panzer1b

Just blowing up some starwars replicas that i rebuilt in chibi scale. The engine pods are 0.6m, so this is literally microscopic in comparison to most of my creations. My somewhat terrible TIE replicas, about as cramped as i can get a ship to be, between the fuel tanks, engines, weapons, and kerbal being in that central pod, its really stuffed (and does just like in SW, more or less explode violently when anything hits the middle spherical pod directly. While it was never a part i thought much of before, the fan shrouds we got in the DLC are insanely useful if you want to make a decent looking sphere without too many seams. Ofc the real reason why i made them in this scale is so dat they'd fit into some of my larger capital ship hangar bays, since trying to build this to a scale dat looks good using the stock cockpits is near impossible, so i had to make my own cockpits and well i think it turned out really neat especially when the fighters are all sittin nicely inside their battlecarrier. Well they sure explode nicely. Especially like how the N1 was split in half (and then got ganged up on by the partially damaged TIE and the other fully functional one, shortly after the damaged 1 gets slaughtered by the 2nd N1. KCS mod FTW, real time combat. The firework based cannons are buggy and have a tendency to be very inaccurate, but its fun to see 2 fighters slugging it out and aiming/flying around on their own without me having to manually do it all...

Blew up some jaffa... Firing interceptors (anti-missile). All hands brace! Mediocre... After eatin 4 rather good torpedoes (or so i thought). Return fire you morons. Dats better. Yeah didnt really stand a chance in a drawn out slugfest with the AKS Nebula class frigate, but at least it put up way more of a fight then i expected it to (the core is absurdly hard to kill and near immune to heavy torpedoes short of extremely lucky hits and or a huge quantity)...

For me the biggest issue seems to be the performance (which i seriously hope will be fixed in future versions). I can fully understand the game now working properly on my current POS GPU (GTX 1050 TI, like the 3rd best card you could get at that time), and the CPU if enuff, but if the streamer build is anywhere near accurate then why would a sub 200 part rocket lag badly enough going thru atmo (at least until boosters are dumped) to slow the game to like sub 20 FPS and slow down from realtime rendering? Yes KSP1 is old, but ive never experienced lag going thru atmo on a craft below 300 parts, not even if i give it 30 engines on the 1st stage. Dat and the streamer PCs were very high spec last i checked so if they experienced that kind of lag there is a good chance you are screwed on a normal home gaming rig (that doesnt cost more then 2 used cars where i live). Heck, while i do want to try the game (even in its unfinished and buggy state), i doubt i'd even be able to run a 20 part count ship at useful FPS. Heck, i'm running KSP1 with: EVE Scatterer Parallax (with tesselation off and all textures manually edited down to reasonable resolution as 8192x8192 for a tiny rock is beyond OVERKILL and completely unnecessary, no idea why this is done for the mod textures) DIRT TURD Waterfall And from my experience i can comfortably handle a sub 1K part vessel in orbit before the lag starts to be annoying, and around 500 or so for an atmospheric craft. Heck, ive loaded up nearly 3K parts on multiple occasions and while it does get painfully slow and laggy, the game is still playable. One of my hopes for KSP2 was that they would have slightly better high part count optimization (perhaps they will eventually in a few more years), but right now in KSP2 on a super beefy rig 151 parts ran worse then a 500 part SSTO with way more engines on it in KSP1 on my own rig, so at least with EA it appears unlikely i will get any useful performance out of it, albeit one of my friends does plan to try and install it on my rig to see whether it will run at all. If it does i'll likely buy it, if not i'll wait and see if the perf improves enuff to handly my rig since its still going strong and i generally dont upgrade unless what i have now falls apart on its own and its gonan likely be at least a year if not more b4 i need a new rig (i undervolt my GPU and CPU for longevity's sake and sofar ive never had thermal problems because of it and performance (while not as good as overclocked) is at least very consistent and remains within where the hardware normally should perform out of the box. Also worth noting the major things ive found which are less then ideal: *wheels are buggy (they seem to have broken colliders and are implemented using the same hyper limited raycast solution of KSP1 which means they will not work when placed sideways or at any angle but vertically the way the suspension intends them to go (real wheels would technically work at any angle but would loose the spring/damping function when placed sideways, dont mean they shouldnt work at all). *SAS is messed up on planes with anything but the bare minimum control surfaces (simple PID solution, hopefully wont take too long or be very hard as they can pull the PID values from KSP1). *Ground scatters and the terrain looks a bit bland (maybee this is cause i'm so used to scatterer and love its alien feel, but in general its a step backwards). I'm certain there will be mods to make the scatters cooler/more alien so no worries here. As for the terrain tex, scatterer's is prettier imo, however its also a bit buggy and occasionally has tiling issues and artefacting so its a bit of a give/take. The one point of praise i can give KSP2 here though is that compared to pure stock KSP1, its a much better looking game in every category. Despite seeing alot of bad, i will reserve my final judgement once its out of EA, but given that the current game isnt even remotely close to the original trailer, it is a bit dissapointing (especially with the absurd minimum GPU requirement. Who these days plays games below 1080p so you may as well consider any GPU below the bare minimum to be useless if indeed the game has such insane requirements once it launches and we start seeing some legit benchmarks on less then stellar setups...

