panzer1b

Pretty sure kopernicus doesnt (i always disable that as it has always had version checking on every new update and always refused to run on new versions of the game), but ill try it anyways if you say it still works without a version update... It was purely for lag testing, i already had all these ships made before (the frigate, fighter, covrette have been around for quite a while, the larger cruiser is also old but i made a new subvariant of it somewhat recently and the only 1 thats actually semi new is the smaller cruiser).

I can confirm, the update has NOT improved performance by any noticeable degree... 2 cruisers, 1 frigate, 1 corvette and a starfighter still lag to the point that its borderline unplayable (and i dont even wanna know what would happen if i opened fire and the game had to render all the cannon trails/explosions/parts being shot off)... That and not all of my mods work either, at least the super critical stuff works...

I'll give these a try, didnt know they fixed performance aspects (thought it was just QoL things in that modpack). I'll see how much this affects my massively overkill warships...

Made another battle, this time without any support ships as just 2 of these are laggy enough for my tastes. Rearmed the Victory class with thermal cannons (pirate tech, cheaper, faster firing and not that much weaker then the usual BCorp plasma weapons, 90m/s vs 100m/s). The ships are actually quite matched in broadsides. The dimension has 6 turrets vs the Victory's 4, but the Victory fires each barrel faster so they are actually more or less the same there. Armor is not so useful (against fireworks which pretty much bypass all but very thick armor and gut the interior) but both ships have a crapton of redundancy (15+ command pods/seats, 7-8 engines, lots of fuel tanks ect) making them hard to really hurt with turreted glancing blows (outside of true point blank turrets are usually going to hit at best 50% of the time anyway against ships of this size (and are borderline useless against smaller things like corvettes and fighters, need guided 0.6m for those). Headon firing is a whole other story since the Dimension has that massive double forward firing AT gun (same thing as on all my tanks) which is overclocked to 300m/s and will gut armor albeit unreliably (velocity is so high it's chances of phasing through the target outright are very high). The heavy cannon does cut armor apart as you can see here with the engine mounting girder being blown clean off. Might look terrible for the Victory but after the fight it actually retains 1 engine (and around 400m/s dV), 2 of the 4 cannons (with a little bit of ammo left), and is still controllable albeit barely as the only control is RCS which has lost a few emitters leading to an inability to roll without also pitching (and correcting that pitch makes it roll the opposite direction but you cant both stop it from rolling AND aim where you want it to aim at the same time). The Dimension has 2 engines left and around 1500dV (they are nukes afterall), albeit i cant engage them above 30% throttle due to both being on the same side), lost the nose gun, and 3 turrets, but took no real hull damage due to the Victory lacking anti-armor capability with it's turrets (only the squishy internals went down). Still, its what i expected would happen since the Dim is larger, heavier, and like 3-4 times the cost. Now if only i could do something about the part counts to prevent these things from being relegated to heavy torpedo sniping (both of these vessels carry 4 heavy torps as their primary firepower). Wish i could have 1 Dim and like 2 Victorys engaging at the same time, but its just too laggy to do quite that much (Dim could main gun one target while firing turrets at the 2nd one).

Nice to see bugfixes, but i have to say i was honestly hoping for some of the more gamebreaking things being addressed (what i see here are minor nuissances at best, even if they are helpful for new players, not that i think there are that many of which at this stage in the game's lifecycle). Why not focus on some of the following which make a much bigger difference: Memory leak, even with no mods this eventually crashes/slows the game to the point that its unlayable without frequent restarts. Various krakens, most well known of which which affects me and quite a few other players being the wobbling issue with too many things attached to a single part (without a crapton of struts to stop the wobbling). Editor symmetry bugs. Not sure how to reproduce but it happens every once in a while where a craft file references a non-existent part ID and fails to load said craft file without going in and deleting all references to that part. Also another bug that breaks craft files and results in them "duplicating" themselves once you launch into orbit, go to another vessel, and then enter phys range of the bugged one (does result in some nice fireworks at least but thats not always the desired intention). Wheels/landing gears STILL bloody sliding down anything but the lightest slopes, not to mention bouncing up with extremely violent force when you drive over Parallax's terrain bumps, (albeit its still a stock issue as the same thing happens when you try and drive over a girder laying on the ground or up a ramp with a small step, rover goes airborne and the thing under the wheel usually explodes). Honestly, im not even sure what the point was of the wheel physics update, i never saw the old wheels as bad and i dont remember (correct me if im wrong on this) wheels in the older versions being this buggy, slidy and they certainly didnt bounce up like they do now when hitting any sort of bumps lie say running over a girder. That and perhaps look into the electricity useage (i know this can be edited using part cfgs) as right now a small propeller/ducted fan can accelerate a rather non aerodynamic vehicle to 40m/s using 1/5th the power of 6 wheels which can only accelerate it to 25 m/s (i dont know what physics laws are violated in the universe kerbals are from but i seriously doubt replacing the electric motor in a EV with an airboat engine, even if electrically powered airboat engine, will get you better fuel economy ). Finally, perhaps some optimizations and general performance improvements (would be nice to have 2 600 part count capital ships be able to slug it out with fireworks without the framerate slowing to a crawl (its actually "manageable", but still painfully slow especially if i were to add any more ships to this). I know KSP is backburner mode, but its kinda sad to see the list of bugfixes being minor annoyances and not gamebreaking things that would improve quality of life for everyone.

