panzer1b

I can actually give you a few tips with ions (since ive kinda switched over from nukes to ions a few months back). First of all 100+ RTGs is a VERY bad idea... Your best bet is to have more batteries then RTGs since all you need is enough EC to accomplish the absolute longest burn you ever expect to need to pull off. My own designs are roughly designed with ~1500-2000dV on batteries alone in mind. You dont actually need to have more then that because interplanetary timewarp (even if you have but 1 RTG) will recharge your entire battery capacity and RTGs are incredibly heavy compared to batteries. Also, ions tend to have such long burns that you dont care about teh oberth effect as much as with other engines, so you can afford to do two separate burns to a far away planet (my smaller ion craft can do ~1500dV, then do a 500 or so dV burn once in solar orbit when the few RTGs have recharged the batteries, its not as efficient on fuel but with ions being so insanely fuel efficient anyways it more then compensates. Another tip (although you didnt do bad in this regard with ur ship) is to spread the ions out as much as possible. Ions are unaffected by objects behind them (they will always provide thrust even if inside a cargo bay pointing at the back wall), so in terms of survivability you are better off spreading out the fuel/engines/batteries as much as possible like how my modern ships do it. Best to have no more then 3 ion engines connected to 1 part so a direct hit to any part of your ship will be unable to actually knock out your engines. This thing uses the whole spread out internalized ion layout. Ions are attached in groups of 1-2 to a 650 ibeam, and those ibeams are attached all around the skeleton frame one after the other. While its far from a perfect design, extremely bad luck aside, you will survive 10+ shots with this thing and still retain mobility. All in all, your new ion thing looks incredible, especially that rear wing layout. Not quite exceptional in armor or firepower, but it looks good enough that that doesnt matter . The only thing id do is get rid of all but ~10 RTGs and add enough batteries to allow for a ~1000-2000dV burn before requiring a recharge...

Except that such games will devolve into everyone running out of ammo if you ask me. My most basic (relatively unarmored) ships are 90% immune to macey dean styled weapons . Ofc if i make a fairing missile ill be more then capable of killing anyone without using 80m/s parts, but imo fairing weapons (or any other form of abusing parts that have indestructible colliders) isnt exactly fair. Ramp armor and anything with movable sections, pretty much relies upon two factors to work, indestructible sections and luck to an extent. Ive done extensive testing against it and you have to hit a very specific section to actually destroy a ramp (the wider area near the back), shooting teh ramp itself will never actually destroy the ramp. Yeah ibeams work so-so against em (pretty much aim at the vulnurable section and hope you brought enough rounds to get a lucky killshot), but i personally wouldnt consider usign them since it makes games more luck dependent and less based on design decisions. Then again, i dont exactly build 100% fair ships either so i cant complain too much about fairing armor. While they arent what id call cheating, 90% of modern AKS warships/fighters employ so much redundancy in their construction that you pretty much have to have lots of ammo AND high precision to have any hope of killing them. Almost all the new models need 12+ direct hits from ibeam styled weapons or 4+ competitive torps before i can say that they are 100% unable to function whatsoever (probe cores everywhere + damaged sections tend to break apart into smaller functional subsections which can move, shoot, and have their own dedicated probe cores). Also, when it comes to classic macey style torpedoes, the game's destructive interaction actually changed in such a way that such weapons (in particular the antpedo as i like to call it, oscar-B+ant engine+2 docking ports) are incredibly weak and more often then not will not do ANYTHING to a ship. The only thing from macey's series that still works today is the RT-10 torpedo. Its extremely inefficient on mass, but it has low part count and it provides enough raw kinetic energy to break joints. The real reason i dont touch those in competitive games is because they are extremely large, forcing me to build either a very large ship (heavy+part count issues), or stack em lengthwise leading to distinct weakspots where the entire stack of weapons gets shot off by a single precisise hit to that spot. RT-5s are better, but still have the same issue that they pretty much require stacking for decent ammo capacity in a smaller ship and 90% of all my competitive ships are so small that you can fit at an absolute maximum 4 1.2m hardpoints on the front (and mounting anything broadside is going to result it terrible accuracy). Also, since 1.2 has come out, most of my fleet is kinda dead (i have 2 fighters, 1 subcapital, and 1 capital that im even remotely happy with and has been updated to work well in 1.2). Need to spend a few days making some new ships, then il battle you guys some...