I'm most excited about the multiplayer capability (the one thing NO KSP1 mod has accomplished properly) and more planets which will eventually be added allowing us to explore many new places.

Its the fact that the wheels are huge (visually) and implemented using the same simplified KSP1 logic. There is a single raycast from somewhere near the middle of the wheel that touches the ground (and does the phys calcs), and at any orientation but the way the wheel is meant to be loaded, the wheel doesnt work correctly. Another major issue i saw was the fact that when the spring is compressed too much the wheel bounces up really hard (this is what causes KSP1 vehicles to occasionallhy go flying when going over debris or rocks with colliders). Its just sad that KSP2 doesnt seem to have overhauled the wheel logic (which is one of the more agrevating aspects of KSP1 in general, sliding legs, wheels bouncing all over, and general kraken bait. Ohh and to those who dont like parralax, to each his own, but i personally love it as the mod makes the game feel more like its in an alien universe and not trying to replicate earth (theres RSS fot those so inclined), but i will agree that it doesnt look realistic in the slightest (and yes there are some terrain tiling bugs to an extent (you can disable the terrain changes to it).

Looks cool, however there are some things i noticed which arent all that great. Most of the parts appear to be reskins of KSP1 parts (some like the cockpits appear to be new). Maybee this is just temporary, however i'm suprised that they actually used what appears to be 100% identical parts in this case. Wheels look buggy (like KSP1 levels of buggy if not worse with how they clipped thru things on the moon or planet you drove em down). The collider implementation looks identical (single raycast to ground) which is dissapointing given how unrealistic it is to not have the wheels work properly when at any orientation but straight down. UI looks meh. Maybee this is just me, but KSP1 despite being simpler feels more natural and less forced on you) and it takes up less space overall). This may just be a case of being used to KSP1, but if i had to pick right now i'd go with KSP1's UI over dat of KSP2. While KSC looks beautiful (way nicer then any variation of KK mod, it does seem that alot of the moons are relatively bland (at least in comparison to modded KSP1). I'm sorry, but there is not even a remote comparison here between KSP2 and modded KSP1. I mean it IS a very different asthetic and i believe the lower amount of scatters is an intentional design decision to make it less difficult for newer players (it genuinely is VERY hard to make rovers or even larger bases with parallax 2.0 that work properly and dont need jumpjets or excessive reaction control to move at anything beyond 10m/s). I'm gonna reserve my final judgement for after the game gets out of early access, but even stock KSP1 doesnt look THAT much worse, and modded KSP1. And on my rather pathetic computer (CPU just above the min KSP2 spec and a 1050TI GPU), framerates (with Eve+scatterer+waterfall+parallax2+DIRT+TURD) remains perfectly comfortable up to ~1000 parts (ive done over 2K, however it does get painfully bad at this point). Again, gonna reserve final judgement once its out of early access, but sofar it doesnt look like the EA version is any better then modded KSP1. My opinion may change is the game ends up being better optimized (and the sky/scatters look amazing), but aside from some later implemented features (like multiplayer) there isnt much KSP2 offers that ive seen sofar that cant be achieved thru at least 1 KSP1 mod...

Well good thing (after checking benchmatrk comparisons), my 4yr old lappy should handle the CPU reqs just fine (its like 20-50% better then the i5-6400). What i'm hoping for is that the flashy grafix (like reflections, parallax, ect) can be 100% FULLY disabled as then it just MIGHT run on my POS GPU (1050 TI). Afterall, KSP1 runs within reason (gets painful above 1K parts but it will still RUN) with parallax 2.0 (scatters only, no actual parallax rendering as its not needed imo with the scatters enabled)+scatterer+Eve (including the recent true volumetrics)+TURD+waterfall and looks no worse then KSP2 in my opinion (never liked the overly shiny looks of KSP2 craft, hopefully they allow us to edit the specularity of the paintjobs to make them look moe like KSP1 does at stock texture settings). Heck, solong as they bothered to optimize in the slightest degree it should still in theory run even on my garbage GPU. Cpu, specifically odeling high part count interactions is where KSP1 and likely KSP2 is gonna be bottlenecked since i just dont see there being an efficient performance friendly way to model 1000s of part on part physics interactions ACCURATELY while not being a lagfest. Now if only a new computer didnt cost as much where i live (thats the downside of exchange rates and living in Poland, a brand new reasonable gaming rig is the cost of 1-2 decent used cars), ten i might even upgrade, but given that my current 1 is still hanging on and it itself wasnt cheap i'm defenetely not upgrading just for 1 game : ). When it shats the bed i'll likely get a rig that can easily handle KSP2 (as it makes no sense to skimp on computer capability given that any sane person buys a comp for at least 5 years of use), but lets hope i can at least run KSP2 with basically all the grafix reduced as it would be super cool to have such an old POS run a game this new : )

