panzer1b

Yeah, its configs, i just bundled EVE itself but the version dont work in 1.8 obviously. If i ever get the time to bother upfdating this ill add newest EVE to it as well as a few changes ive been working on...

Made a new house, since i wanted a bit of a break from the usual combat in KSP i normally do. that and installed KS3P now that its been updated and ofc tweaked it to remove the annoying crap like motion blur (i dont know why but ive hated motion blur in like every single videogame ive ever played, never felt "realistic", made it hard to see stuff well, eats resources, ect). Dropped this near the pole, since it features more interesting terrain, views, and is less likely to get attacked by pirates. Nothing too fancy, just tried to make something that actually felt like a sci-fi orbitally dropped housing unit that looks like a shipping container on a girder base, and i think it came out decent in that regard. This was teh older iteration, not the one thats pictured above, but it shows a much better view of the actual design (only change with new one is the hitchhiker being moved internally and just a singl fuel tank visible below). Now to make a HQ in this style (my older skytwoer design is much cooler from a HQ standpoint, but it just doesnt fit well with this style housing), and ofc deploy a LRM battery for defensive purposes if i can actually come up with some sort of long range guided missile that doesnt suck, require crazy part counts, and looks like something that wasnt vomited out by my pirate factions...

So yeah, i did a small 1v1 battle, and spent a bit of time with logistics and rearming/refueling a ship that miraculously took no damage of any meaningful sort. Got restock installed so that the parts actually look half decent in terms of quality, really makes a difference with NTRs and a few of the otherwise bland stock parts. Some of it i disable (i actually prefer the stock 1.25m fuel tanks and most of the revamped engines squad did in the latest updates), but for the most art restock > stock. While this thing is borderline useless (no range, engine thrust is so offcenter you need to constantly lower thrust levels, pathetic firepower, no TWR, exposed bridge), it did actually survive a weapon that normally would have blown a BCorp vessel in half with a direct hit to the centerline like this was. Still, it was designed to tank fire, and that is did quite well. Despite the rather impressive explosions, the Broadsword class frigate didnt do squat, blew off most of the wing paneling (which is purely asthetic anyway), and the only genuine damage it did was destroying 1/12 of the Nebula class's fuel capacity (so 1 LF tank), something said ship can easily live without as its got overboard dV to begin with (close to 3000 with the weapons payload i gave it). And returning fire with broken SRMs (update made them useless, i used to have the engines tweaked to 200% thrust with ablator added to compensate for mass, but 1.8 made it impossible to exceed the 100% setting rendering the ibeams too slow to do jack besides knock off the unarmored exposed bridge and a few of the ships fuel tanks. While it was dissapointing, at least it forced me to remove the final "cheaty" aspect my ships abused in KSP and ofc upped the part count of the heavier SRM podsmmaking it harder to carry ammunition without lagging to death (to be honest they were a bit OP with just 4 parts per missile, now its 6 so not crazy bad but less capacity for most ships if i dont want to lag to death). here she is after the battle, half the crew is intact (noone actually died, both the main bridge and side pod that were lost just got shot off), engines work (albeit 2 of them need to be shut off if i wanna go in a straight line), 4 of 6 weapons hardpoints can be reloaded, and it is fully controllable. I think ill try and have the pirates operating in higher orbit drag it away and fix it there, given that a ship this damaged has no place serving any of the primary factions, that or pull it to the closest station and add it as a sort of disaster shelter (it is still armored so a kerbal inside it has a good chance of surviving ordinance). Launched a quickly whacked together ammo dump to the mun to rearm the Nebula that emptied almost every round it had. So yeah, the reloading droid was beyond painful to use as i had to rush like crazy so it didnt loose power. Apparently i forgot to add any power generation or batteries to the thing, rendering it extremely finicky and forcing me to use the frigate's own RCS system (which also survived with no damage) a couple times to save the unpowered probe. Hopefully ill remember to add useful things the next time i send ammo to a ship, that or like the last time, forget to put RCS on teh tug drone (which makes it extremely hard to get ammo onto a ship, since it sorta needs RCS to move at all...

