panzer1b

More derpin around... Ive found that BCorp's Broadsword class frigate is actually a rather even match for the AKS Eclipse class corvette, winning pretty much is entirely dependent on dumb luck with which side happens to get a shot that knocks out the other's weapons first. The Eclipse tends to loose its PDC turrets instantly when shot at but the primary cannon is rather well protected although in the 3 times i tried the Broadsword won twice so id say that in a slugging match the BCorp ship is superior (albeit heavier and larger but its also lower tech so expected). Ofc in a strategic fight 1v1, the Eclipse wins as it has long range weapons able to engage well b4 the short range slugging match, but at least the short range engagement sorta goes the way i expected it to go (Broadsword also has ibeam sepatron rockets able to do a lot of alpha damage in the very start of the slugging fest). Redid the front of AKS's Dimension class cruiser, since i never was happy with it and i sorta made it fit asthetically with the rest of the high tech AKS warships (3 of the atmo scanner+mk2 light fixtures as with the Nebula and Eclipse). Also fixed the engines which look amazing now, slight clipping here and there as it cant be helped (asthetics come 1st), but its not too unrealistic and the armor protection is very good (byfar the toughest ship ive ever made, never 1 shot killed the thing with any sub 15t weapon thusfar). And a nice shot of finishing off the Broadsword from the last test battle i had... Upgraded the GSD-49p Talon to modern standards, works on Eve but very finnicky wheel springs so it wobbles, prolly need something wider and more stable for this planet. Blew up it's old version i left on Duna, so at least the cannon works (albeit i have to watch the range as it only works at multiples of ~30m due to the way the fireworks physics work. Its also one of the most stable and safe to drive vehicles iv e made, easily able to do 50m/s in moderately bumpy terrain at x3 time accel, and up to 80m/s at 1x time accel on pretty much any terrain you can think of including massive jumps. Got it up to ~87 and it lost a good chunk of the front on a jump, but technically still alive and combat capable even after the damage. And a final beauty shot of the Talon doing massive air while firing the main cannon cause i can. BCorp's newest tank, the GT-MB4 (havent thought of an actual name for it yet), and like the polar opposite of space combat where AKS ships are dominant generally speaking, this thing wrecks every AKS vehicle 1v1 reliably unless it gets extremely unlucky and takes a direct hit to either the cannon or the hinge/rotator directly behind it (unlikely in anything but staged scenarios where AKS gets to just unload for a minute or more without return fire). Its a bit WIP and i still dont like the look of the turret (not entirely sure what i want to do with it but its way too small relative to the tank itself and the massive plasma railgun sticking out of it. Goodbye Talon... And thats after like 2 minutes of sustained fire without any retaliation, just wouldnt hit the turret and hitting the hull doesnt actually do much of anything useful since 90% of the hull is sacrificial armor. Also minor update to my old Dune class dropship. Lands beautifully with just a quick burst to slow it down. Fits 2 Talons internally, a bit draggy getting em up but it has enough fuel to drag that up anywhere into Duna's SOI (though lacks the fuel to land on IKE without refuel as it would need the parachutes to land without expending considerable fuel. And one final shot burning to orbit with the full load of vehicles inside...

Thats pretty much all you need to make KSP great again... Anyways, i do agree that many of the stock engines/fx are meh, i have to say having played around in 100% stock a few times (mostly due to performance issues involving loading up 2 cruisers with their escorts in 1 loading zone), there are no parts that stand out as major eye sores and while there are some that are massively improved by restock, there are others that i have to say are equal or even a bit better imo then restock's versions. That, and for engine plumes get waterfall (and either the stock or restock configs as it alone doesnt do squat), they are much closer to realistic albeit i had to tweak the NTR as i hate waterfall's default rendition of that particular plume realistic or not, the rest are good as is imo. Just be aware of the non insignificant perf hit from both of these. Restock without modding the mod results in a major mem leak which makes playing the game for more then short bursts impossible. It can be fixed by removing the .dll from the plugin foler and editing all the configs that use any "modulerestock___" to not use that module (or delete those parts outright and use the stock versions for just them). A bit of a pain, but at least the petrformance doesnt seem broken after it (and the only thing i truly miss are the restock solar panels as those look way better then stock ones, klaws on the other hand stock are superior any day as they have that cover over em and look good on ships when not in use. With the dll removed the mod merely results in increased memory use, which is not an issue unless you are on sub 8gb which frankly few modern computers go below 16. Waterfall doesnt mem leak according to tests, but it does degrade performance, so i suggest disabling it for any situation where you will have in excess of 1K parts loaded at a single time, although it is still playable if yiou are patient enough.

