panzer1b

If its your one and only weapon 12 at a bare minimum for an actual "capital" ship, around 6 or so for a support ship or heavy bomber, and around 3 for a heavy fighter optimized to hit capitals. The reason i would go with 12 at least is that most ships ive tested require at least 6 before they start to fall apart, and (at least imo) ships kinda should expect to be able to kill/neuter around 2 enemy targets, with bombers being capable of killing 1, and fighters just doing some damage but not killing a capital ship solo. Thats at least how much i carry on my ships if they are actually only carrying ibeam weapons. If they are a secondary or aux weapon, 6 is plenty. most of my ships that arent designed to use loads of ibeams have 1 SRM-6 launcher on the front as backup firepower (so 6 of the ibeams). If they are a truly last resport and you have other weapons, as few as 4 will do you well, ive seen a few others use 4 ibeam style weapons as a good backup option. As for other weapons, it really depends on how powerful they are. For 1.2m torps, most of my ships carry between 2-4 of them, with flagships or excessively heavy vessels carrying 6-8. Generally speaking, my modern 1.2m weapons are capable of killing the majority of targets in 1-2 good hits, so having 4 of them is a solid choice, with say a handful of backup weapons. For guided 0.6m stuff, id say you want around 6-8 of them, since they are heavier and usually more accurate then unguided models as well as somewhat more klethal, so you dont quite need 12 to kill 2 ships bad luck aside. Finally, for anti-fighter weapons (rcs powered kinetic drones and similar) i like to have 4 on my ships, and they tend to make good secondarys in a desprate situation against a capital ship although you dont want too many of them on ships that arent dedicated flakboats (anti-fighter) since they do weigh a bit and the part counts tend to stack quickly when you go overboard and bring 20 of the things... Also one more somewhat unrelated thing with regards to ibeams, the best way ive found is to fire groups of 2 and just keep hitting them in teh same spot (from teh same side of the ship for best results). Itll dislodge armor quickly and tear a nice hole in the target, oftentimes destroying the spine/core if your aim is good. Best choices for targets (if you are using manual aim) is either the engines or weapons if the target happens to not have redundified the crap out of them. If they are so redundant that this is pointless, aim center of mass and hope for a clean kill via root part/spine.

Autostruts are BAD for armoring from my experience, do not use these for "armor" unless you are running into a major part count problem.

There are a few things that ive found work weapons wise fairly well. the simplest and cheapest weapon i use is a single long ibeam propelled by 4 sepatrons (or using a modded decoupler if im desperate to save part count to propell it to ~200-250m/s). The idea behind these is to spam them in numbers and keep hitting the same part of a ship one shot after the next until you literally drill a hole through the entire thing. Since they are very small you can cram alot of them into the ship's frontal profile. A step up from this is the same concept, but instead of sepatrons, the ibeam has a probe core, engine, and fuel tank behind it allowing it to fly guided. Ive never had extremely good results using these, but you can carry alot of them for a given mass/part count, and with some luck a good hit can split the entire ship apart. After that you have your 1.25m weapons. The most basic weapon ive found reliably is the smallest SRB (drained to low fuel, leave ~40-60 solid fuel in there) with either 1-2 structural panels on the tip or a ibeam on the tip. These things are brutal against thinner more compact ships (like many of mine) but lack the firepower to truly destroy thicker more heavy ships that have alot of parts between the outer hull and the core. Use them when part count is the primary concern, a single one is like 3-4 parts and it can some decent damage, with the main cost being space requirement and vulnerability to enemy fire compared to 1.2m weapons. As for guided design, the most important thing is to utilize 80m/s or higher parts as the "warhead", and push it to the optimal speed within a reasonable distance (this dictates your engine size and choice). Its extremely varied what works and what doesnt, but there are 2 major types of warheads that seem to be around, either armor piercing (kinda pointy with ibeams on the front) or fragmentation (lots of smaller structural "shrapnel" embedded inside) where there is a weak part (like a fuel tank) holding the shrapnel parts and when it breaks apart on impact the smaller stuff flies throughout teh vessel and guts the weaker components inside. On the modern battlefield ive found a combo of these 2 to be the best (as in like 3-6 shrapnel parts combined with a AP tip) but it really depends on what you want to take down with it. There are many ships that are very good against one type or the other, and even the combos are never guaranteed to work. Overall, shrapnel is worse against compartmentalized ships since the shrapnel is stopped by armor or by the fact that not all the components are accessible, while AP is less damaging then shrapnel but will often do more damage against very well protected ships then a shrapnel round would. Also worth mentioning is that one way to increase your weapon's power is to up teh mass. Its not mass efficient to make heavier weapons, but if your current designs arent working (assuming they have some sort of structural warheads) try to add more mass to the missile for extra firepower. You are correct that struts, when used wrongly, can actually make your ship easier to kill. Strut together only the parts that need to stay intact like the cor/skeleton itself, and leave sacrificial parts like fuel tanks, ect unstrutted. As for weapons, pointy and fast may not alwasy be the best choice. Pointy and fast is good against very thick and well armored ships (since a more blunt impactor might not penetrate to the internals), but against more compact or lighter armored ships shrapnel or frag rounds are flat out best. You just need to get a feel for the target, some ships (due to each design's individual quirks) are easier to take down with a different type of weapon, as well as velocity. Also, in case you didnt know, over-penetration is a thing, ive had bad results when hitting all but the largest targets at excessive speeds (above 500m/s relative) since they just pass through after blowing out a few irrelevant bits of armor. At excessive speeds you also gamble more, yes you are theroeticxally capable of doing more dmg and or instakilling the ship with a direct hit to the root part, but you are also much less likely to achieve such a hit as you are less capable of changing trajectory and hitting the desired spot. Ohh and yeah, feel free to use my ships and ideas in whatever, i do not believe in keeping secrets, if i make a ship that i believe is good, i sure as hell will show it off so other can use it/learn from it/blow it up. The only stuff i keep secret and in progress designs and stuff that i feel isnt actually competitively useful (i have my share of terribad ships i keep around that ive never told anyone of )...

