panzer1b

"prepare for attack" "all batteries, FIRE FIRE" Now i just need to remake a providence replica since the Dimension is a bit overpowered in a fight against like just about anything i have right now (as it should be in universe given AKS tech superiority over all other factions). That or maybee ill upgrade the venator with MK-2 hull armor, which would bring it somewhat closer to competitive since MK-2 armoring is the best thing there is against all stock weapons and fireworks... a somewhat more balanced fight against itself (took me over 75% of the ammo to finish it with 1 side disarmed, still had 2 engines left which worked so it wasnt game over quite yet), and with FX that is closer to what AKS would field in universe...

Your most basic turret features a servo for traverse, and a hinge for elevation. Below shows you hat one looks like with the hinges pulled away from the assembly (normally i try to hide the hinges/servos asthetically as a joint going around a ball or cylinder). Its really that simple, then you bind an axis to traverse and axis to elevation. On my tanks i use IKJL, or the default RCS controls since i dont normally use RCS on vehicles (and these controls arent used for wheels), and for ships (which use RCS), i bind them to wheel controls which ive remapped to arrow keys since i dont like the wheels and the reaction wheels to be on the same controls (that and i swap roll and picth cause its super counterintiutive when im so used to AD being roll in like every aircraft game ive ever played). Basically in space, you use arrow keys to aims the guns, and i have one KAL for each turret group, and 1 more KAL to reset all turrets to aim forward. This is both useful if i want to engage something by aiming the ship and not turrets, and it allows you to fire with every weapon on the ship at once provided the turrets are placed smart and can actually aim at stuff directly in front of the ship. If the turrets cant aim forwards, i usually have this KAL make them aim directly to the sides or any default orientation that allows me to use the ship itself to aim at stuff or just to reset their position since i bind every turret to the same arrow key movement and that means that different directions will aim differently. Still, it is generally best to have the guns at least able to aim forwards in unison, a reason why imo ships that taper down to the front like the star destroyer lineup tend to make some sense (aside from the stupid idea of making the bridge not redundant and sticking out that much), not that big a crosssection from the front, but you can potentially aim everything to the front and still have at least half the guns aimeable to the sides (only issue is the rear but its not a big deal to put some smaller point defenses there to stop fighters or anything more agile). The other type of turret is what i call a flexible emplacement, just 2 hinges (same configuration as above, they just move side to side and are more limited in angle usually). Normally mounted on sides of ships instead of top/bottom, and 90% of the time you want one or the other or it becomes too complicated to manage that many turret groups with just 4 buttons (and using any more makes it even more complex to fire at anything). Maybee someone will make a mod to have turrets autolock on nearby targets regardless of ship orientation (id try to do it myself if i wasnt so mentally drained everyday i get back from work, and what time i do have id rather spend actually playing games, or just going outside like we used to before computers existed ), but until that happens we are stuck with manual traverse only which is fine when you are aiming at things the size of a capital ship from within 200m... Again, they look a bit janky when aimed upwards (since too much of the massive firework canister is visible, but they work, they are reasonably low on parts. 3 parts minimum to make a working turret with 32 shots in it, up to 5 if you want it to be reloadable, and in the case of the Venator asthetic it goes up to 10 per turret which is actually very reasonable all things considered, 83 parts for the entire ship counting the KALs to control it and you get 512 shots out of it total. Now lets just hope they fix the bug that breaks the colors on reverting, and resets to default on copy/paste as i set 1 turret to the right color, the rest are sto\ck ...