Made some minor edit to the fireworks settings and i think the explosions look way better now, more of a shrapnel flak effect rather then just an intense explosion as the round expires. Also redid the firing pattern for my turrets to be more burst fire then single shot stream fire, not really more effective or anything, but just looks more cinematic then a continuous steady bombardment. That screenshot was just perfect timing, even spamming F2 its rare to get the screenie timed to the explosion so well, especially since you can sorta see some of the detonating airburst behind the explosion. Anyways, finalized dagger class light corvette is quite solid, it still maintains control, propulsion, and weapons after 4 full burts from the Nebula (a burst from 1 set of turrets is 8 rounds, usually 1-2 of them direct hit every burst as the spread is horrendous even at point blank against such a small target). Also rearmed my LRM battery with the new medium sized drones i developed for some of the smaller AKS warships that needed a small, compact, and 0.6m sized weapon that at least had the ability to deal critical damage to frigate sized ships like the Broadsword (it can semi reliably tear the front off of one if i get the angle of impact just right and actually aim properly, wont split it though with any reliability as its just too small a warhead). Armed with the extended range variant with that stack of tanks on the front (that gets jettisioned before impact as it tends to act like a shock absorber which isnt what you want when you are trying to evicerate things). Not my best shot either but one of those drones tore half the ammo off the weapons platform., the 2nd one tore the entire front off the platform. And the 3rd drone hit what was left of the launcher so hard it actually ended up flying at over 100m/s across the surface... I know its a minor detail, but i really really like how the hysics in this game works, you smack something at 600m/s and a good chunk of that kinetic energy gets trasfered to the unfortunate victim...

So i think i may have finally made a "ramming ship" that is actually not trash. very good TWR, actually better then most of my starfighters, 30t ship pushed by the quad nozzle 1.25m engine and 4 of the smaller gimbleable ones. It will loose the front when smacking into anything massive (the target is what, 300t), but the crew sofar has yet to get killed during testing... And it actually managed to cut the front off of that transporter... So yeah, i need to tweak this a tad, fuel flow is broken and a few other things could be balanced like the COM, but at least it works and is way betetr then the mk2 of this same ship which flat out is going to become a pirate owned vessel as its just trash which can neither ram, nor take a single hit, nor do much else useful. Also need to redo that transporter in teh background as it has a tendency to do the "wobblin krakken" the instant it takes the slightest amount of dmg (its because of those 6 fuel tanks on the backside).

Basically fireworks are the so called guns, either set to 100m/s (50-75m/s on some of the smallest weakest fighters), or using the KAL overclocked to ~250-300m/s velocity. Any more and they are too overpowered with no chance of surviving an impact provided it registers, any less and its unable to damage armored parts like girders which it wont touch at 100m/s (this is desireable for cinematics as it shreds the interior and any wing armor without splitting the ship apart leading to longer drawn out slugging fests). As for the other weapons, i use ibeams+2 sepatrons as prolly my most common short ranged weapon, comparable damage to overclocked firework without the accuracy issues, but heavier and part count is an issue on larger craft so generally I dont bother with those on 400+ part ships. Also use a variety of guided weapons, pretty much a probe core, 1 reaction wheel, a few engines, and some structural crap in there to make it do some damage. Engines i generally prefer the 909s and thuds for 1.2m, and the 48-7s and cub for the 0.6m weps. As for turrets, its really simple, just a servo for 360 deg rotator, and a hinge for pitch control (and a variety of things added on to make it look the part like the above example pic). This gives you 360 degree field of fire, set all the turrets to aim forward, and set them all to aim in same direction using wheel controls if its on a space thing, and rcs controls if its a tank/apc/ground turret. Turrets on one side of the ship will always be unuseable (or risk destroying your own vessel), but its not like it matters since i set up 2-4 firing groups depending on the ship layout. Either go with dorsal/ventral turrets bound to 1 key each, port/starboard, or just 4 firing groups that let me fire any given side of teh ship as needed. Just need to be aware where each turret is aimed to not destroy my own ship with it (dont fire ventral guns when aiming upwards. 90% of the ships ive made can have their turrets be easily and intuitively controlled with this control scheme. You can even do a little trick to make the AI self target for you, hide a dummy turret inside the ship with a single docking port, set to control from here, and you have a aiming recticle that roughly fires in the direction the turrets are aimed at (fireworks spread like crazy so its not a big deal if you arent spot on aim wise). Then set each of your 2 ships to aim at each other and they will do so without the need to face directly forwards at the ship (you can do broadside fights this way). Ofc the KAL is used to auomate the firing sequence so you dont have to right click launch every single time. really the reason i do this instead of using BDA is cause its actually more fun (and challenging to do 100% stock combat), and BDA is super buggy and unreliably, especially in space... that and its just as easy to "automate", just vaguely aim turrets at each other, set the ship to aim at enemy one, engage firing sequence, they quickly swap and do the same on the other ship (or manually aim it if you prefer to, the 1st ship will retain its last command to aim at you solong as the ship retains reaction control and the KAL isnt destroyed. Only thing i miss is the 0 spread fireworks from 1.12.1, you could actually make something akin to a particle beam weapon just using the correct FX (the standard trail) and firing them from a single weapon often enough. there outta be a setting to adjust how much spread you want...

Well for whatever reason i sorta was in the mood to continue with this, so EP1 is 100% done. full album here: https://imgur.com/a/nFcPhyz Now to think what i want to do going forward, given that i have like 60 different ships and stations spread throughout the entire starsystem, not to mention made quite a lot of changes over the years (i will say one thing i do like about old saves is loading up some of the vessels i had back in the day and either being impressed at how long it remained useful or just facepalming about how stupid the idea/ship was at the time, and keeping it. As much as i do enjoy seeing my old crap floating around, i think im going to go through all the various things i have floating around and get rid of the stuff that doesnt serve much purpose just to clean up that save which ive had for years now, and then prolly do some stuff with pirates since they are a big deal in universe and i have some really cool pirate warships and bases ive made recently.

