KSC-Destroying Missile Launcher (updated to 1.1)

[Geschosskopf]

Long ago, back when buildings first became destructible, I made a big missile launcher that shot Kickbacks, to destroy KSC. Having nothing else to do and with a clean stock 1.1 installation, I decided to updated it.  After all, engines have been tweaked, the atmosphere has changed, wheels now need huge amounts of power, and all that.  After a fair amount of work, I got it where I like it

The key, of course, is making the missiles fly more or less straight and horizontally.  This requires careful use of Sepratrons, thrust limiters, and fuel tweaks.  The 1.1 missiles don't fly quite as straight as the old version but they're good enough to hit buildings.  The missiles can reach nearly 400m/s although it sometimes appears that hitting at lower velocity actually does more damage.  But OTOH, buildings appear to have some places where they're most vulnerable and it's possible to drop any building with a single hit.  Usually, however, it takes several.

Anyway, I present the Geschosskopf Rampage!

Drop box link for craft file:

Action Group 2:  Toggles ladders (sometimes needed to repair wheels)
Action Group 5:  Toggles fuelcells.  Do this immediately upon spawning if you want to move.

And some pics of it in action.  Here's the beast launching from the runway spawn point.

 

And a missile just prior to impact.

 

As you can see, the missiles fly pretty straight.

 

And are accurate enough to hit relatively small targets reliably, such as the telescope dome of R&D.  This is facilitated by the use of an antenna for a sight.

 

If you get close enough, you can feel the blast wave when missiles hit and buildings fall.

 

Anyway, sometimes it's fun just to go on a rampage and level KSC.  Enjoy.

[Dfthu]

This looks pretty good! What do you think the top range of the missile is? EDIT: how many parts is it?

Edited April 19, 2016 by Dfthu

[Geschosskopf]

1 minute ago, Dfthu said:

This looks pretty good! What do you think the top range of the missile is?

Well, on average, they go the full length of the runway.  However, it's a bit variable due to wobble in the joints and flexing in the suspension, which makes each shot leave at a slightly different angle.  So sometimes they hit the ground about 7/8 down the runway, sometimes they land out in the water.

The main problem with the missiles is that they tend to rise slightly, which makes it hard to hit low buildings from long range.  This could maybe be fixed by tweaking the Sepratrons a tiny amount but the thing is VERY sensitive to such tweaks.  What I've got here is the best I could do after several hours of work.

[Skybird0]

Wow cool...  I need to give this a shot.(Pun not intended.)

 

Just need some kerbals in a command seat, geronimo!

[Geschosskopf]

12 minutes ago, Skybird0 said:

Just need some kerbals in a command seat, geronimo!

That probably won't work.  The missiles are very sensitive to mass.  They have almost zero fuel in them because any more makes them hit the ground too soon and the Sepratrons can't keep that from happening.

Also note that the missiles lack nosecones.  While they fly better with nosecones, they do less damage.  Apparently the 1st part to hit the building delivers all the impact alone, counted by itself, without the momentum of the whole assembly behind it.  So to maximize damage, you want the part that hits the target to be the biggest part y you've got.

[Guest]

This is something PEGI would love to see...

Looks awesome, though!

[swjr-swis]

3 hours ago, Skybird0 said:

Just need some kerbals in a command seat, geronimo!

2 hours ago, Geschosskopf said:

That probably won't work.  The missiles are very sensitive to mass.  They have almost zero fuel in them because any more makes them hit the ground too soon and the Sepratrons can't keep that from happening.

Well, I had to try.

I remembered I had solved a similar issue for my V1 flying bomb replica a while back in 1.0.5, so I went and rolled out the ole' launch ramp again, and replaced the V1 with a Kickback missile. No sepratrons needed for it to avoid the ground, even fully fueled. And while I was at it, I let Hilzy do a 'von Munchhausen'.

 

Note that this is still in 1.0.5. Unfortunately, due to the changes to wheels and their still ongoing issue with clipping, the ramp no longer works in 1.1. I'll have to unclip the wheels, and probably have to place the bomb/missile higher over the wheels so they get time at physics load to become 'collidy' before the missile comes to rest onto them. As explosive and touchy as wheels are at the moment though, that might not be a good idea either. We'll find a way.

[Skybird0]

I knew it wouldn't work for your missile @Geschosskopf, I thought it was worth a try.

@swjr-swis I like it!  Idk how Hilzy survived that, but anyways awsome craft and great narrative.