Well my CPU is fine for this (despite being on a 4yr old laptop), what i'm worried about is the GPU (i dont mind reducing some of the less "essential" glamorous flashy effects). Ofc for me 1080 is all i need (never cared about 4K cause even 1080 is overkill on a 15" screen), i'll prolly give it a try and see if it works or not. I'll just have a friend with a better PC thats defenetely getting it on day1 install his copy on my rig and we can try it out, if it works i'll get my own copy of KSP2, if not then well i'll wait till i get a better laptop. Besides, by the time all the mods i care about are made for KSP2, and multiplayer, the 1 thing that i'm really looking forwards to (PvP real time ship-ship combat) it will likely be at leats a year anyway...

Well nearly finished with my Sevastopol class space station... View from the redesigned windows in the habitation/admin section. The base's 2nd staircase, in the RnD/medlab section. The local bar located in the spaceflight terminal. Spaceflight terminal departure area. One of the generic research stations complete with glowy monitor (the mk2 light actually looks very much like a computer screen actually). View thru the smaller basic windows into the RnD section (with a random red monitor in the hallway). One of 2 passages that go between the RnD section and both the Hab and Hangar bay sections. Staring at Jool from the hangar section. Interior of the rather spacious hangar (comes stock with 5 hardpoints but it is easily upgradeable to more (if you can stomach the lag from adding more parts atop the already nuts 740 of this monstrosity). One of the other hangar section hallways with the admin office in view (the triangular panels stickin out of the MK2 bit is where the station command sits). Medbay reception area with a nice view of the comms array out the small windows. And the final section worth mentioning, KG348 RnD section which can be used to jettision aliens or unruly kerbals into the gas giant. And finally the entire station in all its glory... Honestly, even though that part count is on the upper borderline of useable as anything but screenshot material (ive docked a 400 part frigate to it without too much pain), and its so massive that the only way to do anything with it is to teleport it up (not even gonna bother making a rocket to get it anywhere), its byfar the coolest looking station ive made in KSP by a considerable margin. Also quite efficient on parts as i abused certain mechanics to save on this. Namely 120 degree MK2 hallways which let you make seamless low part count joints (no need for anything to cover gaps above/below unlike if i wanted to make the joints 4 way), and liberal use of 10m heatshields which look pretty good as a structural element to begin with and cover a huge amount of real estate compared to trying to do so with wings or about anything else. I also tried to cover up teh awkwardness of the look by adding some girders going between section of teh hangar bay and i think it turned out nicely. Almost every piece added to this station serves at least 2 roles, asthetic, structural, or utility (power generation, reaction control, command core, ect).

Well working on a revamped version of my Sevastopol station... Upper and mid level styling (apparently MK2 bays make excellent low part count hallways provided the joints are connected at 120 degrees (no gap in the cieling/floor and no trouble for the kerbins to move around in). Access from the mid habitation level to the main staircase and the upper level admin suite (via ladder as i didnt have unlimited parts to work with and a ladder is 5 parts vs a staircase being closer to 40). Beautiful view of Jool from the staircase's massive windows. The view into the staircase from the outside is no less stunning. Guest eatery in the lower ring section. The windows leave such pretty shadows on the walls. View of the whole section. Keep in mind this is merely 1/3rd of the entire planned station, which will have 3 sections (admin/habitation, drydock/utility, and RnD towers). Hopefully i can keep the finished product below 600 parts as this section (which is the most complex of the entire set) is around 200 parts total (with all the little asthetic bits and pieces inside like tables with food, beds, boxes, ect). One of the biggest part count savings is using flags for windows which not only cut down on parts like nothing else, but let me use shapes and styles that arent really practical in the base game (ofc they are all stock-alike since i made the flags from stock part screenshots so they are at least in a style that fits the game unlike pulling random textures from the internet). But yeah, all in all this is byfar the most expansive and prettiest space station i ever made...

More derpin around with ship-ship battles Torpedoes away Evasive action Kaboom The Nebula class frigate now with improved asthetics in all its glory (even if i sorta wasted around 50 parts purely for looks, screw it, looks come b4 lag) Entering DPC range Dat just looks amazing to see real time combat : )...

