Warships, Delta-V, and Efficiency.

[Nich]

Whipple or explosve armor is easy to beat all you need is a projectile that splits in half before impact. The first small bit goes through the shielding layer and the second goes through the heavy plate

[suicidejunkie]

Oh, here's another possibility, with double cheese for a dollar more:

What happens if you make your ship doughnut shaped, or with a long moment arm, such that your geometric center and/or CoM are outside your actual hull?  If the enemy puts their shots all dead center and you don't dodge, they would miss!

[Frozen_Heart]

I usually aim for at least 6k of dV with my warships. With a good TWR on top of that. Means I have to skimp on armour but the spaceplane fuel tanks are tough.

 

 

Edited May 3, 2016 by Frozen_Heart

[Accelerando]

10 hours ago, Nich said:

@Accelerando HAHA I had to google strawman.  After reading your post and considering it your 100% right.  I was giving people way to much credit.  Infact after thinking about it I now believe space "conflict" is a 100% chance certainty however I have some points.  

First off all the "wars" you listed were not wars.  I do not want to offend any veterans but these conflicts were more policing then wars.  I am no expert in history but in Vietnam we were not allowed to send troops into North Vietnam out of fear of starting a war with China and Russia.  Thus we were sitting ducks just waiting for the North Vietnamese to go south and attack the South Vietnamese.  Afghanistan was not a war against Afghanistan but a war on Terrorist that claimed no nation state and many experts believe simply fled to other countries after the invasion of Afghanistan.  The Iraq war lasted what 9 days before their military was crushed?  Might as well mention our most expensive war to date.  The war on drugs has been the biggest loss yet for the US lasting 35 some years and only increasing the value and profits of the drug lords while costing the US Trillions of dollars.  As for WWII the reason it did not bankrupt the US was because the world economy was basically non-existent at that time.

The United States was not simply rich relative to other countries after WWII, in many respects it was prosperous compared to even now (for a select but large segment of the population). If the US had not maintained full employment conditions in the postwar period, it would have slid. This had much to do with its role in reshaping the global economy in the aftermath of the war, of course, but it was not simply prosperous by comparison.
 

Spoiler

 

In the aftermath of WWII, the United States maintained full employment conditions domestically by selling manufactured goods to the devastated powers and took up a large quantity of food production for Europe and Japan; it retains this latter role, rather, today. In order to give the devastated countries the means to pay for this, the dollar would be pegged to gold at $35/ounce, and other currencies would be pegged to the dollar, with accommodation for small adjustments; this would assuage the worries of businessmen who were agitating for a return to the gold standard, abandoned during the Depression. Additionally, the UN and its economic triad WTO/World Bank/IMF were established.

The WTO codified rules by which Europe and Japan could sell their industrial productive capacity to the United States; and the World Bank + IMF, which would deal in dollars, kept dollars flowing into the world economy even as the USA ran balance of payments surplus, where countries were putting dollars into the US economy more than it was pushing them out. The Marshall Plan, vitalized by the initiation of the Cold War, provided aid to the US's fellow imperial powers so long as those powers integrated their economies into the global system outlined by the US: via the establishment of US-style business practices and labor relations, establishing means by which foreign profits could be converted to US dollars, the dissolution of trade restrictions differentiating US companies from domestic ones, and expenditure of aid on US goods.

This eventually developed into the modern global economy, as the relationship between the dollar and gold was abandoned early in the 70s. After reconstruction, the US military became its primary asset, guaranteeing security to other nations in exchange for investment into US treasury bills or US private banks. Hence:

The United States is not going to go bankrupt from warfare, even in the large modern economy (and yes, the wars since WWII have been - largely irregular - warfare, though at the same time I agree that it is correct to call it policing as well) so long as the dollar remains the world's reserve currency; the US retains its military aegis; and the UN and its suite of economic institutions remain in place. That's one of the things I was trying to get at with the WWII comparison, although I was too tired last night to render it into a format that I think hopefully avoids stepping over Rule 2.2. In the modern era these institutions serve the following roles:
 

Spoiler

 

