Three1415

Well, aside from the Mammoth engine protruding from the craft's rear, you have created a (relatively) viable interceptor-type ship that trades modest amounts of firepower, range, and durability for high maneuverability. Seems fine to me... Yes, everyone agrees that would be far better. However, I fear that actually intercepting enemy vessels is going to be near-impossible unless there is a significant difference in TWR between them; orbital rendezvous is hard enough as it is without the other ship actively attempting to evade you... Additionally, close-quarters combat (i.e, within render distance) would be weird; fighting with Newtonian mechanics, not to mention orbital, is extremely odd. For example, in fighter dogfights, one would have to become accustomed to the ideas of slowing down to speed up, a lack of true orientation, etc. Also, it REALLY annoys me that one has only three degrees of freedom with the in-flight camera in KSP; the enemy's gate cannot be down until we can actually rotate the camera to accommodate any orientation...

Someone's spent WAY too much time at the SCP Foundation website... (Don't worry. I have too.)

Is it actually better? Are you truly willing to sacrifice 34 tons of capacity and a full craft for a single-use, unarmored ship? In an actual battle, that would move first, do minimal to moderate damage, and then be completely useless for the remaining duration of combat. That is extraordinarily inefficient, and the use of such tactics would quickly result in an opponent with better ships completely obliterating your fleet. In any event, the use of these ships would have the same merit in real-time multiplayer, so for all your complaints about "balance being impossible until we get multiplayer," you are awfully resistant to any attempts to make the two more similar.

Those results were more or less what I expected. The major problem versus extremely powerful warheads is not that the armor itself is destroyed, but rather that it is knocked off due to structural failures, and the amount of struts necessary to prevent that from happening would be mind-boggling. However, I note with pride that, although sections were removed, they were rarely actually destroyed. It is only slightly stronger; the moment of inertia of the longer girder columns and generally better bracing results in more rigidity and a slightly more difficult time removing components and armor sections. Its main strength is that it is simply bigger; judging by the amount of damage a single Tripedo-H did to it, you would presumably require at least ten to incapacitate it fully. Regardless, here you go: Full ship Also, the censor dot you drew eerily resembles what Duna's "core" looked like after I destroyed large sections of it with [REDACTED]. Actually, I do not even know if [REDACTED] is still functional in 1.0.2; I need to go test it again (probably tomorrow)...

Here it is. However, due to the way the armor is braced, this segment is not quite as strong as it is on my actual ship; aim towards the back center for results closest to what my armor can actually withstand.

I can probably get a decent-size segment down to about ~300; however, it will take a bit longer (especially if KSP keeps crashing). Also, not for the first time do I wish KSP had a drag-select feature.

Actually, I can give you a hull segment now that my armor is complete--give me a minute...

Indeed, as wheels are now the most durable parts in the game (the Ruggidized Vehicular Wheel has 300 m/s impact tolerance) following the nerf of Structural Pylons; thus, I am using them as warheads. As seems to be the case generally, my missile is more effective than yours (~85% of impacts do damage comparable to that found in the images I posted) but is less efficient than yours at 7.0 tons and 30 parts. This, however, I am quite happy with; I shall arm my dreadnought tonight. EDIT: Hmm--that is the exact opposite of what I have found, but granted I performed only limited experimentation very early in my ship-building days...I have a rather different approach to close-range combat. Actually, I think I now know what my next ship will be...*Commences construction of barrage cruiser"

Tirepedo resuscitation successful: Behold what was once a perfectly happy Heavy Drek. It is no longer, for I have unlocked the secrets of spined armor penetration! Fear me! EDIT: That second piece does not actually exist, either-- it immediately disintegrated upon the removal of centrifugal forces that were (somehow) holding it together:

Ship armor finally complete, at 454.6 tons and 1502 parts. Below is my engine armor: Sadly, my delta-v has suffered massively (it turns out that 300 tons of metal plate kind of limits one's range)--I will have only 1600 m/s after the ship is fully armed. Final estimates for mass and part count: ~505 tons and ~1800 parts.