[swjr-swis]

3 hours ago, Skybird0 said:

Idk how Hilzy survived that

No idea either. I expected to get a zoomed in shot of the explosion, but the camera suddenly zoomed out and bounced a bit. Turns out she was somehow launched from her seat to the mountainside behind the hangars.

 

Back to @Geschosskopf's launcher though: I was getting really frustrated last night because I wasn't managing to make even a single KSC building collapse, not even after a full barrage of your launcher. I couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong. Apparently, buildings are not destructible in sandbox mode. Sigh. Shows how much I use sandbox in my regular play.

Back to a career mode save and awesome destruction ensued. It was embarrassingly satisfying to test that launcher; I 'tested' more than I care to admit. Props to the sepratron solution for the pure horizontal launch.

[Dfthu]

4 hours ago, swjr-swis said:

No idea either. I expected to get a zoomed in shot of the explosion, but the camera suddenly zoomed out and bounced a bit. Turns out she was somehow launched from her seat to the mountainside behind the hangars.

 

Back to @Geschosskopf's launcher though: I was getting really frustrated last night because I wasn't managing to make even a single KSC building collapse, not even after a full barrage of your launcher. I couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong. Apparently, buildings are not destructible in sandbox mode. Sigh. Shows how much I use sandbox in my regular play.

Back to a career mode save and awesome destruction ensued. It was embarrassingly satisfying to test that launcher; I 'tested' more than I care to admit. Props to the sepratron solution for the pure horizontal launch.

Buildings are destructible in sandbox, there button to disable or enable destructible buildings when you start a save. Just like in Career mode.

[swjr-swis]

52 minutes ago, Dfthu said:

Buildings are destructible in sandbox, there button to disable or enable destructible buildings when you start a save. Just like in Career mode.

Hmm, indeed they are, I just reloaded the same sandbox save (in the 1.1 release version, yay) and downed a building within the first couple of shots.

I'm not sure what happened there then. I unleashed several full loads of missiles, reverted back to launch to reload etc. Pure stock 1224, default sandbox, no settings changed, craft file exactly as it downloaded. Explosions aplenty, but the buildings did not budge. Planets must've been misaligned or something. It works now.

[Geschosskopf]

16 hours ago, swjr-swis said:

Well, I had to try.

Well yeah, Kerbals can ride just fine on SRBs if you aim them upwards.  I thought you meant riding the missiles on my launcher, which require a nasty kludge of tweaked Sepratrons to fly at all.  Making even a minor change usually results in the missile going badly haywire.  It's actually fairly hard to get something to fly more or less straight and level from a zero-length launcher with no further input from you have you fire it.

IOW, the effort in this rover went into the missiles.  Then I just slapped them on any old chassis.  Feel free to copy and paste the missiles onto your own designs.

 

1 hour ago, swjr-swis said:

Hmm, indeed they are, I just reloaded the same sandbox save (in the 1.1 release version, yay) and downed a building within the first couple of shots.

I'm not sure what happened there then. I unleashed several full loads of missiles, reverted back to launch to reload etc. Pure stock 1224, default sandbox, no settings changed, craft file exactly as it downloaded. Explosions aplenty, but the buildings did not budge. Planets must've been misaligned or something. It works now.

Glad you got it working.  Schadenfreude, nichts?

Results are, unfortunately, often highly variable.  Sometimes 1 hit knocks down the toughest building, sometimes the weakest can withstand multiple salvos.  I believe this has to do with physics frames.  Things in KSP (and all 3D games, for that matter) don't move continuously in analog but instead teleport in discrete jumps from point to point without ever occupying the space in between.  This is fine for objects approaching each other at reasonable speeds but If you fire these missiles from the runway spawn point, they're approaching 400m/s by the time they hit.  This means they're covering a fair amount of ground between ticks of the physics clock so can actually teleport through the walls of a building.  The missile's collider retrospectively checks to see if it encountered a static collider between teleports and thus will always explode instead of flying through solid objects.  However, static colliders aren't aware of collisions except on their surfaces.  There has to be a radius around the ship that will affect static colliders or else we'd never damage buildings with moving objects, but it seems this radius is smaller than the distance an object can travel at near-sonic speeds.

Thus, if you teleport inside a static, you die but it might never notice.  To change this, vary the range slightly.  So if you hit a building a couple times and nothing happens, drive forwards or backwards a few meters and try again.