Made BCorp's newest ship, the mark-4 variant of the Victory class cruiser. Took aspects of various ships that i liked and mated it with a pretty nice bridge design. The first variant of this ship with a truly massive interior. View from the back of the observation deck/seconday bridge. View of the overall layout, the main bridge is somewhat integrated with the hull and the secondary bridge is atop it sorta sticking out. Ofc in combat no sane kerbal will go into the bridge that sticks out of the hull (and is notoriously likely to get shot off if anything hits the dorsal section near the center of the ship), but it actually works as sacrificial armor for the main bridge and the view of the entire top of the ship is cool. Hangar is somewhat spacious and unlike the earlier variant is decided to go back to the mark-2's concept where the hangar doubled up as a weapons bay, if using it as a carrier its generally a good idea to ditch the heavy torps anyway due to part count and dV issues. Anyways, with the torps removed it can fit 90% of all fighters/bombers i have available and with the torps it can fit 2 small fighters and 1-2 reloads per fighter. Front of the hangar is where smaller fighters or utility things (probes, 0.6m weapons, ect) can fit. You can see more or less what my inspiration is for this thing, front based on BC304, center based on the standard star destroyer, engine cluser from venator class, and well the bridge is sorta something i came up with that would somewhat integrate with the ship. In other news, made a high gravity rated variant of the Dragon APC i made a while ago, with 2 more wheels and a small propeller fan in the rear to give it a hair more push since in higher gravity the energy consumption of wheels is so insane in stock you are pretty much forced to use propellers which despite common sense dictating otherwise, require a fraction of the electricity of wheels to maintain a higher speed then the wheels provide. Not entirely sure what the devs were going with here where a propeller alone can accelerate this thing to around 40m/s on flat ground (while using the electricity of a single wheel) while 6 wheels just eat the batteries in a matter of minutes (under a minute when going uphill without prop assist). Its not that i dont like to experiment and come up with different concepts, and wheels burning energy is a challenge that you need to overcome, but common, a land vehicle using 6 times the power of a plane makes no bloody sense as electric motors in the wheels should be way more efficient then sticking an airboat motor on the back of a rover. And finally a nice beuty shot of the older low gravity/airless variant. Sofar tested and functional on every planet but Eve (it can drive there but you need infinite electricity and it can barely go up the shallowest hill), Kerbin/Laythe/Tylo (works but requires inf electricity to go anywhere far between recharging), and some of the super low gravity moons like gilly, pol, ect (no RCS means this thing is just unable to stop if you can even get it going in the 1st place). Aside from that, it can more or less just plow through parallax colliders with the exception of things like spikes, ice crystals and very large rock formations, which it can easily avoid as this thing steers very well and isnt very prone to flipping over (ample reaction wheels and suspension tweaked for quite a while until i got it perfect where it was grippy but not so grippy as to flip constantly in normal driving). Overall it can maintain a sustained speed of around 15-20m/s (with x2 time accel) through any terrain but aforementioned spikes and or larger rocks, and it does this with no use of RCS whatsoever.

Testing some of the fixed craft i have. Started with a fully fueled scout ship in low duna orbit. It has chutes but i wanted to see if it was possible to do the entire journey without chutes so i didnt bother usin em, just wasted fuel burning down. Drove the Dragon around duna a bit more and i have to say that it handles phenomenally on Duna, better even then the Talon class agressive recon vehicle (the 2 outrigger wheels tend to be really bouncy due to broken spring physics). Anyways, drove it 4km at a average speed of 15m/s (x2 time accel so it didnt take much time) since it started in a spot that was just too hilly to reliably land the lander in. Its passability is what id say average, can handle the smaller rocks (and the flat plate ones) like it was nothing (just bounces up some), and is agile enough to just evade the larger fields (just need to plan a route that avoids those as trying to go through the large clusters is just makes you wanna tear your hair out provided the vehicle doesnt get stuck in which case F9 spam ensues). the mid size rocks that are bumpier can be traversed if you need to but they tend to send the craft a bit too airborne for the kerbals liking which sometimes fall otu of their chairs if the bump is too much. Took off fine, even though its dragging just over 8 tons into orbit with it. Aerobraking around Kerbin, which was the ONLY way i could achieve a useful orbit afterwards. I initially wanted to go straight to the Mun, but the dV requirements to land, especially since i was a bit of an idiot and forgot to disable the fuel cells (i lost around 500m/s of high TWR aerospikes for the final burn which all went poof after a time warp with the cells engaged). At least the cool part was this thing's ability to aerobrake without exploding at moderate velocites (i have heating to 120% on all my saves as 100 is a bit too "weak" for my taste except on Eve where 100% is bloody hard). So yeah, i'm stuck in a highly ecliptic orbit, and the ONLY place that i could go to at this point being Minmus (no friendly fuel tankers and im NOT stealing fuel from any of the 3 AKS warships in orbit around kerbin as they are all low at this point and need every drop). Landing was easy, didnt even need the aerospikes as 3 TWR with a single nuke. This thing is very practical actually, enough dV to transport a moderately sized vehicle, good combination of super high TWR but a short burn (landing/takeoffs only), aerobraking capability (although somehow the back of the turret did indeed fry during the Kerbin braking), long range using just the NTR and ofc IRSU capability which while slow (just a single of the small converters and 2 small drills), is at least enough to fully refuel this thing in around 3 days on Duna (not sure how many Kerbin hours that is). Really the only thing i dont like about this craft is how it performs in atmosphere, no way to occlude the payload and its both draggy and has a tendency to flip front towards the ground. Parachutes help with this, but its always a small risk that i wont be able to right it before touching teh ground when attempting to land on Kerbin for instance. It does actually land there fine btw, just cant take off again as there is no way im making this thing SSTO capable (it just cant be done with stock aerodynamics).