If youd like, i could give you my advice from what ive found to work in KSP armor wise. There are 2 truly unique build styles, with some variations when it comes to armoring ships. The first, and the more common/conventional method is using a so called structural spine along the ship from front to back. This is almost always the XL girders since they are both easy to work with and are nice and strong structurally at least. Basically lay down as many girders in a row as you desire the ship to be lengthwise, and build outwards. From the spine you should have another structural piece (ibeams or more girders or even structural panels) to which you can attach an outer shell of whatever material you choose (for best armor use structural panels, but even wings work if you are building something like a carrier or its a part of the ship that is less critical). As you can see, there are 3 girders lengthwise, which the outer shell is attached in multiple locations (to keep one lucky shot from removing an entire side of armor), as well as to which the fuel is attached. Ive had mixed results with fuel directly attached to teh spine. On one hand, it increases protection against multiple weaker weapons (ibeam spam), but it seems to make it more vulnerable to direct hits from high powered phasing torpedoes (1.2m), so if you expect to deal with hard hitting weapons, it may be a good idea to have the fuel tank attached to another structural part that is attached to the spine instead of directly attaching fuel to the spine. Basically this is the more reliable build style, and if you have enough redundancy (engines in teh front, weapons in teh back, ect) you are all set in the likely event of being split in half (its almost inevitable to happen sooner or later with this design, but once split its possible to remain a threat with proper hardware placement). The other style of building is the so called "all or nothing" approach, where you have one critical part that you build the entire ship up off of. This has its share of issues but can potentially be much harder to destroy as you have to get a direct hit to one and only one part to kill it, with shots to any other portion of the ship doing damage, but being unable to completely cripple the ship. Ive had alot of luck with this style recently, and most of my semi competitive ships these days utilize it as ive found the older style of structural spines to be harder to completely wipe out, but easier to do critical damage to as you just aim for the midsection and it goes away. Its a bit of a gamble as one hit can 1 shot your ship, but ive found that risk to be worth the ability to tank insane amounts of damage to anywhere but the root part. One more somewhat unrelated tip if you like to plate your ship externally with wings, is to place the wings not direclty onto the outer hull but via a cubic strut or other small weak component, so that if the wing takes a massive impact, it just falls off and does not transfer excessive forces into the actual armor beneath it (ive had ships torn apart this way by hits to the outer wings destroying the core through force transfer). Anyways, good luck with your design, most of my ships right now are being redesigned (as i dont quite like them atm and many are outdated) but if you want to take a look at some of my ships go to my company's craft repository and the majority of my ships that i have made that werent trash are there. Also, feel free to try variations of these styles, ive found something like a H spine to work well (2 spines side by side with some armor between them so that if one spine goes you still have over half a ship left), and dont forget redundancy, its better to have something left over and functional after you are split apart then relying on a single control point and or a single weapons mount/engine cluster.

I support the idea of repairing outside of the VAB in a similar manner that KIS allows (try the mod, you cant quite VAB edit and it has its share of restrictions, but you can attach and move around parts on a vessel in orbit/on another planet). Actually KIS (or at least the edit craft feature of KIS) would be great to have stock. That would really make it more immersive then right now, since it is very difficult if not impossible to fix a ship after it was damaged in battle despite having lots of parts leftover from whatever you just vaporized during battle.

Its just not the same as with absolutely no ambient lighting night battles may have been a thing, but trust me, with the new ambient light thing we can actually simulate real nighttime, and not that super overly bright crap the stock game provides (and the old ambient light adjustment mod did exist, but it looked like trash with ambient lighting set to excessively low)...

Well with 1.2.9, we finally get nightfighters! With ambient lighting set to -100%, its... interesting...

Alright, did the 2nd battle between the Loligator-2 and the Tiny-Fighter. The results were 3 wins for the Loligator-2 in a row, with 4-0, and 3-0 twice respectively. The Tiny fighters lacked the armor to sustain a long term engagement and with the randomness of the AI, only had luck destroying the Loligators (1 neutering and 1 complete kill by lithobraking) when they happened to focus fire. This is essentially the exact same issue my FW-190s had (and a large reason why they lost), since the only way for them to reliably neuter/kill the massively heavy and tough Loligator was 2 or more focusing fire at the same time or within a short enough time interval to deny the target the ability to cool down and recover from the barrages. While the planes had very good luck evading attacks at least for the first minute or so, eventually the Loligators managed to get lucky and destroy the exposed fuel tanks which resulted in the loos of one wing, at which point the craft tumbled out of the sky. Also, 2 Tiny losses were due to flat spinning and crashing into the ground without sustaining damage. A tip to avoid this in the future is to make sure that the tail surfaces are far enough backwards, since then the plane is resistant to flat spinning and is much more likely to be able to recover from one. Nice try btw. Also while it was not important to the tournament, i tested the crafts in a 1 vs 1 situations and the results were much more in favor of the Tiny-Fighter. It seems that maximizing maneuverability helps in 1 vs 1 situations as you deny the enemy the ability to get a firing solution, whereas in 4 vs 4 the high maneuverability allowed the Tiny to avoid one or 2 attackers, but eventually was taken down by one of them that happened to get a good angle. Thusfar Eidahlil is the victor and has 2 consecutive wins.

If you guys (@BDATeam) are ok with it, i could upload a version of the .dll that has been recompiled for those of us so inclined to use BDA in the beta. No changes to teh code have been made, and the only thing that needed updating was the actual dll itself (guns and all work just like they did).

