Three1415

As of late, I have been constructing a new cruiser; I will likely have it done by tomorrow. Likewise, I wished to outfit this vessel with new weapons technology; after some upgrades: This is what remains of a Drek after one shot; I cut it in half. Pretty good for a single missile, I would say.

I have deferred it long enough--I have a fleet to design. *Prepares for five-hour building spree* Also, I have determined how to bend the editor to my will, and now my abominations shall pour forth to destroy all that stand in their way.

I have finally found a solution that I am happy with; it is "soft," meaning that it does not actually place restrictions on anything but merely discourages unwanted behavior, but it may be too complex for some people. It is in three parts: 1: Which carrier fighters move first is determined not by the tonnage of the carriers but by the Thrust-to-Mass ratios of their fighters with attached payloads. This means that ion-probe fighters will still move before standalone ships, but will be one of the last fighter groups to take their turns, giving up some of their first strike capabilities but retaining some initiative in exchange for their efficiency and smaller mass as compared to fighters propelled by other types of propulsion. This change makes sense from a logical perspective because, if we were battling in real-time, the slowest fighters would hit their targets last. If a sortie includes several types of fighters, the average of their TMR is taken and used for turn ordering. 2: Fighters within carrier ships will move before any independent vessels, but the carriers themselves will not move until after all standalone ships have moved regardless of their tonnage. If one faction has multiple carriers, their turn order will still be in order of mass, just deferred until singular ships have made their move. This passively encourages larger carriers, as the penalty for an increase in size is less given that they need already wait, and a more heavily armored and thus heavier carrier will be more likely to survive to its own turn and its fighters' next turn. This also means that hybrid ships with powerful armaments, like the example of a battleship with a deployable fighter that I gave earlier, can preemptively launch a weaker attack (5 tons or one missile) against a standalone ship, but will have to wait until that ship moves before it can bring its full armament (10 tons or two missiles) to bear upon it, which I think is both more interesting and more balanced--such ships will no longer have the opportunity to take two turns before their opponent takes one, giving the opposing ship time to retreat or retaliate. 3: This is the most complex of the changes in this amendment to my proposal. I first remove the cap on the maximum tonnage of fighters that a carrier can have, and replace it with a maximal sortie size, measured as the mass of deployed fighters with their payloads. As I could not find even a set of rules that would give the effect that I wanted, I turned to the creation of an algorithm to compute it based on a number of factors. The algorithm is where S_max is max sortie size in tons, m_carrier is the mass of the carrier, m_fighters is the total mass of the carrier's fighters, T_fighter/m_fighter+payload is the average TMR of launched fighters and their payloads, and n_fighters is the number of launched fighters. a, b, and c are constants whose variables affect how the algorithm behaves; I am still determining what they should be. However, as of now, the algorithm gives a reduced penalty for larger fighters (they still take up sortie mass, but maximum sortie size increases slightly to compensate), penalizes fighters with low TMR, and gives a small penalty if to a large number of fighters. This value is then multiplied by the mass of the carrier (larger carriers can field more fighters) to give the maximum sortie mass. These parameters were chosen because they all affect the amount of real time that would be needed to conduct the sortie; the longer the time, the less the sortie can carry (the best compensation one can achieve in a turn-based realm). The values of the constants are not yet set and can be changed to increase or decrease the effects of various fighter parameters on sortie sizes. Overall, I am pleased with the flexibility that this approach gives; it maintains carrier viability while weakening abuse of salvo mechanics in manner that can be easily adjusted to suit combatants' desires or the will of the entire club. However, I worry that some may think it unnecessarily complex or too involved; I hope, however, that as basically everyone who plays KSP is or is an aspiring engineer or physicist, the inclusion of mathematics will sit as well with you as with me. EDIT: The natural log being multiplied by b should have a +1 in its argument, but I am too lazy to fix that right now...