1. With all international trade carried out in US dollars, the US has the advantage that it only has to print more money if it wants to buy anything from abroad that it cannot produce. This also places restrictions on the global economic interactions of other nations - they cannot buy too many things (sell dollars) for themselves on international markets lest the market be flooded with dollars, thus making US exports cheaper and more competitive than their own and hurting their export business. Thus, third-world states are "persuaded" to primarily export to the first world, which gives them access to dollar holdings ("petrodollars" in the IMF's own words) for which they have two options that don't hurt their international economic standing: Invest in US treasury bonds or invest in US private banks. Either option bolsters the credit available to the United States, so that it can take advantage of easy credit no matter how deep its debts are.
2. The World Bank serves as a mechanism to hold third-world nations financially accountable against one another in the UN system, as its funds are developed from an initial investment by all UN nations as well as funds put back in via repayment of loans (thus everyone is everyone else's creditor, and all have a vested interest in seeing others repay their loans to the World Bank). Loans can be used to enforce austerity, but they can also be used to drive development in a certain direction by pressuring third world nations to maximize exports of goods that the United States will want to buy. For many third-world nations, this is raw materials.
3. For East Asian manufacturing powers, their low-priced manufacturing exports fulfill another role in the global economic system: the provision of cheap goods affordable to US workers even as wages decline.
4. The US military as a global policing force serves as its primary asset both to itself and to other countries, being used against third-world states to prevent any of its foreign investments from being expropriated for the third world nations' own use, as well as to guarantee the security of regimes preferred by the US government (both in and out of the third world), guaranteeing countries military security so long as they comply with US demands and participate in the global economic system outlined via the UN.

 

 

The US absolutely had something to gain from WWII in this way (and this is also how it finances the Drug War, which is beneficial to the US in that it keeps money flowing into US institutions and maintains a demand for police-military hardware, as well as justifying to voters a heavy police presence in the cities). But perhaps more importantly to expansive-scale space combat, I think it's important to note that WWII happened at all despite the foreseeably ruinous consequences for almost all powers involved, in the wake of WWI; Germany had something to gain as it was stripped of its productive capacity by the Entente after WWI and forced into extreme austerity as the Entente used the money to pay off wartime loans from the United States. Future empires that are similarly pressed may also find a reason to go to war. Maybe not. All I'm saying is that the possibility remains open, regardless of whether or not it's in space or on Earth. After all, China continues to develop its imperial capacity despite the US system.

Again that isn't to say that the US and China are going to war any time soon, asteroids or not, of course; China serves a major role in the US global economy. But such a system isn't inevitable, and it won't last forever. Nuclear weapons additionally are not extremely useful as in-space weapons, and if you have the defensive capability to take out inbound missiles or Kirklin mines then you have the capability to shield yourself from most doomsday threats. The threat of lasers can be mitigated by maintaining distance between nations' habitats. And so on.

I don't want to defend "grand" space warfare, per se. But I do think it's disingenuous to go along with the line of thinking that space war will not happen on large scales, because it's economically non-beneficial/useless/some other utilitarian reason. If you have large infrastructures and large profits in space, people are going to fight over them, in space, and this fighting could get big.

----

Anyway, with that said, I'm going to let the thread return to spacecraft-building discussion. All I can say about that is that I've seen working armor for KSP ships, but I have no idea how effective it is since KSP physics outside of its orbital-mechanics model have little bearing on real-world physics; and the upper limit of ∆V you can expect from a single-stage vessel with significant weapons payload probably only goes from 3km/s ∆V with chemfuel to about 7k ∆V if you use nukes?

EDIT: I see my reading comprehension fails me somewhat and that you do agree that what I call large-scale war (which is global policing, yes, but still costly warfare using industrial technology and bringing ruin to other nations) is within possibility in the future, so - cool. I guess my final remaining point is that I still think empire-vs-empire open war remains feasible, given a certain range of political/economic situations.

Edited May 4, 2016 by Accelerando

[Kerbart]

I will bypass the armor vs stealth debate. If you go for armor, go for a ball shape, as you will maximize the amount of volume you can cover for a certain amount of armor (mass). A flat rectangular shape ensures that you're using a lot more armored mass than needed. Do feel free to decorate the surface with lots of greeble though.