Ok well i did the battle, and your planes beat mine, albeit super close as it was 3 to 2. First game the FW-190s slaughtered your side 4-0 (seems to be a bit of a luck factor, if one side's AI starts to focus fire on a single target it dies instantly), 2nd battle was the loligators at 2 to 0, 3rd was FWs 1 to 0, the last 2 were both Loligator wins as well, 1 to 0 and 4 to 0 respectively. there was one fluke game that i cut out as 5 planes were lost via destruction of their weapon manager antennas (i consider that some sort of hack, wish my screen recorder worked as thatd defenetely be worth watching again and again). So sofar you are the record holder at 1 win. Ill let other take their turns and ill come back in a while with new planes that will hopefully stand a chance Im actually quite impressed at the sheer volume of fire these monsters can take especially from my FW-190s that have 6 13mm guns on them. Your achilles heel seems to be a weak joint somewhere near the front of the plane that often results in the destruction of the frontal section but not the entire plane. The vast majority of kills from my side were caused by that weakness although the good thing is that it then took multiple continuous attack runs to take down what remained (the frame is incredibly tough!). Id say the survivability of those skeletons is what got you the win, the fact that 1-2 of these degunned skeletons remained airborne kept my side from focusing fire on the leftover armed craft leading to eventual loss for me. Also worth mentioning is that there were 7 planes brought down by collisons . One of my victories was because 2 of your own planes crashed headon into each other and tore themselves apart... Also in case you are wondering why your aircraft are burning so badly, there seems to be a bug with destruction fx and the new feature in 1.2 that lets you have free struts to heaviest/root/whatnot. Every time there is a part change it made every single part light on fire... Also, updated the rules to add the standard BDA .50 cal, its a hair more powerful then the AVA one so its 20 points instead of 15, but they are roughly similar in capabilities with the AVA one overheating more and doing slightly less damage with more accuracy.

Still works great in 1.2.9 beta! Just need to recompile is all (it was crashing otherwise on game load). Not sure if its just mne, but 1.2.9 seems to perform a bit better, it normally lags a tad when you have 4 vs 4 dogfights, not that bad in 1.2.9...

While there are other BDA AI styled dogfight challenges out there, i wanted to try something with a new flavor that uses only stock parts to create the aircraft and utilizes stock aerodynamics with all its ups and downs that allow for quite a different approach then the other challenges that use mostly FAR. While regular BDA was originally planned to be used for weapons, aviator arsenal was found to have better variety of less overpowered guns and thus will be used for this challenge. ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// The Tournament: Players will submit a squadron consisting of 4 aircraft for the competition. For more variety, up to 2 different aircraft models may be present in a squadron (for example 3 model A fighters and 1 model B heavy fighter). Winning will be king of the hill style, with player ranking based on how many wins your aircraft had in a row. Each contestant will go up against the current king of the hill with their squadron. Battles will be the best 3 of 5 (or 2 of 3 if time becomes a concern) using BDA AI only. The built in aircraft competition setting in BDA will be used to start the game, and each squadron will take off from the grass to either side of the KSC, fly to the default distance of 8km, and then engage the enemy. Retries are allowed provided others arent waiting already for a fight and all aircraft are new entries (you may use your old aircraft after modifying them physically in at least some way such as adding wings, changing weapon set, moving engines, ect but an actual modification is required for reentry, just swapping weapons out does not count). A retry will override your old score if it scores higher (as in gets more wins in a row). One entry allowed per player at any given time to prevent fighting yourself. Altering the ratio of aircraft within the squadron, any AI settings, and the weapons complement of your fighters will not invalidate your current entry, but any alterations to the plane's airframe itself will result in it counting as a completely new entry and equal a loss to your current entry (if its the leader). The winner is the side with the last standing functional plane. Functional means that it remains airborne on its own. In the unlikely event of both sides having functional planes after all ammo has been used, the side with more planes in the air will be the winner. If a plane runs out of fuel and lands/crashes, it counts as if it was shot down, so be sure to bring enough fuel to stay in the air. ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// Leaderboard: Eidahlil: 2 wins with 4 Loligator-2s ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// Mods: BDarmory (may be a good idea to have vessel switcher and vessel mover as well to make spawning planes and spectating the battle much easier) Aviator Arsenal ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// Planes and Loadouts: Fighter: Minimum weight of 4 tons. Engines consist of 2 Juno with 40kN thrust total (you may use more Junos but make sure to dial down their thrust accordingly to keep the total at 40kN). Alternatively a single Wheesley is allowed at 45kN thrust maximum when set to 37.5% (the extra 5kN is to offset the increased size, weight, and vulnurability of the engine compared to the Junos, and in practice ive found the Junos to be better anyways, but its an option for those so inclined). [100] total weapons points allowed. Heavy Fighter: Minimum weight of 7 tons. Engines consist of 3 Junos (or 60kN of total thrust). Alternatively 1 Wheesley at 55%. [120] total weapons points allowed. Attacker: Minimum weight of 10 tons. Engines consist of 4 Junos (or 80kN of total thrust). Alternatively 1 Wheesley at 75%. [150] total weapons points allowed. Weapons: Breda: [5] Note: first 4 are free to use and cost [0] points (lets face it, these things are so bad might as well give you 4 freebies). Any additional ones past 4 cost the [5] points. Browning M2/Mg131: [15] BDA's Browning [20] Note: this is the only weapon currently allowed from regular BDA mod, its slightly better then the AVA's 0.50 so hence the extra points. UBK/Dual M2 pod: [25] Mg151/20: [30] Hispano/Shvak: [70] ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// Rules: Max part count of 300 per squadron (add up the 4 planes' part counts to get this). This rule is somewhat flexible (if you go over a bit and i can run the dogfight without too much lag ill let it go, otherwise ill ask to redesign it with less parts) but please dont go overboard and dont include aesthetic parts if you are nearing this limit without them. All craft contain at least 1 kerbal (more are allowed if you are sadistic inclined) that is located either inside a cockpit with frontal visibility (so no lander cans or the mk1 rocket pod) or in a external command seat that is inside a custom cockpit (has to be at least partially enclosed, head in the air stream is fine, seat placed on the outside of the fuselage is not). No excessive clipping of fuel tanks into each other or into fuselage parts. Exception: the standard enclosed cockpits (such as the mk1 inline) may have up to 200 units of LF clipped inside them, and the 2 tail connectors can have up to 100 LF units inside. Engines may be placed anywhere and may be enclosed as well provided they still are able to produce thrust. I was originally going to not allow things like engines inside the fuselage, but ive found battles to be much more interesting when every other plane didnt die to engines shot off and the fights drew out for a while with both sides shooting bits off the planes until one finally died off in a blaze of glory. No excessive wing clipping. A bit for aesthetics or protection is ok, but do not just stack multiple wings together. Also, make sure that all control surfaces are exposed to the air, while stock aero does allow you to place them inside the fuselage, its not really in the spirit of the challenge to abuse the concept of hidden indestructible wings and control surfaces. AI pilot module must be visible externally on the craft. Clipping it in some to protect it is recommended, but I need to be able to check the AI settings and searching through a plane's guts to get to it is not fun. Both the Aviator Arsenal antenna or the BDA weapons manager+AI pilot combos are allowed, although it is preferred to use the antennae since its harder to shoot off and has everything you need built in that one part. No more then 1 total weapons manager allowed per craft, so choose its placement well. No "excessive" abuse of the offset tool. Small gaps between parts are fine, a wingtip floating in mid air after the wing root was shot off is not. Default altitude on the autopilot must be set to 1500, and minimum altitude must be set to 500 (lets actually dogfight and not use the ground as a weapon). All other AI/guard mode settings are up to you. No more then 2 of the smallest radiators may be active during the flight. While I want to avoid near indestructible planes that are plated from every side with radiators and abuse BDA's heat damage model, you get 2, so use them wisely to protect those few key components that need to be cooled as much as possible (like the kerbal ). Also, the active radiators should be exposed to the airflow, it just makes no sense for them to work otherwise. No reaction wheels (disable the cockpit ones too). Any weapons not listed in the table below the airplane classes may not be used as they are either broken or OP. And in case it wasnt obvious, no turrets either, they are not fun to fight against since they shred planes without any effort right now. Your submission must be tested to work with BDA AI autopilot in some way before submitting it here. The best way to do this is to try your plane out against my Sample Fighter to prove its worth, but even spawning 2 fighters and having them face each other until one dies is enough proof that it will fly and fight. ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// Notes: Unlike most of the other challenges, im actually opening the door to truly armoring your craft against fire. While nothing is invincible, with the current weapon limitations as well as the rules that allow part clipping, armoring via structural panels, ect, i do not expect these dogfights to end super quickly and i think its alot more fun and interesting when planes take a beating to go down. In this regards ive found using redundant wings and control surfaces, and building wings up off of structural parts to be helpful, but i do not discount the effectiveness of sheer maneuverability and glass cannons, and i think with my weight limits ive opened the door to both styles of combat, be it super heavy tanky plane or light nimble interceptors that die when sneezed at. Everything has its place here except for land planes (obviously they must fly to be in the challenge ). Its not a rule or anything and i do not require it, it is strongly suggested you give your craft a shot against this Sample Fighter. This will ensure that you will at least be able to put up some sort of fight against an actual opponent. Being a sample, it is intentionally very badly armed, so you may want to increase its firepower by adding some guns or replacing the ones currently on it with more powerful and effective models for a real fight, but even then its not that great a fighter aerodynamically. You can also take a look at it and the way i build the engines/fuel system to take maximum advantage of the rules. I may end up doing away with it if it proves unbalanced and or too complex for people, the squadron system actually allows one to mix and match up to 2 different planes for maximum effectiveness and its not necessarily going to be won by stacking up on one feature such as maneuverability but a good combination of maneuverability and armor. While i cannot speak for others, the many mock dogfights ive done have shown that having some damage tanks and some glass cannons is actually a very good idea, although its also a matter of luck that the AI doesnt decide to gang up on the weaker planes early in the match. Im having some issues with my screen capture so the first few battles will likely not be recorded. I will still be sure to take plenty of screenies but ill try and get my screen recorder functioning again ASAP so that i can make videos of these fights, afterall, images arent that epic. Ohh, and please post some screenies of your plane(s) when submitting, while i will accept either way, id like to see what it looks like before i load it up and get it slaughtered ... And ofc here is my own submission: Squadron composition: 3 FW-190s and 1 BF-109.