Derpin around again, mostly with some of my ground vehicles (that were rendered useless after i installed parallax with collisions)... Updated the Dragon APC, mostly to stop it frustrating me when driving on Duna. Currently can do 10m/s comfortably while dodging teh worst rocks and i can sorta weave in and out of the really big ones with a bit of care but its not the thinnest vehicle so there is a small chance of getting wedged between 2 rocks Upgraded it to the heavy pulse cannon, which is actually a good anti-tank cannon now (the PDC on the old model was not effective against BCorp's newest armor). Interior, simplified it over the older model to save a couple parts. Its pretty much utilitarian now, transports 6 kerbals and 2 drivers (or whatever cargo/fuel will fit in the space between the wheels) and nothing else. And the biggest change is the front, made it angled and not using the friction pads so that it will tend to bounce over a medium sized rock and not instantly stop the vehicle and bounce backwards. What the old one looked like, the biggest flaw of which was the front. I will admit that i like the old front better (its a bit more blocky and has more detail), but i wanted to save some parts and also do something about the absolute garbage terrain passability. A lowered suspension coupled with a grip pad that is basically vertical (that would touch terrain even without parallax installed on occasion when hitting a valley's bottom) is not exactly a smart move if you want to go over any sort of bumps. The new front while looking a bit less cool imo, saves over 10 parts, and those angled girders just let it bounce on anything but very tall rocks (or those spikes on Ike, need to fully evade those things). Cant believe what a big difference a teensy change to the wheel setting did. Was able to make it just about stable enough in bumpy terrain to ditch the RCS jump jets entirely (weight went from 5.5 to 4.5t which is nice as i can carry it with less dV wasted). I still have a jumpjet capable variant as there are rare situations where its useful (such as on extremely low grav where you can use it to slow down when brakes are near useless). Now i just need to make a new version of the 850T tank, since the last 1 was lost due to accidentally overriding the file (and not noticing until i updated all my backups). I sorta want to make it much flatter then it was (its actually too tall to fit into my standard dropship which sorta sux given that the only dropship i have which fits said tank cant lift the weight ). So yeah, maybee loosing the latest version wasnt entirely a big deal.

Fairly simple, there are really 2 ways to do it. One is to install BDArmory and part your fleets near geostationary orbit (else the aiming is broken) and just enable guard mode. The other is to go the stock route, which is mostly turn based (with 1 exception) where you move 2 ships relatively near each other, and either use guided missiles to manually fly in and smack the target, or get em into physics range and point at enemy with unguided dumb weapons. Fighter dumb firing. Pirate battlecruiser with visible forward and broadside facing ibeam weapons. Stock dumb fire weapon example, pretty much the smallest effective weapons ive found is an ibeam pushed by 2-4 sepatrons. I dont have any good pics of em that arent full on ancient (been messing with fireworks more these days), but even a single flea or hammer SRB fired at the enemy is going to do some damage (if you are ok with the size requirements but want lowest part count per shot possible (technically just need a single SRB and a way to decouple it). Guided missile example fired from a ground station, not much to it, mine are just a bit more complex with lots of armored bits inside em (to make the damage useful against armor), but basically probe+fueltank+engine is the minimum you need in this case to hit something. And ofc fireworks. The number 1 cool thing they added which make excellent weapons. I like these alot as with the KAL robit controller you can make them automatically fire, and if you use the aim at target autopilot feature, then start firing loop, then swap to the 2nd ship, aim at target and start it's firing loop via KAL, the 2 ships will try to look at each other as much as possible and the guns will autofire solong as the KAL isnt destroyed, the ship has something to reorient with (RCS/wheels) and there is something controlling it (probe or cockpit). With velocity at 100m/s it wont destroy armor but will gut the internals enabling some nice long drawn out slugging matches, or if you want to kill quickly set the fireworks to 300ish m/s and that will destroy armor but is less reliable with collisions making a bit of a tradeoff. Finally, if you have the time and a decent machine you can actually mount your firework weapons on turrets, manually have them elevate/turn with controls you arent using (say wheel controls, i have mine rebound to arrow keys so that wheels dont screw with my attitude control) or just something you dont use to toggle shooting say 7890, and just aim the turretys manually sapping back and forth to adjust the aim as the ships get hit and drift around. It does require some beefy ships to be practical (turrets will have difficulty hitting a smaller target with any consistency but if you have 2 proper capital sized warships feel free to just part 50m from each other and go full broadside with em.