well ive finalized my newest SK-VI Dimension-VII cruiser... I gave the primary forward batteries fx that make them look like beam weapon (even though its just lots of shells fired in a stream). The side cannons look a bit janky when aimed at certain angles (they are a tad clipped into the hull and are only fully exposed when aiming sideways/rearwards), but they work and i was able to use the 32 shot cannisters since its just too many parts (and not enough ammo) to ustify using the 8 shot ones on a ship of this size, those are mostly left for fighters or as purely emergency backup weapons on ships that arent normally intended to get into point blank ranges. Its got a grand total of 672 rounds of ammo, utterly mad given that its only a total of 60 parts for said amount of ammunition (and 6 of the 7 hardpoints are fully turreted and can fire in a fairly solid angle, directly forward, and about 60degrees in every other direction, with a not that hard to aim setup either. Fires by default 3 per second on the side turrets, so a total of 1.6 minutes of continuous fire (has 2 controllers with 2 rates, 1 button to enable slow firing aiming mode, the other to enable higher ROF once you are aimed in properly to not waste too much of the ammo and even 600 rounds doesnt last indefenetely). Damage is also much more enjoyable then stock weapons, no more splitting ships in half reliably (unless they are made like crap or something), but the internals close to the impacted side get obliterated (fuel tanks, engines, anything that isnt high impact tolerance will drop quick). And yeah, i dont use the KAL speed overclocking, its just not needed and actually takes all the fun away since a single 32 shot canister is 100% certain to completely kill any ship when the impact speed is ~200-300m/s, more and it just phases thru too much and isnt really all tha useful anyways. Now my next plan, redesign the Nebula class frigate as its now pathetivcally easy to knock out with just 3 massive and easy to snipe out NTR engines and the interior while solid at stopping stock weapons that arent too large (wont stop a 10t heavy torp), doesnt even attempt to stop the firework cannons from dropping the interior. I think my best bet is going to be using the DImension's core layout, and then keep the rest similar to what it already is...

you cant, but u can send new ones up to orbit and dock em to the hardpoints (if they are reloadable designs)...

THANKS YOU @SQUAD! BEST UPDATE EVER! Now if we could only get a fix to the rather annoying bug that randomly resets the fireworks colors to either default or black (as in invisible) when reverting crafts...

Yup, probably my favorite update thusfar after the one that let you edit stuff beyond the VAB with engineers... Fighters are actually super useful now (and the part counts across the board have dropped to near irrelevance)... turrets are now viable too since wasting a couple shots isnt a big deal when i have 144 shots per side of the ship (and i only ate 48 parts for the entire broadside setup, 100 total per ship is nothing compared to old fashioned weapons tech). Also, these are reloadable too which is a nice touch imo since you would eventually run out of ammo regardless and have to ship more of these things up to the vessel. And best of all, fully aimeable broadside firepower :)... Now all i have to do is recreate my all time favorite scene from any sci-fi movie, the 1st 10 minutes or so of Revenge of the Sith (the starfighters, then the deckgun broadside slugest)... "Prepare for attack" "All batteries, FIRE FIRE" Ok, handdown, BEST UPDATE EVER!

Got out of work a tad early today, so i made some updates to a few fighters to take advantage of the fireworks... Prolly the biggest change, my TIE went from bleh, to almost perfect (its not a 100% replica, but its pretty close for only 48 parts)... die rebel meatbag scum (which happened to be in the old TIE ...

0.90 by a long shot, followed closely by the 1st iteration of 1.0. Reason for that is that 0.90 had some of the best performance (before the multicoreing at least), and i still keep it around for those rare times im in the mood to relive tey glory days where SSTOs were about as sci-fi as you could get (airhogging really let you do some crazy stuff with but a single jet engine). that, and arguably the multicore made collisions alot less fun to deal with (0.90 had barely any "phasing", modern version its like a 30% chance that a high velocity missile will just pass thru the target vessel entirely). 1.0 purely because they came out with aero that felt really fun. I cant speak as to how authentic it was, but there was 0 soup in that version, you could get a single rapier craft up to like 2km/sec at sea level within 30 seconds (it would obviously explode cause of heat but the acceleration and overall performance of every plane was incredible and drag was minimal). I also fondly remember trying to aerobrake every which way at laythe with a variety of SSTLs and eventually leanred (after like 100s of quickloads) that it couldnt be done without exploits (namely nullifying heat via antennas). All the other versions were ok, but not worth keeping around since they werent better then the current one, and anything pre 0.90 didnt have very good performance in it at least based on what i remember from those days (and there were alot of bugs, like lots, orbital drag, phantom forces, krakens galore, you name it)...