Wish i could use scatterer, but the whole idea of my mod was to implement scatterer without using scatterer to give a huge performance boost to the user. Performance with scatterer alone is ok, but combining EVE and scatterer with 2000+ parts within 2.5km just kills the game for all but supercomputers... Anyways, ill take a look at altering the shaders to implement my features, the lack of "glowing" particles really drives me up the wall right now (itd look much better even on non glowy clouds with a tiny bit of lighting just like i have the cloud layers set to on the dark side of the planet). Thanks for the help, at least i know where to look to edit the shaders and such...

Hey @Waz, im continuing work on my own EVE based mod(SciFi Visual Enhancements), and im wondering if you could help me implement two features that would really make this mod so much better. First of all there is already a method to render the 2D cloud layers to glow on the night side of the planet, but it would be very useful if there was a way to allow the "fullbright" feature using the MinLight parameter to be extended to the 3D volumetric clouds. I have been trying to make volcanoes on moho, and sofar while i can make the proper effect during the day, it looks like crap at night. This is an extreme example of what i am talking about. Setting the minlight param to 1 results in a shadowless cloud layer (that gives the desired "glow" effect, but there is no way to make the 3d volumetric clouds actually glow like the cloud layer itself can be made to. Ive looked into the source code and i honestly cant make out how the heck to add this functionality to the 3d clouds, and i dont believe it would be too difficult to accomplish either, so if you could guide me in the right direction (no programmer but i know enough about coding to alter other people's source code and even write a few of my own functions/routines to add features) id really appreciate it (volcanoes and or lava effects that actually glow would be insanely cool looking!). The other feature which should also be quite simple that i would like to implement is rain effects. The basic idea is to have a rain texture that does not have any rotation (always faces up at the same angle) which moves downwards and is present below the cloud layer. It would be fine if this is implemented as another cloud layer beside the original cloud layer but has no 2D texture visible and only shows the particle effects with the falling textures. Any help inplementing these 2 features is appreciated, i really want falling rain on laythe and volcanoes/lava on moho, but thusfar these two things cant really be done properly (rain can sorta be simulated but it doesnt move downwards which is a bit immersion breaking, and the glow would really open up the door for volvcanoes, as well as things like glowy fog for us sci-fi inspired modders).