Make sure you have one big super powerfull beam weapon. Preferably strong enough to blow up a planet. And lots of point defense, preferably concentrated in cool trenches.

Be wary of reactor exhaust shafts. Make sure nothing can get in. It might surprise you from what impossible angles your enemies can drop torpedoes in it, especially when they are a bunch of religious zealots.

[ImperialistPigDog]

4 hours ago, Frozen_Heart said:

I usually aim for at least 6k of dV with my warships. With a good TWR on top of that. Means I have to skimp on armour but the spaceplane fuel tanks are tough.

 

 

Great ships man, love the design. Seems your method is sacrificing armor for Dv. Can I ask what the part count on that vessel is?

[ImperialistPigDog]

In a general review of all the replies I see many of the suggestions from a building standpoint are to add more fuel, use winglet, whipple, or other alternative forms of armor, or use different engine systems.

On the point of adding more fuel it seems that when I add more wet mass the dv goes down (or at least in kerbal engineers reading) adding a few engines along with the extra mass dose increase the dv, but only slightly. Is there a sweet spot in how many engines you need in ratio with how much fuel you have?

As for armor, some have suggested no armor at all, I don't see that as an option. Combat in Ksp, as is, has shown that armored craft have a lot better survivability in comparison to that of non-armored craft. I cant see this "porcupine" or really just a type of active defense armor as practical because it would have to be reloaded after each use. That would be very hard logistically in my opinion, you would have to have a ship carrying a huge load of extra "interceptors". I will try incorporating this whipple armor as that seems the most practical.

And lastly engines. I have mostly been using nukes because of there low thrust and efficiency, but is it more beneficial to use a few high thrust engines as opposed to many nukes? Someone suggested using 2 sets of engines, one for distance travel and one for close maneuvers, but is that actually worth the extra weight of more engines?

 

Really interesting discussion so far guys, let me know what you think on my points.

[Jarin]

If your dV is going down with more fuel, you may have fuel flow problems. In vacuum, more fuel should always be at least minimally more dV. It has diminishing returns, sure, but it should never actually go down.

Edited May 4, 2016 by Jarin

[Frozen_Heart]

5 hours ago, ImperialistPigDog said:

Great ships man, love the design. Seems your method is sacrificing armor for Dv. Can I ask what the part count on that vessel is?

Usually about 300.

4 hours ago, ImperialistPigDog said:

On the point of adding more fuel it seems that when I add more wet mass the dv goes down

That is a fuel flow problem. Adding more fuel should never cause the dV to go down. (Unless the fuel is payload)

4 hours ago, ImperialistPigDog said:

As for armor, some have suggested no armor at all, I don't see that as an option. Combat in Ksp, as is, has shown that armored craft have a lot better survivability in comparison to that of non-armored craft. I cant see this "porcupine" or really just a type of active defense armor as practical because it would have to be reloaded after each use. That would be very hard logistically in my opinion, you would have to have a ship carrying a huge load of extra "interceptors". I will try incorporating this whipple armor as that seems the most practical.

Armour is about hitting the sweet spot between protection, dV, and part count. I go for high dV and low part count so have to sacrifice armour. I had to drop out of the battle club as the are often groups of 1k part ships all clustered up, when a single one can crash my KSP.

Also keep in mind that once mp is added, TWR is added to the mix, as you need to be able to manoeuvre fast. Armour will bring this down.

The new spaceplane tanks are very tough so I recommend using them rather than rocket tanks.

4 hours ago, ImperialistPigDog said:

And lastly engines. I have mostly been using nukes because of there low thrust and efficiency, but is it more beneficial to use a few high thrust engines as opposed to many nukes? Someone suggested using 2 sets of engines, one for distance travel and one for close maneuvers, but is that actually worth the extra weight of more engines?

Mixed engines used to be a very good option, but since nukes now run on LF rather than LFO it was become inefficient. Now there isn't really a way of providing both high thrust and high dV. A large bank of nuke engines works but there is a point where the increase in TWR stops being worth the lowered dV, as they are extremely heavy.

A lot of people in the battle club use a single nuke, but this makes these ships painful to use for anything else as their TWR is lower than a lot of ion craft.

