crashes heading into and/or out of the editor scene, that explosions act as RAM usage spikes- something that can push a RAM-hungry install over the edge into an access violation, causing the game to CTD. Perhaps, depends really on the ship itself, since TWR also depends on fuel mass/engine thrust+isp, and so on. A few current 1.25 meter missiles could in theory strike across orbits, but another alternative is having carriers and warships with parasite fighters that undock as the orbits near, fly to attack the hostile vessel, and then rendezvous afterwards with the parent. Manned ships will (hopefully) be preferable in stock MP, since any ability to have more than one player in control of a ship would allow for things like having dedicated missile/drone operators and the like. While MP's likely going to be very interesting, for now I'm focusing on making currently-functional ships with some MP-styled concessions, like "chaff" probes and so on. After all, we've got no idea when or if SQUAD's going to go through with making an MP mode in stock for the near future, and all we can do is speculate.

It's a mix of building styles and weapons- but if you're going for something highly-competitive, there's 2 main schools of thought (and design) right now: 1. Steel armor plating over structural skeleton/spine(s) with fully internal and compartmentalized fuel, engines (save for a thruster port at the back), and other more "squishy" components. External hulls often are steel coated with either a fully completed layer of wing plate (as ablative armor) or with the occasional decorative piece of wing plate or other aesthetic enhancements. Some ships (including a few of mine) have started putting internal armored "secondary hulls" inside the main hull, with an air-gap between them and the ship walls, in order to "catch" incoming projectiles that break or phase through. 2. Wing plating over a structural skeleton with the addition of large fuel tanks (like MK2/MK3) and fuselage parts into the superstructure, sacrificing heavy armor for enhanced delta-V, TWR, agility, and lower mass+part count (sometimes, depending on the weapon setups and size of the ship overall). Spartwo's current ships are a great example of this. As for weapons, i-beams are still a good fallback for something nice and lightweight, spammable, and easily carried on a variety of ships. As posted earlier this week, rocket cannons now are seemingly functional again, and 1.25 meter anti-ship missiles still are a way to pack a wallop in a single shot. However, some players (myself included) also have started looking into effective 0.625 meter missiles, able to deal similar (slightly less, but in the same range) amounts of damage to our ship-killer missiles, but with much lower mass and size, enabling fighter kills and more missiles on a single capital ship. Lemme see what I can whip up.

Firstly, the best way to learn about stock space combat is through watching what goes on, examining the ships out there for download and seeing how they're made, and participating in battles yourself. Next, part count limits are really up to the players in each individual match, especially since people have varying levels of hardware, and some players may need more or less complex ships to be effective. To limit part count across-the-board would severely hamper creativity in design and fleet sizes overall. "Standardization" of game options isn't really all that important- it's never been an issue in the past, and still isn't today. A stock install with no mods (perhaps save for purely graphical options like EVE/Scatterer) generally behaves like any other stock install. I'm not too sure that a ship would even hold a "Target" SAS mode through loading/unloading, plus there's really no such thing as "flanking" in orbit, and good armor design allows ships to have better survivability in general, since a proper structural-part-built ship skeleton, plus well-laid-out and effective armor, almost always provides a noticeable boost in damage negation (though only to a point, as some weapons are designed to beat armored hulls, so in the end it's a game of trade-offs). I'm not so sure KOS would work for that necessarily, and this is a stock game within KSP, so I'm not so sure that would work. However, with 1.1 completed, hopefully SQUAD's moving towards MP, which will hopefully allow for proper real-time combat (that's a whole 'nother form of stock space combat altogether, as you'd need to be very adept at orbital maneuvers on-the-fly and somehow have a way to remote-guide your missiles to a target from beyond loading range (ideally, by having multi-player-controlled ships, where one could pilot, another could fire/control missiles, and so on)).

Jeez, that's huge! Is that a carrier/warship hybrid?

Basically, a forward-facing engine assembly (normally LFO/chemical instead of nuclear, for higher projectile launch velocities) that launches slug projectiles and/or shotgun-blast like clouds of shrapnel towards a target. The "recoil" is normally mitigated by firing in controlled bursts, while having the main engines running to re-accelerate your ship. Not many ships have really pulled off the MAC/RAC concept well in recent history, with some of the more famous designs (even going back a few updates) being Spartwo's Mace and some of daemonCaptrix's old ships from many updates ago.

I'll mention that I've taken a look at the Jaysef- it still works, and is pretty effective for a dedicated interceptor (high speed and all that). I'm pretty curious to see the new one in action though.

Ditto. What's the final part count, Zekes?