Fireworks are weapons

[Zacspace]

I haven't seen any discussion about it yet, but I just stuck a fireworks launcher on the front of a jet and blew up the VAB with it. It didn't work when I shot it at low speed, but coming in from the island airfield at nearly 300m/s I took a few more shots really just to see how the fireworks would react to being launched at high speed and to my surprise the VAB collapsed. I bet stationary weapons could be made by KAL overclocking the launch velocity, or at worst light vessel editing. Basically, BDAc is stock now.

[Davi SDF]

So, first we celebrate the 10th anniversary 

 

But now, we gotta make an stock A-10 Thunderbolt >:) 

[Hohmannson]

Fireworks seem to phase through vessels if they collide with them at velocity exceeding ~20m/s. At least for me. If it can be fixed, with flexibility of existing firework module(allows for different shell mass and bigger velocities, just tested) it will become a powerful weapon.

[Turf]

It also produces recoil!
The larger the velocity, the stronger the recoil!
The velocity can also be overclocked using KAL!

BRB orbiting Kerbin in 16 firework shots.

[eekee]

I'm not one for weapons as such, but this news makes me grin like Jeb driving too fast!

[kerbiloid]

Blades (Breaking Ground) + Fireworks = Hillecopter

Spoiler

 

With fireworks as guns.

[Dr. Kerbal]

They are. 

[Davi SDF]

I said i was gonna make n A-10... and so i did: https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/27292-what-did-you-do-in-ksp-today/&do=findComment&comment=3995038

[theJesuit]

On 6/25/2021 at 7:19 PM, Turf said:

It also produces recoil!
The larger the velocity, the stronger the recoil!
The velocity can also be overclocked using KAL!

BRB orbiting Kerbin in 16 firework shots.

Recoil?  Why has noone made it to orbit yet?

[Davi SDF]

1 hour ago, theJesuit said:

Recoil?  Why has noone made it to orbit yet?

There's posts on reddit (and even some on the forum i think) of people going to orbit with those, with either Kal1000 or without. I did it too using the Kal1000 (no screeshots sorry) but the recoil is so powerfull that i reached orbit in less than 10 fireworks... wich means...

 

Stock Project Orion baby! 

[panzer1b]

@SQUAD PLZ DO NOT PATCH THIS OUT!!!!!

I know its unintended, but i sure hope they dont patch it, the first viable stock weapon in the entire game (and impretty sure it works by throwing a unbreakable object (like the whackakerbal thing) at x velocity out the front which is able to impact the target (so it works exatly like the mod i made for KSP back in 0.25 or some ancient version). 

Took a very lucky hit, but in the hour i had for gaming today, i managed to kill a capital ship (took a 6 pack of the launchers fired in salvos and like after depleting most of the shells it killed a capital ship...

capital ship bought it (i used KAL to slightly velocity boost to like 200ish, and lost of the shots phased thru, but eventually i got a very lucky shot after like 20 reloads to kill it)...

[Zacspace]

Woah a whole thread happened. Yeah, I'm reasonably certain it's the impact of the firework object itself that causes damage and not the explosion. I suspect that the shots could be made more reliable by running at higher framerates (so just go buy a new CPU, easy right?). But really with how much of the playerbase spends their time recreating military vehicles, some kind of weapon in stock is long overdue. This'll be huge for console players if they ever get it.

[herbal space program]

26 minutes ago, Zacspace said:

Woah a whole thread happened. Yeah, I'm reasonably certain it's the impact of the firework object itself that causes damage and not the explosion. I suspect that the shots could be made more reliable by running at higher framerates (so just go buy a new CPU, easy right?). But really with how much of the playerbase spends their time recreating military vehicles, some kind of weapon in stock is long overdue. This'll be huge for console players if they ever get it.

People are saying this is the first stock weapon, but I thought people had already made high-velocity cannons out of stacked decouplers at some point. Is that not so?  It's also not clear to me why this would be superior to  just sticking a bunch of  Sepratrons onto a probe core/battery/reaction wheel stack and making that into a guided missile. Does the shell have some property that ordinary objects don't?