Well im 100% done with the new AKS GSD-W01 "Spider" medium mech: Looks amazing imo, 100% stock and prolly one of the generally cooler things ive made in a while... Finished all the minor tweaks, gave it 3 solid types of walks (1 generic fast on flat ground, 1 slow walk with at least 1 foot touching ground at any given time, and 1 for hills which it seemed to have alot of trouble with b4). Also tweaked the standard run anim to get it up to almost 8m/s (from around 7), uses more electricity though so i needed to add 4 more RTGs to the already insane total of 24 RTGs previously. Just bloody stupid (wish there was some sort of larger RTG or even a full blown nuclear reactor, but stock doesnt offer much else and robit parts eat so much juice it cant be done any other way if you dont want to run out of fuel instantly or be limited to daytime (AKS in universe doesnt use anything but near infinite energy reactors like zero point or whatnot and the closest thing in KSP is the RTG). Redid the arms as well, not that i didnt like the older model's arms, but i felt it made more sense to be symmetric (left arm has extended fingers, right arm is set to firing more with retracted fingers). Now it feels like a proper serially manufactured robit and not something whacked together from whatever was available (only pirates would do stuff like that in universe). Another shot of the arms, this time showing the right side too. Parallax (and the usual Scatterer +ScifiVE) actually makes kerbin look really good now... Looks properly menacing at night through the bushes with just the head and arm cannon lights on...

Made a new mech, which went though like 5 redesigns. Just the damn legs are a nightmare to get working to any degree when it comes to stability and such and took 3 variants before i was happy with em. So yeah, the very 1st model which uses the leg code i was using when the robit parts 1st came out (which took forever to get working given that it was supposed to carry at least 15t). Looks like crap, walks like crap (although it does get 8m/s), requires a crapton of reaction wheels (these legs with the maximum weight it can carry need 18 of the medium wheel to stay upright), and is just crap. Attempting to make it faster and not require as many RTGs, i made a 2nd variant with just 2 actuators per leg with a somewhat unorthodox design of the feet which allowed it to actually grip rather well (speed was up to 10m/s with this layout even with those fuel tanks there). I might go back to this design in the future but i wanted something rather small and compact for starters and this thing required also a crapton of reaction wheels to just stay upright. The lack of foot actuators does simplify it but drastically decreases stability in pitch which means more reaction wheels and not much of a savings in RTGs. So this is what i settled down on for the last 3 variants (didnt take pics of the 3rd or 4th but the legs were identical aside from the added ibeam that is there in case the legs smack the ground on braking/accelerating. I went back to a more traditional leg design (at least as traditonal as you are gonna get for a chikin leg style build), equal length top/bottom leg segments, and to make it smaller profile i used the hinges instead which have the same strength as the medium servo/hinge without the massive size (no mech that can carry any useful amount of weight is going to work with the smallest servos). The leg actually massively boosts the stability and lowers the reaction wheel requirements to 14 of the smallest sized wheels (which is 5 medium ones). Its still a crapload of reaction wheels, but compared to the previous models this is nothing (its about half the weight of the larger mechs i had made a long time ago, and a tad slower but what can i do). Anyways, speed is trash with 7m/s max on flat ground, but it actually is useful and looks cool. Speaking of looks, variant 3's upper torso was based on the assasin from mechwarrior (not a fan of the legs, but i like the rest of it). The shape was also perfect for arming it with the larger firework cannister, open top and having the barrel where the cockpit would be in that image). Although i soon had issues with it faceplanting into the ground the instant i stopped running/walking which ended up breaking the nose/cannon off constantly. I ended up adding a pole that stuck out the front which looked utterly stupid and still didnt fix the problem since the mech would fall sideways occasionally, and adding a full body armor made it too top heavy. Basically the thing looked good but didnt work, and i settled for the stabilizer spike being crotch mounted (it worked well from a physics standpoint and kept it from flipping when i stopped the legs but make it look even more stupid). So i ended up more or less integrating the spike it would fall onto into the hull and well the end result ended up looking more like a prawn mech then anything else but hey, it still looked good. This is the near complete V5, with the spike which makes this entire mech actually work properly as acceleration is so high when it stops walking that it will crash into the ground and id rather it stay upright then crash onto it's face. You can also see the head design with articulation, the main cannon only fires directly forward (no way i can make that turreted with so little space to work with), but it makes sense from a lore perspective (its gun is supposed to be based a capital ship grade autocannon so i guess you'd have to lock the articulation before firing or the recoil would tear the head off or something like that). Completed model somewhat makes it look better and adds wings to allow the kerbal to get in or out of it. Originally the cockpit was going to be on the very top with the cannon nose mounted just below it, but i thought it would look better lower down and the only logical spot for the pilot is dead center of the hull. Firing the primary weapon. Its supposed to have secondary light arm mounted autocannons in universe but i just do not have the space to mount any more weapons on such a tiny mech without either making the arms disproportionally huge or getting rid of the arms and just bolting the secondary smaller firework cannisters direcrtly onto the side of the mech (i might do this as a subvariant since honestly the arms dont really do anything useful right now). Looking straight up with the head (arms track where the head looks). Walking over Ike's rather nasty terrain isnt too difficult for this thing in walk mode. I have 2 slightly different animations, one for slower walking and 1 for full speed running (if you can call 7m/s running). Works on every planet from Kerbin gravity to Minmus (minmus does require a special 3rd walk mode to not go flying every step but it has that option added. All in all its got 3 different anims for walking, and on every planet ive tried it it seems to like at least 1 of the modes fine (with tweaking the animation rate ofc per planet as that cant really be standardized). More cannon testing. And finally a shot that i think came out rather cool through the grass. Really does look like a prawn mech... Except with the right arm from the Assasin, the left arm from the Viper (both of those mechwarrior universe), the legs completely wrong and missing...