Ok here is a near finalized WIP of Kerbin's new cloud detail textures. I am pretty happy with teh results, because it lets me lower the details and increase cloud coverage as a whole around kerbin, but it doesnt look like trash when you get close up like many mods that use solidish details. One thing i dont like is the fact that i was forced to include multiple cloud types in the textures since im only willing to have 1 cloud layer on any given planet, but i think the end result was good enough for now. I may eventually add a second layer since i cant think of any ground based effects i want to add to kerbin but either way, i think this will make 1.3 much better then 1.2. Im not done with the oribital maps yet, but you can expect much more coverage throughout kerbin. Also the artefacting near the cloud layer altitude is a bit worse in this version, but i did my best to minimize this by adding plenty of gaps between clouds in teh detail layers. Again, not perfect and im going to work on improving this aspect, but i think its an overall step in the right direction...

Every single visual mod will result in SOME framerate drop. Ive done everything i can to keep the frames reasonable and 30FPS is NOT what id consider bad especially since im used to like 10-15 (try loading 1000+ part capital ships in KSP without the welding mod). Anyways, in other news, work on 1.3 is going well. Im currently focused on redoing the cloud layers substantially. The idea i came up with is to take advantage of the way EVE implements detail textures at shorter range which fade away when you get far enough away. The plan is to make all planets especially kerbin have much more clouds all over the planet, as well as some thicker distinct cloud systems in places, while at the same time thinning out the detail textures so the clouds are no longer so solid at closer ranges. Duna as can be seen below is one of the more extreme examples, where the clouds are super ultra thin while the total planet wide coverage has been increased substantially from before with a few more thick patches as well as more thinner patches placed here and there. Ive done the same basic treatment to kerbin and laythe, except a bit less overkill with the detail texture thinning, it has its share of clear open patches and there is still a solid amount of coverage. Kerbin's detail texture is a combo of wispyness like on Duna, and thick fluffy clouds like on a sunny day on earth. laythe has been overhauled a bit more, with my best attempt at creating a sort of rainy hurricane planet. Im working on adding rain underneath the clouds but this may or may not end up in release since i also have to be mindful of how it will affect performance, and having rain particles between 0 and 5km isnt going to be without its framerate drops. That said, if it does get in the final release, it will make the current laythe look like absolute trash visually. Id love some feedback from you guys on what you like better, the new ultra-thin Duna clouds im planning for 1.3 or the older 1.2 styled thicker but less planetary coverage?

I can confirm this myself through my own (rather extensive) weapons development. A single long ibeam (the stubby ones are worthless against strong armor) is perhaps the most lethal weapons currently possible if you consider its effectiveness per mass going into the weapon. Most of my new ships are armed with 6-12 SRM (ibeam propelled with 2-4 sepatrons) or the same number of PulseC weapons (ibeam propelled by a modified decoupler). While a single ibeam is unlikely to do extensive damage, the idea is to maintain sustained fire and basically gamble that one of the shots phases at the right distance and shatters the core part. From my testing the vast majority of ships that do not abuse cargo bay/fairing/indestructible collider parts (this is the one and only way to make something immune to "ibeams" but its more of a cheat imo then a valid method for armoring your ships) will have theirt core split with around 4-6 shots, occasionally the first round does it, but thats more dumb luck then reliable (only a flawed skeleton results in reliable 1 shots from a ibeam). Btw, im quite interested it this new shipkilling 0.6m weapon you are making, ive tried multiple times to create something akin to a 0.6m shipkiller, and the best ive come across is a single long ibeam (with a probe core and engine strapped on+RTG or battery), but it suffers from teh same issues the unguided ibeams have, unreliability and reliance upon multiple direct hits to guarantee one of the rounds phases into the core. Given that these missiles are heavier and much more on part count (~3 for a SRM, ~5 for a LRM and almost double the mass) their worth over unguided ibeam spam is questionable in anything but real time combat (where i think short range weapons are going to more or less become obsolete when someone can just kite you and keep firing longer range weapons). If you have made some breakthrough please upload a subassembly or missile file so that i could take a look at it and give it a shot, might even learn something or 2 from your design and use it to create some sort of mini shipkillers that arent reliant on long ibeam spam...

I hate to burst your bubble, but not everyone here uses the so called "realism" mods, and stock KSP is honestly more of a plausible alternate reliaty sci-fi then a realistic space sim. Sure it follows real physics laws (simplified to make it feaseable), but many things in KSP do not have real life counterparts (ion engine at 2kN, fuel tank ratios, the ability to make space warships, ect). Granted to each his own, but this is what i do with KSP, and i DOUBT that (unless the government is lying to us and has indeed began conquering the galaxies using starships) the following is realistic... SO yeah, before you diss someone's unrealistic idea consider that not all of us actually care or desire KSP to be another copy of reality...

never wanted 100% invulnurable (you CAN do it with fairings), but id love a ship that can be something like a true dreadnought that just keeps taking fire from like 4-5 enemy vessels and looses components, armor, ect, but refuses to break apart completely. Granted with the way weapons work in KSP, this is impossible, but itd be amazing is it could be done...

I see you have a new ship and it looks cool (always liked those mass effect styled engine coverings in the rear of most recently made ships). Hows the armor on that thing btw, cause im still struggling to create properly resistent armoring (capable of stopping 2 SRM-6s or 4 1.2m torps at a minimum before the ship gets neutered). In other news, ive gotten enough warships on my hands recently that i think ill be able to fight over the weekend. Hatbat's series made me considerably update alot of my old fleet (and a few recent ships that i kinda dismissed because they werent up to armor standards or had some fatal flaw that made them non competitive) so i defenetely have ships to fight with, now to actually test how bad they are in a real battle . So, anyone interested in shooting up some of my cannon fodder over the weekend and perhaps proving once and for all my dream of super strong armor is never going to happen ...

