Three1415

The armor (which I have now completed) is less than 850 parts for the entire surface area of the ship; even armed and with propulsion, I do not anticipate the total part count for the ship exceeding 1300 despite the craft's projected 375-ton mass and extreme size. Fortunately, I have also improved my weapons technologies to compensate; at least I now have missiles that can easily penetrate bi-layered armor (although the prototype above remains mostly resistant to them), and doubtless others soon shall as well. I, too, do not use ions on any craft over thirty tons; nuclear engines are preferable in such cases. In most circumstances, my minimal tolerance for TWR is 0.1, although I often cannot spare the typically large quantity of parts necessary to construct an Ion drive, as I am typically inefficient in terms of part count.

A preview of what is to come: I am prepared to dethrone zekes for the title of "most durable armor."

Massive, massive amounts of armor...And even more fuel. My flagship is in its early stages of construction (i.e, before armor) and already weighs in at 130 tons, 90 of which are in tanks alone.

I see the return of Macey Dean has kickstarted some some shipbuilding endeavors . In any event, I shall soon join those with operational vessels, though I shall be in the same position as Zekes (lacking functional escorts), as I am building a ~250-ton flagship first. Also, use cargo bays as engine shields; they are vastly stronger than airbrakes and can be opened and closed to either allow the passage of thrust or obstruct incident missiles, and they make excellent heatsinks for Nuclear Engines. Edit: Also, never use fuel cells in conjunction with Ion Engines...I just did some calculations and found that when draining both xenon and fuel/oxidizer, their specific impulse drops to 194 seconds (from 4200), which is abysmal and makes them utterly useless.

Sadly, I am afraid I shall have to defer the release of my newest warship to tomorrow at least; my concept failed to turn out well, and so I am now experimenting with other hull and armor types. I have made great strides in terms of defenses, however; I can now reliably deflect incident 8 to 10-ton missiles travelling at ~400 m/s while barely sustaining hull damage. Now to combat phasing...

I, too, plan to have a new warship up by the end of tonight, or perhaps tomorrow. 1.0 was especially hard on me--I lost basically everything I have ever built in KSP, including all but one ship in my fleet. Hopefully this new one will be combat-effective...

HE'S BACK???!!! YEEEEEEESSS! :D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D

While K^2 may be moving into zealotry territory, I do agree with his assessment that it is fantastically unlikely that the EmDrive is somehow violating conservation of momentum, which so far has been upheld in every other physical process we as a species have ever observed. Returning to that Arthur C. Clarke quote, we have only eliminated the more likely possibilities (that thrust measurements are a result of fraud or experimental error), and so are now moving on to the less likely ones (i.e, the EmDrive is somehow generating negative energy or using that vacuum as reaction mass); breaking conservation of momentum is the least likely, so that shall be settled upon only when no other possibilities still exist. Personally, I think the EmDrive is producing (comparatively) large quantities of negative energy, as that would explain much of what has been observed in its operation--lack of apparent reaction mass, preliminary findings as to space-time warping, etc. Negative energy/matter, if properly controlled, basically allows one to gimmick one's way around more or less every physical law without actually violating them, so I very much hope we have found a good way to generate it, or at least, if the EmDrive works by some other means, have an infinite specific impulse thruster.

After realizing that my massive intake spam on the previous Cosmic Ray was only hampering my speed, I removed thirteen of them and ended up with this: Moral of the story: Never underestimate intake drag. Also, I managed to level off this time.

This is still easily exploited--I know I can make a suborbital hop, then activate engines with an angle of attack of ~70 degrees and stabilize my altitude at about 32km, but I still never could have gotten to that height without zoom climbing; thus, I am confused as to whether or not such strategies are legal. Yes, but if you look at my prograde marker, you see that my AoA is less than five degrees, and indeed I was attempting to lower the nose as my fuel cut out. The craft gets extremely twitchy at those altitudes and speeds, and I feared overcorrecting would ruin my chances of breaking 1500 m/s; likewise, speed only increases as I nose down further...So whatever. If necessary I can repeat the run while trying to maintain more level flight, but this is difficult when a one-degree AoA will result in a vertical speed in excess of 25 m/s....

This is my entry for the Kollier Challenge (Open Class) in 1.0.2, with the Cosmic Ray Mk II, a RAPIER-powered, short-range interceptor. As you can see, there is some discrepancy between the maximum speed as displayed on the navball and as in the mission report; use whichever you deem fit. In any event, I broke 1500 m/s, something I have not seen without exploiting the occlusion bug (I am unsure whether or not that has been fixed in 1.0.2), so I am rather pleased with the result. Also, I would enter again for the altitude competition, but I am uncertain as to how it is intended to work...If zoom climbing is not allowed, is coasting upwards on previously attained speed also banned? That is the primary method for one to gain altitude in any case, so it would be rather odd if it were; I do not really understand what is being asked of us in that field of competition.

Something that I often do is surround the engines with cargo bays that when closed block off the engine and provide it protection, but when opened still allow it to move. This usually requires four to six per engine cluster, however, and they look rather odd, but they are quite effective.

Alas, all of my warships have been rendered useless by a minor change completely overlooked by most people: The impact tolerance of structural intakes was reduced from 80 m/s to only 7...And the majority of my ships' chasses were composed of them. Time for redesigns...