For a change of pace, started messing with walkers again, mostly cause they are actually hard to make work properly (and as "unrealistic" as mechs are, they are really cool). Sofar this is my standard chikin style leg setup, and the first attempt to make a viable walker with just 2 robotics parts per leg. It does have issues with heavy weight on kerbin gravity due to the limits placed on the lower joints (those have a rather long lever arm which makes it move faster but also cut its carry capacity, i will likely make a variant of this leg with equal upper/lower lengths lateron for heavier walkers. That said, what im very happy with is the lower leg component, it offers excellent side-side stability (it will not fall over sideways even with 0 reaction wheels), it does not require moving parts, and it provides a decent speed capability while allowing some sliding on the starting stroke. All my older style walkers had an issue when planting down the foot that it slightly slowed the entire craft due to the initial 30% of the movement being slower then the rear 30% which is the main propulsion stroke. This solves that problem entirely offering a somewhat lower friction girder initially which then rotates in such a way as to grab the ground with the grip pad just as the higher velocity motion engages. Its still way slower then id like, but i also consider the fact that realistically i am not going to get a 15 ton walker up to 20m/s without sacrificing something im not willing to (i once made a walker go 23m/s, but it had 0 armor, used like 20+ reaction wheels, and was so tall that once it flipped over you could not right it again at least under kerbin grav). Also, i made an attempt to cut the bumpiness and jumpiness of the older legs by making at least 1 leg at any given time touching teh ground. Another tradeoff towards stability and weight carrying over speed, but i need it to be armored and able to tank hits. Does around 8m/s on duna sofar which isnt great but isnt bad for 15t total weight. 10m/s downhill, 5m/s down the highest slope it will even go up at all (it can go up hills no worse then a conventional tank). Goes over rocks a bit less good then id like, but its just a matter of some minor tweaks and raising the height of the legs when they return to forward position. Still got a ways to go (and im not even entirely sure what i want the top to look like (i make legs 1st as those are the hardest to do and can be used on multiple different walkers).

Made a new variant of the HK-II Trifighter, with a bit less BSG viper inspiration and a bit more starwars tri inspiration although its no replica as i dont bother making replicas anymore (too many parts to put into a carrier or use it in any fight but taking some screenies or something of the sort). New one is on teh left, with the 5th gen beside it, then the 4th, and then a experimental 4th gen atmospheric variant (the 2 are internally identical aside from the wings and a kraken drive to allow it to actually fly in atmo albeit very slowly as there is no consideration for how draggy the thing is). Had to make it a bit fatter and wider owing to the larger fireworks, err cannons, which was a design consideration (and to make them not look utterly stupid and out of place i added those airbrake based front wings (which look cool but serve no real purpose otherwise). Without the wings, teh profile from the sides is no larger then the previous variants (they just fall off when hit by anything anyway) and the front profile is a hair fatter with the now larger cannon hitboxes, a flaw yes, but sofar in testing i have not found it to be disarmed easier then the older variants and it does carry around 4 times the ammo capacity. One of the biggest flaws with the old design was minimal endurance and having to constantly be rearmed as those 8 shot cannons are just a joke really and eat 4 times the part count per round. Back in 1.12.1 or so before we got the fireworks spread 32 shots per hardpoint was overkill, but now even at point blank ranges half the shots are going to miss anything fighter sized). Not entirely sure if i like this 100% just yet (its larger then i'd like), but i cant seem to come up with any reliable method of mounting 3 of the larger cannons (a design requirement for the 6th gen) without also making the fighter somewhat large (at least for my scaling since my smaller corvette class capital ships are actually around teh size of a modern fighter jet replica that are all over kerbalx, and for me a starfighter is at most the length of a FLT-800 tank, often half that). So yeah, made some more progress the next day, namely fixed the drop to survivability due to the new style somewhat more exposed core. Tested the armor using the standard AKS G7 series torpedo (weight efficient anti-capital ship). All hits blew apart the cockpit (no amount of armor plating will truly protect a cockpit from a 4.5t torpedo), but the rest of the ship retained at least 1 weapon, engine, fuel, and control systems. Granted 1 of the hits destroyed the entire rear section so badly that there was like 200dV left and no autocannons, but at least it was still a threat and able to do something (its still able to ram after firing the drone). I think with that the new ship is finished, it is very much not like a starfighter has any buisness eating heavy torpedoes that often can 1 shot a capital ship with good aim, and it is very much vulnurable to autocannon fire (engines+fuel+weapons are extremely suceptible to a direct hit by firework), but i think its good nonetheless. Fulfills all hard requirements, namely 1K dV minimum (2 forward reserve tanks give it 1K dV total), armarment of 3 full size cannons and then either a M-drone or a SRM-4M, under 120 parts, 3 engine layout (i cant call it a trifighter otherwise, duh), and not too much clipping or abusing or parts (there is SOME fuel clipping in the rear as asthetics come 1st, but in theory the clipped tanks could fit into teh cockpit so it doesnt violate volume physics). Also fullfills design intent, armored heavy fighter that should be able to 1v1 every other fighter i have made before and still seriously hurt capital ships with good aim (thats what the drone is for).