A bit of derping around with new concepts for my smaller ships. Made a "ramming ship" which is supposed to be the new iteration of BCorp's dagger class corvette, but i have to redesign it a tad to make it actually a good rammer (it can do it and those ibeams on the nose cut through anything with weak or no armor like fighters). but it seems that when i ram it into something the ship almost always takes a bit of damage to the engine pods or the top/bottom (especially so if it bounces off rather then getting embedded in its prey. Still, i do like the somewhat unorthodox design and i think ill make this into a pirate vessel (remove the wing shielding and angle some of the parts a bit so it looks mashed together and not cleanly attached. Not that BCorp uses corvettes much due to how useless they are (no real armor, meh firepower, ect, itll kill a pirate ship that is also more or less unarmored, but forget fighting AKS with these things... Thats what happens to a slightly modified Eclipse after unloading all 8 of the light SRMs (7 impacted the target, 1 miss). And thats why you do NOT get into a brawl with anything thats equipped with PDC turrets, unless your ship is full on heavily armored brawler thats designed to take hits. A few more shots and well all thats left is the core itself. Granted, while i did intentionally not armor that corvette since it wasnt intended to get shot at given its mostly for escorting freighters and such, not frontline combat against any competent enemy, it was remarkably difficult to hit at normal PDC range and i actually wasted around a third of the ventral turret ammo to get 4 solid hits in that basically evicerated everything but the core cockpit, the armored ram, and the rear engine. Ramming speed! But yeah, completely mediocre given how hard it is to control a ship with 90% of its RCS shot off, and without electricity left for the reaction wheel in the forward pod. It just bounced off doing minor internal damage (dislodged some internal fuel tanks that were empty, and also separated a missile from teh ship but it remained fully functional so its possible to just claw to it and still use the thing. And the main gun finishes the job (although i had to literally get into ramming distance to score a hit on something with the frontal profile of a starfighter). Flying through the wreckage, that never gets old in any space game (just gotta watch not to slam into any of it). Made the main cannon have retracting doors, they dont really do anything to stop weapons fire (its such a small thing to hit the odds of ever getting a weapon down the gun barrel is like 0), but i think it looks really cool to have the doors shut after destroying something. the weapon system is also reloadable as the lower angled piece with the airbrakes and various control surfaces opens up enough to allow me to slide another set of firework ammo in from below. Not a huge fan of the way it looks over the standard variant with just SRMs in teh nose, but maybee ill redo it later using a hinge/hydraulic thing to just move the original cover out of the way.

Revamped all my smaller AKS warships to unify the asthetics and generally make em look cooler imo. Part counts have gone up a bit overall, but its not that bad and i can actually load all 4 of these in 1 spot without the lag becoming unmanagable (but yeah, im so NOT loading in a cruiser alongside this many ships). Anyways, the largest of the sorta series, the Nebula class frigate is pretty much the most capable of these things, NTR engines, 3K dV, optional kraken drive on certain variants of the thing, turreted firework cannons and a overclocked main gun that is similar in firepower to SRMs (what i call the ibeam+sepatron weapons). Its also armored with MK2 bay hull which makes it near impossible to 1 shot kill with any weapon that is 1.25m in size (there is only 1 angle that is even remotely possible to 1 shot it using some of the larger 10-15t warheads, but even that isnt 1005 guaranteed to kill). Also the smallest ship i have that carries a pair of heavy torpedoes which with decent aim can reliably split most conventionally armored vessels (provided i aim at a ship's weakpoints). The Supernova class frigate, basically the Nebula's sister ship but designed to be dirt cheap. Regular 909 engines, 2K dV, 16 SRMs and 2 generic guided missiles. Nothing to write home about but in universe its usually exported (due to lacking of any advanced tech) and makes a good frontline ship that is easier to replace if it does get destroyed. The Eclipse class heavy corvette, completely redesigned it from ground up as the old one was just trash and i never really liked any of the previous iterations much (they were utilitarian and a bit lighter/smaller, but their looks were just lame as it was basically a MK2 hull with some fuel tanks to the sides and a teeny bit of wing surface to make it look like something. Now it not only looks amazing imo (id have to say if i had to pick 1 design i made recently this 1 gets top grade for appearance) but its actually a capable warship at least for its size and weight. Has 4 internally carried medium drones (they are comparable to the Supernova's missiles firepower wise but shorter so they fit and fire out the bottom of the ship, and well 4 SRMs on the nose for point defense duty (or to give it something to do once its out of guided ammo). Finally the Nova class light corvette, the only AKS ship that is not only as primitive as you can get (this one has RCS but the base model lacks even that), but is designed to be disposable and even useable as a kamikaze once ammo depletes (the bridge is optionally manned). Armed with pretty much the best combo ive found for short range, SRMs and a RT-5 SRB which can do some serious damage to larger ships like cruisers and such. So yeah, now to work on BCorp's fleet as the only ship im truly 100% happy with in the asthetics dept is the Broadsword frigate, and that ship is terrible at anything but being a damage sponge for medium or light weapons.