Try this mod, im using it myself since (just like you) i absolutely cant stand waiting for 20 minutes just to get something to/from interplanetary. Stock is acceptable for duna/eve at best, everything else is too painful imo...

Except that noone is going to force anyone to use the new antenna range system because it is ill-suited for multiplayer (especially PvP). Right now a single antenna allows both sides to get full functionality (so unless a mod comes out where you can have distinct "teams" with the comms system i cant say its going to work on here). Droid fighters/vessels are still going to work as they always did with the system disabled so im not concerned about it affecting any combat scenario though. Ofc if you want to play with the comm limit you can always start a battle that specifies it, but i think we can assume the default rules assume that the comm system would have to be disabled. Looks good. That said, id HATE to be the kerbal who gets the privelage of sitting in the manned torpedo on the front of the ship...

Sounds good. If you want any help working on this mod id be glad to help you out with testing/texture work. Im no pro coder (the most i can do code wise is modify other people's mods and recompile them afterwards), but i do have some texturing experience (made quite a few mods for WW2 games back in the day, so i can skin stuff fairly well as well as work on particle textures), nothing official but its something i like to do when im not in the mood for playing games or doing anything truly productive. Also, i do have an idea for making the mod almost lag-free. You could implement what IL2 used to use in its old smoke-trails. Combine a 2D flat trail with a shorter sprite based particle system as the mod has now. This has the advantage of allowing much longer lasting and longer length smoke trails without actually requiring you to render thousands of particles (and you dont get any of that terrible artefacting at high speeds where the smoke turns into separate balls of smoke and not a true trail. Ofc there is the disadvantage of the fact that it lacks any volume (and thus looks weird from very close up and or when looking directly from behind the smoking vessel). Best way to mitigate that would be to only enable the simplified trail effect on things that arent being actively controlled or even better are farther then a set distance. Say a plane explodes 1km away from you, you wont actually be able to tell the difference between a trail and sprite based smoke clouds under 95% of circumstances, so why bother wasting processing power in that case. This is the sort of effect im talking about. Its an older game that has since been considerably updated, but using better looking sprites/trail textures i think this mod can become just as good if not better looking, and with less performance issues. There is 3 effects overlayed, sprite based fire, sprite based smoke, and a 2d smoke trail that allows the effect to have length with virtually 0 performance concerns. I think it would be very good to have this in future versions of the mod, 3 effects, sprite based fireballs (with perhaps a few LOD levels so that at very long range you dont need to render that many small particles), sprite based smoke (this would be used at shorter ranges and wouldnt be too long either), and a trail based smoke effect that would be the dominant effect from far away (this would actually be similar to the BDA tracers which take 0 processing power for all intents and purposes).

Looks good, but how did you get this working in 1.2? Ive tried to recompile the same code and it keeps giving me crap (and i know about the changes to assemblies, i got rid of KSPUtils). Also, that screenshot reminds me of il2 sturmovik mod from way way back in the day. Original game had pitch black smoke with super bright fireballs and there was a mod that turned the original (pretty bad imo) smoke into something akin to what you have. Anyways, cant wait for your updated version since this mod really makes combat look good despite the considerable performance hit it produces. Gotta love capital ship battles where the entire enemy ship is on fire and trailing tons of smoke, much more immersive. I know technically fire in vaccum doesnt really make much sense, but hey, KSP is a sci-fi game and not a reality sim, not to mention how nice it looks... If it isnt too much a bother id love to download what you have now and perhaps offer you some tips on improvements, but if you prefer to hold onto it until ready im not that inpatient...