Edited May 4, 2016 by Frozen_Heart

[suicidejunkie]

4 hours ago, Frozen_Heart said:

Mixed engines used to be a very good option, but since nukes now run on LF rather than LFO it was become inefficient. Now there isn't really a way of providing both high thrust and high dV. A large bank of nuke engines works but there is a point where the increase in TWR stops being worth the lowered dV, as they are extremely heavy.

A lot of people in the battle club use a single nuke, but this makes these ships painful to use for anything else as their TWR is lower than a lot of ion craft.

This is where ore storage and a converter will work its magic.

Regular fuel tanks cost 1/8th ton per ton of fuel carried, but ore tanks cost 1/15th.  If my math is right, that means if you plan to carry 70 or more tons of fuel, the tank mass difference will pay for the 4 ton converter.

 

And with the converter, you can decide on the fly if you need more pure LF for the nukes or LF+O for the combat drives.

[sdj64]

Your best bet may be to go with drop tanks or unarmored fuel tanks attached to the outside of your ship.  If the fuel flow is set up correctly they will empty first and then function as a sort of armor, stopping the first shot at that area by exploding.  Dedicated fuel tankers, maybe with mining equipment as well, could be useful depending on the kind of battle, how long it could last, and the rules of the engagement.  Since the Naval Battle Club rules state only one attack per turn but unlimited movement (often there's a stay in SOI rule), you could refuel every one of your ships completely on the mining tanker's turn legally.  

Your ships could also mount their own mining equipment but I would go with small converters and minimum ore storage.  Remember that a full size converter is a very important, very big, and low crash tolerance part.  If your converter is shot and all your fuel is ore then you will have no fuel anymore!

Use Mk1 LF tanks if you aren't already (with nukes), they have the best mass ratio of any LF-only tank. Fewer engines will give you more dV since nukes are heavy, but nuclear engines are frequent targets in stock combat because they're big and have very low crash tolerance.  With only one engine, you could be dead in the water after a single shot.  However, too many engines is bad too, they're heavy and TWR is not important in turn-based combat unless you want to land.

[weissel]

On 4.5.2016 at 1:45 AM, Kerbart said:

I will bypass the armor vs stealth debate. If you go for armor, go for a ball shape, as you will maximize the amount of volume you can cover for a certain amount of armor (mass). A flat rectangular shape ensures that you're using a lot more armored mass than needed. Do feel free to decorate the surface with lots of greeble though.

Make sure you have one big super powerfull beam weapon. Preferably strong enough to blow up a planet. And lots of point defense, preferably concentrated in cool trenches.

Be wary of reactor exhaust shafts. Make sure nothing can get in. It might surprise you from what impossible angles your enemies can drop torpedoes in it, especially when they are a bunch of religious zealots.

Ball shape assumes you assume the need to turtle up, attacked from all sides at the same time.

If that is not what you expect, you probably want a cylinder shape.  Armor the nose really thickly, the sides thinly, point nose roughly at the enemy.  The shallow angle of the sides means the effective armor is much thicker, too.

Advantages: smaller cross section (harder to hit), much more effective armor for the same weight (or much less weight for the same effective armor), place for reeeeeaaaaaaly long spinal weapons.
Disadvantages: Need to point the spinal weapon at the enemy, even when only they are firing.

As to reactor exhaust shafts: try to build less fire prone reactors instead of adding exhaust shafts.

 

On 3.5.2016 at 8:07 PM, Nich said:

Whipple or explosve armor is easy to beat all you need is a projectile that splits in half before impact. The first small bit goes through the shielding layer and the second goes through the heavy plate

Two can play that game.  Dual or triple or quadruple shielding layers.  Sorta like they have on the ISS.  And/or spinning outer shielding layers.  Also: point defense against projectiles.

 

On 3.5.2016 at 3:40 AM, Nich said:

I am going to have to agree and disagree. CURRENTLY there is no stealth in space but I see no reason with 0 point energy thrusters and EM bending shields stealth is extremely important and viable

But they do not help against gravitation gradient sensors! Look up the "Forward Mass Detector".  (Hint: unlike zero point energy thrusters and EM bending shields that thing exists in the real world and works.  And I understand there are other gravitation gradient sensors, e.g. for hunting submarines and for submarines navigating in underwater mountain areas.)