[Zacspace]

23 minutes ago, herbal space program said:

People are saying this is the first stock weapon, but I thought people had already made high-velocity cannons out of stacked decouplers at some point. Is that not so?  It's also not clear to me why this would be superior to  just sticking a bunch of  Sepratrons onto a probe core/battery/reaction wheel stack and making that into a guided missile. Does the shell have some property that ordinary objects don't?

We've had workarounds, and missiles in a rocket game are kind of a no-brainer. You're right. These are smaller and you can just stick them on though. Plus you can fire them more than once without getting your brain sweaty and engineering a reloading mechanism. Finally, I'm pretty sure the low impact tolerance of the decouplers makes them want to explode instead of whatever you shoot them at. I could be wrong though, and I couldn't tell you if the fireworks are any better for that. There's some speculation that the shells are indestructible so maybe.

[panzer1b]

On 6/27/2021 at 12:30 PM, herbal space program said:

It's also not clear to me why this would be superior to  just sticking a bunch of  Sepratrons onto a probe core/battery/reaction wheel stack and making that into a guided missile.

One thing, part count...

 

To make the most basic stock weapon (that is actually able to damage anything) takes at least 3 parts (SRB+something with high tolerance+decoupler/separator).  More realistically though, its going to be at least 5 for a reloadable weapon (ibeam, 2+ sepatrons, decoupler, docking port), and 7 for a base guided weapon (ibeam, fuel tank, engine, probe core, reaction wheel, battery/s-panel/rtg, dockport). 

 

The above is for a SINGLE shot.  Firework (besides being far more compact and not taking up the entire length of a starfighter), is a SINGLE part with 8 or 32 shots.  Yes, it isnt as lethal as properly made old fashioned weapons (when not using KAL cheats), but its very low performance (provided you dont spam too many fireworks until the ones already out there explode/despawn), much smaller (these alone revolutionized all my starfighters overnight), easier to add to just about anything without wrecking asthetics (its not easy to hide a massive torpedo completely inside a ship or build a launch tube for it, and many designs with them slapped on the hull without much care dont quite look right), and they have actual customizeable fx like bullet trails, explosions (you can make some nice cinematic flak effect with that alone), ect.

 

Not perfect by any means at all, but ill take it as an option alongside old weapons (which my biggest pet peve about was the sheer lack of ammo capacity for a given number of parts.  That and ive really not been a fan of BDA in the last few years, so it makes it possible to have easy to make stock combat vehicles/ships without installing BDArmory.  Again, nothing against the mod (i even helped develop it a tad back in teh day Baha was still running the mod), but ive just not been a fan of the recent changes such as going from thermal to HP damage (this made the mod way more convoluted, complex, and slowish, and it did not imo improve enjoyment realistic or not), the uttery broken damage models as of late (ever since they added armor penetration its been really hit or miss with damage and how it behaves), and frankly, the only worthwhile addition the new mod has is the AI autopilot stuff (that is very nice, the rest of it id go back to Baha's original mod if it still worked like at all in teh new versions).

 

Anyways, good exaple is this, before and after on my TIE replicaish thing.  Goes from looking just stupid (with how the guns are larger then the cockpit), to actually being properly done as it outta be).

In terms of actual lethality, both are similar, but the fireworks look the part (no missile canisters, small "barrels" made of the lights), 64 total shots (vs 6).  Most of all, 48 parts on the left, 72 parts on the right)...

My only annoyance here is the fact that there is no fireworks "resource" making it impossible to reload the weapons, but with 64 shots, i dont care, at that point the fighter has either singlehandedly wiped out all enemy fighters, or its been blows to bits).

And best of all, the weapon is effective at ALL ranges (unlike short ranged missiles that need to accelerate, potentially have hard to control recoil), you can more or less go ham with fireworks (if you can stomach the lag with too many rendered at a time), and they just look so perfect (i know i said that like 5 times, but they really do).

 

Anyways, if i have some time over the weekend im going to see if i can for the first time ever make a full broadside capital vs capital battle, see how well that turns out.  There is just too much potential with these things to pass up...

[herbal space program]

11 minutes ago, panzer1b said:

One thing, part count...