Danny2462 must be informed of these developments immediately. He would take your problem and make it vastly worse! I suggest you contact him. Better yet, give him your persist.

He probably means direct exploitation, like firing a Kraken-drive-powered missile into a ship to attempt to deorbit it... - - - Updated - - - Also, improvements to engine configuration: "How to Temperature" I can run the nuclear engines at 83% power indefinitely.

Status Report: Alas, construction times are lengthening--the editor glitches out every few minutes now as part count continues to rise, and any attempt to ctrl-Z results in an immediate and unpreventable crash, which is unfortunate. Perhaps I shall be able to finish tomorrow...

Wow--that does indeed look amazing. How much time did you spend on the internals?! One quarter-size Kerbodyne fuel tank, four Mammoth Engines, four large SAS modules, a 2.5-meter probe core, eight RTGs, and eight clipped XL Modular Girder Segments inserted into the fuel tank, overlapping where they intersected. Not a "real" missile build, but that girder arrangement is quite effective for penetration regardless. Also, the 19-g acceleration was fun. I will do that as soon as I have finished--I will include a section of the main hull armor connecting to the spine, I think.

I have not yet sealed the aft engine compartment, nor finished arming it; the above was one of a series of intensive tests I was performing on the frontal armor to ensure I would not need to do anything else. Also notable yesterday was my testing of an 87-ton missile on the frontal and side armor (which, impacting at 600 m/s, was only able to do minor internal damage) and the testing of my own missile prototypes (still somewhat effective, despite being a fourteenth the mass).

To celebrate the completion of my dreadnought's frontal armor (at long last), I decided to ram a Heavy Drek head-on at 80 meters per second. This took about fifteen minutes real-time, with fps hovering around 2 and the game running at 1/9 speed due to the presence of nearly 2300 parts within render distance. Despite this, I successfully hit the Drek dead-center (due to an effect I call "insanity's blessing"); these were the results:

I am afraid I cannot determine that based on the content of your posts. I suggest consulting a mirror. Regarding people's reluctance to take you up on the challenge, I do not think anyone else has functional ships as of right now; I am still completing my dreadnought, but that is far too large to be used in conventional battles anyway, and zekes has already stated he requires additional escorts. I have no idea what ships Spartwo has right now...

Erm...This is completely incomprehensible; I have no idea what you mean by the above.

This was my intention--I know we can never perfectly approximate true real-time combat, but we can at least try. The current system has not been revised in years and is used only because Macey choreographed his Spiritwolf videos with it when the idea of KSP naval combat was still in its infancy. That is hardly applicable to now, after years of our research and development of new weapons and technologies; if we are to update our ships we must also update the rules.

Hardly. With the armament restrictions, especially if they are based on tonnage, such ships will not be effective without some variety of survivability, as it is highly unlikely they will be able to destroy a slower but more armored ship in a single turn before being obliterated by other ships. These changes would bring diversity rather than dominance; making an extremely fast ship would, just like in real-time, give you the initiative in combat but limit your durability and range, so the latter would have to be complemented by other vessels possessing more "staying power." Also, the presence of logistics ships dedicated to supporting other craft with fuel and munitions would perhaps become important; this is far more realistic.