Im honestly hoping for 2 things, more optimization, and the grafix overhaul that was started by porkjet (right now we have no idea what his absence will mean, im not going to jump on the bandwagon and automatically assume the rocket parts revamp is dead). I know it isnt essential, but itd be very nice to have the rocket parts (and especially the few remaining ugly cockpits) redone in a standard similar to the SSTO and starfighter (i dont make planes so i cant call them airplane) parts that we got with the mk2 and mk3 updates. Clouds and better atmo shaders would also be welcome here, but given that scatterer/eve have more or less done that already to a reasonable degree, i am perfectly content with mods to fix the glaring visual issues of stock. That and the stock implementation would have to have customizable textures for me to be really happy with it and stop using visual mods. Things like the cloud textures, sunflare (stock sunflare in scatterer sucks as it doesnt look like something out of sci-fi), and the coloring schemes of atmo/clouds (astronomer's pack was the only eve based mod i actually liked out of the box, everything else lacks that sci-fi feel to it)... Aside from that, there is very little that i consider that necessary in stock KSP, the 2 mods that id personally love in stock is the robotics mod (or some variation of that that gives you rotating/bending joints), and KIS (so i can make minor repairs and modifications to a ship in space). Anything else is just too limited in its audience to make stock. Things like RO/RSS are great for those that enjoy it, but making that stock would make at least 50% of the community unhappy, LS same situation (albeit that can just be toggled off), just no reason to spend the time and effort implenting something that at least half the community isnt crazy about. Also, while i would love to see MP, the amount of effort and time it would take to make that would require too much time dedicated away from core features. Wish DMP wasnt abandoned (its technically being updated to new versions but actual development and bugfixing is completely dead), it was a good mod back in the day before it just fell apart. That said, not exactly a priority imo right now...

Cool, and i dont even need to use weld mods to make it work in stock game (just use autostrut on a few select parts and its rock solid). Perhaps the one issue is size (assuming its designed for tweakscale), its a tad small imo right now, my venator semi-replica (part count kinda stopped me from making it 100%) is longer then the thing (and that isnt even close to correct size either).

While i wouldnt say no to more cargo bays, i think 90% of anything you want to make with them is doable stock. What i do feel KSP needs badly is a few hinged door like parts. Im not talking about all out infernal robotics style doors, but something as simple as a larger sized airbrake that has a open/close animation and can be used to create custom doors and custom bays (i habitually use airbrakes for doors, windows, even retractable landing legs occasionally). Airbrakes are great for certain applications, but they are just too small and not really a good shape for making traditional doors out of (not to mention the part count if you try to make a large carrier door out of airbrakes). I know its isnt a priority, but a few very basic door pieces (for starters perhaps a 1x1 and 2x2 structural panel sized "door" with one hinged side) would really make the game better for those of us who prefer making our own designs and not just using the very limited cargo bays/airbrakes/antennas to make doors out of. While i would absolutely love to see a robotics mod in the stock game, doors are much easier to do right (its just a square thing with an animation similar to the already existing parts), and dont require that much time to implement...

MK1 structural fuselage does not shield anything inside it (in terms of aero), it does protect from heating though.

Regardless of what happens (im not going to be pessimistic as i just dont have any hard evidence to point that way), at least i have KSP 1.2 on my HDD and i be (in the extremely unlikely event that KSP does fall apart), modders will keep developing the game. This is exactly what happened with an old flight sim i still play on occasion, technically the game has been completely discontinued but some enthusiasts still improve it through unofficial patches... That said, ive gotten way more then my money's worth out of the game and im still very happy with its state, so at the least ill be able to keep 1.2 beta around (once its on my HDD it stays on it and gets placed on my 5 backup drives i keep in basement)...