So yeah, over the last few weeks... Made a new variant of BCorp's Victory class cruiser, since i seem to always have some complaint about most of their ships ive made in one regard or another (except the boradsword which im 100% happy with look and function wise). Can take a beating although it does tend to get its fuel tanks shot out (an issue with ANY ship that doesnt use mk2/3 tanks, and even then its still an issue)... Made a tanker variant of an old APC i had laying around that can actually claw onto 95% of my other vehicles. Not entirely sure why i made this or even what im gonna arm it with (its currently a hull only), but its prolly gonna be a StarLeague warship since its asthetics at least vaguely resemble the infinity class battleship they have. And for the 11th time, i redid my favorite ship i ever made for KSP, the Nebula class frigate. I added ~20 extra parts and a minor amount of weight (its around 330 parts, and dV went down to 3K), but the hull actually looks much closer to the way i envisioned this thing in concept art, its tankier (not even a 10t heavy torpedo will 1 shot this thing), has all its secondary weapons mounted internally, only the heavy torps have tubes stuck onto the sides. I also added a cover for the forward cannon since it looks way better with that then having a giant hole in the front, the hole is only present when mounting alternative loadouts then the firework cannon. Only thing i didnt do that my concept had was the the tri shaped engine arrays, just didnt feel like adding another 18-24 parts to make it look right, and the semi exposed NTRs dont actually look bad to be honest gives it a more industrial look and not full blown alien tech everywhere. And finally, prolly the coolest thing ive made in a long time thats actually not a lagfest (i stopped making "relicas" a long time ago as they take way too much time (which i dont have anymore), eat so many parts that they are useless for anything but taking screenshots, and well i actually prefer my own designs most of the time anyway, just stick to "heavily inspired by x" but not a replica... Should be somewhat obvious what this is at least partially inspired by. Ofc unlike what its based on, there are no vent shafts for the alien to go through (not like i could afford the parts to do vents). Its actually ONLY ~500 parts since i really worked hard on being as efficient as possible with the only parts of this station that eat more parts then they should being the upper catwalks and observation deck (the bottom sections are actually ~200, more then half is the upper 10% of the station). Everything is fully traversible as a kerbal and the station (while a bit WIP still), has a fully decked out interior with plenty of stock windows abusing the girders (honestly the best thing about the stock girder, you can see thru it). Hangar as well which believe it or not fits most corvettes fully inside it as its a double mk3 bay. Still, im gonna try and cut down some more parts as i really would like to keep it below 400 (since a station by defenition gets docked to by ships and even just adding some fuel tank clusters is gonna take its toll).

Looks like they sorta fixed space combat after all these years of stagnation. Its still buggy, but it at least CAN be done when you orbit close to geostationary orbits unlike the last couple of years. Guess i know what ill be doing for the next few weeks in KSP, derping around with BDA... Now to find that old mod that added all the railguns and bring out my old expanse style ships, 100% worthless in stock combat, but they are so nice for BDA and low on parts too... And yeah, the Broadsword while being very good in stock combat, it utterly WORTHLESS against BDA weapons, it melts INSTANTLY from a couple of 20mm guns. The Nebula isnt spectacular, but at least it holds up at longer ranges. The stock metal panels seem to be utterly useless for some reason...

LV-N (NTR) by a long shot, followed by the LV-909. I actually like my capital ships to feel heavy and aside from a handful of interdictors or things that NEED to land, a single nuke of 909 can comfortably push 30-40t with a little bit of phys warp and some patience. That and the NTR is plain and simply so much more efficient that it blows everything else out of the water at least when it comes to capital ships and larger SSTO. They are a bit vulnurable to weapons fire, but all things considered, the ship is either going to get all its fuel tanks evicerated by fireworks, or just explode in a single hit from a heavy torpedo anyways so why would i care if the engines are destroyed slightly easier then a smaller LFO engine (i have vernors on my ships for backup as well). And as for my 3rd most common engine, the 48-7s. Its been nerfed badly from its original form, but it still ha decent ISP and enough TWR for smaller fighters when clustered.

@Starstrider42, do you have any tutorial for configuring this mod? I wanted to create something akin to a very tightly packed group of potatoroids around some planet purely for cinematic purposes, and teleporting roids 1 at a time to any given spot is just painful. If there a way to make a config that would spawn large numbers of these things say near a single point in space with a little bit of locational variation? What im looking for is something sorta like this. I made that station by bolting the roids together using klaws with extremely high offset values (they appear separate but its actually one massive craft). Wondering if this mod can be used to artificially create a persistent cloud of roids somewhere in orbit.