I havent bothered trying to decompile any of the analytics data, but my point still stands, ANY data being sent PERIOD is wrong in my book, especially if the user specifically desires to opt out of any sort of tracking. Unity's solution is also stupid, forcing you to register on some website for it to honor your request to not track you. There is NO method to verify that it even honoring that, and possibly whats worse, is that it requires you to give them detailed info about the installation to have that even work (i havent done it myself, but im pretty sure it needs some unique install code or serial to work at all). its a sad fact that our society seems to have more or less jumped on the facebook/social media bandwagon and doesnt give 2 craps about privacy, but there NEEDS to be a way to completely cut all analytics out of any singleplayer game without resorting to firewalls or any other outside method. Id be fine with deleting a file to make the issue go away, but even that should not be needed, just have a damn config setting that is honored by the program, if its set to not send data, then dont send squat period ever!

Made a new um rover err armored car... After quite a long time of not making stock tanks i decided to give it a go, and with the new wheels its actually not bad at all (and allows for proper aiming up/down by adjusting springs). Does everything a land vehicle outta, drives fast and stable, shoots while moving accurately enough to hit a barn sized building, and can even survive anything but a direct hit right down the middle with its own weapons package. Its a little complex (due to armor plating and redundancy), but the best part about is is that i can fit these things into any standard cargo vessel or carrier i got (all of which use either a MK-3, double MK-2, or some variation of wing panels and armor plating for the bay). Ill see how well this done after i land a few on duna to fight the aliens that are currently there, but i think it will stand a chance. In other news, made a truly well armored frigate for my 2nd main faction i have in my KSP games, and it turned out to be solid despite looking like a brick with stuff strapped onto the top of it. Looks perfect for the faction fielding it given that BCorp uses more industrial and blocky looking ships then AKS's sleeker styled ones made up of almost all wings and MK-2 bays. Despite being split in half and loosing all its weapons (this would have been a mission kill, but its still technically mobile and controllable by the hidden kerbal inside), it remained possible to move it. Given that it took the entire payload of a dimension class cruiser to do this to it, ill say resounding success. No MK-2 armor, no abuse of offsets, and the only price i pay for that is pathetic armarment (2 SRM-4s is too little ammo, and the 4 side mounted SRM-4Ls are useless against anything but unarmored targets), and somewhat lousy range (which i can extend using droptanks to be manageable).

Yeah, as much as it sucks, im officially going to wait for KSP2 to be released and tested b4 i even consider buying it (i would have preordered had they not had this analytics trash in KSP1 that is now nolonger able to be removed or game wont work). Ill prolly get it on sale or something, and if it does come with analytics just not bother with multiplayer (im pretty sure we will still be able to do everything KSP1 could do offline aside from interacting with other earth meatbags). Hear this T2: you have just lost a customer because of your anti-consumer tactics. Privacy DOES matter for me (and apparently quite a few others judging by posts here), so consider that b4 you go and use cheap tactics like this to alienate your source of income...

What i dont get is why this is forced on everyone with no justifiable reason. I can understand analytics in a multiplayer game (afterall, they can like track what you do on servers when playing anyways), but KSP is a single player game, and has no reason to track what you are doing offline in it whatsoever. Also, i dont care about the arguments that its anonymous, ANY data being sent to their servers about my machine, what im using it for, hardware i have on it, ect, is an automatic NO from me. I believe there needs to be a way to opt out from client side and not have to send ANYTHING to any server to get it to be disabled (opting out via website is NOT opting out in my book, you still need to send data somewhere for that optout to be set, and there is no guarantee itll even be honored). Anyways, my biggest complaint is the fact that the game nolonger even starts with analytics deleted. So yeah, please listen to your customers devs/T2/unity/wheover is calling the shots, and make analytics a 100% OPTIONAL AND NOT REQUIRED THING TO RUN THIS GAME!!!!!!!!!!!!!

While im not concerned myself since i have 3 firewalls all set to block KSP from sending or recieving anything, i do think this forced analytics is utter BS from a customer loyalty perspective. I really like this game, but adding a forced analytics crap into it is very low, especially since that feature has nothing to do with actually playing it (and the whole monetize private data many companies are getting into just makes me sick). Ill continue to support this game as usual, but if KSP2 comes with crap like this (and that will be a MP game so ill have to allow it online if i want to do MP stuff), i might reconsider my current stance of looking at buying it...

booted up 1.8 finally (wanted to do it earlier, but was way too busy... Seems that everything works fine, duna is beautiful even if buggy (EVE was updated to 1.8, but i need to redo a few things with my mods to make it better)... That and no scatterer, very rage inducing ... Its just ages better then what we had b4, really makes the game much more immersive especially for those that actually land stuff on planets (had to launch a new skytower, since the old one got blown up). And in other news, more space combat, seems the ship i tested my tri-fighter on didnt even survive the point defense weapons (pretty sure the primary shipkillers would be overkill). Didnt have mods enabled here as i just realized EVE was a thing for 1.8 like 5 minutes ago...