I disagree that technology must be restricted; even veterans' ships are glass cannons, and if they are matched against each other, the defender will still have no chance of surviving, which is why I proposed the changes that I did: Not to necessarily level the playing field (veterans should have an advantage; they usually have better ships, and if a player has better ships than another, then, well, they deserve to win) but to make combat in general more interesting. But this is exactly the problem: It is incredibly easy to create something that counts as a "fighter" and use it to bypass salvo size restrictions, which defeats the purpose of this proposal. But I also hate restrictions on design and technology, so I would rather not bound fighter sizes and limit their variety; however, I see no good way to reconcile the previous statement with the proposed changes without doing so--it is either one or the other, and I see no easy way out of this mutual exclusion... If it becomes obsolete, then we can change it again; the rules are hardly set in stone. However, missiles and armor are fairly evenly matched as of now; ships can simply fire more missiles than they can effectively armor against. This is true in reality as well: Could a fighter survive its own missiles being shot at it? Could a battleship survive its own bombardment? Probably not. But this is less relevant in actual warfare because the defending side can take active countermeasures to prevent or reduce damage, whereas we cannot due to the turn-based architecture of the battles. Real military actions would have exactly the same problems if placed in our situation; it is just that real life is not turn-based. This means that, if we simulate real-time engagements as best we can, no matter how advanced our weapons and armor become, they will remain in approximate balance; restricting salvo sizes is a good way, at least in my opinion, to do this, and so can endure for a long period of advancing technology because improvements in offense and defense will to a large extent negate one another. This negation will keep the situation static to a sufficient extent that rules that do not depend on technology but rather on how the game is played will not have to be changed unless something very fundamental about the game is altered (like moving to true multiplayer); technological advances do not alter gameplay sufficiently to do this. Thus, I do not think this proposal is in any danger of being phased out in the near future. Thanks for the support, frequenters of this thread, but I myself do not think that this idea will be in a viable state until the carrier/fighter issue is resolved; I must think on this further, and try to determine a good solution to this problem... EDIT: And I do not think that forcing fighters to be manned will really help; that is a significant restriction in of itself, and there is always the External Command Seat that can be added for basically no cost.

We seem to have come up with almost exactly the same changes to my original proposal, so I must say that I agree with all of these. The half-salvo would do much to reduce carrier tonnage efficiency down to more reasonable levels, as the number and thus the combined mass of the fighters would have to double to get the same amount of weapon tonnage as in the original proposal, and, as I plan to restrict maximum fighter capacity based on carrier mass, carriers would thus need to be much larger to reach devastating levels of offensive power. I am fairly certain that we agree here; if, say, one player were to have three ships, a destroyer with a mass of sixty tons, a small carrier with a mass of one hundred and twenty tons, and a large carrier with a mass of one hundred and eighty tons, my turn-ordering method would have the ships' turns as follows: Small Carrier fighters-->Large Carrier fighters-->Destroyer-->Small Carrier itself-->Large Carrier itself. I think this is identical to what you said, but I am uncertain. Again, this was also my thought on the matter: Carrier fighters are bound to a "mothership"; if the mothership is destroyed, the fighters are also considered dead unless rescued by another ship with hangar space the next turn (in other words, the fighters must obey the restriction of being docked at a carrier by the end of their turn even if they lose their original base; if they do not or cannot, they are removed from combat and considered dead). I had originally intended this, but re-reading my original post, I realize that I never actually stated it expressly. But you are certainly correct: Being able to fire on and potentially disable or destroy multiple ships in one turn would be rather overpowered. I had also previously proposed this change when in discussion with zekes, as there does not seem to be a justifiable reason for this rule to exist--firing from beyond 2.5 km does not make one's missiles any more powerful; all this rule does is condemn one to lag. However, there still may be problems with these rules, as it might be advantageous for every ship to carry a "fighter" or fighters to take advantage of the reduced salvo restrictions; mostly it comes down to what can actually be considered one, as one could just strap a docking port, probe core, and ion engine to some xenon and call the resultant 1-ton vessel a fighter. Conversely, the distinction between a fighter and a large, advanced missile begins to blur; at what point does one consider a detachable probe a fighter, and at what point a missile? I think that this will have to be discussed more thoroughly before a conclusion can be reached. Definitely not; surface battles are another matter entirely, and I do not think very many rules could be effectively shared between terrestrial and space combat. On the other hand, I wonder how multi-theatre combat, say with both surface- and spacecraft, would play out...It would certainly be a lot more complex: One would have to consider not only each by themselves but also surface-to-orbit and orbit-to-surface weapons, as well as things such as dropships, surface-launched orbital fighters, space-launched surface fighters, and suborbital fighters (the space analogue of aircraft). It would certainly be interesting... I disagree with this suggestion because it restricts too many aspects of gameplay--changing weapon-firing rules is one thing, but banning weapons technology altogether is another. Besides, it is easy to create armor that completely defeats I-Beam missiles--something that was still being figured out in the "good ol' days" of the Battle Club--and if you force players to create ships with armor that can be penetrated by them there is little point in building combat vessels anyway.