I have a 3yr old msi budget gaming lappy, and it works fine (the GPU isnt great, i think its a 1050), i mostly got it cause it was cheap (at least for a gaming laptop at like 900 bucks), and had a very good CPU for its time (2nd best CPU you could get in any laptop on the market at least at that time, i cared more about the CPU as i can usually live with turning down gfx settings a tad as needed, laggin to death in games like my RTSs with 1000s of smaller units all calculating at the same time what they are shooting at and well KSP with its physics processing isnt my cup of tea). And as for graphics, its not that much processing power to do it. I mean i do take the worst FPS hit to run scatterer+EVE (at least my SciFiVE mod isnt as terrible on the framerate as SVE or other other popular cloud packs, its actually quite well optimized all things considered), and the rest of my mods dont really eat much frames. I mean waterfall seems to make certain engines less laggy (its more optimized aslong as you disable the more intensive distortion and lighting options), the rest arent visual mods. Better time warp, vessel switching, trajectories, persistrotato dont really eat any frames (prolly trajectories is the worst but i dont need it to render and calculate all the time, just when im planning my aerobrakes). That and texture replacer, also doesnt seem to eat any frames solong as you disable the reflections on the helmets the kerbins wear. The skybox is what i really like about tex replacer (fps hit is irrelevant so i even take advantage of the face randomization which makes the kerbins feel a bit less like clones). Restock is also a bit laggier then stock, but with how good the vast majority of restock's parts look, i just cant not use it, although i only installed base restock and not the one with all the extra parts added to it which arent all that useful for the types of ships i like to build, but maybee ill give it a try as it does have some neat small scale parts that stock simply lacks like variants of the oscar-b tank and others. Anyways, the skybox i have right now is from this post One of the nebula ones that i recolored (i like the default blue it comes with, but i kinda wanted something more reddish/orangish for whatever reason so i changed it) and upped the resolution to 4096 since even just a resize and tiny bit of post processing takes away the pixelation for the most part everywhere. I just wish the original creator made it in 4096x4096, as there is still some pixelation i was unable to remove entirely. Still, its not for everyone as this skybox is FAR from realistic, and looks nothing like the night sky around the earth in the dimension i live it, i just for some reason think sticking kerbin deep within a nebula is a cooler spot for it then in the middle of some generic run of the mill galaxy vaguely resembling the milky way. Visually speaking, the only other mod id love to have (but to my knowledge noone has ever made something of the sort) would be something that creates a truly massive epic scale dense asteroid field that would be perfect for flying through, evading the roids, battles, or even making a starbase attached to the potatos. Closest ive ever gotten to such a concept is my attempt at replicating omega station from ME, and i actually used offset tool tricks with some claws to simulate a tight group of roids around the station. Problem is, it takes ages to setup even with teleporting teh roids to the station, and has some major instability issues tht result in the station ripping itself apart on occasion (saving often and loading will mitigate this somewhat but its still super annoying when it happens). in other news, im setting up a massive ground complex on Ike that will span around 20km (the base modules will be spread out for both lag decreasing and to allow for a nice overlapping field of fire for all the missile batteries im installing. Im also redoing my orbital defense cannon (while i was a huge fan of the inital design i made and actually think that looked better then all the modernized versions, it was limited to very short missiles (which do barely any damage under 1.12 physics), and was basically IMPOSSIBLE to reload like ever (it had docking ports but i never succeeded in rearming even a single hardpoint due to being super cramped). Thats what the original looked like(laggy, useless missiles with not even the dV to reach orbit on anything beyond minmus and too light to hurt squat in 1.12 physics). And thats my current WIP iteration, different style (alot smaller) but i actually think i like what i did, simplicty sometimes makes things look good actually (and i still kept the signature energy conduits going from the ground to the side of the weapon like the old one had). I might make a heavier variant with some more stuff on the sides, but sofar i like ti as a sorta of a more mass produced plop down anywhere sort of orbital defense cannon not quite as elaborate as the old one which was more like a small ground facility to go with said weapon system. Well anyways, im prolly gonna be away for a bit now as i have alot of rl work the next few days, but maybee ill get some time lateron. For some reason i just havent been in the mood to pay any other game but KSP when i actually have the time to play games, so i got quite a bit more progress done recently...

SRMs really are trash nowadays, they just dont do any reliable dmg... Retaliation with turreted pulse guns... And finishing it off with the primary forward pulse cannon. Ofc its a bit less one sided when the Nebula encounters my newly built Victory class light cruiser, which is equipped with similar firepower and armor (albeit a good deal heavier since it uses those quad DLC engines). Last stand of the Nebula, tries to return fire before being ripped to shreds by a few lucky shots that obliterate the primary weapon port gun turrets, and the controller that allows it to fire the starboard side leaving it helpless and more rounds keep coming in. the Victory took a beating too but luckily didnt loose its turrets before the Nebula did... And finished my gaming session for the day toying with asthetics of the Nebula, made it black panels with glowy edges...