Would you prefer me to dump the spoilers altogether on my sub? Its not an issue for me either way, whatever you find easier to work with... Edit: i dumped the spoilers, so you should see everything easily now... Edit: added lurm battery for planetary defense category, and yeah, vall looks amazing with my mod

I mostly redesign some of the weapons because often enough the ones i have in my universe are WAY WAY WAY too powerful (many AKS warships are designed in universe to have either very powerful missiles or have such crazy ammo capacity they can singlehandedly take down like 2-3 standard ships, or like 20 badly armored warships). As for the ships themselves, its impossible to create truly incredible armor so i generally just submit the best armor i can physically make since its still crap against most shipkiller torpedos (1.2m guided missiles) and often enough results in a 1 shot kill when you look at the thing the wrong way . In other news... Also updated my sub with 1 more warship, the SK-203 "Aurora". Im quite happy with how it came out, and i even have a version that has a fully decked out bridge/interior for kerbals to move around in on my HDD. If you are interested in ships like that @HatBat, i would be glad to upload the "cinematic" interior edition, its just too high on part counts to effectively use in a real battle, so thats why i normally upload the general purpose "combat" versions which have useable part counts most of the time (unless its a destroyer or something which i cant physically make with low part counts). Actually if you want conematic ships i have a BC-304 replica and a Venator class star destroyer replica that are both absurd on parts (over 700) but have completely custom built internals (everything from the command bridge to recreational decks with external seats everywhere) and are bloody huge to begin with so they look awesome when flying starfighters near em... Also another thing you might want to add to the submission rules, is to put the pictures inside spoilers (what i did since it gives a clean and easy to view post). Its incredibly difficult to navigate teh submissions thread and it takes forever to load up in the first place due to the images loading forever. I think itd be a good idea to have images hidden so people can click to open them on demand and not clutter the thread with so much picture spam...

It SHOULD be fully not breaking with OPM installed but the planets will NOT get effects out of the bat. You will need to modify the configs to make the effects show up on different planets, and this is done by altering the name of the planet in front of the effect section (say you want kerbin's clouds on another planet in OPM, rename "kerbin" to "opm plaet name goes here"). Otherwise i cant see any possible reasons it would cause problems, but i do not have OMP on my own machine so i cannot be certain (its possible one day ill add native OPM support to this mod, but that will defenetely not be in the next update)...

Made my sub a bit back, might as well post here so you have a link to it @HatBat... Also, not exactly a "company" per say, but i have my own storyline i work with in my comic and i thought of a perfect way to link my universe with yours so take of it what you will. Currently i provided a nice selection of capital ships (a few fairly recent ones and a few legacy ships from way back when that still work well nowadays) and 2 orbital defense guns (different visual styles but both are more or less same functionality), although i am currently developing more ships for my own purposes, and all of the ones i feel are decent will likely end up uploaded here as well.