They have crew which is a separate thing but from my experience casualties are rather minimal as for whatever reason applying firework to kerbal face doesnt do much, worst case their seat (which is a tiny hitbox) gets ripped off (and all "manned" vehicles i have feature at least 2 control seats, the MBTs have 4-6 so there is no way to take down the crew). In other news, derping around with a bit of BDA combat (trying to do a stock airplane battle is just impossible as its hard enough to get 2 planes to even fly together let alone shoot anything in the sky). Dusted off some of the super competitive planes i made a while ago, namely using the single most effective engine layout, wheelsey in thrust reverse on the front of a mk1 cockpit with a normal thrust vectoring jet on the arss. The reason this is the best (and im pretty sure im not the 1st to come up with the concept) is that the wheelsley is the only jet with a thrust reverser and it seems to have virtually no drag (thus i can have a super compact setup which makes the aircraft miniscule compared to virtually every plane ive seen on here that isnt a 0.6m uav). Anyways, the fights are rather boring as they are over in seconds (the things fly at 300m/s easy and are tuned to be so bloody agressibve that they literally either ram the target outright (with a metal spike on the front for that reason) or just evicerate it conventionally. So yeah, the next best thing you can do is make WW2 era planes, as buggy as they are with BDA that is. Problem is that for whatever reason the autopilot doesnt actually engage the throttle properly with the robit parts, hence i have to manually engage the engines on all these planes. that and BDA will NOT play nicely with any craft that isnt perfectly balanced with it's thrust, so you have to use a counter rotating/coax prop setup to make it even fly remotely straight. I ended up clipping 2 engines together with 50% thrust each so it has the same performance as it did with 1 engine). Eventually after a good 5 minutes of flopping around one of the planes got the other 1, flying through the wreckage like every pilot is trained to do (im pretty sure you cant be cerified as a fighter pilot unless you learn how to fly through debri clouds left behind by your victims). Now if only parallax would stop bugging out so much (weird artefacting on the ground with squares that are too brght/dark, and ofc floating trees, why cant all them bloody mods work together properly)...

Made a few more tanks... On the left are 3 variants of BCorp's Avenger MBT. The right most of which is the original or Mk1, then the early and late variant of the Mk2 (they are literally identical with the exception of the turret being moved and the removal of that extra shield on the Mk2 late). The Mk2s are basically shermans as i wanted something general purpose and the only other tank that came to mind being the T-34 is too similar to AKS tanks (aside from the vastly different turret and the very front of the hull beung sloped down its pretty close actually, roughly 45 degree angle on every side and rectangular in shape). Still, i will say i do like and intend to keep the Mk1 around as its just a bit more unique looking even if the Mk2s are slightly less parts and more practical all around. Mk2 also has a much larger turret that in theory should fit a dual railgun (which would make it a turreted version of AKS TDs). I have a prototype of the Mk3 made but sofar its very early WIP since i cant seem to come up with a good method of mounting 2 guns into the turret without at least 1 of them sticking out and looking rather lame compared to the single fully integral weapon. The 4th tank is as of this moment unnamed (ill think of something once i finish the design 100%) but its supposed to be Starleague's standard MBT (their ships are more organic/curvy looking and i wanted to keep that style going with the tanks). performance is very similar to the Avenger, slightly better armor protection but slower and heavier (and less flippy, the one flaw the Avenger has as its somewhat tall and without RCS to balance it out). After dumping like 6 bursts into it i finally got a complete kill on the Mk1 (every tank ive made sofar has the same flaw where there is a single ibeam as the core part and if the round happens to smack that there is no amount of armor that will stop the tank from being killed, all i can do is move it somewhere where it is less likely to get hit). Also shot up the Mk2 early version which refused to go down despite burst after burst into it. And also testing the Mk2 Late, which went down in a single burst. Its mostly luck though and not bad tank design as the Mk2 early i shot earlier ate like 50 shots and didnt even take any significant damage (the 2 are internally copies). And a final shot of the wreckage. All in all, stock tank battles can be done and they dont even have to be turn based as you can just autofire the weapons with robotic controllers, (although turn based results in less wasted ammo).

I always make a new settings for new game versions, only copy over my keybinds using cfg edits as i cant be bothered to rebind 50 different controls (im assuming that just the control bindings have nothing to do with the mod). Still, ill try to delete the settings and just recopy the non terrain related bits. I also have terrain to high and shader to high (dont use maximum as i feel the game look plenty amazing without tesselation enabled and well the game lags badly enough with 500 part bases...