If you want hard limitations then pick one of quite a few futuristic/near future mods out there that give you engines with ISPs comparable to and exceeding ions in stock (without the TWR issue), some even feature FTL capability and their own interesting mechanics which limit what you can and cant do with em (they can still use power, and to generate power you can have finite antimatter/fusion/nuke. Aside from that, you can just impose your own limits to what is ok and what isnt with regards to kraken tech. Myself, i recently got into them mostly because i wanted to try something new (never really tried kraken drives seriously before) and frankly got fed up with the limitations of stock with regards to making sci-fi themed stuff. I still enjoy the challenge of fuel limits, but many things do become fairly mundane in KSP especially after doing them multiple times, and thats why for quite some time now ive used teleport to destination to transport craft under the condition that ive at least proven once or twice that i can get x ship to x location 100% legit, and that there is some sort of IRSU/fuel tanker where i want to teleport the ships to. I personally think using kraken drives in these situations is no less of a "cheat" then simply teleporting them there which is purely cutting down on the time i need to spend doing multiple refuels using IRSU (stock IRSU in its own way is sorta a "cheat" as IRL there is no such thing as infinite resources (kethane back in the day is a great example of a realistic IRSU concept, it actually limited how much you could get fron a hex shaped grid area on each planet). I also have started messing with them on craft that arent built according to stock aerodynamics (and using ANY of the stock engines would never go beyond 2km), and there are so many concept craft i have sitting around that are simply never gonna work under stock aero. While i do like the 1.0+ aero, it does seriously limit the asthetics of viable craft, and sometimes i want to just build something that flies in KSP that would never work IRL for obvious reasons. That and Ive already had plenty of craft that "hacked" their way to orbit by abusing the aero to hide things inside cargo bays, offset tool to make drag decrease, ect, but many things still arent possible to do despite being really cool (like externally transporting anything on a dropship). At least they still require fuel, but the one above has ISRU and in theory it can land almost anywhere (ive taken it to every place but the surfaces of Tylo, Eve, Jool and Kerbol). Speaking of which, this is prolly the pinnacle of BS i ever made that is a 100% viable SSTO SR-1 Normandy replica from ages ago (it was designed in V1.0). It still makes orbit in 1.12, and its truly a product of a a deranged mind with nothing better to do before i had a job as this ship alone took me a whole week of nothing but KSP. Ofc i have a life now, and i dont have the sort of time or patience to play any game that much, let alone spend all that time on a single ship (which isnt even practical in game cause its too effin laggy at 500 parts). At least its truly an amazing feat (and the closest to a stock working SSTO sci-fi replica i think anyone has ever achieved. Dont get me wrong, people have made some amazing replicas, but i have yet to see a SSTO of this detail/scale that has almost every internal detail down to the friggin med bay that works in stock aero and doesnt need kraken/alt-f12/whatnot, it even has a mako rover replica inside the lower bay that can drive out of the ship and land on RCS just like the one in ME did (it did have some wedging issues i never resolved which could tear the ship apart, but when i tdidnt wedge it was glorious). My next thing i want to do in KSP is make a dropship that can carry this thing (and a few other vehicles smaller then it) 100% externally and it has to be a VTOL/SSTO that works in atmo. This is 100% IMPOSSIBLE to do in stock while actually meeting my asthetic requirements, so i fully intend to make the dropship kraken powered as there is no other method to achieve what i want to achieve even with mods (that arent basically giving me kraken levels of technology). So yeah, it might not be "realistic", but the kraken drives do enable a playstyle that just cant be done stock. I want something akin to this idea (i wont replicate the star wars ones as i got my own ideas for looks, but same concept when it comes to where the tank is and how its dropped off). Not happening with stock aero and without kraken drive tech, at east not for ATMO capability. Still, its a singleplayer sandbox videogame, if you think that IRSU, kraken tech, alt-f12 menu are cheats, then there is nothing stopping you from avoiding them, but if you are like me and are willing to impose plausible limitations on your use of said "cheats" (or even screw around with em just for fun on a non-serious save like i have), then there is no reason why you cant make a k-drive ship and simply say "i wont use it for more then 1 minute per burn" or something like that if you want limits.

Messed around with skybox, finally found 1 i liked and felt more cramped then the usual open galaxy ones the stock game (and the last skybox i had) feature. Its a nice balance between nebula and a little bit of open space, and i edted the color to be red/orange instead of blue/cyan as the skybox i downloaded shipped stock. Darker side of nebula... And ofc the lighter side...

I personally dont like em, as from day 1 i basically explained the lack of surface infrastructure by saying either surface is uninhabitable (nukes, disease, cataclismic event, whatever), that the kerbals simply prefered underground habitation, or that their numbers were so few that pretty much aside from KSC there was no actual life on the planet. That and the mod never actually fixed the apparent lack of something there once you got closer. Very few things break immersion as badly as seeing glowing things in orbit, then flying near them and seeing nothing at all.

Looks cool and flies pretty well (albeit slowly in thick atmo, i wouldnt reccomend it on eve). Now if only it wasnt more parts then most of my massive starships , a bit laggy when brought near any bases or other things but fine on its own at least... Btw, have you ever tried pure 2 directional gear drive? The reason i ask is that your craft is extremely complex and frankly im not even entirely certain how you made the kraken engine work in the 1st place, at least the vertical part, i know what docking port drives are and the few times ive tried them they were too weak, high part count and required way too much real estate to fit on a fighter sized craft (at least at the scale i make fighters at which is literally maximum length of 1.5 mk1 cockpits). I think 2 gears forward and 2 gears up would be more then enuff for the 30 or so tons your craft is, and it would save some insane amount of parts. Then there's this model, its what ive come up with and started outfitting my craft, capable of lifting 90t with but 5 parts, vertical+horizontal capability. Doesnt let me hover quite like yours (although it is possible to tweak it so that the vertical velocity gained is extremely low hence making it a pseudo hover engine, just need to adjust the spacing between the gears and the block they push), normally accelerated vertically by around 3-8m/s depending on config and craft weight (the frigate will NOT play nicely when going above 5m/s as the drive often goes explody for whatever reason when i add too many wheels to it). Also requires 0 robotics parts which have been pretty buggy from day 1 (aside from turrets on ships, anything with a prop on it and mechs/walkers i tend to avoid them especially with how the drifting bug is still a thing that the devs never fixed). So yeah, 2 landing gears per side lifts 90t and gives you forward thrust once it lifts, not to mention accel is quite solid around 1-2Gs depending on how i configure the drive and what mass its pushing. Note sure how many parts your k-drives take up, but i guessing you can easily save over 100 parts with this concept (giving you either less lag or more asthetic options if you so desire). Now if only the ship i built was aerodynamically stable, i cared only about looks and performance (armor, firepower, dV), keeps flipping when i exceed 30m/s every time (having ONLY 6 of the smallest reaction wheels also dont help)...