Allied with GMI Faction Description and History The AKS Alliance is a space faring faction based on Minmus that is primarily focusing on surviving against its enemies. Currently engaged in multiple conflicts, AKS has decided to branch out in search of technology that would provide an edge in these and other future conflicts. One particular group that was discovered had a very important piece of technology that Alliance wanted to get their hands on. Despite knowing full well that GMI is not a very friendly organization and it has done countless atrocities throughout the Kerbol System, no GMI activity thus far has adversely affected AKS or any of its allies, and it was decided to take the risk of opening trade negotiations. AKS decided to strike a deal with GMI to provide a small amount of its smaller vessels in exchange for a GMI designed cruiser or battleship class vessel, a class of warship that AKS does not produce on its own and requires for use as flagships. Of course, AKS never told GMI that they were truly after reverse engineering a warp drive that would hopefully be provided with the ship. On the table it looked like a perfectly fair offer, GMI providing one larger vessel to AKS for use as a flagship and AKS providing a larger quantity of smaller vessels and other military hardware to GMI, with GMI completely unaware of the true motives behind AKS wanting a GMI warship. Finally, AKS was fully aware that GMI might not honor the deal and possibly even become their enemy one day, so the AI on board all provided hardware was given built in sub directives that prevented the use of these vessels against AKS IFF transponders as well as built in backdoors allowing AKS to take over the ships if the need ever arises. Anyways, AKSTechnologies, the tech development division of the Alliance, specializes in low part count simplistic warships that can easily match a much heavier and larger vessel in offensive and defensive capabilities. All ships produced feature structural skeletons and while most are pretty easy to kill with high end weapons, they should be able to tank 1-4 medium grade weapons (such as the SRM) at a minimum and retain some combat abilities and mobility. All of them are borderline immune to extremely lightweight fighter weapons (such as Macey style "ant" torpedoes). Most ships have reasonable range of around 2000dV, and feature either decent thrust from the get go (as with the nuclear engine powered craft), or are equipped with short term boosters that bring its thrust levels up to expected levels during a fight and offer around 100-300dV worth of push. Starfighters and Drone fighters (HK-0xx/1xx, and FK series) Sub-Capital Ships (SK-0xx series) SK-002 With the heavier 60+ ton full size capital ships falling into disfavor, AKSTechnologies returned to the concept of "sub-capital" ships. The main issues holding back such development was the lack of good armor back in the day and its questionably worth over a cheaper and more agile bomber which carried around half the firepower. Modern advances in armor, mass compression, and compact weapons made the previously unfeasible concept sound, and the SK-0xx series was born. The SK-002 was the first truly successful ship of this type and was intended to fill the role of short range escort where it would screen the heavier and more vulnerable torpedo boats like the SK-101 from fighters, capital ships, and anything else that got too close for them to utilize longer range ordinance effectively. Armed with 12 SRM-1 (short range missile) launchers, it was a threat to everything on the battlefield, and while a single round was weak against capital ships, 12 of them were almost guaranteed to neuter a ship to the point it was no longer a threat and could be disposed of by other more powerful vessels. That said, it was not without its drawbacks. The craft relies on a dual stage engine system that uses a special booster engine for actual combat maneuvering which is limited to a very short duration. Once these boosters ran out, the craft was often unable to catch all but the slowest capital ships, and perhaps even worse, was its inability to dodge weapons fire in this state. Proper tactical deployment was the only way to counter the problem, but even then the sheer lack of boost fuel was the ship's achilles heel that was not corrected until the SK-003. Finally, crew safety was sub par to say the least, with many crews refusing to fly these warships because of the high risk of fatalities and opting for either fully autonomous deployment or remote control from a droid control ship. Stats: mass: 27.4t parts: 203 dV: ~2150 boost dV: ~70 armament: 12x SRM-1 SK-004 With the SK-003 proving its worth in the opening stages on the conflict between Alliance forces and the pirate coalition, AKSTechnologies began to focus on rectifying the drawbacks that held the 003 back. First and foremost was a lack of armor protection. The 003 utilized excessive redundancy to keep it on the battlefield even if the ship was shot into 10 pieces, but this approach was too complex, expensive, and resulted in a ship that couldnt be salvaged after taking as few as 2 solid hits. The 004 uses a heavily reinforced and interlocking hull design that blocks and disintegrates incoming ordinance preventing it from dealing catastrophic damage to the internals and skeleton. The armor is strong enough to make the craft borderline immune to fighter ordinance and allows it to take its share of capital ship weaponry before giving way. Because it was already too heavy, the originally planned LRM launchers were replaced by KDrones to lower weight and still offer some long range anti-fighter capability. With the focus on armor, the craft was to operate on the front lines alongside weaker but better armed ships. It could also be used as an escort vessel for larger craft where it could use its body to physically shield the allied craft by getting in between incoming ordinance and the target. Weaknesses include a design flaw in the armor that renders it prone to catastrophic failure if hit in a particular spot by a 1.2m torpedo, cramped bridge, sub par visibility to anywhere but in front, and relatively low ammunition capacity. While the cockpit was well armored (compared to older models), its role as a front line damage sink led to almost unilateral unmanned deployment as there was still a high risk of fatalities when hit multiple times over. Stats: mass: 38.2t parts: 238 dV: ~2150 boost dV: ~180 armament: 8x SRM-1, 4x KDrone SK-006 Looking in a new direction, AKSTechnologies attempted to create a jack of all trades vessel utilizing the SK-004 as a base while integrating aspects of the failed SK-005. The craft used a very similar skeletal design to the 004, but it did not cover it with quite as much armor to save on mass. This did result in a lower TWR and even less mobility, but the booster engine has been proven to match or exceed the best contemporary hostile vessels in TWR, at least temporarily. Also like the 005, this ship utilizes full stealth covering technology which severely limits the effective detection range of scanners compared to normal capital ships which mix stealth panels with heavy armor externally. At just under 40t, and relatively low cost, it can be used in most roles from front line combat to recon with the proper modules and weapons (export version is equipped for short range frontline combat with its complement of SRMs). Perhaps the only complain was the relatively bad crew safety when under fire common to the entire SK-0xx line of vessels. Stats: mass: 35.4t parts: 241 dV: ~2000 boost dV: ~190 armament: 6x SRM-1, 1x SRM-6, 4x KDrone Capital Ships (SK-1xx/2xx/3xx series) SK-101 A legacy ship created from the early days of AKS, the SK-101, or as it was known back in the day, the SK-CRV-I or class-I corvette, remains the backbone of the entire Alliance fleet with its balanced combination of firepower, range, mobility, and simplicity. It was initially built to combat capital ships at long range, with the use of Tripedoes (AKS version of the generic 1.2m capital ship torpedo), and its combination of range and workable TWR to kite the enemy and keep out of range of dumb fired missiles. That role later shifted to a dedicated flak-ship which was armed with multiple drones to create a massive bubble of death which protected any vessel within it from the hoards of fighters and bombers popularized at the time. The modern version combined those roles, creating a long range support ship which could take down both capital ships and fighters. Despite the backup short ranged missiles, engaging in close quarters is almost a guaranteed death sentence since alterations to the physics of the universe made its armor obsolete against all but weaker weapons. Aside from the absolute lack of armor, the ship retains the exposed command bridge which was popular back in the day for spotting targets visually. Furthermore, the vessel uses an antiquated engine layout making it easy to knock out all the engines with a single well placed shot, luckily not much of an issue due to its long range nature. Stats: mass: 59.6t parts: 213 dV: ~2800 armament: 1x SRM-6, 2x Tripedo (compact gen2 model), 6x KDrone SK-104 The SK-104 was created during relative peacetime and was rendered obsolete before the commencement of hostilities, but nevertheless, it had its share of strengths over the competition. It features very thick and triple layered armor which is capable of blocking all but the strongest shots. The ship was developed for front line anti-capital ship duty, and was armed with 3 1.2m hard points on the front. It could carry SRMs, RT-5s, Tripedoes, and a variety of other weapons systems