One thing, part count... To make the most basic stock weapon (that is actually able to damage anything) takes at least 3 parts (SRB+something with high tolerance+decoupler/separator). More realistically though, its going to be at least 5 for a reloadable weapon (ibeam, 2+ sepatrons, decoupler, docking port), and 7 for a base guided weapon (ibeam, fuel tank, engine, probe core, reaction wheel, battery/s-panel/rtg, dockport). The above is for a SINGLE shot. Firework (besides being far more compact and not taking up the entire length of a starfighter), is a SINGLE part with 8 or 32 shots. Yes, it isnt as lethal as properly made old fashioned weapons (when not using KAL cheats), but its very low performance (provided you dont spam too many fireworks until the ones already out there explode/despawn), much smaller (these alone revolutionized all my starfighters overnight), easier to add to just about anything without wrecking asthetics (its not easy to hide a massive torpedo completely inside a ship or build a launch tube for it, and many designs with them slapped on the hull without much care dont quite look right), and they have actual customizeable fx like bullet trails, explosions (you can make some nice cinematic flak effect with that alone), ect. Not perfect by any means at all, but ill take it as an option alongside old weapons (which my biggest pet peve about was the sheer lack of ammo capacity for a given number of parts. That and ive really not been a fan of BDA in the last few years, so it makes it possible to have easy to make stock combat vehicles/ships without installing BDArmory. Again, nothing against the mod (i even helped develop it a tad back in teh day Baha was still running the mod), but ive just not been a fan of the recent changes such as going from thermal to HP damage (this made the mod way more convoluted, complex, and slowish, and it did not imo improve enjoyment realistic or not), the uttery broken damage models as of late (ever since they added armor penetration its been really hit or miss with damage and how it behaves), and frankly, the only worthwhile addition the new mod has is the AI autopilot stuff (that is very nice, the rest of it id go back to Baha's original mod if it still worked like at all in teh new versions). Anyways, good exaple is this, before and after on my TIE replicaish thing. Goes from looking just stupid (with how the guns are larger then the cockpit), to actually being properly done as it outta be). In terms of actual lethality, both are similar, but the fireworks look the part (no missile canisters, small "barrels" made of the lights), 64 total shots (vs 6). Most of all, 48 parts on the left, 72 parts on the right)... My only annoyance here is the fact that there is no fireworks "resource" making it impossible to reload the weapons, but with 64 shots, i dont care, at that point the fighter has either singlehandedly wiped out all enemy fighters, or its been blows to bits). And best of all, the weapon is effective at ALL ranges (unlike short ranged missiles that need to accelerate, potentially have hard to control recoil), you can more or less go ham with fireworks (if you can stomach the lag with too many rendered at a time), and they just look so perfect (i know i said that like 5 times, but they really do). Anyways, if i have some time over the weekend im going to see if i can for the first time ever make a full broadside capital vs capital battle, see how well that turns out. There is just too much potential with these things to pass up...

Yeah, probably one of the best patches since we now have a working weapon system that is quite well balanced and BDA sorta died for me ever since they broke space combat with turreted weapons (which was the whole selling point for me regarding that mod...). Feels like we have come full circle though, the first combat mod i ever used (and even developed my own variant of) was the DYJ gattling gun, and these fireworks after some more testing appear to work on the same principle, firing a small physics object that can bounce off and impact whatever it contacts (velocity is adjustable, and the projectile is a bit phasy and can sometimes pass thru a target entirely, but it works well otherwise. Fairly performance friendly all things considering (just do not try to fire all 8 shots from 5 launchers simultaneously or it will slow the game to a crawl ... I also found that you can use KAL to jack up the velocity to a extent that it will 1 shot kill ANY vessel in game... Velocity of ~280-320 pretty much cores out anything with a few well aimed shots. Im so using these things on all my craft as point defense replacement for the part count savings alone, but im not going to use the speed boosting via KAL (except maybee on battleships which would make sense to have such insane point defenses as to take down any other ship) as it is just overpowered and has no working counter to it short of modding the game. And as much as the weather sucks today, it actually gives me a reason to be able to enjoy a few hours of KSP time id normally be spending outdoors...

@SQUAD PLZ DO NOT PATCH THIS OUT!!!!! I know its unintended, but i sure hope they dont patch it, the first viable stock weapon in the entire game (and impretty sure it works by throwing a unbreakable object (like the whackakerbal thing) at x velocity out the front which is able to impact the target (so it works exatly like the mod i made for KSP back in 0.25 or some ancient version). Took a very lucky hit, but in the hour i had for gaming today, i managed to kill a capital ship (took a 6 pack of the launchers fired in salvos and like after depleting most of the shells it killed a capital ship... capital ship bought it (i used KAL to slightly velocity boost to like 200ish, and lost of the shots phased thru, but eventually i got a very lucky shot after like 20 reloads to kill it)...