Although I am nowhere near ready for a battle, I would like to propose some possible amendments to the current rules regarding weapon usage and carriers. As to utilization of armament, it is evident that, with the weapon capacities that most capital ships possess, any engagement with another vessel will almost certainly result in that craft's destruction; our warships simply carry so many and so massive warheads that it is effectively impossible to armor one's vessels to defeat a full salvo. This means that increasing the durability of a ship has little bearing on the result of an engagement: While it might force one's opponent to use more ammunition than he or she would otherwise have wished (which is comparatively insignificant for the same reason: High warhead capacities), the defender will not survive the encounter. I do not like this; I feel it defeats much of the enjoyment of battling, as one is more or less playing a game of elimination, removing vessels one by one until a player runs out of ships. As such, I propose to limit the quantity of ammunition that any ship can discharge in one turn. I feel an optimal restriction is ten tons' or two missiles' worth of munitions; i.e, one can fire an unlimited number of rounds as long as their combined mass is less than ten tons or two missiles of any (though perhaps cut further to one if someone brings a twenty-ton missile to an engagement) combined mass. Thus, it becomes possible for a durable ship to survive an engagement to unload the armament it was not able to fire its first turn, while a less durable ship might only be able to fire a salvo's worth (a salvo being a number of rounds obeying the above restriction); this would make effective armor truly matter in a strategic sense. Additionally, it would reduce the advantage given to the player that moves first, as without the basic guarantee of a kill the first turn becomes less decisive, as well as, in my opinion at least, make battles more interesting to watch and participate in: The final engagement might come down to the actions of two tattered, battle-scarred warships in a final struggle for dominance, rather than an undamaged ship simply firing at another and destroying it. Finally, fighters and bombers would see their value increased: With such salvo-size limitations, a fighter or especially a bomber could unleash almost as much destructive power in one turn as could a capital ship, sacrificing "staying power" (these ships would likely exhaust all of their armament on their first turn, or, if they did not, would be easily destroyed by opposing warships) for first-strike capabilities. I feel that such considerations are currently lacking in battles, what with the massive power advantage possessed by capital ships. These changes would, as they would make fighters and bombers more effective, increase the attractiveness of carrier designs. However, carriers are basically never used in the Naval Battle Club for a number of reasons: They are massive with high part counts and consume valuable tonnage; they are vulnerable due to imposed restrictions on their armor, making them soft targets for enemy warships; and most importantly, they introduce what I and no doubt most others feel is an unnecessary intermediate step between engagement and actually firing rounds. Why have fighters carry small ammunition loads from a large carrier when one can simply have a capital ship carry much more by itself? However, carriers could see renewed viability if the previously described salvo limitation were to be accepted. I propose this be done in a number of ways: First, by removing the "heavy armor" restriction from them, as they are vulnerable enough having to provide a hollow internal space for structurally weak fighters without having to use far less durable armor across a majority of their surfaces; second, by removing fighter tonnage restrictions and capping total fighter mass to a certain percentage of carrier mass; third, allowing every fighter on the carrier to perform a sortie (rendezvous with target, discharge armament, return to carrier) in a single turn; and fourth, applying salvo restrictions on a per fighter basis, meaning that each fighter, and not the whole carrier, is bound by the ten-tons-or-two-missiles rule. These changes would combine to make carriers less of soft targets (though they would still be more massive and vulnerable than their non-smallcraft-carrying counterparts) and make exotic, intriguing combinations, such a battleship that can deploy a single fighter for striking long-range targets and softening up ships before its own turn, more viable. Additionally, carriers could support a large bomber and several small fighters, rather than a few fairly homogenous fighters of similar sizes and tonnages, while still being restricted as to their maximum sortie size so that they do not become too effective, as the fourth change would give carriers first-strike capabilities comparable to those of a capital ship with the current rules. I feel that this is balanced, however, by (again) the intrinsic vulnerability of carriers, their large sizes and tonnages, and the fact that they themselves shall likely forgo their own armaments in favor of additional fuel and missiles for their carried smallcraft; this introduces additional design considerations that I think are missing in the current "metagame," if it can be called such. Similarly, carriers are so ubiquitous in the realm of science fiction and space-based warfare games that I think it would be unfortunate if we were not to make allowances for them here. Keep in mind that the numbers I gave and even some of the smaller changes are highly flexible and could be easily adjusted--for example, one might wish to cap salvo tonnage limit at fifteen tons rather than ten, or make maximum carrier sortie size also proportional to its mass; I am simply looking for feedback on these ideas, rather than suggesting they be implemented immediately. My apologies for the wall(s) of text, but I would much rather construct a long argument than an insufficiently supported or fallacious one due to attempting to compress my ideas.