I prefer the new behavior, makes heat shields actually useful (lets face it, unless u hit laythe above 3km/s you can aerobrake almost anything but flipping around in the atmo), and it makes it less of a dragfest. The souposphere is not my idea of realistic or even all that fun, best was around 1.0 release (with truly low drag but dangerously hot atmo), and its gone downhill ever since that update. I may not be the majority, but i vastly prefer new atmo in 1.8 to the old one (now the challenge is more heat related, less drag/dV related as it should be, given that it was virtually impossible to overheat anything in 1.7.3 with heat set to 100%, and even at 120% you had to intentionally do something to melt your ship unless its interplanetary aerobraking). So yeah, might not be all that popular an opinion, but i say keep it as is in 1.8, much more realistic and enjoyable (not to mention heat is finally somewhat of a thing even if its still way too low imo, especially lack of heat gen from NTR engines which was such a neat mechanic back in the 1.0 days).

I have to say my number 1 inspiration for this game was Macey Dean, with that carrier space battle series he made on youtube. While he didnt exactly introduce me to KSP or even stock KSP warfare (i sorta came up with that myself after i made my 1st rendezvous attempt which involved both ships colliding fast enough to explode). That said, he did give me the idea of unguided stock missiles (all of my initial attemots at space warfare involved guided weapons, most of which were pathetically weak. He also heavily influenced my 1st generation of capital ships i designed for KSP, none were true copies or anything, but they did take alot of visual design elements from them. My 2nd greatest inspiration was Zekes with his drek series of capital ships, and the creator of my 2nd generation of warships (which stole the interior design philosophy and were actually resistant to weapons fire). Before him most of my ships used the Macey styled fuel tank/cockpit surrounded by metal (which was useless against AP warheads), Zekes (although im pretty sure he didnt invent the concept), used structural skeleton and created some of the best early KSP vessels from a armor perspective. Every ship up until the 4th generation (which was maybee 2 years ago or so) used his style in its armor layout, and only the 4th gen is where i started coming out with my own 100% not stolen from someone else armor layouts. The last military inspiration would be Hatbat, he wasnt so much a engineering/ship design inspiration, but hes (at least imo) one of the best cinematics creators ive ever seen (if you are into military stuff that is). That kethane series he made was amazing, even though im very sad that he deleted all of the old videos which features one of my super old mods in it :(... As for 100% non military, i will say that Scott Manley is where i got the vast majority of my early knowledge with regards to interplanetary travel and advanced orbital stuff. I managed to get a ship into orbit on my own when i began playing KSP (its really not hard to do a very simple orbit if you make something that resembles a real life rocket). I know hes still here, but he really did help me understand how to do some of the cooler stuff earlyon when i started playing. The last guy that i can recall is Vaos (im pretty sure hes still around though), purely because he is the one that got me into SSTOs early on in KSP (my 1st interplanetary ship was actually a SSTO vaguely based on his BSG viper replica). I learned airhogging from his designs, and he made some beautiful vessels visually (at least really nice for that age's standards where black intakes all over a craft was a thing and there was no aerodynamics that made sense).

I almost exclusively build capital ships in chibi scale, so im fairly likely to use the smallest ports availeable for them when adding hangar space (if a starfighter hull is below 1.2m its very hard to make the larger ports look good on it). Capital ships tend to use the mid range port options for docking to themselves and or stations/refulelers (they are more numerous for asthetic choice), and stations or vertically stacked ground base modules use the largest one for its improved stability (and the fact that 90% of my ground/station designs are physically large enough to accomodate that size port without looking stupid). The largest port is also very big and has a huge hitbox, so i dont go near it on anything that expects to get shot at (especially with stock non-BDA weaponry which evicerate those large ports very quickly). That and i tend to use ALOT of klaws on both ships (its helpful to be able to dock to a section of a ship and use its fuel after its been lost in combat), and even starfighters that are physically large enough to add one without making it look like a joke, which is not all that many of them as of this point in time (trifighters use them, and most bombers/heavy fighters but every other one uses the small ports or the extendable MH one which docks to the small ports). And ofc as for non military replicas (i do actually make a few of those), i just pick whatever port looks the part and fits closest to the rest of the ship scale wise.