Im seriously hoping they dont add DRM in future versions. Doesnt stop pirates, and just annoys us legit customers. The one thing i love about KSP as it stands is that i can copy the game to another directory and it works fine, no shady software modification required to bypass DRM. I have absolutely nothing against giving the devs money they surely deserve (as KSP is like 100 times more entertainment for the price then almost all other games i own), but if DRM is added you are going to annoy alot of players. Anyways, if you absolutely HAVE TO add DRM, make sure it isnt something that requires an internet connection to work, DRM like that drives me up the wall...

Personally i like it because it lets me build insanely redundant sub-capital ships that spread the engines throughout the hull (so any one hit wont destroy the entire ship's engine array). Also, other engines are more cheaty imo because if you want more thrust, just clip 2-10 inside each other making one engine composed of super large amount of smaller ones. Now that i do consider cheaty, but again, noone is forcing anyone to do it that way, if you think clipping parts is cheat, then dont clip, same with engines and the thrust obstruction, if you feel its cheating to place an engine inside a craft and still get thrust from it, then dont do that. Also, besides the two thrust reversor jets, i believe the ant/spider do not have thrust blocking (unless this was changed very recently), as do the RCS engines (vernor, quad, linear and even the OMS engine). SO it isnt an exclusive scenario that is just the ion. If the ion gets its thruster blocked, i say all engines should (besides possibly RCS as those can be a pain to get working otherwise). Either way i think its about time for a larger ion engine. Ions in their current form are useless for large ships since you would need like 500 parts minimum for just the propulsion systems (~100-200 engines, rest batteries/solars/rtgs). Yeah i can edit the ion properties to include batteries (and some ablator to increase their dry mass to compensate for it), but id much rather get a larger ion engine and then still be able to use the batteries separately. Still, if they do alter the thrust, ill just adapt and redesign my capital ships to let them work with the new thrust blocked ion, until then, ill stick to my insanely redundant armor layouts with enough ions spread throughout the ship to make completely killing it almost impossible (unless the enemy has 20 missiles or so).

Well, more ships being made... Just finished the new SK-003 series. Using concepts learned with the SK-002, i pretty much improved upon the basic concept while giving it a much better look imo. I crossed 4 things to make this, the hull shape and structure is taken from a concept AKS cruiser i made in 3ds max a few years back, the claws on the sides are in the iconic AKS style pretty much all KSP ships have, the internal hull uses lessons learned from the SK-002, and the weapons layout is taken from the failed SK-105 that pretty much sucked in every way but the weapons looked really good on it. Armor is so-so, but since ive just about given up entirely on armor protection, not a big deal. The more i think about it and look at ship designs, test them ect, the more i realize that procedural designs are the way to go, so what if i get a section of the ship shot off or the core split apart, if half of what remains retains full combat ability, then the ship is still in the game! That and i can pretty much settle for a wing based exterior with a few structural panels for critical sections, less mass, and still enough protection to keep it from being 1 shotted or anything of the sort. A hair heavier and higher part count then the SK-002, but it has better weapons variety (8 SRMs and 4 LRMs), better survivability (less raw armor but better redundancy and spread out weapons), a 1.2m hardpoint on the back (can be equipped with emergency thruster, interplanetary drive, or carry 1-2 capital ship torps). Its by no means perfect, but at ~33t, and enough firepower to wipe out 300t capital ships reliably, i cannot complain. Really surprised with how good it came out considering it began as a purely aesthetic design that i later built an internal for...

This NEEDS to be added to stock KSP because it'd cut down alot of time. If a ship has 3 hatches, and 2 are blocked, then why should i have to keep moving the kerbals from the pods with a blocked hatch to the one with an open hatch and not just let me EVA from said hatch directly. Unless this is a coding issue that is more complex then we can see right now (im not a programmer so i wouldnt know), then i see no reason not to do this... Maybee someday we will get such a feature (or someone makes a mod for it)...