At last we were provided a large xenon tank...The thrusters themselves remain small, however, which I find annoying, as the problem is only half-remedied: Ion engines themselves are largely responsible for massive part counts, and this has not been addressed. The potential applications of fuel cells also seem promising, as does the use of fairings in armor/improving the aesthetics of combat vessels. So much new tech to use...I must explore further!

I plan on returning to the realm of naval (spatial?) warfare for 1.0; sadly, all of my extant designs are A: Rather old; and B: Far above part-count limitations proposed. Besides, they will likely be partially broken by the new update anyway, so it will take me some time to prepare an operational fleet.

Well, it is not actually the struts; all of the Structural Pylons are are technically "connected" to one another by themselves, as they are to the root girder part in the center. One can achieve this effect through judicious use of the "Offset" and "Root" gizmos; I only strutted it together to reduce what wobbling I could. As you saw, the ship's only real weakness is that I could not make a Structural Pylon the root part; if the far more destructible girder segment is hit, the entire ship disintegrates. Well, you still got most of my armament, which is good for you and bad for me; I may no longer have enough missiles to destroy your fleet. Given that even girder rockets were able to knock off the 1.25 meter missiles, I may just forgo the armor entirely in the next iteration and simply spread more missiles out farther, as the main strength of this ship is in distribution and redundancy rather than hull strength.

BATTLE ALERT! Mr Tegu vs. Three1415 over Moho 3 ships and 350 tons ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ I deployed three distinct vessels, as shown below: The C3V ("cee-three-vee") Fermi, a Lepton Class Fighter MK IV, at 18.03 tons and 341 parts; The C3V Euclid, a Vertex Class Destroyer, at 80.29 tons and 876 parts; and finally the C3V Zwicky, a Dark Matter Class Battlecruiser, at 251.16 tons and 1144 parts. I went ahead and took my turn, as I have by far the lightest ship present. Turn One Summary: I intercepted the nearest Murderer with my fighter and unloaded the entirety of its armament. Unsurprisingly given the mass discrepancy between the two vessels, the Fermi was able to inflict only moderate damage, destroying approximately half the Murderer's fuel, two of its heavy missiles, and multiple assorted support components (such as SAS modules), before retreating into a low polar orbit. The target is still functional, however, even if its range is somewhat reduced. Persist Your move.

Excellent! I shall set up immediately.

I do not recall you proposing one yourself, but I, too, am up for a battle; for the first time, I have a fleet that I am relatively pleased with, so I am eager to take it into combat (this will be my first true battle, actually). As to the specifications, I would go for 350 tons and 3 ships; you can choose the location if you wish, and also whether or not to try out the ten-tons-or-two-missiles rule. My ships would be my new battlecruiser, the new Vertex, and the Lepton class fighter (I just need to upgrade its weapons technology); I shall post screenshots once I am finished upgrading their armaments.

I have always thought that rule rather draconian; while I can understand generally restricting roleplaying, one would at least think it could be permitted in this particular subforum...Although I seem to remember the thread getting locked more due to resultant heated disputes than the roleplaying itself, which I suppose is why it is banned in the first place.

As I said, it was not true testing, and I must admit that, rather than continuing it yesterday, I instead went on a several-hour building spree and constructed 2048 parts of warship...I was using my new Singularity Missile, which is a 14-ton impactor that hits at about 250 m/s (I confess it was more weapons testing for me than for you ); when hitting from the sides, only about a quarter of the targeted ship (and this was fairly constant across all three designs) was destroyed; and when from the front, about half; but from the back, a single shot would simply obliterate the internals (despite leaving the hull intact) and render the ship dead by loss of armament and propulsion. But for the large part your ships fared better than the Dreks, so do not feel bad; I simply have yet to come across a vessel that a Singularity Missile cannot one-shot (with the exception of my new battlecruiser), and even in death there was more of your ships left intact than any other design I have tested them against so far. I have not as yet tested them with my smaller armaments, however, so results may differ with smaller missiles. Such territorial allotments used to exist, but I do not think they do any longer...In any event, you would have to defeat either Zekes or Scriptkitt3h (I cannot remember which of the two claimed it last) to gain control over Duna's SOI.

Upon returning to the old Vertex, I realized that, as it was my first functional warship, it had been built long before I had actually figured out what I was doing in terms of weapons and armor, and so, rather than renovating it, I scrapped it and built a new one in its image: Behold, the Vertex Class Destroyer! As it now masses in at 72.6 tons and is 840 parts (blame hyperdense armor and effective 12-fold symmetry for this), I felt a class change was in order. In any event, it is now far superior to its predecessor, while still retaining much of its aesthetic.

Meet my new battlecruiser, probably my strangest ship yet: This is the C3V Zwicky, a Dark Matter Class Battlecruiser; it is 257 tons at 1208 parts, with 3.1 km/s of delta-v and 104 tons of armament. Would you be willing to try the two missiles or ten tons rule? I would be willing to battle either way, but I am curious as to how such a battle would play out. I still need to retrofit the other ship I am planning to use (the old Vertex), but I can do that quickly; my flagship will the be the above battlecruiser.

From of what I saw of your ships last night, Mr Tegu, the were extremely durable from the sides and slightly weaker in front, but rather vulnerable from the back. I only tested with my large missile, however, so that may not be as true of smaller munitions.

As I need to test my new armaments, I will gladly accept the new targets. I will probably not get back to you with the results until tomorrow, however. Also, a 475-ton battleship?! That is...terrifying.