The return of D-Corp

[Orky Kultur]

Hello all! So, I’ve been away, and my shipbuilding enterprises have been on hold for well over a year now (I'd be astonished if anyone remembers I was ever here tbh). But with the end of uni exam season comes a new frenetic energy and a bunch of free time. And what better way to spend it than slogging away for untold hours in a shipyard, building monstrosities that my tired old laptop can barely run in the first place?

And so does Demise Corporation return to business. And it was nothing to do with us going bankrupt after attempting to develop a solar-extinguishing device, no matter what anybody says.

We at D-Corp believe in the philosophy of galactic harmony through mutual destruction (which is a related, but distinct, concept to mutually assured destruction). As such the majority of the craft I end up posting will probably be military-oriented. That being said, I’m leagues behind many of the other warmongerers on here in terms of experience, aesthetic skill, and hardware capabilities. That being said, I shall try my best, and I like to believe my style is at least distinctive.

 

Ships

B-Series: Tugs, haulers and interplanetary drive units

Spoiler

B1-1 & B1-2 'Boxer'-Class RCS Tugs

B2-1 'Bully'-Class RCS Tug

D-Series: Destroyers, guided missile boats, and other anti-capital-ship craft

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D1-1 'Dagger'-class Light Destroyer

 

S-series: Carriers and multi-fighter drive units

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The S1-1 ‘Socialite’-Class Light Fighter Station

V-series: Space fighters & bombers

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The V2-1 ‘Vibrato’-Class Featherweight Fighter/Armour Unit

 

Current WIP:

Spoiler

The P1-1, an unarmoured mothership

 

I’m not intending to put the craft files up by default; if for whatever mad reason you want one, just ask in the thread and I’ll share it around!

Edited June 12, 2016 by Orky Kultur

[RobotBob]

They look pretty cool.

I like the 3rd one by the planet he best.

 

[Redshift OTF]

4 hours ago, Orky Kultur said:

And what better way to spend it than slogging away for untold hours in a shipyard, building monstrosities that my tired old laptop can barely run in the first place?

 

Haha, yeah I know the feeling. Great ships!

[Orky Kultur]

Aww, bless you both ^^

50 minutes ago, Redshift OTF said:

Haha, yeah I know the feeling.

So, for context, that capital ship came in at I think roughly 275 parts. I didn't have any framerate issues, but what I did notice was that time was running at about one fifth normal speed ^^; So, some improvement on the past, then.

The biggest I've ever gone just broke 400 parts I think, waaaaaay back when (I think it was whenever the mk3 cargo bays had just come out). When I went back to my old photobucket account to put up the above pictures, I realised I actually still had a picture of it - this lumbering thing:

Ugly hunk o' junk, isn't it? It was designed to have fully modular segments and removable/replaceable armour, hence the high part count, questionable aesthetics and proliferation of jumbo docking ports. It got eaten by the kraken (watching those rows of plating wriggle like a pianists fingers on a keyboard is a disconcerting sight that continues to haunt me whenever I am reminded of this beast), But the last five minutes of its demise (real time) were slow and agonising to watch, crawling at a frame rate in the single digits at most as I could only look on in horror.

Now to put that into context, at least one person not long after this put up a craft in KIDI with over 1600 parts. This thing nearly ate my game for breakfast even in the SPH, never mind the field test. So, in sum, that's the major (external) limit on what I can achieve in this game.

Edited June 2, 2016 by Orky Kultur

[Spartwo]

Strange how that screenshot has the shine like really old KSP but mk3 parts so its comparatively new.

[Orky Kultur]

Right, so, in detail, then – presenting:

The D1-1 ‘Dagger’-Class light destroyer

Spoiler

 

The Entry Wound, immediately following her maiden voyage to Duna

She’s a 258-part, two-hundred-ton capital ship, light and fast (by the standards of my craft, anyway). She’ll make Duna with some delta-v to spare for in-system manoeuvres (MechJeb tells me this translates to 2417m/s total). She doesn’t flex too much in flight (due to my finally conceding to putting a strut between the arms), but can be slightly wobbly if you don’t keep RCS on during a burn.

She’s designed primarily for an anti-capital-ship loadout; shown here with two remaining heavy missiles from an initial complement of four, having carried out weapons tests against the remains of an earlier prototype in Kerbin orbit. She’s somewhat light on hardpoints otherwise, which is perhaps a mistake, but it keeps the part count down at least.

The rear section is only lightly armoured, to allow access to the command pod and cargo bay. Ship is provided as standard with a single B1-1 tug, used for re-arming purposes, but it could feasibly transport a small fighter if it had a mk1 or smaller profile.

 

 

The B1-1 ‘Boxer’-Class medium RCS tug

Spoiler

 

Many of my capital ships will likely come with a tug as standard, or at least provide storage space capable of holding one

Nothing much exciting to say about these little guys. I finally took the option to go nuclear for power generation, because it saves me a couple of parts and a lot of hassle for extended operations further from Kerbol. Features enough battery storage for practical purposes, as well as bi-directional probes for convenience of use. Militarily, these will likely be the most-used of my tugs, as they have jr. & regular docking ports.