For me what will determine whether i play KSP1 after 2 comes out is pretty much all about performance (unless KSP2 is missing some critical features or something that KSP1 had minus the constant kraken attacks). If it fixes the massive lagfest that 1000 part ships are (especially in cases where you arent even directly intracting with said ship, just flying 1km away from it), then KSP2 will be a keeper, otherwise, if they dont actually solve the issues, then the only thing that i will consider in KSP2 is multiplayer, the neat stuff like interstellar engines, new planets, ect, can all be done via mods in KSP1, but thusfar KSP1 lacks any multiplayer mod that works well (yeah there is that one, tried it, was so buggy that any sort of real time interaction with 2 players doing something in the same 2.5km range broke everything). Performance or not, if MP is good ill get it, otherwise everything comes down to whether KSP2 can solve some of the lagfests and kraken bugs in KSP1...

Honestly for me it was Eve, followed by moho probably (everything else is either super easy, or just requires dV which is something one can create with a fat enough rocket or orbital assembly/IRSU abuse). I know a few mentioned tylo, but given that i made a tylo capable SSTO with room for 1 kerbin a while back which was actually a repurposed escape pod that i made which had to be capable of landing on any planet in jool system if the mothership was too heavily damaged by hostile pirates (yes even my more peaceful minded missions often include ibeams with sepatrons on them being shot at the ships). As for hard, Eve is kinda obvious, getting there and landing is easy (just get a heatshield and dont be too agressive on the initial aerobrake), leaving is the truly hard part, since it requires both a aerodynamic vessel, stupid amounts of dV, and worst of all the vast majority of engines ISP is terrible in the lower atmo (its not too hard to do it from the top of a mountain, but from sea level is not easy whatsoever). Even with the propellers it is still hard to do (albeit props have 1 major benefit, infinite dV while in the atmo so even if you raise the launch vehicle by 2km its still a huge benefit). Finally, i know its maybee just me, but ive found moho to be the 2nd hardest thing to get to and return, the dV (especially to circularize) is much higher then i initially expected it to be, and the braking burn needs some TWR, not to mention the heat there makes it actually hard to blast a cluster of nukes at full power (i guess if you are using 1.7.3 stock it wouldnt be an issue, but i use the thermal properties of the nuke's 1.0 cfg, as i loved how hot they got just to make nukes nolonger the do everything engine and actual downside). Pretty much, i either need to stick to pure LFO, or spam radiators like crazy to not explode my ship using nukes, and regardless of what i choose it takes a ship quite a bit larger then most that i design (unless again, IRSU, but ive yet to launch a IRSU ship to moho so cant say how much lighter itd be if i did it that way).

I was under the impression that the best way to get helium-3 is to steal it from the moon dweller's mines...

Looks cool, but the 2 biggest things for me (which will determine whether i actually get the sequel) is performance improvements and grafix, both of which are huge pitfalls of the current game. I know modeling physics interactions on a per part basis is taxing, but im pretty sure it can be optimized somewhat especially for vessels that arent actually colliding with anything (id treat a solid ship as a single body until it actually gets hit by something in which case id model every part individually as now. Itd solve the day-day lag, but still allow some truly impressive explosions, collisions, lithobraking, and stock missile combat (aslong as the phys interactions were only engaged during and a bit after a impact between a vessel and something else i dont see how it would be too laggy). As for grafix, well its not that stock KSP+scatterer+scifive+KS3P is all that bad looking, but its performance is fairly weak most likely due to reliance on CPU/DX9 (KSP of all the games i play barely even touches the GPU on my rig). If we could get dedicated DX11 support, more land details (more polygons on terrain, and generally more features like rolling hills, small valleys, bogs, ect, stuff you would expect to see IRL), that and properly textured landscape (like what teh 1.8 is attempting to do), with uniform fitting ship parts that dont look like a jumble of 10 different artists all doing whatever they feel looks good to them, the game would be a major step up from today. Finally, im very happy to hear that KSP1 wont be completely abandoned post KSP2, which is good for those who like the old game (and given the sheer number of ships ive made for KSP1, i doubt ill completely abandon the game myself even if somehow KSP2 is 100% superior in every way (which is doubtful given the high bar KSP1 has set).