Yeah, after I made that comment I went ahead and played around with some of those older weapons, and they're quite a pain to implement by comparison.

[Dientus]

On 7/1/2021 at 7:07 PM, panzer1b said:

My only annoyance here is the fact that there is no fireworks "resource" making it impossible to reload the weapons,

I am curious, have you tried EVA replacement via Engineers? Have you tried using clamp-o-tron docking ports? (Even possibly tweakscaled if you use mods)

 

I have been meaning to see if these ways could work to reload. I have not had a chance to check this yet. If it does work (either way) an ammo ship design would be nice addition for the fleet. 

[orbiting_electron]

On 7/2/2021 at 7:07 AM, panzer1b said:

One thing, part count...

 

To make the most basic stock weapon (that is actually able to damage anything) takes at least 3 parts (SRB+something with high tolerance+decoupler/separator).  More realistically though, its going to be at least 5 for a reloadable weapon (ibeam, 2+ sepatrons, decoupler, docking port), and 7 for a base guided weapon (ibeam, fuel tank, engine, probe core, reaction wheel, battery/s-panel/rtg, dockport). 

 

The above is for a SINGLE shot.  Firework (besides being far more compact and not taking up the entire length of a starfighter), is a SINGLE part with 8 or 32 shots.  Yes, it isnt as lethal as properly made old fashioned weapons (when not using KAL cheats), but its very low performance (provided you dont spam too many fireworks until the ones already out there explode/despawn), much smaller (these alone revolutionized all my starfighters overnight), easier to add to just about anything without wrecking asthetics (its not easy to hide a massive torpedo completely inside a ship or build a launch tube for it, and many designs with them slapped on the hull without much care dont quite look right), and they have actual customizeable fx like bullet trails, explosions (you can make some nice cinematic flak effect with that alone), ect.

 

Not perfect by any means at all, but ill take it as an option alongside old weapons (which my biggest pet peve about was the sheer lack of ammo capacity for a given number of parts.  That and ive really not been a fan of BDA in the last few years, so it makes it possible to have easy to make stock combat vehicles/ships without installing BDArmory.  Again, nothing against the mod (i even helped develop it a tad back in teh day Baha was still running the mod), but ive just not been a fan of the recent changes such as going from thermal to HP damage (this made the mod way more convoluted, complex, and slowish, and it did not imo improve enjoyment realistic or not), the uttery broken damage models as of late (ever since they added armor penetration its been really hit or miss with damage and how it behaves), and frankly, the only worthwhile addition the new mod has is the AI autopilot stuff (that is very nice, the rest of it id go back to Baha's original mod if it still worked like at all in teh new versions).

 

Anyways, good exaple is this, before and after on my TIE replicaish thing.  Goes from looking just stupid (with how the guns are larger then the cockpit), to actually being properly done as it outta be).

In terms of actual lethality, both are similar, but the fireworks look the part (no missile canisters, small "barrels" made of the lights), 64 total shots (vs 6).  Most of all, 48 parts on the left, 72 parts on the right)...

My only annoyance here is the fact that there is no fireworks "resource" making it impossible to reload the weapons, but with 64 shots, i dont care, at that point the fighter has either singlehandedly wiped out all enemy fighters, or its been blows to bits).

And best of all, the weapon is effective at ALL ranges (unlike short ranged missiles that need to accelerate, potentially have hard to control recoil), you can more or less go ham with fireworks (if you can stomach the lag with too many rendered at a time), and they just look so perfect (i know i said that like 5 times, but they really do).

 

Anyways, if i have some time over the weekend im going to see if i can for the first time ever make a full broadside capital vs capital battle, see how well that turns out.  There is just too much potential with these things to pass up...

Turn on infinite electricity.

[KrakenRider43]

I made a Concorde replica and added fireworks as guns (I know that the Concorde does not have guns)

[Corona688]

Pretty sure the VAB is sensitive to impact velocity.  A pair of 20-ton solids hitting  it on  full thrust?  Nothing.  A high-velocity seprotron?  Kaboom!

Edited September 22, 2021 by Corona688