Nice update, no major bugs ive found, and FINALLY we get stock weapons (which are damn well balanced, they dont render the old stock weapons useless as they are weaker, but they provide excellent bang for the part counts involved to bring them). These are massive performance improvements general though since i can finally ditch short range SRMs on smaller craft and even larger ones, a single part with 32 shots vs 5 parts with a single shot, no brainer despite the somewhat mediocre damage these things do based on initial tests... we have fully working particle cannons, and the best part is that they arent even overpowered, just enough damage to be useable even against a capital ship, but it wont utterly vaporize the hull provided it has some armor plating on the core. now this really looks like lore pulse cannon fire closer to what i always imagined it in universe (AKS was normally firing black orbs with purple glow on exterior as their short ranged firepower not yellow glowing rockets). a bit of a delayed reaction, will need to tweak the explosion delays and such... damage is there, but best of all its actually reasonable for something that is so low part count and doesnt nullify the benefits of heavier shipkiller SRMs (and doesnt even come close to heavy torpedo damage). Probably my number one use of this is for fighters though, where having large quantity of weak bullets beats carrying masively powerful SRMs that tend to evicerate another fighter sized target in a single shot (now i can get drawn out fights with these things and not be screwed with ammo count issues on anything that isnt over 100 parts).... Now, if i could only find some serious time to spend on gaming (real life is a nightmare for me right now), ill have to see if there is any method to armor against these scary things as a fighter :)... hopefully this doesnt get patched, its a really neat "unintended" feature that makes the game way more enjoyable imo...

As much as id like to, i tried and tried and it cant be done without killing scatterer entirely (and given what scatterer does to sunsets/sunflare/cloud improvements like coloring, im just not willing to ditch it). Basically nothing i can do with the cloud layers to make them glow black (which is a sad thing, but im limited by EVE/scatterer mechanics). Ive been insanely busy these last few months so 0 time for KSP dev since my job has a stupid amount of overtime now, and im getting ready to move abroad, so well have to see whether ill get more time when im out of the US for good, but it is what it is, and what little freetime i have right now im just too tired to do any creative stuff (short of occasionally making some KSP vessels and play the other games i also have)...

Lemme think, for starters, as someone else mentiones, docking mode, never used it, never bothered to use it, as im just so used to wsadqe and ikjlnh that docking even the most unwieldy vessel is easy as heck. Honestly, the hardest part about docking for me is the lack of a half decent stock camera (only easy to do so if i have the docking port directly in front of the bridge fully visible ut i dont really use fore mounted docking ports, almost always dorsal/ventral or port/starboard for those things as i guess i think docking something on the nose of a capital ship looks dumb regardless of practivcality). Another thing, science/career. I gave them a try, but i like using my own imagination to come up with missions/scenarios, and i can always arbitrarily limit myself to certain parts if i so please (and i routiniely do so as i have ship lines that are supposed to be "low-tech" such as anything BCorp faction or pirate vessels). That and i like to play combat related things which makes no sense in career/sci modes. Then there are a handful of parts i just never bother with, but those are too may to mention here, prolly ones that many people do use bbut i dont include the mk2 and mk1-3 pods (i just dont like making RL replicas and im not a fan of conventional circular rockets, gimme a square/triangular/whatever angly design any day over circular, most of my ships either use a cockpit clipped into the hull to make it non-circular or just slap on the only good looking stock pod, the rover/capital ship bridge pod, that or i just make my own bridge from command chairs and a custom interior). That and some thing like the 5m parts, maybee its just me, but ive yet to build anything that a 7 engined 3.75m rocket cant lift (14 tanks, core and 6 side tanks 2 largest tanks each, and the quad engines below these). I have some design concepts that the 5m parts would be essential for, but every time i start one of them i quickly realize the part count is going to melt my CPU, so i end up shelving it (cant really make anything that is over 600 parts for me since i like to be able to add fighters and ammo and smaller vessels to my big ships, so while i can possibly handle 1000 parts on one ship, i wouldnt really be able to use this in a fleet sized battle... Another thing, dV readouts. There has always been a memory leak associated with this that slows the VAB/SPH to a crawl, and i just keep it disabled. Takes me about 20 seconds to calculate the dV of all my ships anyways using a calculator. Finally, mission builder. I have played some missions including the stock ones, so its not like i dont like them, i just dont have the time these days to actually make my own missions (and the mission community is almost non existant anyways, everyone just does forum challenges). maybee had the DLC come out when i was still in college and had loads of freetime (those were the days, i could actually enjoy playing KSP and still mod the crap out of it constantly including altering mods i played), but i just dont have time for game mods anymore, given that i have almost 0 freetime and what little i have im too tired to do any sort of thinking during :(, then again, having a stressful job with long hours suck arss regardless of the fact i get good pay for it...