Made 2 new ships, or well 1 of them is a really "fat" starfighter but whatever... The "Duck" class heavy fighter. Went with a sort of industrial look to it given that crossed a light utility tug i had laying around for station building/rearranging and the Pidgeon class starfighter that BCorp uses as its primary highly survivable starfighter. And the SK-XII "Pulsar" class medium recon corvette (sorta inspired by my favorite ship from the Expanse series albeit with AKS styling added and none of the complicated rear bits since i wanted this thing to be super low on parts). Different enough from the other mainline AKS warships but not so different that it doesnt fit alongside em. Also nice to not have to armor the living crap out of it since the ship in universe would not realistically engage in combat except in emergencies (its not useless but even light SRMs will take down most of the fuel with 1-2 good hits). That and it has that massive interdictor engine which gives it higher TWR then 90% of my starfighters and even some torpedoes... Quite tanky for a starfighter actually, can eat large ibeam weapons and not kaput instantly. Only major flaw is the somewhat vulnurable open cockpit layout (Pidgeon was very similar but used the mk1 inline cockpit and was somrta smaller with better crew survivability but ofc its more advanced design). Then again, its a pirate vessel and I usually intentionally give pirate tech some flaws as pirates mostly whack whatever is available together rather then design everything with things like crew safety and high tech weapons. The 1st fighter was decrewed (survived but both command seats were gone so it was uncontrollable), and the wingman retaliated suprisingly taking down all but a single fuel tank with it's 1st shot (while the Pulsar is not designed to get hit, im surprised how bad it is as is and im going to have to do something to at least make sure a single light weapon salvo doesnt leave it useless with like 200 dV. And finally i redid the interior of the stealth ship i made earlier, namely adding crew area (its super cramped and not even a single straight hallway due to having to cram said interior in alongside the oddly placed weapons and exterior stealth paneling (lots of angly wings). Despite that, its not actually THAT cramped since you can move around easily even when kerbals are sitting in the seats. Thats what the forward command section looks like (after the entire front of the ship was shot off but the Pulsar's drones). Ship surprisingly isnt that weak either, the fact that the interior is so oddly designed makes it somewhat unlikely for any single medium weapon impact (except a heavy 1.25m torp wich 1 shots it reliably) to do that much damage (cosmetically it gets panels shot apart very easily but the interior and critical bits are rather unlikely to be destroyed without sustained fire).

Made a new ship, to replace the old BCorp stealth i had from ages ago (that i never particularly liked). Armed with 2 1.25m capital ship grade heavy torps (2 in the internal bay), 2 stealth ion missiles (basically a LRM but with ion engines and more complexity) and a SRM-6 for emergency point defense or finishing something thats crippled by the other weapons. Primary thrust is 6 measly ion engines, a bit weak but well thats sorta the way ion anything works, a TWR of .02 for extra painful burns. Ofc if willing to sacrifice some of the stealth capability you have access to 0.1 TWR (still rather pathetic but about par as far as a frigate sized warship rocking ions will get). View of the engine clusters, the center one is always exposed (but wedged pretty deep in the hull so it shouldnt be detectable on sensors), and the 4 extra are used when high thrust is needed. Each is actually a cluster of 6 ions (wish stock KSP actually had a 1.25m ion engine, stacking the 0.6m ones is just part count intensive (not to mention adds quite a bit to physics calcs when theya re running all at once, not sure how some of the ships ive seen on the forums with 200+ ion engines can even run?). All in all very happy with the ship's looks. Hull is based on the anubis from the expanse. Wings are based on the normandy from mass effect. That said, its not really a reploica, i just wanted to make a stealth ship that was fully assymetric, and went with the most natural style, being lots of weird angles and shapes. Only thing i completely took from the anubis was those triangular bits which were black in the show but i wanted some contrast and to sorta match AKS stealth ships (BCorp isnt exactly advanced enough to make a stealth without stealing said AKS tech) which are black with some gold edges/highlights. Also gave it 6 solar panels ti try and counteract the insanely power hungry engines, but they completely ruin the appearance and are only extended in friendly territory since i doubt a bunch of extended solar panels are very "stealthy" nomatter what sci-fi universe you live in (at least not without full on cloaking or something of the sort)...