all ideal at killing enemy capital ships. Because a frontline vessel would always come under harassment from fighters, the ship was provided with 8 backup KDrones to deal with unarmored targets or for situations where a heavy weapon was deemed overkill. Mobility is another of its strengths, with triple nuclear rockets pushing a 70t warship, augmented by 8 backup ion engines which supplement the nuclear engines and allow the vessel to maintain some mobility in the event of a catastrophic engine failure where all three engines are destroyed or the fuel runs out. It may be outdated and is a bit heavy for current Alliance standards, but its ability to deliver almost as much firepower on the battlefield as a SK-101 while having vastly superior armor protection gives it a niche that no other AKSTechnologies designed warship can truly fill. Stats: mass: 69.7t parts: 303 dV: ~1900 aux dV: ~700 armament: 1x SRM-6, 2x Tripedo (ER model), 8x KDrone SK-203 "Aurora" Frigate A hybrid design, the SK-203 is actually based on the original Aurora class warship used by the Alliance which was destroyed during peacetime when a incompetent pilot navigation failure resulted in an impact with Minmus. After the crash, AKSTechnologies developed a hybrid version which utilized many aspects of the original Aurora (bridge, sensors, engines, drone bay) but has standardized AKS hull construction, weapons, and a slightly smaller width and length. Like its predecessor, the new SK-203 is intended as a dedicated flak ship with its complement of 12 drones as the primary weapons system. While not intended to engage anything heavier then a bomber or fighter, the ship has been armed with 2 backup PulseC-2 forward firing impulse weapons as well as 2 LRM-1 long range missiles, both of which are capable of at least damaging capital ships to an extent. Because it is much more specialized compared to vessels like the SK-104 or SK-006, it is best utilized as part of a strike group or fleet that has other ships capable of directly engaging capital ships that the SK-203's weapons are ineffective against while it focuses on keeping fighters and bombers off other vessels with its very precise drone weapons. Owing to its role, armor is medium grade, capable of resisting all light munitions commonly carried by fighters, but it is not quite strong enough to deal with dedicated shipkilling ammunition such as 1.2m torpedoes. One fatal flaw, retained from its predecessor are the weakly protected engines, which are vulnerable to both fighter based weapons and kamikaze attacks. This prompted AKSTechnologies to include a emergency backup drive, similarly to the SK-104, which could return the ship to friendly territory in the event that both of the main engines have been destroyed. Stats: mass: 69.8t parts: 400 dV: ~2150 aux dV: ~500 armament: 12x KDrone, 2x PulseC-2, 2x LRM-1 Planetary Defense Hardware ED Type Orbital Defense Cannon Invented by another faction, AKS got hold of the blueprints early in its days and used these cannons to defend key locations from orbital threats. That said, the weapon was not without its share of downsides. For one, ammunition had to be specially made for it, and the gun could not just load any old AKS warhead and fire it into space, rendering supply a difficult and annoying prospect. Another issue was susceptibility to enemy fire, as if any section of the weapon was damaged, it could not fire anymore, and there was always a risk of the entire weapon exploding if one or both of the 2 main reactors were damaged in any way. Stats: mass: 47.1t parts: 320 armament: 8x Heavy Cannon Shells Modernized AKS Orbital Defense Cannon While the ED model orbital defense gun proved its worth, it was not without drawbacks. First and foremost the ED cannon required Kerbal operators, and given that Kerbals cant hit the broadside of a barn, a new weapon was build from the ground up utilizing aspects of the ED cannon in its construction but with a AI core to control it. The AKS model of cannon is fully autonomous and only requires targets to be uploaded to its firing computer, with the process of shooting and killing a ship being entirely out of the hands of Alliance commanders. Another improvement upon the ED cannon was the shift to using standardized AKS ammunition. A modified ER (extended range) Tripedo was chosen since it proved its worth against capital ships time and time again. The specific model of Tripedo was otherwise the same as the original 1st gen model, but featured an extended range fuel tank to let it hit targets in orbit outside the range of a standard torpedo as well as programming alterations required for loading and firing out of the cannon as opposed to a starship's missile bays. Not only that, but the entire cannon was simplified, with many of the subsystems integrated internally and because of that, less vulnerable to being neutralized. The new model could function provided there was at least one piece of undamaged ammunition in the magazine and at least one of the four total power conduits remained intact (this would drop the rate of fire by quite a bit but not the ability to fire entirely). Stats: mass: 36.5t parts: 233 armament: 9x Tripedo (ER model) LRM Battery With a considerable surplus of LRM-1 missiles, AKSTechnologies decided to utilize them for point and low orbit defense by mounting them on a ground based launch platform. The battery stores 10 multi-purpose long range missiles that are effective against almost all targets from capital ships to tanks, although they arent quite powerful enough to reliably penetrate the thickest armor plating. The missiles have enough range to hit targets in low orbit around most moons, and ground targets can usually be engaged anywhere on the planet, although in practice it is better to engage within 50km due to more accurate targeting capabilities when the missiles are remotely controlled by the launcher. Like the orbital defense cannon, these launchers only require targeting information to be uploaded to the AI core, after which the target is automatically engaged with no user intervention. Stats: mass: 15.5t parts: 165 armament: 10x LRM-1 Few Notes: All starships/fighters use staging to fire their weapons. If long range guided torpedoes are present on board a craft, they are staged first as they should be used at long range while closing the distance between two ships. After this (or if the craft lacks long range guided weapons) the forward firing unguided missiles are fired, almost always one at a time in a very specific sequence. Rounds fire right to left, top to bottom, from the inside of the ship to the outside of the ship. The first few shots are usually near the cockpit and do not require compensation at shorter ranges, while the later rounds are farther out and may require the vessel to be aimed a slight bit off target for the missile's convergence to line up with the target. All SRM or equivalent have an optimal range of between 100 and 300m depending on the actual target (against thicker ships best to fire from farther out, against fighters fire from ~100m or so, just enough to let it build up some velocity to do damage but not phase through entirely). Aside from that, if present, KDrones are manually decoupled and use RCS to hit a target (best against fighters or other weakly armored craft). All ships use action group 1 and 2 for controlling their engines. Action group 1 is the primary propulsion which is usually the lower thrust higher dV engines used for general moving around, and action group 2 is used to activate combat thrusters if they are present (only certain ships have this feature). The boosters are good for ~200dV (depending on ship but most are near that) so they should be used sparingly and only when in combat (or during emergency landings). Some other larger ships do not have boosters but feature emergency ion drives to return the ship home after the loss of all main engines. Action group toggles those as well. Everything here is provided with a launcher that can deposit the vessel at any location within the kerbin system. All ground hardware is tested on both mun and minmus (though most of it can easily land on anything but tylo, eve, laythe, kerbin, although getting there requires refueling the transfer stage). All starships as of this time are capable of reaching Jool at a minimum before requiring any refuels using standard hohman transfers Many of the "capital/sub-capital" ships require the use of a crew transfer shuttle to get crew in and out of them. This is because the ships are so compact that the hatches/ways to get out are obstructed. To get the crew out dock anything else to the ship and use the crew transfer feature (teleportation) to get the crew in or out of the ship. Most starships have had their original in universe weapons load outs lowered to provide a more balanced gameplay for your series. For example the SK-006 in in universe can be armed with up to 6 PulseC-2, 2 heavier models of Tripedo on the front, along with 4 LRM-1s on the rear hard points giving it over 3 times the effective firepower of the GMI export version. I can easily up arm these ships if you feel that they are too weakly armed for the series, but i think the current weapons load out give most of them a good niche in the close range category (most are armed with minimal guided weaponry) that is specialized enough while a few variants offer different roles like long range (SK-101, SK-203). Anyways, if the weapons do end up too strong/too weak, they all come with docking ports so you are free to alter the weapons as you see fit to better work with your series... Also, i have read the guidelines and made sure this sub follows em correctly...