Hmm...I need to start constructing yet another capital ship, which will hopefully be less prone to destructive oscillations, being the antithesis of the Tesseract class. It strikes me that I have yet to actually participate in a battle, but I do not have the necessary ships at this time.

I have done as you wished: "HE HAS BEEN AUGMENTED!" "But sir, you've replaced his brain with monopropellant!" "Trust me, it's an improvement." I expect my reputation shower now. More seriously, the alignment between roundified tank and helmet improves markedly after liftoff; I just did not get another good screenshot of it. Also, not only is that the smallest VTOL ever created (well, yours is about the same size), it is one of the smallest crafts possible, as the small monopropellant tank is the smallest fuel-storing volume in the game (other than the xenon containers), and the entire ship fits within it. I can, however, claim another superlative with more certainty: This is most definitely the smallest SSTO ever built. Yes, that is correct: This is a fully armed and operational battlecruiser VTOL SSTO. You have 900 m/s of delta-v; I have almost 4800. Part-clipping at its finest. It does come at the cost of a high part count and mass--this thing is 124 parts (after capsule ejection) and 22 tons on the launchpad, but whatever. As they say, "Pics or it didn't happen," so I provide proof in the album below. To get this into orbit, one must begin a gravity turn to about 60 degrees at 10 km, then hold it until one's apoapsis reaches about 71 km, then immediately cut thrust; continue burning only to hold the former above the atmosphere, and adjust circularization burn angle to always keep yourself within a few seconds of it for maximal efficiency. This craft cannot spare additional delta-v to be able to return in one piece; your cushion is only about 40 m/s. Still, it is easy to fly, and if done correctly the above will allow you to make orbit with comparative ease. As for landings, as you can probably tell from the above album, water landings do not end well; try to avoid them. Personally, I am terrible at gauging where re-entering ships will come down, especially for low orbits, so of course I missed all of the land-masses completely and crashed the furthest distance from any land that was possible with that orbital inclination; hopefully you are more proficient than I in this regard. It is fairly easy to land when actually on land, only requiring a final flaring burn to reduce touchdown speed.

Hmm...I hope you realize that whenever somebody claims something is "smallest" they are invoking my presence. I accept the challenge, Upsilon. And I know things, dark secrets that can aid me in compressing spacecraft to unimaginable densities; your claims shall quail in the face of my craft's abilities! Seriously, though, I shall go whip something up...