Upgraded my old AKS Nebula class frigate. Its old, but its still arguably my most efficient warship i ever made when you consider the weight of only 70t and insane armor that doesnt rely on offset tool abuse like the later models (eg Dimension, Origin, ect), so its a bit less "hacky" even if it does have some fuel clipping as i just couldnt get enough fuel inside it without it and still maintaining the looks to be right. Gave it a full size proper bridge as the older series had the MK-1 cockpit which wasnt bad, but it didnt really feel like a true bridge (currently using the rover cockpit as its the only good looking blocky one available, and im just not a fan of rounded crossection parts since they dont look like anything youd find on a sci-fi warship in pretty much any universe that isnt based vaguely on reality). Anyways, i made a new LRM based heavily on the older G7g torpedoes but half the weight and 2 less parts. Looks like utter crap, and not even remotely like an actual missile of any sort, and ofc its inefficient part count wise. Still, the results speak for themselves when a single one of them does the following damage to a ship that is for all intents and purposes one of the stronger "conventional" designs i have made for BCorp: Given i can now carry 6 of them, i can afford a bad hit or 2 and still finish the target. 2 different options are also avilable, longer range LRM with vernors for better guidance and a cheapo version with less fuel, less range, no vernors, but 5 less parts a noticeable less weight. Its only a single shot per 0.6m hardpoint, but its actually more lethal then dual SRM-4Ms for considerably less parts and mass. Also, i did sorta upgrade the BCorp's Broadsword, given that the old mk5 was so anemically underarmed it was inferior to a starfighter... New one has dual SRM-6Ms which is at least what id consider the bare minimum for a frontline warship, and it still has a single 0.6m hardpoint for optional anti-fighter/emergency backup weapons (normally i dont bother carrying them as these things are built to be damage sponges and not offensive vessels). Not perfect and still higher on parts then id like, but its 100% conventional armor (no mk-2 bays or any other more advanced designs inside), no RTGs, no nuke engines, pretty much no advanced tech of any form, so yeah, does its job well for a cheapo mass produced ship that would realistically outnumber the Nebula 4-1 if not more in universe... Not much KSPing these last few weeks cause i was too busy with work, but i still got some stuff done. now to work on my comic ive been doing over the last few months and maybee i can finish the next section...

Ive tried, mechs are incredibly hard to make especially if you want them to 1, move at anything more then snails pace, and 2, carry stock weapons. These 2 things become increasingly difficult the taller the robit gets, and in the case of a strider that will be a huge issue... I might give it a try, since i do like the design of the strider, but in all realism, i think hunter would be easier to make as its smaller, lower to the ground, and would not require a boatload of reaction wheels to go anywhere. Things like this are fairly easy to make (after fiddling with the leg anims for a few hours that is), triple leggers shouldnt be much harder to do (might even be better balanced and need less reaction wheels), but tall things are a very big problem cause the slightest side force makes then wanna topple over. Still, ill see what can be done as id love to see a strider like thing in KSP (actually if i did make a tripod in KSP id prolly make it more akin to this as i like it's fully flexible organic legs). I actually remember someone made something akin to this in KSP ages ago, but it wasnt mechanized or anything of the sort. If i ever pulled it off, id make a HL2 styled strider with legs pulled from war of the worlds since they were fully flexible (part count nightmare though if i ever did it)...

well, made my final version of it... sorta mid version, moved guns to top, but it just dodnt work well (firing was unreliable and it was notorious for hitting the launched ordinance itself knocking it off course or at worst blowing itself up). so yeah, moved the stock weapons back below it (it doesnt really look bad, id just have preferred it up top), added flippers, and animated everything so it actually flexes as youd expect teh HL2 one to do so. dat glowing nose cannon looks insanely cool imo, as does the missile launcher on top (well it doesnt actually shoot anything, but the HK-G1 is supposed to be armed in universe with light point defense cannon (nose), 1 AT gun (the stock missile launcher is where that is supposed to be), and 1 missile launcher (the glowy vent like thing on the top)...