Updated to recent version (i was on one of the older ones), Ike, Tylo, and Minmus are fixed. Bop is still missing scatters though (not sure if it ever had it as i rarely go there and just randomly teleported a tank there to drive around with as i dont have any good civilian vehicles besides a fiat 126 replica which is unbelieveably slow as a homage to the real thing).

Finished the sortof standard AKS GSD-8xx/9xx tank family (they are all based on the same general purpose hull with just changes to weapons and armor levels). On the left is the basic medium tank, the 850T "Panther", right is the TD variant of the same tank, the 926D "Coyote", and center is the heavy tank TD hybrid thing, the 930T "Tiger". The 2 actual tanks have stock turrets with a 300m/s AT cannon that does decent anti-armor damage (albeit somewhat slow rate of fire with 1 round every 2 seconds). And both the TD and the heavy have a fixed double cannon that fires 2 shots every second. Terrain passability is the best with the Panther, since dat 1 is the lightest and its not as long (hence more likely to bounce up and over rocks when moving above 15m/s rather then getting stuck or wedged on something, but the other 2 arent that far behind with passability since its the same basic hull layout just lengthened to fit the dual heavy autocannons (which are reloadable in space from below the vehicle). You can see the configuration very well in the Tiger. the model shown is the standard armor variant with side skirt addon only, the heavy armor variant completely covers that up from any angle but below and has an extended nose with additional spaced armor with 1 more girder layer (i didnt bring dat 1 as it has major issues going over the slightest rocks, mostly would use it in a semi static role). The Coyote shown features the level 1 armor upgrade which only covers the roof of the turret stub (it doesnt rotate but is useful for armor protection) and also the cannon firing system (sorta like what the level 1 armor does on the Tiger but i couldnt drive it on Duna with parallax enabled so i didnt bother with it). There are a few minor things im not 100% happy with (like the teensy bit of wheel that clips through the armor plate on the sides, nothing i can do there as i dont want to make it any taller and need to use this particular wheel), and the part count being a bit more then id like (might try and make some variants without the little teeny square armor panels which eat lots of part count), but all in all i think these came out pretty good, are actually useful in stock battles, and most of all are useable even with parallax terrain coliders enabled. The Panther has been tested to be able to go around 20m/s on most planets/moons safely, the others are somewhat better around 15m/s but far from bad given the fact that some of the bumps will utterly stop teh tank in its tracks and make it bounce or go full airborne, and these tanks can withstand a 20m/s impact against a wall without any internal damage (at worst you might loose the front facing light or the barrel extensions on the Coyote which are purely for looks anyways and dont affect performance). Also rebuilt the BCorp Avenger class tank. Not really sure what my thinking behind this thing was, but i sorta took some inspiration from the FT17 and the M4 sherman and believe it or not that combination actually seems to work well. I much prefer this thing over the previous prototype which was based on some somewhat more modern MBTs which im frankly not that big a fan of (i like WW1, WW2, early cold war, and full on sci-fi stuff, current modern military tech just doesnt speak to me asthetically and it doesnt seem to work all that great in KSP either as the MBT inspired Avenger sucked horrifically and was even often beaten by a 4 ton armored car). Driving up to the wreck of a Tiger tank that was defeated in a turret only fight. The Avenger is in universe supposed to beat the AKS Panther in an equal 1v1 fight, as the Panther (and any other tank with the same weapon system) has 4 shots per attack while the Avenger (and pretty much every other BCorp tank) gets 8. Ofc if i was to use the TD cannons its instant death to the Avenger as its 16 shots per burst and the guns seem to be more accurate then turrets from my testing. Im still not 100% certain if i want this particular tank to be the definitive model of the BCorp Avenger, but it performs well and i think it looks pretty good (not sure why i thought FT17 in a sci-fi space game, but whatever)...

@Gameslinx, I think i found bug in 1.12.4 (new patch), appears that scatters are missing on a few moons (which was not the case with 1.12.3): Minmus at higher elevations, only some of what i think are stock scatters (not sure why those are even spawning with parallax) are left (no colliders and i distinctly remember lots of tiny bumpy ice things on the ground at this altitude). Ike is kaput, which is very disconcerting given that its my new favorite place post parallax 2.0 (the combination of rocky moon with those red crystals was just epic, looked alien enough but not overboard like Eve (which i do like but i ended up toning down the bubbles as the sheer amount of different things was just a tad overkill and the very large bubbles stood out a bit too much imo (wouldve been cool if they were poppable, but i think thats beyond the mod's capability ). Bop, I have to admit i havent actually ever been here since installing parallax so i cant be certain if it ever had scatters, but there is a config file so i dont see why it shouldnt have anything. And finally Tylo, im pretty certain whats still left are leftovers from the stock scatter system. Not sure if this entire problem is a Kopernicus or a Parallax issue, but it might be worth looking into (and i know its not another mod as i tested this with nothing else installed but scatterer+EVE+restock (none of those affect anything on planets themselves). Btw, is there a reason that the stock scatters are even enabled alongside parallax scatters, are these hardcoded and not removable or is this some sort of bug with parallax not removing stock scatters while its own are enabled?