Well i wanted to try a new style, so i went with something a bit more "reality" inspired. not really based on any particular spacecraft/station, but i sorta went with the stack of circular fuselages and a few semi rounded tanks to the rear. i initially wanted some more exposed girdery bits, but i settled without it as i sorta needed every bit of real estate onboard for well, enough fuel to actually get over 2K dV with LFO engines (and not even the most efficient ones as i have one of those quad nozzle lifter engines on there with trash ISP (mostly cause i like the look of said quad engine and it saves 3 parts over having 4 909s clipped together). Nice view of the interior, about as cramped as you can get with the crew surrounded by fuel tanks. You can sorta see what is the payload too, to the sides and top... Used a crapton of doors on this ship (it was originally gonna be a civilian fuel tanker, settles for something more conventional). Front houses 4 generic LRMs which are unreliable (older model), but well there are 4 and its not like its meant to engage a bloody cruiser with those. The ventral doors on the primary hull hoise the main weapons, namely 2 heavy torpedoes that are capable of being used against cruisers with decent effect (its no AKS torpedo, but its not far behind). And the coolest part of the ship imo, the railgun turrets (which are fully hidden behind doors and slide out really nicely). I took the inspiration for those guns from iron sky (the earth ship's 2 turrets), specifically the fact that they kinda extended outwards from the ship like mine do (albeit i only went with a extension+doors and not like 3+ hinges the earth ship had). I think it turned out really nicely, especially since "realistic sci-fi" isnt a style i use very often in KSP. Never really cared for replicating reality as well i can just go outside the house, jump in the car, drive on to the nearest spaceport, and attempt the real life version of GTA except with spacecraft (and prolly kaput horribly due to armed guards)... Still, definitely a ship im keeping, along with the unarmed transporter variant that just guts the weapons bay and adds some docking ports in there for containers or fuel tanks.

I used alot of struts to connect the turret to the tank's armor so it doesnt bend and flex too much, but sadly robotics (unless you use the largest rotator which is too easy to snipe out) are a wobbly mess and pretty much have been from day 1 (you just have to get used to it or work around the wobbliness). Still, you should try the medium rotator servo with the tall base (the smaller one cant be strutted and will wobble unless the turret is unarmored (say servo+hinge+docking port+fireworks, much more and you need lots of struts to hold the base of the medium servo). You can see the struts in this screenie fairly well, just went from all the 6 wheels to the turret base and it more or less makes the wobbliness manageable. That said, make sure to lock the servo/hinge when you arent actually firing it (and driving at high speeds as having an unlocked hinge will increase the wobblin by a ton. Anyways, in other news, made the 11th gen Dimension class cruiser. Part counts are a bit bad (625ish), but i can always make a bridge-less variant to fix that problem (its at least 50 parts or so that goes into the custom interior). Upper bridge, went somewhat simple but not so simple that the kerbins are missing basic monitors at their stations. Most of the parts go into the upper armored canopy that actually offers somewhat decent protection from anything that isnt phasing levels of velocity (fireworks just pass through stuff and randomly interact with the internals so no "armor" really helps to protect the squishy bits inside from sustained fire). Primary weapon is a dual heavy AT gun (same thing as on the tanks, just much faster firing and with more ammo). Its unreliable due to spread and the phasing, but when it hits it tears armor apart like a ibeam with sepatrons would (minus the part count and limited ammo issues). Also visible are the ship's PDCs, namely 3 quad pulse cannons with the standard 100m/s velocity (wont touch armor, but guts the internals with sustained fire), able to fire forward with the main gun, and ofc each side can also aim independently via turrets (only blind spot is directly behind the ship, but its not like the thing cant just RCS turn quickly enough to nullify that issue). Powered by the standard dimension engine array, 3 rear, 2 mid, 2 front allowing for redundancy to prevent any 1 shot nomatter how powerful from immobilizing the ship. ~3K dV with 3 starfighters onboard, 3.4ish unloaded. View from the observation deck, excellent for manually targeting the PDCs and generally cool view across the ship's top. Daylight shot of the ship with hangar open. Plenty of space in there as ive crammed a Nova class inside there although its a very tight fit, generally better for 3-6 smaller sized fighters. I think the ladders also really add to the look despite only being 6 parts and really hides the fact that the hull of the ship is more or less fairly symmetrical top-bottom (aside from the very front and the bridges up top), i know its personal preference but im not that big a fan of perfectly symmetrical ships in the vertical direction. Speaking of the front, i actually used the 3rd gen's broadside firing ports and turned em into windows for the living area. View of the living area interior. Nothing crazy, just some crew stations on the sides and a table in the center, didnt want to add too much but also didnt want to just have 4 chairs and nothing else as it doesnt feel like a proper interior that way (jf im gonna waste parts at all on an interior adding a few more wont really matter). testing the frontal firepower (which is actually quite insane). Just wish that we could adjust firework spread as the particle beams just dont look right when not firing every shot in the same spot. Still, it looks super cool, and I can even broadside things (not that this makes any logical sense in a space fight with guided torpedoes, but whatever, its fun to get ships up close). All in all, i quite like what i did with this, crossing the 5th and 10th gens was defenetely a good idea. I honestly prefer the grievios ship inspired hull layout, just had to mate it with a front that i actually liked, nd the 10th gen was pretty good in that department. Ofc i did modiy it somewhat since the 10th gen as it was didnt fit properly, but i thing i like the current 1 even more due to being well not symmetrical (and it has the upside down triangle layout of the other AKS ship). Might make some tweaks (namely to cut parts), but i think ill keep this overall layout going forward.