When you realize how much potential there is to the robotics parts, spend 2 days to make and tweak a physics defying helicopter, and get a screenshot like this one (with a teensy bit of photoshopping)... This game, despite being so old, never fails to amaze visually (at least with the right mods)...

heres my basic model of the thing, slightly smaller scale then yours and no flippers. I still need to completely redo the rear and the 2 top thrusters which i have some better ideas for, and im so moving the weaponry from the bottom placeholder turret to what will most likely be a top mounted option, but its there, it looks amazing, and it flies a tad better then your variant (ive gotten it up to 47m/s without the missile launcher turret on the bottom, and if i wanna sacrifice speed it will lift 6 tons of payload albeit then it flies like a dead pig stuffed with bricks). Thanks alot for showing me some of the potential of the robotics parts, they really make the game neat (and i just cant believe it took your craft for me to actually figure out some of the more advanced features of the DLC)...

Added some pics from 1st battle scene, not 100% finished yet, but here they are... full album here: https://imgur.com/a/nFcPhyz

well, i have it working sofar at least the skeleton... Making mine in chibe scale since i just cant justify a gunship being larger then a corvette class warship ...I tend to make everything very small if possible since i play mostly stock and part counts become an issue with cruiser sized ships, not to mention i totally want to make a SSTO variant (even if it means relying on the notrious infinite fuel exploit since im not entirely sure its possible to make something like this SSTO legit)...

Gave it a try, works nicely actually... Now what im trying to do is reverse engineer the thing to figure out how you pulled off the super smooth flexible exterior. If its not some super secret thing whats the purpose of all the random small hinges clipped in around the 2 small engines and the 2 hydraulics? Im making my own "gunship" based on the generic configuration of the combine one, but with a rear engine setup more akin to this thing as i want to make the thing look like a true hybrid between organic/mechanical tech and not just pure organic (with the exception of the engine bits glued on) like the HL2 version is). So yeah, it wont be a replica (yours is already brilliant in that regard), but ill try and make my 1st "flexible" helicopter combining organic elements based on how you made yours with some more mechanical parts which i think the HL2 gunship lacks. Either way, you did show me that there is quite a bit the robot controllers can do that ive never really tried b4. Like binding the controllers to WSAD (never took advantage of this b4), and such. Hope you dont mind me stealing these ideas for future builds :)...

Best helicopter ive ever seen on here (and fyi, the HL2 styled gunship is my all time favorite heli like craft in any universe since it looks really weird, and that real mounted rotor that defies physics but looks cool). Ive made quite a few thinsg inspired by the HL2 gunship, but nothing even close to this quality (im not even gonna ask for the part count as it must be terrible)... This was from a while ago (around when BG DLC came out), and i sorta gave up on the concept since i couldnt get anything that flew reasonably (and was to the chibi scale i build with as i dont really make planes the size of capital ships like most people on here due to part count issues with said capital ships), but heres some pics of what i had. Yours defenetely makes what i had back when look like crap :) ill have to revisit that project as it was really cool imo and you defenetely inspired me to revisit the concept...

Well, i cant believe i havent seen dis mod earlier, makes this game actually look like what ud expect on a planetary surface with genuine micro sized features! Paralax mod is epic, makes the surfaces actually uneven and challenging to traverse by vehicles (didnt get any screenies, but i already lost a mech to the new terrain ). Damn its hard to drive on the mun now, guess ill have to seriously redesign my vehicles and actually think about how to navigate this kinda surface. Still not 100% sure if i want to keep the new collisions enabled, but im thinking of keeping them on since it really makes the game much harder to play which is a welcome thing (and its hard in a way i actually enjoy, not making it impossible to fly spaceplanes to anywhere like RO style mods do or add tedious mechanics like life support mods would (they have their merits, but im just not a fan of having to babysit all my 100+ ships spread throughout the universe)... and ofc what mod would be complete without its share of bugs ... Pretty sure its not intentional for half my base to be underground, but hey, maybee its just buried partially or something, wont stop me from landing ships in the designated landing zone. So yeah, not too crazy or anything, but this thing just adds so much immersion, im so not going to remove it any time soon, planet surfaces still arent quite up to other games, but they are finally at a point that immersion isnt lost completely like in stock KSP where the planets themselves are just meh surface feature wise. I might disable it just to take a quick look at the 1.11 planets, but after dat its back up and makes the game look amazing...