My prototype dreadnought would like to have some words with you :

In fact, it has worked so well that no-one has battled in months because of it. zekes, spartwo, Frozen_Heart--them and so many others have stopped even requesting battles because they have recognized their futility. When every battle is effectively one ship eliminated per turn, and the person with the most ships wins regardless of their crafts' quality, combat becomes dull and uninteresting, and no-one feels like participating anymore. Back when armor and weapon tech were more balanced, there were constant battles between members of the club. Now? Nothing. It is clear something needs to be done to remedy this. The heart of the issue is that our current system of conducting battles is abysmal at approximating real-time warfare. As that is out of the question until more stable multiplayer is introduced, we must make do with our comparatively clumsier turn-based method--but we could at least make it closer to how combat would actually work. I have come up with several solutions to this, with varying degrees of realism and stringency; I will present the one I think is best at promoting varied and interesting gameplay. Proposed Changes 1: Allow weapons to be fired from slightly outside render distance, say 3km. 2: Limit maximal weapon discharge per turn of any number of missiles to x% of a ship's mass. x could be constant, or could vary by tonnage; I prefer the latter, with fighters and smaller vessels being able to fire more per unit mass than larger ships. 3: Make combat order from highest to lowest TWR, regardless of tonnage or allegiance. In other words, if one player possesses three ships capable of higher acceleration than anothers', all three of them will get a turn before the other players' do. Explanations 1: The reason for this change is fairly obvious--while retaining the requirement for physical proximity to a target, not having to bring both ships into render distance of one another greatly reduces lag and improves gameplay. 2: This change will help bring weapons and armor back into balance, hopefully allowing ships to survive at least one attack by an enemy vessel. In terms of realism, this change makes sense because firing a full volley of missiles into an enemy ship requires time--time that the enemy ship would likely spend retaliating with weapons of its own. Because we cannot really accurately simulate this interaction in a turn-based setting, this compromise helps ship-to-ship battles be "fairer" to the ship under attack. Varying mass percentages for different tonnages of ships helps keep fighter and smallcraft useful in combat, allowing them to be more efficient than larger ships on a per-turn basis but less efficient overall (they consume more fuel, require a dedicated carrier, are more vulnerable, etc.). 3: This is the most significant change that I have proposed, and I do so primarily on the basis of realism, as our current by-tonnage, alternating-allegiance system makes no sense whatsoever. Why should my nuclear-powered cruiser follow another's ion fighter in turn order when the former is capable of three times the acceleration of the latter? Moreover, if all of my ships are more maneuverable than my opponents', why should they have to follow his? It is entirely illogical. Ordering solely on the basis of TWR makes vastly more sense, because logically the ships capable of greater acceleration will be able to reach their intended destinations far more quickly than those with lower thrust outputs, and this time-to-target determines who gets the first strike in combat. This change would give short-range but high-acceleration fighters a more realistic place in combat, and reduce the dominance of the slow, ion-powered craft that are now ubiquitous. In sum, it would make maneuverability an actually valuable trait, giving designers another quality to consider in their construction of ships, while vastly improving our approximation of real-time, real-life orbital combat.

True, but it is common enough that a volley of missiles from a capital ship is likely to phase with at least one round, and oftentimes that one round is enough to incur massive damage. However, I discovered the main problem with my ship's internals: Some of the fuel tanks were clipping into one another and causing destructive oscillations during impact, which wreaked havoc on its interior; changing the layout somewhat has vastly reduced the damage possible through a single shot, so I have somewhat resolved that issue.

Build status report: I am nearly done; all I must do now is cap the ends of the armor (not that difficult) and attach some armament, as well as perform a few other minor tweaks. As I have progressed in ship development, I am now able to make a more (or less) reasonable estimate for final size: ~500 tons and 1450 parts. Truly frightening, as well as probably useless. Alas for the mass of deflection armor, as well as the fuel needed to get it anywhere. Also unfortunate is that there is simply too much phasing for effective armor to actually be possible. If a weapon actually hits the ship's armor, it completely disintegrates and does basically no damage; however, even with seven-layered, spaced, four-and-a-half-meter-thick plating, weapon components still simply phase inside the inner hull about twenty-five percent of the time. Thus I have come to the conclusion that armor no longer serves a purpose, and I doubt that I shall make anything as heavily armored as this again. It is useless to try to defend against missiles anymore...

Well, I am the least part-count efficient person on this thread, because I enjoy complexity . Everyone else usually uses 800 parts or fewer...