Kinda messed around with the concept of ignore part counts entirely and just make ships look cool: I was going to do this to the dimension, but i suspect it would require at least 300 lights to do, so i sorta didnt bother as adding unnecessary crap to a 300 part ship is one thing, adding unnecessary crap to a 650 part ship, is not my idea of intelligent: )

You mean the tank or the ship? The ship is rather complicated, since i designed something that was supposed to both fit a certain asthetic (most of my ships these days are designed in the order of core -> exterior -> everything else. I build for asthetics and the Dimension class cruiser took prolly the 2nd longest amount of time to develop (1st place goes to the ancient SSTO normandy replica, the best and only legit full on replica i made in KSP as it sucked up so much of my time). The Dimension's requirements were from the very start: Looks amazing, resistant to all conventional weapons (1.25m or smaller torps), 3K dV when fully loaded and most of all minimal part count (hull itself never exceeded 500 parts, current variant is 430 without any weapons and without the internal bridge, 450 with said bridge). It's actually the one ship i made with the longest history of iterations too, alongside the nebula frigate (although the iterations of the DImension were much bigger changes while the Nebula had purely asthetic edits more or less). The 1st gen was sorta meh, but it was at that time one of my larger vessels which wasn't crap (armor was top notch, just a bit small). Unique thing about it was the rear hangar bay with engines actually integrated in the hull and firing out the corners of the hangar (depending on how the fighters were placed you had to disable one or more engines in the hangar or the fighters would be roasted, a flaw that was fixed in later variants). 2nd gen was actually decent sized, and moved the hangar in middle of the primary hull which was a bad idea for 2 reasons. First of all, the hangar was so bloody small it wasnt particularly useful for anything but the smallest of fighters (which in lore would be HK-1s, a fighter that normally is small enough to just claw itself to the external hull and didnt even need a dedicated hangar). Secondly, it made the entire front (where 75% of the ship's firepower was located) extremely likely to get shot off when anything hit near the ship's center due to how it was constructed. 3rd gen was heavily inspired by grievious's ship from star wars, although it like most of the earlier models was mostly a stepping stone to the later variants. Its the smallest of all of them (which is an issue since it just doesnt "feel" like a proper capital ship and more of a huge frigate or destroyer), and while longer then the 1st gen, it was so crammped that like its predecessors wasnt particularly useful. Still, it was the 1st ship to feature angled engines in the front and center which loose a bit of dV (they dont aim directly backwards), but allow the ship to get smacked in any section without being completely unable to move (you need at least 3 very solid hits to knock out all 7 engines it has, a configuration that i kept for all subsequent models: 2 front, 2 mid, 3 rear). The 4th redid the hangar bay to make it much larger and finally useable for basically any starfighter that AKS has (and even a single small corvette such as the Nova class). It got a bit fat though which was actually good for 2 reasons, looks more like a proper capital ship, and makes it much more likely for incoming fire to smack the exterior hull which was always semi-sacrificial. Only thing i wasnt particularly a fan of with this model (and the others but the 2nd and current gen) was the front layout, which was primarily function over fashion due to needing to hold and somewhat protect the 2 forward engines (the reason its angled that way is so that the engines can have their thrust vector not hit anything and still aim mostly to the rear). The 5th-8th gen is pretty much identical with entirely internal edits (to improve the armor) or changes to their weaponry locations and types (as tech developed weapomns changed quite a bit, the 5th gen had it's dual SRM launcher on the nose, the 8th had swapped to fireworks in order to cut parts and because they were just so much cooler since you could autofire them and aim with turrets allowing you to actually go broadsiding an enemy ship in full on sci-fi movie fashion (broadside SRMs were a thing but so unreliable with aim i never truly took the concept seriously). The latest 10th gen redoes the hull bringing it closer to the 2nd gen in appearance (but taller and longer). I'm finally happy with the front look and shape, and the rest of this ship isnt bad either. Im a bit torn between whether i like the hull layout of the 5-8th gen or the 9-10th gen more, but one thing is certain, i very much prefer the front of the current one as it actually looks like a integrated weapon and not something ad-hoc slapped on the underside as an afterthought. I think i'll defenetely try a 5th gen hull coupled with a 10th gen front for the 11th gen, as i think the older hull, while less uniform with other AKS ships, was a bit more unique and different then just a larger version of the frigates and corvettes used by AKS (uniformity isnt bad, but overused makes fleets look a bit bland which is why i occasionally change styles even within the same faction). Tank is fairly simple, basically a stock turret setup (1 servo for traverse, 1 hinge for elevation), on a hull designed such that the actual weakspots are the core part itself (i used a short ibeam as its got a smaller hitbox then the larger ibeam), the hinge (which is a rotator servo and a hinge), and the weapon itself (which is replaceable since i attached the fireworks cannisters using docking ports). The hull is pretty much entirely sacrificial junk, short girders placed in such a way that if any is broken off it just drops out the bottom or falls off the sides while slowing or deflecting whatever kinetic projectile hit it in the 1st place (be it fireworks or ibeams). Not perfect, but with 3 probes, 6 reaction wheels and 3 power generators its very unlikely that the thing is disabled by anything short of overwhelming fire or extremely bad luck (nothing will 100% guarantee that a firework or ibeam doesnt happen to hit the root part and insta-kill the entire tank...