Flew my SSTO around a bit more on laythe to visit some of the different spots, and came across the exact same spot that Macey Dean landed his colony in what remains to this day the best original KSP combat series ever made on youtube... Dont ask why the hell i took it for a swim, im not even entirely sure what i was thinking there... At least it floats... And somehow made it across that tiny bit of water to Macey island... Got into kraken drives a bit more, they are buggy but the part count these things require is literally 1 of the smallest landing gear per direction you want thrust in. That alone has made me refit a couple of my craft with them. Flies like a dream despite being about the draggiest thing anyone would ever build (there is absolutely no consideration for aerodynamics in the Tri-Fighter-III, its purely armor and some asthetic pieces bolted on). But the new K-Drives actually allow me to both VTOL it to a degree and best of all fly in atmo and not burn all its fuel instantly (none of my starfighters carry enuff fuel to do much more then deploy from a carrier and nail something with fireworks or ibeam+sepatrons before returning to refuel). Added a VTOL drive to my Nebula frigate, although i think im gonna not bother as its just too friggin heavy for it at almost 100t fully fueled (it has over 3K dV without the K-Drive). At least it is possible to land though, and im quite suprised that a meager 2 landing gears can lift such a huge craft even in Vall gravity.

Part count or asthetics (it looks really good in restock modded style, way better then any jury rigged equivalent made from structural fuselages or anything of the sort). But yeah, it shouldnt be that heavy given that for the meager cost of 2 more parts over the 1 i can use 3 structural fuselages ad get 03t worth of hardware. I know KSP1 development is kaput, but the most reasonable thing id do to differenciate that part is give it a crew member slot, drop the weight by at least 50% of not more, and give it small windows on the exposed bits. Ofc in reality, either edit the cofig if you so please (its a singleplayer game, whos gonna care if you alter its weight to be a more reasonable 0.5t or something like dat), dont use it, or use it in situations where you dont actually care about weight like ground hardware or space stations (or in the rare but useful case of ballast or to lower the CG of something (there are applications where minimal mass isnt always better, even if they tend to be super niche).

1: obtain MRI machine 2: place computer into MRI machine 3: turn on machine 4: all KSP craft are guaranteed to nolonger reside on the HDD (and ur house likely will light on fire for bonus entertainment value) But in all seriousness, craft made in game are stored under (these can be deleted at any time in game): \Kerbal Space Program\saves\gamenamegoeshere\Ships\ stock craft or those you want to not be deleteable in game easily: \Kerbal Space Program\Ships\ Worth noting is that the 2 DLCs have their own respective undeletable stock craft located in these 2 spots(i myself ditched these ages ago as none of them fit my asthetic style and ive learned enuff about the DLC features that i dont need their stock sample craft): \Kerbal Space Program\GameData\SquadExpansion\MakingHistory\Ships\ \Kerbal Space Program\GameData\SquadExpansion\Serenity\Ships\ Note certain mods might add their own craft (only 1 i ever used with dis issue was BDArmory)...