Id love to see stuff like this because it would really make planetary exploration more interesting. That said, a good first step would be to add a few easter egg like natural formations, and fix the ones that were left underground (like the cave on tylo). Not an ideal solution, but it doesnt require adding alot more colliders and polygons (all of which do affect performance). That said, if the devs find the time and can pull it off without making the game much laggier, i am all for cave like formations on planets where it makes sense to have them. Maybee we can even get a massive cave where you can like fly into a planet's core while we are at it. It would be very interesting to experience the 0 gravity zone inside a planet (ofc assuming its not a melted core in which case the EVA kerbal instantly goes poof).

1. Should they appear visually as normal struts? I would have to say no for two reasons. First of all, while the performance aspect may be less then adding more parts, anything that has to be rendered in game will decrease performance (probably wont be a big deal with just a few struts but many mods that feature insane polycount do slow it down). Second, it will ruin alot of purely aesthetic designs which benefit considerably from the new autostruts in that they nolonger need to have visible struts anywhere which may or may not completely ruin the looks. Now i would welcome an option which enables a visual strut (there are plenty of ships where having it visible would improve the looks), but this option (if it is ever implemented) should be completely optional and not forced because it would make designs that shouldnt have visible struts unbuildable (lets just say almost all of my sci-fi replicas went from so-so to much prettier with this update because i could ditch the external strutting for those that shouldnt have any). 2. Should they add mass to the ships? Given they are there mostly there as a utility feature, i see no reason they should add mass to ships. People that insist upon absolute realism (not that thats even possible in a videogame), are welcome to use the normal struts and arent forced to use autostruts for anything. That and given that autostruts are quite limited in their usefulness, and (at least imo) are not a replacement for regular struts since they are far more limited, i see no reason to limit their use. I'd only support this if the autostruts feature allows picking the part it struts to manually (instead of the heaviest, root, grandparent modes), then it would be essentially a regular strut replacement and should come with teh same advantages and disadvantages of regular struts. 3. Should they be limited to the VAB/SPH? Defentely NOT! The biggest reason i am against this is that the autostruts allow you to say dock something to a ship and then strut it correctly afterwards. Normally i'd use KIS/KAS to add struts after the fact, but i think its much better to give people a stock option for making space stations, large motherships with lots of stuff docked to em, carriers, ect. Ofc i would really prefer KIS to become stock (so we can finally dissasemble and reassemble ships in the field), but until then i think the new struts are a reasonable alternative that also doesnt affect performance. I would be fine with this if and only if KIS/KAS (or at least the ability to attach struts in the field) becomes a stock feature, then we can use normal struts in the field when docking together massive stuff that wobbles and is unstableish. All in all, i think we should leave the things as they are. I know i may not speak for everyone, but my biggest limitation when it comes to enjoying this game is the part count issue, and anything that can be done to limit that problem is good in my eyes, even if it makes the game a little easier and or less realistic. Autostruts allow you to cut down on quite a few parts (when your ship is already 1000 or so parts), dont add to lag by any measurable amount, and well, arent exactly unfair or OP in any way since they dont really replace the regular struts but add a new mechanic. That and its a bandaid fix for the wobble kraken (the one where ships start wobbling around until they tear themselves apart). For those that feel its unfair (and dont insist on building or using 1000+ part vessels), there is nothing forcing you to use them (either stay away from them or if you prefer disable adv tweakables and not be given the option), everyone is happy that way...

While im 100% for this suggestion, i have a much better idea... Why not make the music system user configurable in a similar way to how GTA series made the user radio system. You can add your own music files and place them in each planet's or situation based folder and you get your own choice of music if you want to per every situation. I just have my own playlists i listen to when playing KSP (and kill the in game music), but a method to get customized sound in KSP would be very welcome provided it doesnt take too much away froim dev time since it isnt what id call essential (decent mucis playlists in external programs do just fine, i get plenty of violent combat music when im engaging in capital ship battles)...