Really the one and ONLY thing that will determine if im getting this game is whether they fix the performance issues. Visually with the right mods KSP1 is actually quite amazing (scatterer+EVE+parallax) and doesnt run much worse then stock tbh, but the main issue which just plain sucks and seriously limits what i can and cant do in teh game is performance with any vessel or ground base that is in excess of 500 parts (a single ship thats under 500 doesnt have any lag isues really). The lag/slowdown is somewhat bearable up to around 1K parts, but try bringing 2 fully fitted out cruisers (with full load of ammo and 1-2 of the simplest fighters i can make onboard its easily 800+ parts per ship) into loading range (and then trying to go broadside with their firework turrets) is just rediculous (for purely screenshots its fine, but doing an actual legit battle with anything but long range torpedoes is just painful with how laggy it gets (even in 100% stock its still sluggish). Same issue with my larger stations, docking anything more then a frigate is going to be painful especially if the ship has weak RCS capability. So yeah, if KSP2 at least improves the performance (im not asking for 5K part ships, i understand that anything resembling proper physics interaction between multiple connected parts is going to take a good CPU, but id love to see some optimization, perhaps even something as simple as treating a single ship as a solid object unless it comes within a certain distance of something it could collide with so that a ship thats just sitting there 500m away from the enemy isnt even doing any physics calcs). As for any other changes, they are minor (ohh and plz fix the kraken bugs like the wobbling which happens alot with radially attached fuel tanks to girders/ibeams (that require a crapload of struts to fix).

As usual, more derpin around with various things... New 1.875m supertorpedo testing, targeting the strongest warship ive ever made thusfar in the armor dept. 1st shot obliterates the rear section and removes half the engines and fuel tanks. 2nd shot makes the whole ship go poof (and it does so beautifully with lots of secondary detonations as the remaining sections keep exploding for a bit). So yeah, when you add 1.875 supertorpedoes to your ship there is literally NOTHING that can survive a hit to the core. Made a new tank, the AKS GSD-850T Panther. Its pretty much a cross of the old T-850, the Type-3, with the external appearance sorta inspired by the WW2 panther tank (namely the 2 rear exhaust stacks and the overall shape and layout of the hull), and the turret inspired by the M10 wolverine's turret (my all time fav turret design, and in KSP the open top doesnt really seem to be a weakness on any level). So pretty, shootout in the tall grass with parallax's updated version... Keeps getting slammed and loosing parts, but it keeps on going... After over 100 shots (around half of them actually hit the target), the thing just refuses to bloody die (i know its luck, but really unless the firework gets a direct hit on the turret bearing or on the root ibeam, both are very small targets, its unlucky to deal critical damage). I mean its got almost no mobility (all batteries shot off, and most of the RTGs are gone too), armor is gone, it looks like a utter wreck, but its technically still combat viable. Full control, turret works as expected despite missing armor, drives if barely, fires rounds out of the cannon (manually due to loosing the KAL but it can still be used). The hull is so effective that im going to redo the T-930 in much the same way (basically a T-850 with 2 more cannons in the hull fixed to fire forward, a relic of the age where tanks carried at best 4 sepatron powered ibeam rockets in the turret which sorta forced me to add more ammo in the hulls to make them able to deal with more then 1 enemy target).

Damn i love the new version of parallax, it seems to have decent performance now unlike the last time i gave it a try (which was when they first really came out with it, looked nice back then too but the current version with all the redone scatters puts the old one out of the water and is well worth the minor hit to performance... This is what it looked like b4 config messing, there were these odd lines where the textures didnt quite line up right when looking far away (not really visible on dis screenie but very blatant on decent from orbit). Not as pretty shadow wise, but its still decent looking (and what matters the most to me, the scatters, are all fine). I really like what they did there, each planet is truly unique now (most of the "classic" grey moons were mostly identical visually b4, now each one has something going for it)...

What mod gives you all those ground objects?

Its actually based on a cross of 2 things, replica of a vehicle from a videogame i used to play ages ago (way b4 KSP even existed), and something i saw on the forums a while back (namely the idea to use angled wheels as stabilizers since trying to drive a "motorcycle" is basically suicide at speeds above 20m/s without either a crapton of reaction wheels (there are only 2 in my vehicle), or stabilizers of some form like said landing gear... Its not perfect by any means, but its the simplest AKS combat vehicle (i didnt even bother with a turret and made it into a fixed gun thats adjusted somewhat by the spring strength of wheels), and its byfar one of the safest things i have to drive (and its fast too since there is virtually no weight as the armor is mostly the fact that its so small and hard to hit from anything but point blank...

