[STOCK] HMS Invincible - a stock 1:1 scale aircraft carrier.

[EvenFlow]

 

I've always been fascinated with the idea of creating huge models piece by piece, especially replicas. Over my few-year long KSP career I've already built space shuttles, N1-L3s, at least a few not-really 1:1 Mriyas and some really big naval vessels. The projects got bigger and bigger ranging from 60m corvettes, through 90m rockets, to 130m destroyers. Once I hit 150+ metres i started getting into the aircraft-carrier size range. The partcount and KSP engines stability were the only limits.

And just like that, the Invincible was born. At nearly 1700 parts this is a true behemoth. Running a GTX 1050 I managed to hit about 10FPS and had to cope with insanely long loadup times. While not exactly smooth, it is definitely manageable enough for me to be able to land fixed-wing aircraft on it with about 85% success rate. The partcount could be cut down greatly if I were to omit the details, but they're the part of the replicas charm after all. The carrier will most likely receive a few improvements in the near future. I plan on including some landing lights to make night operations feasible and perhaps including some period-correct carrier vehicles and/or some parked Harriers.

I will also make the carrier mobile quite soon. For now it is a static model for practicing carrier landings. I'm releasing this version due to the partcount limits. I want to make this thing accessible to as many people as possible without crippling their framerates and frying their GPUs. Due to it being 1:1 scale it is perfect for testing out all kinds of life-sized carrier aircraft replicas. Stock arrestor gear isn't really an option but due to how strong KSP brakes are they aren't really necessary most of the time.

The deck layout consists of two separate halves, the left half accomodates the runway strip and the takeoff ramp (and is the side you should probably be landing on), with the right part consisting of two parking areas and the superstructure. On the bow there is a small, functional Sea Dart SAM battery which in 1982 was the only defensive system aboard the Invincible. It relief heavily on covering fire from it's escort vessels (which I might make sometime soon, they shouldn't be too much of a problem to build and a whole carrier group might look nice together if it doesn't make my PC explode in the loading process)



 

The deck is very rigid and should be able to handle hard landings with ease. The ski-jump ramp makes aborting your approach quite easy provided you spool up your engines soon enough. The carrier was designed to operate STOVL Harriers exclusively, but landing regular fixed-wing aircraft is absolutely possible. Might try to land my Tu-95 on it sometime soon for the memes.


 

The carrier has functional citadel lighting. It doesn't do much apart from making it look extra nice in the darkness. As mentioned before, I'm planning on giving it some more lights and details and releasing a higher partcount version. It will light up the runway, the superstructure cabins and turn your GPU into heated plasma for some extra lighting effects.

 

Optimal landing speed sits at about 50m/s for the majority of my planes. General rule of thumb for carrier landings is to come in for a relatively shallow approach, line up at approx 2.5km from the carrier and make fine adjustments to your attidute. Just before touchdown it's wise to apply a fair bit of thrust to make aborting possible if necessary. Watch your speed and altitude, the line between overshooting and hitting the stern of the carrier is a fine one.





Here are some videos demonstrating some landing and takeoff examples. They also display the scale of the carrier in comparsion to the Skyhawk nicely. The A-4F is built in 1:1 scale.
 

 

Here are the download links:

CARRIER: https://kerbalx.com/EvenFlow/HMS-Invincible

SKYHAWK: https://kerbalx.com/EvenFlow/A-4F-Skyhawk

Happy landings!

Edited February 11, 2018 by EvenFlow

[MiffedStarfish]

That’s great! 

[Servo]

Very impressive build! You're giving me that itch to try building boats again. That A-4 is lovely, too.

You're more than welcome to my Harriers if you want to make your computer cry any more than it already does. 

 

[selfish_meme]

You can use colored lights shining on the stern to make a visual landing aid, I did that once, for stock arrestor gear I used spiders or ant engines stacked, because they bend, and then a thermometer offset into the landing zone, then you can attach a strut to it. The plane won't collide with the struts so you have to get the thermometers into the path of the wheels. It sort of worked, but is part heavy.

Spoiler

 

Edited February 12, 2018 by selfish_meme

[EvenFlow]

2 hours ago, selfish_meme said:

You can use colored lights shining on the stern to make a visual landing aid, I did that once, for stock arrestor gear I used spiders or ant engines stacked, because they bend, and then a thermometer offset into the landing zone, then you can attach a strut to it. The plane won't collide with the struts so you have to get the thermometers into the path of the wheels. It sort of worked, but is part heavy.

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This is brilliant! I will try to fiddle around with the arrestor gear idea (even though the real-life invincible wasn't really designed for fixed-wing non-STOVL aircraft), perhaps on some test low-part landing strip first since the partcount would make reliable testing extremely hard, but the colored lights glideslope indicator idea is excellent! I will try to include it soon, probably sometime in the next few days! Thanks so much for the tips!

 

8 hours ago, Servo said:

Very impressive build! You're giving me that itch to try building boats again. That A-4 is lovely, too.

You're more than welcome to my Harriers if you want to make your computer cry any more than it already does. 

 

I'm so glad to hear you like it! I was actually thinking how feasible would landing your excellent Tomcat on this carrier be. I guess lag could be a big issue, but I'm planning on making a "landing-lot's-of-not-neccesarily-reasonable-stuff-on-carriers" video sometime in the future so if you wouldn't mind I'd be honored to have your F-14 as a guest feature! c:

 

13 hours ago, MiffedStarfish said:

That’s great! 

Thanks for the kind words, will try to update the craft to make it more functional soon! c:

[eagle92lightning]

Fully stock?

[EvenFlow]

15 minutes ago, eagle92lightning said:

Fully stock?

Absolutely. Mostly made with MK3 fuel tanks to keep the partcount sub-2000, but no mods apart from VesselMover to get it into the water were used.

[eagle92lightning]

2 minutes ago, EvenFlow said:

Absolutely. Mostly made with MK3 fuel tanks to keep the partcount sub-2000, but no mods apart from VesselMover to get it into the water were used.

My computer is very slow so what is it looking like, 150ish?

Gulp 1700!

[EvenFlow]

Just now, eagle92lightning said:

My computer is very slow so what is it looking like, 150ish?

It's 1680-something parts if i remember correctly. FPS are manageable for me, but loading times are the main issue. Once you get into the physics range the game usually freezes for about half a minute just to get this thing loaded correctly.

It is still quite fun to practice landings on, but it's main focus is accuracy, not performance.

[eagle92lightning]

Maybe the A-4 will be a complement to my Panavia Tornado F.1

[Servo]

6 hours ago, EvenFlow said:

 

I'm so glad to hear you like it! I was actually thinking how feasible would landing your excellent Tomcat on this carrier be. I guess lag could be a big issue, but I'm planning on making a "landing-lot's-of-not-neccesarily-reasonable-stuff-on-carriers" video sometime in the future so if you wouldn't mind I'd be honored to have your F-14 as a guest feature! c:

Despite my Tom's size, it's quite nimble on and off the ground. It can easily take off and land within 150m, so I'd love to see it do some carrier ops.

[EvenFlow]

OLS glideslope guidance system is undergoing testing! Looking pretty good so far although you need to strain your eyesight to see it's readings from a distance :v

[klond]

 I can't get enough ship/boat/carrier photos.

 @selfish_meme, @EvenFlow the landing light guidance systems you each have are pretty sick.