Making more progress on duna colony, added a few buildings besides the massive tower i built last week. For some reason i have a thing for using alot of girders/panels in my designs, its just not really possible to make something look like a building without em... Ever since i discovered you can use cubic struts and normal struts together to make bendy cables, ive sorta been abusing it like crazy on all my land buildings, mostly between the building itself and power supplies. Shot from bottom of skytower, more cables, and plenty of structural junk that serves n real purpose but looks cool. View from damaged interior, originally i had the missing segment being intentiomnal part of design, but i later made it look more like stuff was hanging off the ower via struts and about to fall off with the rest. And finally a view of duna landscape from the very very top of the tower, its quite tall, but if i can come up with a way to make this thing taller without lagging my KSP install to death, im so going to do so. Still have plenty of stuff i need to make, fuel depo, a less terrible looking refinery (i have multiple designs, none of which im actually happy with), landing platforms (like refinery, have alot of these, not happy with any of the designs for either looking too bland or having too many parts), and finally some vehicles to transport the kerbins around between stuff that arent tanks, afterall, this isnt actually a military facility or anything of the sort despite what i normally do in KSP (since there is no way im going to load all of that and a ship that will be used to go orbital all within 2.5km). And made a few minor edits to the dimension-III class warship, mainly redid the torpedo bay by making the doors below and not above the ship (couldnt get a single door to work for the top, needed 2 which was more complexity). One of my more sleek ships, especially after i added some DLC parts to make the doors slide properly and not rely on aerodynamic control surfaces as makeshift redneck doors (which i did equip the non-DLC variant with, just doesnt look anywhere near as good ofc). So yeah, now to make my new pulsar class stealth frigate, suprisingly hard to make something with 1005 of its weapons hidden inside the hull, and no major protrusions or engine thrust clearly vesible outside of the ship...

100% finished my skytower concept, like 90% of everything i do it really takes the 2nd iteration to make it truly good in every category. Taller, and less parts then previous model even if its alot more white and has less panels on it (as much as i really like structural panels, the stock ones are way too small to do more then minor touchups and detailing, cant make a wall out of em nomatter how much you want (well not without wasting 500 parts on that single wall). This thing is just a bit taller then the VAB, and it was a nightmare to land on duna since its stupidly heavy and has barely any reaction wheels (all of which are purely asthetic consideration), and just 3 vernors at the very top to help somewhat. My fav view of this thing, covering that metal girder thing which i have no idea what it is supposed to be (sorta stole the concept of that from the hl2 citadel this is based on). After trying for ages to make a non straight strut (mostly by offsetting the strut into thin air), i finally came up with the idea of using offset tool and rotation and just strut between the separate floating components. Managed to get a fairly decent looking albeit part count intensive cable that actually looks like its affected by gravity to link the tower to its 3 extended legs (which are needed to get the building to not fall over anywhere but the launchpad). I think my idea of using panels falling off the building to expose the internals is a better idea then the previous model which had what was sorta a random opening which had no real reason to be there. Also, to go along with the damage concept, the girder thing is also destroyed in a section near the exposed interior, as well as the whatever the heck that thing i made out of panels on the left). Now to make some super super low part count filler living spaces to put around this. While im so not a fan of MK3 parts for normal designs (too big for ship parts, and too small to store anything but the tiniest scout vehicles or microfighters). I think ill go with something like a building complex but sitting on girders so its not just on the ground like a normal building would be...

Its at the very top of valley, this spot here... Ive found the valleys to be much more friendly to massive towers, although i have replaced the tower with a new design (same part count, much taller and still got plenty of detailing on it... So yeah, about as flat as ur going to get on duna at least, had some difficulty landing this monstrosity (if you dont time the burn just right you will never land it where you want to land it), but eventually got it where it needed to go (and its 400tons, so the 8 or so large reaction wheels sticking out of the backside are useless (i honestly used them more for asthetics then anything else). Really like the ground up view this thing has, makes it look way way taller then it really is when you see it from afar. Currently taller then VAB though, so even then its no joke.