Crewed by 2 probes (in case 1 gets shot off)... Its basically something akin to a aggressive recon vehicle, not really a "tank", but it can take a few hits to anywhere but the weapon itself. Hit the ibeams, or in later variants the firework cluster and its useless since ramming armor against armor doesnt do squat below 80m/s and it can go above 50 on flat ground...

Dat "ohh shaaaaat" moment when you have been driving at x3 time accel for 50km, and forget to check the map ahead of you... Right off a bloody cliff into a rather huge crater... Bounced off pretty damn hard after a 65ish m/s impact ... And the sigh of relief when you realize the thing you have been driving in was designed years ago and was damn near impossible to crash (this version is at least a yyear old, though the vehicle layout of motorcycle wheels and 2 stabilizer wheels ive had since at least KSP v0.25)...

Well, messed around with ground vehicle combat... BCorp's newest Avenger class MBT (with V0 prototype turret as i still havent made a new turret im happy with yet, im on my 3rd now) comes across a AKS outpost on Duna (not that this makes any lore sense as BCorp doesnt have the means to land tanks on Duna at this moment but whatever, it was a test)... Over the hill, CHARGE! learn to aim you stupid gunner ... The cannon is about as useless in it's 1st salvo (looks bad but that round merely smacked the ground in front of tank and rolled undeneath it b4 self destructing). The tank moves forward and scores the 1st hit in the fight, although its oly one of the smaller fence pieces and not the turret (which is a remarkably small target all things considered)... Prolly not the smartest move to move into the firing arc of the 2nd cannon, 2 salvos manage some proper damage... Lucky shot actually blew up the hinge that held the cannon onto the tank... Testing the fence light cannons, cant fire both though due to being blocked by the heavy AT turret... Some cosmetic damage, but otherwise irrelevant to the tank (it was designed to actually eat a crapload of 100m/s fireworks... And since the fights over anyways, might as well go ham with the AT guns... My new desktop, at least until my computer dies or i find one better. And a final screenie of falling debris on a Duna sunset...

Removing JUST the .dll which causes the memory leak issues, the vast majority of the restock parts just need modulemanager to work, a mod which from my testing is not a concern. The restock.dll only adds a few minor things, namely intakes have things clipped into them dissapear visually (this is actually sometimes good, sometimes bad depending on what im trying to accomplish visually, wish it could be toggled per part but no such option). It also adds some animations that get disabled with the dll missing (IRSU glows, radiator panels glows, ect), everything else can be done with stock modules and do not require the .dll. Really, the major things you loose without the .dll are all the retractable solar panels, radiators, klaws (i like the stock ones better anyway), the large comms dish, and a few other part revamps. The things i care about the most in restock like the structural parts specially panels/girders/ibeams (namely for the variants with the differing color options), engines, crew pods/probes, sci instruments, antennas, fuel tanks are not affected what so sever that i can tell from using it for a week or so with the so called :stripped down" restock post DLL removal. And a few screenies of what it looks like now, pretty much everything is still restocked anyway. Its like 90% of the content the stock memleaky mod ships with anyway minus said memleak...

Finished testing the slightly upgraded Dune class dropship/lander/whatever you wanna call something that deploys tanks out of internal bay after landing on the ground... After a 75% refuel (dont really need it at 100 if im careful not to waste it on minor adjustments to the trajectory), it left Duna with a nice view of the system on departure. Braking burn, not the most efficient way i can theortically accomplish this (i could have used 1-2 grav assist to slow myself), but i cant be bothered with grav assists when i have plenty of fuel and it just needs to get on the surface. Final hard burn to slow it down. I actually find this engine config to be very effective for this sort of ship, a single nuke purely for dV (its not designed to be shot at or even enter combat itself so who cares about things like redundant engines), and 4 aerospikes for the final burn/takeoff engines. Not that i couldnt have used another type of engine, but the aerospikes have prolly the best TWR and ISP considering such a small physical size. I did end up clipping them and some fuel tanks, but again, looks and function come 1st and i just couldnt make it work any other way (maybee ill redo the fuel tank layout a bit as there is a bit more space underneath now that i think about it and there is no reason i cant have some sticking out forward/back). Drives out fine, didnt even get that weird klaw kraken from back in the day where the klaws would shift around between save/load/game restarts (they just sat exactly where they should be when i stuck em inside on Duna's surface). Nice view of the nebula in the morning, now that i finally found the source of the memleak, i can go back to all my visual mods without too much performance issues (DIRT with skybox edit takes up pretty muhc 0 performance as it just replaces textures). And to finish the test by making sure the fuel converter works properly. I dont quite like the look of those solar panels on the top, but frankly i vcant think of any other spot to put em that would look any less bad and i sorta need em to get maximum efficiency of the converter (since the 1 RTG won't cut it and using fuel cells wastes a chunk of teh fuel i get from the conveter. A bit unrealistic, but you can run fuel converters and still get a net positive fuel flow by running fuel cells from the LFO you generate with the converter unit.