Alas; I had thought the armor would hold up better...I seem to have underestimated the phasing ability of high-velocity missiles. The clipped stack in the center of the ship I intended to be hypercompressed to allow me to make the armor as thick as possible, but it seems almost four meters of internal space is insufficient to prevent phasing; similarly, I had thought the number of struts holding the disparate sections of the armor together would be strong enough to prevent destructive oscillations, but it seems I was incorrect in this matter as well. However, we may simply be approaching the limit of durability for constructed armor; one can only do so much to impede the progress of a seven-ton missile travelling at several hundred meters per second and capable of phasing through external defenses. If anyone has a ship that can take more of those torpedoes than that (probably a Drek variant), I would certainly wish to know of it. Anyway, time to try utilizing the complete opposite strategy...Also, I am discovering that, as usual in militaristic games, I dislike capital ships. EDIT: While one missile per turn may be a bit too low, I do not think ships should be able to unload the entirety of their armament at a ship if that total mass is above a certain threshold, allowing ship's durability to come into play; as of now, any player with reasonably effective missiles can destroy an enemy vessel regardless of its defenses... Also, if my next design fails, you will force me to use exotic building techniques straight from the Kraken's maw, and you do not want that...

As KSP (sadly) does not support construction in four-dimensional space, it cannot really be considered a tesseract. However, its interior looks almost exactly like the Schlegel diagram for one, with a cube nested within another cube, so I decided to call it that...Besides, one cannot really go wrong with calling something a "tesseract"; the word belongs to that category of science terminology that sounds awesome when applied to anything. The right to upload his missiles belongs to zekes and to zekes only; I am certainly not doing it without his permission (blame copyright laws ). Not at all; any weapons testing on it would be welcome, as I wish to better know the limits of the Tesseract's armor, and doing so requires a calculating malice that I simply cannot summon against my own ships. As to its current strength, I know the outer cube's armor is extremely strong, but I am less certain of the inner cube's; likewise, I am still attempting to place the missiles in locations where they are not so easily knocked off, as they are now. Download

Real-time multiplayer is the only thing that I can think of that can resolve such issues; it would also raise the skill ceiling significantly, as one would have to command one's entire fleet--intercepts, dodging, returning fire--all at once...

At which point it becomes almost useless to battle anyway--whoever goes first wins...

*Eyes narrow* Well, while I will admit that that hurt more, it is still only the first two of seven armor layers that must be penetrated... However, I suppose that, as you carry twelve missiles, you do not have to do much damage per shot to eventually destroy me...Glass cannon syndrome!

As I wished to determine the strength of the Tesseract's armor, I downloaded zekes's Drek XXX and stripped a Popper missile from it, then placed the latter at ~200 meters from the battleship and fired at what I assumed to be the vessel's weakest point, the engine casing. I lost two wing plates. *Laughs manically*

Thanks, but it is not really my idea--I simply realized that the phasing effects of time warp (to which I was introduced by Danny2462) could have practical applications. It is simply a term I use to describe when the weapons in a game are far stronger than the armor that can be mounted for the same cost. KSP has a particularly bad case of it, but it is not the first game I have seen where this is the norm--if you have ever played Robocraft, you know what I mean.

Hmm--my computer can definitely handle missile vs. target part counts. I wish to finish my frigate before I challenge you, however, as right now I have no good warships between 35 and 320 tons, which is rather restrictive...

That rule does not make any sense, in my opinion; it just condemns you to lag and penalizes you for having long-range missiles, neither of which add anything to combat. I fear my computer would enter "sunscreen mode"--I would get something like 30 spf if the Tesseract and the Drek XXX were within render distance of each other.