Most are fine but a few that really stand out are the crew pods... I think the devs should standardize the weights per kerbal on those pods. Something like the MK1/MK2 cockpits are ~1t per kerbal, so the other parts should be similar to this. The MK1-MK2 pod should be ~3t cause 3 kerbals, ect. The lander cans (have low impact tolerances) should weigh a bit less then that, perhaps .6-.8t per kerbal, but the 2 seater can is so heavy it makes no sense (you would NEVER bring one of those unless you are building entirely for looks and dont care about efficiency, 2.6t for 2 kerbals and terrible impact tolerance). Most of the pods are ok as they are, but the mk2 lander can and the 3 seater pod needs to be made lighter as it makes no sense to use those outside of the rare "appearance" department (not that they even look very good cause outdated models). Girders and ibeams are fine (you are exchanging mass for impact tolerance), have you ever tried building armor out of those cubic struts, they utterly suck at protecting anything whereas it takes some pretty high firepower to bring down a ship made of ibeams and girders as armor plating... Ofc combat isnt what most people like to do in KSP, but even something like landing, ibeams and girders make excellent landing legs for very heavy landers, the cubic struts, not so much. Unlike the cockpits, these things actually have a good reason to be heavy. Otherwise, yeah, the hubmax is WAY too heavy for what it does as neither is it a strong part (low impact tolerance so forget landing on em), nor does it have any qualities that justify the weight. Same can be said about the micronode which is in the same boat (at least that one makes a good impactor though for weaker weapons). Hopefully with the game becoming more and more polished (after the rocket revamp we should have way less "ugly" parts remaining), the devs will eventually take a good look at balancing parts over. Until then, its mods or just playing the game as is and hoping for a fix later...

I just CANNOT understand the obsession for absolute "realism" in KSP. There are PLENTY of mods out there if you absolutely must have your engines with real life models, ISP values, correct fuels, ect. KSP never was and still is not intended to portray reality in its stock parts, planets, ect. It takes certain aspects of reality and puts them together into a very fun and well made game. Everyone who is obsessing with the whole compact engines arent showing machinery they need to operate and are against placing that inside a fuel tank need to chill out and look at KSP as what it is, a fun game with plausible physics and the universe somewhat modeled after what we have but by no means a copy of real life. Afterall, since when do you see a kerbal when walking down the street? There is nothing in this game dictating it has to follow the laws of earth (which btw are also invalid as soon as you go to area 51). And yeah, im aware jet engine are also missing the so called turbine part, but i dont mind at all. If you must have realism then there are turbines you can enable in the part.cfgs and make sure you dont put it in a fuel tank or the realism cops will tear your door down... Ofc this is coming from someone who could care less about 100% realism and considers building capital ships, space carriers, and starfighters, and then using all of that in battles way more fun then trying to replicate real life space flight. That and i care more about looks then realism (or to an extent function). I bet half the realism focused crowd will end up crucifying me for habitually doing the following because i feel it looks nicer then having the nuke exposed... And yeah, technically that wouldn't work IRL, but then again, the following wouldn't work either, and yet i made it work in KSP (despite being a sci-fi replica that should never be air worthy)... And my final remark: Noone is forcing those who dislike a certain engine or part to use them. Feel reaction wheels are cheating, then dont use them on your ship, feel a compact engine is cheating, then use a full size model with the tank butt, but dont force your ways on those of us that dont consider part clipping or whatever cheating/unfair. I dont normally get that annoyed about anything, but the hostility towards engines that arent identical to those in reality (and have some of their model inside the structure/fuel tank) is really high right now