The B1-2 trades a jr docking port for an Advanced Grabbing Unit for omni-grappling capabilities

 

 

The B2-1 ‘Bully’-Class large RCS tug

Spoiler

 

The debris shown here is from the ship classified as D1-1.x3, one of the prototype D1-1s. Notice the alternate arrangement of the missiles; this combined with chronic under-strutting led to serious flexure during engine-burn, which ultimately tore the ship apart.

Basically a bigger cousin to the B1-1, the B2-1 is primarily designed for in-space assembly of larger units, such as space station or interplanetary drive construction. In a previous version, a variant of this saw me well in stitching together my Duna in-depth exploration mission.

 

 

On their way: The finished V1-1 (the WIP shown above), the tiny V2-1, and hopefully a carrier/drive unit (for the V2-1) and Guided Missile Ship

Edited June 12, 2016 by Orky Kultur

[Orky Kultur]

Why, what is that mysterious ship? Why the strange aesthetics? Consider this:

Problem 1: To protect fighters inside, carriers need to be very big.

Problem 2: Large craft need a lot of armour, equalling a lot of mass/parts.

Problem 3: once sections of the armour have been destroyed, that ship will always have a vulnerability in that spot. Eventually, even the most durable ship will have to be retired simply due to not having enough armour left to survive another battle.

Note 1: if available in sufficient quantity, fighters are kinda expendable. An individual fighter makes very little added contribution to its fellows. A carrier/drive unit, on the other hand, is very useful to fighters as it allows them to move and engage new targets, particularly those they cannot reach alone.

Solution 1: don’t bother carrying them inside. Use the ‘carrier’ as little more than a drive unit

Solution 2: Attach the armour to the fighters. This keeps the armour external, providing sufficient separation from the drive craft without having to use a complex exoskeleton. As each chunk of armour is attached separately, you can’t force a craft to shed all of it by hitting a part ‘upstream’ of it in the design chain. Additionally, as each part is separately mobile and attached via docking ports, after a battle damaged fighter/armour units (FAUs) can be replaced. Those that cover particularly sensitive areas, like the engines, can be switched out on the fly during a battle for intact fighters from a less valuable section of the ship.

Now, I will be the first to admit that this system isn’t particularly realistic, and relies heavily on a turn- based style of combat. A more realistic version of this idea might be having effectively a ‘swarm’ of craft released from a carrier that interposes itself in space between the carrier and the enemy. But hopefully it should work for conventional KSP combat as it stands today.

As such, it gives me great pleasure to present to you a ship demonstrating this concept:

The S1-1 ‘Socialite’-Class Light Fighter Station

Spoiler

 

In no way was this thought up while listening to Poli Genova’s “If love was a crime” on repeat.

The S1-1.1 Beau Brummer. I’d like to be able to say I got this thing to Dres manually, but it had to be hyperedited – for reasons that will become apparent shortly

The S1-1 was designed to be relatively simple, really. She carries up to twenty-two light FAUs (shown here with the standard complement of twenty). Underneath her skin, she’s little more than three fuel tanks, a cockpit and four NERVAs strapped to a basic girder endoskeleton:

In the SPH, with specs on show.

And from the rear, displaying the bridge and torpedo baysAnd the specs with the full complement of fighters & ammo

Unladen, she makes 5100m/s delta-v. Fully-burdened that drops to 3100m/s, which I think will scrape you to Jool(?). Her TWR is – not fantastic, but then you have the fighters for when you need speed in combat.

Also, note the part-count on the fully-loaded ship. I had no idea if my computer could even handle a 543 (once you exclude launch stability enchancers)-part craft before launching this. Apparently it can, but only at single-digit FPS. As such, I can’t really say much about her handling characteristics (the standard model comes with no RCS thrusters of its own. Each fighter has two, but they also have a reaction wheel system each, which I suspect between them is more than enough to keep the thing flying straight and true), or have an accurate feel for her acceleration. I also haven’t done any weapons tests on her, for the same reason. If someone with a less ancient rig wants to give her a go, definitely hit me up for the .craft!

 

And her companion FAU:

The V2-1 ‘Vibrato’-Class Featherweight Fighter/Armour Unit

Spoiler

 

http://s654.photobucket.com/user/willwills1/media/Demise Corporation/V2-1 Kerbin ii.jpg.html

Shown with & without a front-mounted Flea-based torpedo

A fairly simple FAU, coming in at 15 parts. She handles well with one flea-torpedo, and not poorly with two. Smaller projectiles should be no problem whatsoever. I personally set the thrusters to not fire for pitch/yaw/roll ‘cos you don’t need them.

Actually this design is probably already obsolete; when I get round to it I’ll put on a couple of minor updates like replacing the two small RCS tanks with one larger one, moving the wings up and in to also protect the modular girder ‘body’ of the fighter, etc.

 

Still to come: I finished the V1-1 ages ago, but tbh it’s not really a very interesting craft (which is why I haven’t got round to posting it). I’m currently working on a civilian mothership and compatible ground base system (but, fitting things in mk3 cargo bays is hard).

Edited June 12, 2016 by Orky Kultur