Meet zekes's ships. Also, I have found that I-Beams are just a waste of parts for basically all but fighters; they are more or less incapable of actually damaging well-armored targets. The weapons are simply inside the vessel; they require no exit, as I realized I could simply undock them and phase them out of the ship with time warp. As for the engines, there is a shielded hub in the center of the ship consisting of eight MK2 Cargo Bays; when "locked," they completely seal off and protect the engines, whereas opening/closing them (it is different for each set) frees a path for the exhaust to exit. I think glass cannon syndrome shall afflict both of our vessels, though I have yet to test my shatterer missiles against the Drek XXX. Also, you cannot run without escaping the SOI, as my missiles have 2 km/s of delta-v by themselves, which means A: That you cannot outrange my ship; and B: That it does not even have to move to kill you. Perhaps you and I should battle--I do not seem to build like anyone else, so perhaps my vessels shall give you some pause.

The OP has the full set of rules, most of which overlap with yours; the others (like the "synced orbit" rule) are just specifications for the battle, so they are probably fine. - - - Updated - - - I have returned to inform you that RESISTANCE IS FUTILE. Behold my new flagship, the Tesseract Class Battleship! It is far into overkill territory at 319 tons and 1548 parts, but makes good use of them: It has eight eight-ton shatterer missiles, four girder torpedoes, 3 km/s of delta-v from eight nuclear engines, and omnidirectional four-meter-thick seven-layer armor. Also, it is completely cubical is construction--the outer cube is made from smaller cubes braced around a nested inner cube that has octahedral (octahedrons are dual to cubes) armor inside. Have fun trying to damage this.

My capital ship is nearly complete! I have also been testing new missiles--they are not true "Poppers"; I think of them more as "Shatterers" because they tend to just completely disassemble vessels that are hit with them. Almost every successful hit on the vessels I have tested it with has crippled them, either through disarmament, immobilization, or simply by slicing the ships into two or more pieces; in those cases, the resultant debris fields are glorious. And that is with just one missile--my capital ship has eight. EDIT: Also, the rules apparently disallow firing weapons from outside render distance...Why? That makes absolutely no sense; it is not as if you can do more damage that way, and if your ship is the orbital equivalent of a missile silo, so be it. This rule simply condemns players to unnecessary quantities of lag...

Since the Duna battle seems to be permanently on hold, I would be willing to do a 1v1 against you as soon as I get my new frigate built--my new capital ship is basically done, and I already have the former mostly planned out, so I should be ready by tomorrow or Tuesday at the latest. Depressingly, the only one of my ships that has ever seen combat is the Lepton, and that was two months and thirty-one iterations ago (I am on the MK III H now), so that hardly counts. EDIT: Wait, I forgot to specify a location--how about Bop? No-one ever seems to fight there...

I suppose that to a large extent all of our ships are glass cannons--I know none of my ships could survive their equivalent in armament being fired at themselves, and even with your effective armor, the same is probably true for yours as well. I am thinking that my capital ship will be a missile cruiser: It will sit just outside the edge of render distance (say, 2.6 kilometers from the target) and launch guided missiles into the region containing the enemy ship, thus reducing lag and at least lightening the part count load that I have to handle. Also, it will incorporate a VLS-style launch system, which should please andrew123, though I am still prototyping the specifics.

zekes--out of curiosity, just how many of your "Popper" missiles can the Drek XXX take before being crippled or destroyed? Also, preliminary armor testing on my new capital ship is promising: So far, it has been able to absorb repeated impacts by 6-ton Structural Pylon missiles at speeds in excess of 150 m/s while taking minimal damage.

That is a nice carrier, though I do not see much use for them myself. Also, those are some odd-looking fighters--their armament is the same size as the craft! Weird... My capital ship is progressing nicely--five-layered, 3.455-meter-thick armor, 3.1 km/s of delta-v (that is a bit low; I shall probably add more fuel) at 153 tons and approximately 700 parts. It is not yet armed, however, nor is its armor quite complete; it shall probably end up at about 180 tons and 900 to 1000 parts. It is also equipped with the first functional Kraken Field Generator, which I discovered accidentally and have been/will be working on improving; essentially, it allows this ship to disintegrate any craft within render distance without firing a shot.