Waste of money and time, everything from the absolute basics like getting to orbit to advanced things like armor/weapons design can be found online on youtube or on the forum for FREE (well discounting the cost of the internet which you probably need for things other then gaming anyways). That and the advantage of youtube is that you can look for the specific thing you want to accomplish and only that thing. This is especially true for unorthodox playstyles (im willing to bet that there is nothing about building combat ships, stock propeller planes, bearings, kraken drives, ect), and while it may help learn the basics, the majority of the extremely basic stuff is better learned through the tutorials and kspedia which are included in the game (by no means do i think these are perfect in current form but they should help a complete nub get to orbit). Finally, while im not someone who would ever buy this kind of thing, even for those that would benefit from it, 30 bucks is very insanely overly expensive (for something like this...). Theres a good reason i refuse to buy college books (and havent bought 1 for over 2 years, theres a think like friends which can like lend it to you if absolutely necessary). That doesnt even go into the fact that KSP has been changing so much over the updates (even 1.2 altered the drag so that certain designs utterly suck and others work much better compared to 1.1) that there is no way the manual will remain valid long term (unless its talking about how to naviagate the main menu which hasnt changed over the years except the submenus ofc)

Im actually against implenting Hedit as stock, too many features of that mod that can both break the game completely (ability to mess with planet orbits comes to mind), and the mod is a tad feature heavy which is just unnecessary... As for adding some of what Hedit can do to teh stock cheat menu, id like to see the ability to edit a particular ship's orbit manually (change the values of all the parameters to alter say inclination, location, eccentiricity, ect), and id also like the ability to alter fuel levels, and possibly the ability to land a vessel at a given coordinate (or the current coordinate location). Otherwise, the whole edit planets should go (this is bad as it can cause game breaking bugs to occur and there is no reason a player should be able to make duna orbit around gilly as hilarious as it is)... Not against adding more features to stock, but porting hedit, despite obvious liscense violations (not that i give a damn about such things myself), isnt a good idea and id rather the devs focus their efforts in dealing with more pressing matters...

Im obviously not the smartest human on earth, but i dont understand what this has to do with the spacecraft exchange at all? Shouldnt this go into the "random screenshots" thread?

All of my recent planes instantly explode when time warping at X2... Then again, ive recently gotten into making customized electric engines (not quite as epic as infiniglide but i do get infinite range with em) and those really hate time warp when they spin at like the maximum allowed speed for the game... At least my "conventional" ones work fine at any time warp, thanks to strut spam (err autostruts nowadays) so even my probably best SSTO capoable normandy replica flies fine at x4, no flex, no explosions, no considerable loss in efficiency that im aware of (use x4 habitually to help deal with the excruciatingly long ascent to orbit which is like half an hour at X1).

@Abraxas, you have officially inspired me to create a flak-turret that can be used on anything from tanks to capital ships! The current prototype (intended for mounting on my newly built Panzer-IV chassis to create a FlaKPanzer-IV) is ~60 parts not counting weapons, is fully armored (not a single part that isnt structural), and is pretty smooth motion considering its like going back to square wheels and shafts which dont exactly slide well. Works best in low gravity environments but it does work on kerbin (technically). Its not perfect by any means yet, and its incredibly heavy but its able to survive direct impacts from anything but heavy weapons. Its also pretty damn modular in design so you can remove the elevation axis if you dont need it (for example in tanks), and you can place more or less whatever you want to on it in terms of weapons (wont work in kerbin grav but you can mount dual heavy capital ship SRBs onboard this thing with no structural failures or issues of any kind). Ohh, and the turret is so well built that it snaps back together using docking ports when you quicksave and quickload (docking ports allign) so its not a 1 shot use like the fairly popular bearings that use a decoupler inside. Thanks for the inspiration Abraxas, if you are interested in trying it out the prototype on your ships PM me or post a request here, (it will most likely lower your part counts not to mention give you near indestructible turrets outside of excessively heavy weapons like SRBs and ASMs) otherwise wait for the release of my FlaKPanzer-IV AA tank. And the best part: IT SHOOTS DOWN ACTUAL PLANES! Gotta try this thing out on a capital ship, armed with a SRM-4 cannon it'll be quite lethal to anything in teh area.