On 3.5.2016 at 4:18 AM, Nich said:

@Jarin Seeing as we are still discovering dwarf planets and asteroids every day scanning tools suck pretty badly.

Yep, dwarf planets. Ceres was found in 1801.

The other 4 have a perihelon of 30-40 AU, which is a bit further than Jupiter or Uranus, and likely outside combat range.
They are also very very cold (30-50K, in other words, if you want to warm them up, throw liquid air at them and see even the oxygen solidify!)  I think you'd agree humans do not function that well in the cold, you want 270-290K, and that's assuming a shut down nuclear reactor!  And of course none of them use any propulsion, those that sorta do (comets) are very easy to spot.

Asteroids are not that dissimilar, but much (much much) smaller and we have a hard time seeing them against the sun, which happens to be really really hot, you know?  Place an IR sensor somewhere around Venus' orbit and we'll get the ones that occasionally cross the orbit pretty soon.  (And they are still many many many times farther out than the moon.  Would you consider the moon in fighting distance?)

On 3.5.2016 at 4:18 AM, Nich said:

Even with chemical rockets you can shroud and cool your exhaust gasses.  Also Stealth is not invisibility the F-22 can be seen by the naked eye from 50 miles away IF you are looking at it.  It can be detected by radar from 50 miles if you know what you are looking for but it may just look like white noise or a bird.  Yet a majority of the aerospace community would still consider the F-22 a stealth fighter.  Stealth != Invisibility but simply limiting the emissivity (light sound and heat) and reflectability of your craft.  Old school planes could be detected by radar LONG LONG LONG before you could see or hear them so money was spent to shorten that range.  However there is no point in shorting it more then any other as it only takes one to be detected.  As sensor technology goes up stealth tech needs to increase to keep pace.  Currently our scanning tech far far far out paces our space stealth tech because there is no reason to develope space stealth tech and TONS of reason to develop space scanners.  

I would agree that as distances increase to light hours or light days stealth becomes less and less important as you can simply move in a random direction to make incoming enemy lasers miss.

Shrouds: Extra mass.  Needs active cooling
Cooling exhaust gases == reducing exhaust gas speed == reducing ISP.  (If you disagree, show us how!)

See the problem?

• F-22 supercruise speed at altitude: 1,220 mph (1,500 mph full afterburner) == 0.34 miles/second (0.42 miles/second AB)
• Max detection range: (your claim) 50 miles (under ideal circumstances)
• Time from maximum detection range to zero-range: 147s (119s AB)

Typical detection ranges for the F-22 are likely much shorter, with the time between detection and the plane being overhead likely less than 30 seconds under typical circumstances ...

For your space vessel, we are talking weeks and likely months between detection and arrival.  Sure, you can go faster --- which means you have to start from even more far out to not be detected during burning --- so though you are faster, the coasting time is similar.  Most things an F-22 would target do not move fast in 150s, much less in 30 seconds.  In the months of your coasting ... well, you connect the points!

Even if you know, say, the position of the ISS perfectly, the changing Earth atmosphere is causing varying drag, changing the orbit enough that you as likely pass the wrong side of the Earth after months of drifting.  Never mind if they evade some space junk or boost orbit.  And of course any enemy will change the orbit every now and them, just because of people like you ...  So, how do you correct your course without lighting up the engines and becoming instantly visible?

How will you correct your course?  One single(!) space shuttle attitude thruster is visible from the asteroid belt.  With today's off the shelf technology.  Your 0.001g ion drive?  Visible from 1 AU away.  The Voyager 1 is in interstellar space.  The Green Banks telescope (today's technology) latches onto it's 22W transmitter (your fridge light is likely stronger) in one second flat.  It's just 18 billion km away.  The VLBA can not only see it, but resolve it!

So ... how to correct your course?

And even while drifting, ignoring all life support, sunlight heating you up, nuclear reactors providing energy, electrical stuff (like computers) producing mostly heat --- each human produces ~100W heat.  Which means you either have to trap the heat somewhere (and remember a heat pump/climate control/... also needs power, which means more heat to handle).