Well, decided to take a short break from the usual stuff i do in KSP (pretty much exclusively exploding capital ships and the like), and actually put together something akin to a jool-5 mission (with a bit of a military twist to it as well i just dont make unarmed ships period :)). I plan to setup a base on either Vall or Laythe (although im thinking Vall is more likely due to no atmo and the base i launched the2re isnt really verty good in atmo exceeding Duna's neglibile drag). Anyways, im very happy with my destiny class mothership. Its a genuinely original design (im pretty sure i was inspired by something, but i didnt actually intend for it to be a replica of anything), and i wanted a rotating rear (those 3 containers are the crew sleep area, habitation, and storage areas), but that idea got shelved as the part count went through the roof and i just couldnt do it without tearing my eyes out later with the sluggishness and lag (the ship with its payload is over 1200 parts). Anyways, the core payload this thing drags with it is my redesigned Tylo rated single stage lander. Nothing fancy, just a command seat, reaction wheel, and a single LV-909 with as many fuel tanks as i could reasonably fit. I wanted to make it as small as possible, so i clipped a little bit with the fuel, but hey, it works, it should allow me to land/return from tylo surface, and well lets hope it goes well once the whole monstrosity arrives at the jool system. Secondly, intending to put it on whatever planet the main ground base ends up going, i brought a marauder-II class heavy SSTA dropship. I loaded it up with my 1st truly viable mech/walker tank, the Jaguar. Its sorta undergunned, overweight, and sluggish (max speed realistically is around 10m/s at least in kerbin gravity), but its the first thing i ever managed to make with a true chikin walker leg design that actually breaks 5m/s while being 12t in weight. While it failed as a replica (this was supposed to be a shadowcat from mechwarrior universe), i think it still looks really cool, and it does have working weapons albeit ive yet to figure out how to aim then properly since they seem really unreliable with how the mech bounces around while standing still. The dropship will also double up as the entire group's IRSU unit capable of refueling the mothership and other ships nearby (i dont plan to use this for the jool-5, but the dropship will be left behind at jool and will probably end up refueling the spy station thats been slowly running low on fuel since i wanted to put it in a super low jool orbit and burned every bit to do that. Finally, i added a HK-101F to the mix as i had completely overkill amounts of dV leftover and well, a SSTL starfighter is never a bad idea to fly around in. It is alone capable of making the entire trip from Kerbin->Laythe->Kerbin without refueling if i replace its onboard weapons with 2 extra fuel tanks. Ill prolly use it to determine a suitable landing site for the main base ahead of time if i decide to try and land it on laythe, otherwise it will be what i land on Laythe in the even that the main base goes to Vall as there is no reason to use the MArauder for that since its complete overkill to explore something with a massive dropship. The whole ship was refueled using a partially drained fuel can i had sitting around in a close enough orbit that it wasnt a complete waste to drag it there. Not fully fueled, but i managed to get ~90% of the internal LF supply, and around 50% of the booster engine that was still left from the Destiny's launcher which will hopefully give enough of a kick to allow the rest enough range to actually go to every body in the jool system. And finally, perhaps the most important ship, i brought a cargo transport (very basic craft with just 2 2.5m argo containers) with the goal of bringing a ladder which will be attached to the tylo lander (in vcase it wasnt obvious oin that screenshot, i forgot to add it earlier (very much liking the 1.11 build system, it feels fair/realistic, and it really helps when you just forget stupid crap like this and dont want to essentially decouple the vessel, delete it, and teleport a replacement to destination (no more need for that, or minor cosmetic changes). I also, since i had tons of dV after fueling, stripped a few things off the cargo ship like RCS and solars just in case they will come in handy later for something. The rest of the cargo conatiner was various odds/ends, lights, surface experiments which i dont really need cause i play sandbox, but look amazing and really add immersion to land bases, and a few other potentially useful things like struts and a crapton of repair kits as you can never have enuff of em. Ohh, and a few random screenshots showing the interior...