I do my share of replicas as its a much greater engineering challenge to make something out of a sci-fi movie (especially if its a dumb design like half the sci-fi ships in any movie, offcenter thrust, not aerodynamic, ect). Anyone whos played this game for a while can make a rocket to get anywhere (ive been to every planet without cheats or mods), but it takes a special type of skillset to make a good looking ship (that remotely resembles something from reality/scifi movie), make it do more then just sit in orbit, and also not make your machine lag to hell (and in my case, have armor to withstand some amount of stock weapons fire). That said, the vast majority of my vessels are heavily inspired but not 100% replicas, for example my fairly recent dimension-III class warship, interior is based on older dimension-II, exterior is taken from a failed providence replica (well not exactly failed, but it ended up having way too many parts to justify using in any sort of larger scale battle and i cut out some of the organic styling and the nose which i couldnt do without alot of parts). And as for buildings, i tend to go a bit more all-out with those (at least civilian models, bunkers and military facilities tend to be much simpler). My latest skytower rendition, not a true replica or even close, but i stole alot of design asthetics from the citadel in HL2, even if its just some aspects of it (3 sided, middle segment having that open section with those ibeam/girder things, ect).

Redid my skytower concept with the intention of putting a city on duna (i already have like 3 military bases/outposts on there, now need somewhere for the kerbins to actually go when they arent being shot at). Should be pretty obvious what its inspired by even if its not even remotely close to being a replica of said citadel, just stole a couple concepts for the exterior and the cut out segment near middle...

But, but, but.... A SSTO does 1000m/s easy, 20m/s is insignificant when you want to get from 1 side of duna to the other... Itd take me forever to get any mech from my military complex on duna to the city im currently in the process of making, the city being at the very top of the largest valley, and the base being at the very bottom... Maybee i should just do what any sane person does and just carry land vehicles on a dropship or something... Especially since we have props and nolonger need to waste absurd amounts of fuel on duna at least.

My perference has to be none of the above, im more into space warships, starfighters, tanks, and generally anything combat related, but if i had to choose from those 2, id say rockets since im not huge on flying in atmosphere on kerbin using jets (i have other games if im in the mood to fly planes, KSP for me is like 100% about space).

I have to say that after quite a bit of messing around with the parts, this DLC is the single best thing to happen to KSP. Now if only i could actually make a viable 2 legged walker mech thing that stops flipping over and actually goes faster then 20m/s...

Well after my last weekend creation, which surprisingly turned out to be near indestructible (only thing that could kill it some of the time was a siege torpedo which is complete overkill against starships), i decided to cross the providence with my dimension's internals to create the ultimate warship i have thusfar (even if it is laggy). Its also the 1st successful ship (ive toyed with the concept over the years but never made it practical) to use front mounted engines for redundancy. Its not 100% efficient (if you can tell those engines point at an angle and not straight as i couldnt make the front look good while being wide enough to thrust aiming engines directly to rear. I kept a similar bridge layout to the providence, 1 front, 1 mid, 1 rear, and especially the rear one looks amazing as you can see down the entire hull and then some (with there was a 360 glass bridge to put up here but i did want to keep it stock). I sorta overdid it with teh antennas on the top, but its a really pretty detail that breaks up the otherwise 100% armored hull, so yeah, thats another 10 parts to add to the 500+ parts that make this thing work. Stole the missile bay concept from my older aurora, works well even if it takes a bit of finesse to actually get a missile out of the ship without breaking anything in the process (damn you exhaust damage). And ofc it has broadside weapons (along the usual nose cannons), not that it makes any sense to do so, but its one detail from the providence i wasnt going to toss even though it is technically replacing my dimension class and not really a replica of the providence anymore (i have 1 way closer to a replica, but its not quite as useful due smaller hangar that fighters cant get in or out of, no front guns, and is way higher on parts despite having less guns on it. While i also dont normally make them, i will say organic styled hulls do actually look pretty neat, especially when you make it in KSP and its almost utter lack of organic styled components (there are a few like the radial air intakes, and the rounded adaptors and fairings, but not much else. Ill defenetely attempt to make more organic hulls after this one came out so good...