Not quite over 1 day but this week i well... Installed waterfall (and mashed restock waterfall with stock waterfall fx mods together in such a way that every single engine has the new fx as restock's configs miss a few engines like the rapier, jets, ect), and derped around with quite a few things. Made a minor redo to the hl2 gunship inspired chopper to make it look better. Then after being utterly annoyed at how restock mk2 light is flipped 180 degrees spent like an hour messing with the config files to flip it right side around and i got a pleasing result that means all my old stock craft dont have backwards facing lights, and so that new craft i make with restock dont then get reverse facing lighst if i ever decide to disable restock for whatever reason. Made a stealth variant of the Nebula frigate ive had for like ages, albeit i keep updating it with minor tweaks as its sorta my workhorse combat vessel (small enough to not be a lag issue like the larger cruisers, and big enough to more or less evicerate any single target with proper aim). randomly blew something (i dont even remember what it was and the screenies i got were all impossible to tell from) up around minmus with a Dimension cruiser's starboard batteries (turreted fireworks really are amazing especially when you sit inside the observation deck and can aim the guns based on where the tracers are). Made BCorp a new warship, the Victory class (mashed together the front of a bc304, the rear of a venator, and sorta made up something in the middle section). Im quite happy with it as the 4th prototype is rather resilient to every weapon ive thusfar flung at it as the only consistent method to split the ship apart is to get 2 heavy torps into the core, but the 1st one never seems to split it just shred all the sacrificial armor that protects said core. If both hits arent spot on it likely will take more then just 2 torps (and even then they have to be my better torps and not any old ones). The 2nd prototype did this every time i hit with a torpedo from directly from port/starboard, moved 2 girders by the length of a cubic strut and the exploding went away entirely on the 3rd prototype (armor in KSP is finicky like that, the smallest little offset, or1 strut added/removed/placed wrong can make a ship go from worthless to borderline immune to fire, and after all this time its still trial/error since there is no reliable method to tell what is causing the problems. Made a kraken powered tug in an attempt to drag a comet to kerbin without using the alt-f12 menu. Damn those waterfall light glows look amazing... Didnt get any good screenie, but the instant i engaged the K-drive after attached to the comet, the entire ship vaporized itself. The funny thing is, the K-drive worked flawlessly getting the tug to the comet, but something about being clawed onto the thing seems to turn the drive into a makeshift bomb... Guess claws are just bugged (or maybee my attempt at the drive sucks, it is sorta the 1st time i messed around with actual stock K-drives (my previous experience with the things was mostly when something unintentionally created phanto forces and flung craft crazy distances, this week 1st actual legit k-drive that is built to be one, ill need some practice making them to not explode)... Also tested a slightly different low power k-drive on a SSTL (it doesnt need it as this thing has like 6K dV after attaining LKO), but i wanted something that could return home if the drive broke, and wanted to actually try the drive once at laythe just to fly around, used normal fuel to fly there as the craft is so heavy it cant actually land on laythe unless im below 50% fuel capacity (even then its a pain to land it as barely any lift or thrust, 1 rapier pushing close to 40t on the runway)... Again, waterfall's minor little things like the glowy lights makes a huge difference in prettiness. Finally, messed around a little bit with the sunflare, wanted to get away from the stock one that scatterer has after i updated since the stock one just doesnt look scifiy enuff for my taste (its not bad per say, but it just doesnt feel right to me for a videogame as its too realistic...

Been experimenting with creating holographic displays for my larger warships that have custom interiors. Still a very much WIP, but i do like the concept sofar. Now if only flags werent so buggy, it appears that they dont have shadows rendered on them AT ALL, and they have some issues with occlusion since i can see the planet in front of the leftmost display despite the planet display being in the center of the ship and not near the captain's seat as it looks like it is in the 1st screenshot. I might just go with less of the displays (or space them out moreso) as they look fine when not placed smack dab in the center of the ship (i wanted a massive display over the table in the center just above the conference/feeding table). Maybee even just ditch the center display, move it near the captain, and then move the ship status display near the reactor status display. That and i need to redo the interior lighting, the side displays are not lit one bit by the 2 large lights on the front/rear of the ship, and while i like the bluish color scheme, it doesnt particularly fit the interior of the bridge all that great. Maybee ill just redo the lighting entirely as its cheap (just 2 lights for the whole ship), but it doesnt look all that amazing being a single color for the whole warship.

I still play KSP, but ive been less and less active since its hard for me to play games like i used to, when I got KSP i was in college, had tons of free time, and frankly nothing better to do with it (i could easily spend an entire afternoon in KSP. Now i moved abroad (got sick of living in america, dont ask why), i have a family, i have a job, and there is too much else to do with life then play videogames all day (even if i was unemployed, id rather spend my time with friends or just going for a walk outside provided i had the energy to do so). No idea, maybee im growing into an old fart, but im sure there are many people that are in a similar spot where their life just took a turn that nolonger allows gaming on any sort of reliable schedule and its become at most something to do when im literally too tired to do anything productive (and im not a TV/movie person so if im gonna waste time on anything, its gaming). As for KSP-1, noone can deny that its past it's prime. Mods will keep it alive for at least some time going forward, and there will still be plenty of people playing it, but its nolonger that brand new super unique game (and i cant recall anything similar to KSP around that time even being on the market) that came out of nowhere that it was 10 years ago. Still, i think we can all agree that it was well worth the money and even now it remains a game that i play when i feel like doing something creative even if the end results are usually more destructive then creative

Im happy to see some effort put forwards especially to solve this rather gamebreaking bug. That said, im really hoping that KSP2 isnt as broken as the last few updates of KSP1, and im pretty damn certain that there wont be any fix to the extremely infuriating memory leak/performance degradation when you spend enough time in KSP and do alot of swapping vessels/launching/relaunching. Its playable, but high part counts (as in anything over 600) coupled with this mem leak makes it very hard to enjoy the game without consiantly restarting the game every hour or so... Its been a great run all these years, and while i dont have any hopes for my personal pet peve being fixed (mem leak), at least the game was well worth the minimal cost and still remains fun to this day... Heres to all this time spend in KSP1 ... And a rather fitting screenshot, the bottom is my aurora from like 0.25, then a mid one in prolly 1.1, and finally my most recent model that i finished a few weeks ago... Now if only i could find my 1st warship i ever made in KSP from like 0.22 or 0.23 when i got the game, i have like 2GB of craft files archived and i forgot where it was and what it was even named...