It gives a prompt and does load, just parallax scatters are broken on minmus, ike, bop, tylo. Rest of the planets work fine.

Parallax is broken on a few moons, namely Ike (my favorite moon after installing parallax 2 due to those really pretty crystals and well low enough gravity to make driving rather enjoyable, difficult with colliders but not impossible), and im sure its either parallax or kopernicus so yeah, not all my mods work. Its not a huge deal as its just the rocks that dont spawn, but as i expected at least 1 mod did break at least partially ...

Well derping around with the 850T series medium tank, and i think i like this variant more then the previous one which was lost due to my stupidity and accidentally overriding the file. Nolonger looks anything remotely like a panther/t-34 tank the previous 1 was inspired by, and actusally looks more like the original T-850 i had back in 0.90 or whatever version was b4 the multicore patches were a thing and it even had a stock armored (hit from ibeam would usually jam it but it could still aim by driving) decoupler based turret that could recouple itself after firing and was super smooth and accurate aiming (that alone was an accomplishment in the world of stock KSP mechanisms). Ofc its also smaller as the original was 4x4 of the smallest non DLC metal plate in size and that doesnt count the gun which stuck out a bit beyond that. This is what the previous 1 (dat was lost to file override ) looked like. It was a good deal taller, and it could take a beating (havent tested the current 1 in combat yet but its made using a very similar armor system which seems to be very capable against both ibeams and fireworks). I offset the turret as far back as possible (without sticking out beyond the rear and thus making the tank longer then it has to be) as im going with rear mounted weapons on all AKS vehicles, and i wanted it offset to 1 side too (so its not symmetric) but there is literally no space for anything of the sort since the tank is as compact as it can get while still being considered a tank. Fits into a MK3 bomb bay, good terrain passability, at least on the bodies that have scatters, parallax seems to be broken on a few moons now specifically Ike since 1.12.4 hit (its my favorite place to go now with those amazing looking red crystals) and checks everything that a medium tank has to have, not overly heavy (8-12t depending on variant), agile, and hopefully able to tank some hits. Well anyways, combat tested it and its defenetely solid. Took like 10 direct hits from BCorp's Avenger tank and wasnt really affected (1 wheel was broken, some non-essential bits were shot off, interior was mostly intact and the turret/gun took no damage but the rear bit). Ofc as dumb luck goes the 1st retaliatory shot instantly blows the turret off the Avenger and smacks the tank so hard it nearly flips over despite being almost twice as wide as the 850T. And about 30 or so shots later the tank hull explodes so violently the semi intact piece ends up almost 1km away from where it was (you can barely see the flying chunk in the top and to the left of the boom). Going to use the AKS armor layout with minor edits to make room for crew since BCorp vehicles are crewed in the Avenger class tank (which in universe is supposed to be superior in 1v1 to any AKS tank but the 930T which is the strongest single vehicle in universe as it carries starship grade heavy autocannons for like 5 times the firepower).

Yeah, this is about the most chaotic and laggy thing ive done in years, the last time i remember dealing with lag THIS bad was with 1000 part warships back in 0.25... 3v2 fight with ALL ships firing simultaneously, believe it or not its not even quite in seconds per frame... The frigate was the only ship that was actually knocked out early with its crew taken out, ill have to replace the internal command pods with the mk1 cockpits which have better armor at least against the likes of 100m/s fireworks, the observation deck which is the only armored bridge happened to be unmanned for some reason (i just randomly stuck 3 kerbals inside the ship without thinking what pod they were in). Moving in the starfighter since the Dimension lost 2 of its 3 port side turrets through some dumb luck shots (its really hit or miss, sometimes i can unload an entire 128 round turret without damaging a single weapon, sometimes the 1st few bursts shots blow half the guns off). Which ofc was prolly not the smartest move given the ship has turrets, luckily the damage dealt wasnt too bad (not to mention it's ammo was pretty much depleted by this point). Ended up engaging with the starboard turrets which were still intact, and by this point the corvette and fighter was out of ammo, the frigate was dead (even though it was still firing randomly due to being unable to shut down the firing sequence with no control), the Victory lost both its turret controllers (no more autofire,might move em somewhere better protected), and the Dimension lost half its engines (the one thing that sucks with nukes is the massive hitboxes combined with the very weak impact tolerance making them extremely easy to shoot off) and also all its port side turrets. Still, i think turn based 1v1s make more sense as the lag is more manageable and the fireworks make for a really nice stock slugging match with some amount of randomness regarding who wins (its usually the ship that looses its guns 1st) and both ships able to engage at the same time. Not gonna bother bringing 5 ships into load range while firing anything as its too painful to watch and extremely chaotic to have to constantly shift between ships to adjust their aim or make them maneuver to counter the recoil...