Directional radiation is nice --- but sensors do care very little if you show them your radiatior's flat face or just a shallow glimpse of it --- they trigger just the same.  (In daylight, look down at the street next to your feet?  Is it any brighter than the street 500 or 1000 meters away, where you only see a very shallow angle?)  And any country that can build space ships can easily build hundreds of small satellites spread all over the place.  Looking for people just passing into the shell they protect, and any infrared signal from directional radiators.  And trivially looking for stars being shadowed by a vessel, no matter how far it is!

Throw in a few hundred or thousand microsats in orbit, using a few solar cells, a gravity gradient and magnetic torquers (even a permanent magnet will do, as long as there is some planetary magnet field) for passive attitude control, a smartphone (GPS, accelerometers, more computing power than needed, communication capability), an additional camera or 3, some apps to do detect "missing" stars, and a conductive tether, if you want them to be able to raise orbit against the magnet field at will.  Cheap as dirt, today's mass technology, really hard to stealth against.

Have fun having an effective laser from just one light hour away.  Let's take a nice violet laser, and if you want a spot size of less than 50 cm diameter --- you know you have only limited power --- you'd better bring a mirror 1 million kilometers across.  Aiming will be fun, as you see where the enemy was 2 hours ago.  A trivial maneuver every now and then and you will not ever hit.
On the other hand, it's kinda hard to shift a 1 million km diameter mirror ... kinda hard to dodge with that thing.
 

On 3.5.2016 at 4:18 AM, Nich said:

This is why I said future space wars with aliens would be more about destroying their planet, sun or even galaxie then their battle cruisers

Sounds like the Cold War, where, as we know, both sides casually nuked the other one's capital cities and population centers.  After all, it's just sports, and nobody (and no third side) would ever care, right?

[Kerbart]

4 hours ago, weissel said:

If that is not what you expect, you probably want a cylinder shape.  Armor the nose really thickly, the sides thinly, point nose roughly at the enemy.  The shallow angle of the sides means the effective armor is much thicker, too.

Advantages: smaller cross section (harder to hit), much more effective armor for the same weight (or much less weight for the same effective armor), place for reeeeeaaaaaaly long spinal weapons.
Disadvantages: Need to point the spinal weapon at the enemy, even when only they are firing.

A much bigger disadvantage would be that, at that point, it's no longer an Imperial Deathstar. Kinda takes the fun out of it, don't you think?

[Red Iron Crown]

On 5/2/2016 at 8:32 PM, AbacusWizard said:

There are really only four ways to give a vessel more ∆v:

1. More fuel.
2. Less non-fuel (which is basically going to translate into "no armor").
3. More efficient engine (which really just means faster exhaust velocity).
4. Move to a universe with completely different laws of physics.

5. Staging.

[magnemoe]

On 3.5.2016 at 3:09 AM, flatbear said:

probably only star trek magic

Orion nuclear pulse engine is plausible and cool for an warship, two versions for KSP. 
Combines high trust with very high dV.
The old one let you use the blasts  to destroy stuff
 

[Spartwo]

21 minutes ago, Red Iron Crown said:

5. Staging.

That makes it a one time deal then.

[Red Iron Crown]

18 minutes ago, Spartwo said:

That makes it a one time deal then.

Use fuel tanks with docking ports, drain and drop. Then dock new, full tanks after returning to "base".

[JoeNapalm]

 

I find it difficult to imagine Kerbal weapons tech advancing beyond the "food fight" stage.

-Jn-

[Spartwo]

4 hours ago, Red Iron Crown said:

Use fuel tanks with docking ports, drain and drop. Then dock new, full tanks after returning to "base".

That then means you have to return to base each time. Boosting costs. If you have to keep coming back to get fuel storage you may as well shell out for inbuilt resource harvesting so you don't have to make the years long trip. Especially if we ever get other solar systems in stock to play around with.

[Red Iron Crown]

5 minutes ago, Spartwo said:

That then means you have to return to base each time. Boosting costs. If you have to keep coming back to get fuel storage you may as well shell out for inbuilt resource harvesting so you don't have to make the years long trip. Especially if we ever get other solar systems in stock to play around with.

I guess so. The thought of a one way warship is a bit foreign to me, you eventually need to come back to rearm anyway, no? And if not, then why not just stage tanks away anyway, the trip is one way.

[max_creative]

I don't even bother with armor. The lag is enough to stop most ships that try to attack. And when attacking I just ran the other ship really hard. Like, 40 m/s hard. And my battering ram design leaves it stuck in the target if I doesn't break, so then I can undock from the ram and than later go back and board the ship or something.

Basically I just don't bother because two cruisers to close is so laggy it often crashes the game anyway.

[Spartwo]

Say for example, you send a ship out to Laythe to protect something. A trip from there to Eeloo and back is going to take far longer in this case as in order to not get stranded from lack of fuel you would need to stop at Kerbin or spend even more to send the tanks out. That would greatly increase the time needed. Of course the whole thing can be avoided by sending a new ship from Kerbin out but that would bump the costs up again. Cheapest long term solution is to refuel with the mining in game. Going the Kerbin detour route would double the required D/V

 

It's a feedback loop really. Need a mining infrastructure to support these big ships, need these big ships to protect the mining infrastructure.

 

Edited June 6, 2016 by Spartwo

[TimePeriod]

You DO want armour actually. However the part you want to armour is the central core systems, like control room, power unit and life support. The reason behind this is not to stop damage from a direct hit but to prevent fragmentation, otherwise known as 'spaaling' to damage the vital parts of the craft. 

The same principle  applies on today's soldiers, if you put too much armour on them it impedes their combat effectiveness and you can't put enough armour on a soldier to stop large calibre bullets or even shells*. However what you can do is stop the majority of the threats.

• Indirect fragmentation.
• Grazing hits.
• Ricochet.

You want enough armour to prevent a premature destruction of the craft. Think more in line of redundancy, multiple probe cores, back-up systems and such.

*Most body armour today is only rated to stop rifle ammo aka 5.56mm, 7.62 and some armour piercing rounds. Anything above 12.7mm (50cal for you metricly challenged) is strictly vehicle armour.

Edit: If you want a better example, go look up the A-10 'Warthog'. That aircraft is a proper bullet sponge, soaking up god-knows how much damage but can still manage to fly due to its unique construction, redundancy, armour and solid flying characteristics.

Edited June 6, 2016 by TimePeriod

[weissel]

22 hours ago, Kerbart said:

A much bigger disadvantage would be that, at that point, it's no longer an Imperial Deathstar. Kinda takes the fun out of it, don't you think?

Ah, but you have to decide.  Fairy tale where the guys with the Imperial Deathstar get pwned by a script-kiddy rebel pilot and have their heads handed to them?  Or reality where you can do much better with less investment, and where you actually have the money for all the aircraft carriers and destroyers you'd want to have a proper CAP and screen your Imperial Rod Of Death, before you insert it rectally into that pesky rebellion?

PS: The Deathstar was designed by a Rebel sympathizer, not only did it get backdoors en masse --- building and maintaining it prevented the Empire of having a huge number of much simpler and actually effective weapons.

 

 

8 hours ago, Spartwo said:

That then means you have to return to base each time. Boosting costs. If you have to keep coming back to get fuel storage you may as well shell out for inbuilt resource harvesting so you don't have to make the years long trip. Especially if we ever get other solar systems in stock to play around with.

So ... use fuel tankers?  Probably to be abandoned after sucked dry?

8 hours ago, max_creative said:

I don't even bother with armor. The lag is enough to stop most ships that try to attack. And when attacking I just ran the other ship really hard. Like, 40 m/s hard. And my battering ram design leaves it stuck in the target if I doesn't break, so then I can undock from the ram and than later go back and board the ship or something.

Basically I just don't bother because two cruisers to close is so laggy it often crashes the game anyway.

Yeah, that is a valid technique.  Of course you need lots of mass to stand being slammed into from the front by 40m/s.

And it assumes that the other side does not wreck you with any kind of weapon first.  Which is sorta obvious.  I do note that ramming has sorta disappeared from naval battles as of lately.  I wonder why ...

Edited June 7, 2016 by weissel
script-kiddy rebel -> script-kiddy rebel pilot