Project BABYLON

[Tada]

No no, I just borrowed the picture As I´m still waiting for "Saphire" station being build I do just testing not any missions. I consulted with Temstar, that he will try to put whole thing into orbit in one pice, so no assembly would be needed.

Delta V to Laythe is all depending on how good pilot you are

Carrying 2 Calf Tankers and 2 SSTO shuttles I´ve burned almost 9000 units of Liquid fuel (I´ve burn both Calf tankers, each worth 1800 units of Liquid fuel just for ejection burn)... But I´ve made few mistakes and I had to do a lot of inclination changes...

Edited May 5, 2013 by Tada

[brobel]

How much do you usually use( i really need to know how much delta V i need to have on my craft)

And i made a new frigate that uses structural panels(Also makes it easier to get into orbit when no wings all over the place) and it is way easier to get to fuel tanks. I made it as an anti capitol ship but i think i could modify it to have same weaponry as the first frigate i made.

[Tada]

I really never counted that Take a look on Dv map. I think 5000m/S would be safe. But more = better, you then need less refueling missions

I suggest, that it can pack as an addition some defensive smart missiles as Damkina does - againts light ships, so it doesn´t waste the more powerful missiles.

[Octobomb]

I'm gonna make some refits to a Damkina, outfit it with a bee (+ adaptor), two grubs, some more RCS and some docking systems for the ammo. Gotta keep part count low though as my crummy PC does 3-4 fps with a fully loaded regular Damkina, and for four ammo clips we're looking at ~350 parts. I can launch the clips, but launching/ docking/ piloting the Damkina even with MJ I won't be able to do . For the clip launcher ill use my trusty Min/Munpact mkIII launcher (first two iterations were kinda buggy. MkI suffered from no ladders and a broken landing leg. MkII was unmanned and the rover had no decoupler to get it off. Having deemed my minmus visits 'interesting' mkIII went to the mun, wasted it's fuel on grandstanding (thanks Jeb) before nervousness hit the throttle too high, it flipped over and landed on it's head. It rolled over onto it's side, I merrily decoupled the rover (now 2 wheels short), 25 units of RCS later had flipped it upright, extended the ladders and Jeb went on a moonwalk. He is now kinda stuck, the only way to get him home is either land nearby or get into orbit and jetpack him over. Any ideas?) The lander stage weighed more than 2x the weight of this and it has a pretty low part count so I think that shouldn't be a problem.

[brobel]

Here is what it looks like (only has around 4000 deltaV but if i add some sort of fuel container on the nose then we could make it easy and its part count is around 400 (im off by like 10 or something for the part count) and add ing smaller missiles sounds like a good idea

As always i will be looking for ways to get deltaV up part count down and still having same outcome

Be carefull this is an ugly beast

And there larger Smart Rockets (very basic and only 6 parts but do so much damage)

Tell me what you think and yes i know its very ugly but this was my first shot at anti capitol frigate.

[Tada]

Post pictures then But current setup of Damkina is kinda on the limit of practicality. I have made adaptor to atach on those radial points and expands number of docking ports and it works and you can modulary attach any kind of payload you want....

I suggest you take some docking tutorial videos

brobel: To be honest, I like the previous design bit better - just make it easier to refuel Practicality is most important to the project. I also like better the weapon setup on that previous one.

Edited May 5, 2013 by Tada

[Xeo]

From the screenshots I've seen in this thread so far, I would say that most of the big ships share an important design flaw : they have way too much LV-Ns for their size. My main interplanetary "carrier" is just a bit bigger (equivalent of a x200-16 fuel tank) than the Damkina and 4 LV-Ns is the engine-count wich gives it the more dV for its fuel.

Remember that everything is a question of balance. Having too much or too few engines on a ship will both result in a performance drop, respectively because of the unnecessary weight of the extra engines or due to the fuel wasted during the insanely long departure burns. Since the LV-Ns are heavy and do not have a lot of thrust, having the right number of them is really important if you want your craft be to as efficient as possible.

For example, with 4 LV-Ns, my "carrier" has 8.7 km/s (according to kerbal engineer) of dV with no payload and no drop tanks, for the equivalent of 2.5 orange tanks of fuel. If I were to remove one engine, I would lose 0.5 km/s of dV. If I were to add one, I would lose 0.3 km/s of dV. It's less of a loss but it can still easily make the difference between making it back to Kerbin or getting lost in interplanetary space. And of course, the more unnecessary engines you add, the worst the problem become. With 4 extra LV-Ns (8 in total) my "carrier" dV would be reduced to 7.6 km/s. That's a loss of 1.1 km/s, think about it.

To make a long story short, remember that what matters in interplanetary travels is the balance between your fuel reserves size and your engine-count (and of course your "payload" size).

P.S : I hope I didn't sound too aggressive or pedantic, or anything of the sort. My goal here was to share a bit of my KSP experience, and hopefully to allow some people to travel in the Kerbol system more easily and more efficiently. If you want to give a look at my "carrier" and its companion shuttles for reference (or personal use, I don't mind), I can give you the craft files.

Edited May 5, 2013 by Xeo

[Octobomb]

I will post pictures... WHEN I CAN GO ON KSP! But yeah, I wanna learn to dock, I can do that, but that's not the issue. Try doing even a gravity turn at 2fps? I will see what I can do, however. In spess the lag might not be so bad. But the clips are ~60 parts each, so... Anyway, I think the modded Damkina should probably carry 4 clips at a time. How secure were the calves before? Because I could extend that to 8 (64 total torpedoes, so that makes 480 parts + the actual Damkina although only 28t of payload - less than one calf).

Edit: Seen Xeo's post, this means once I know the payload weight (14/28t) I can start tinkering.

Edited May 5, 2013 by Octobomb

[Tada]

Xeo: Well, I may not have your patience with long burns This setup may not be efficient but well, it looks good and give significantly shorter burn times.

Just now I´ve took Damkina Proto C, which was left in orbit after launch with about 1000 units of Liquid fuel less than its full capacity and I was thinking - lets just for fun get Eeloo encounter... I did not, but I got Jool encounter after 7 minutes of burn time (2020m/s)... Then I started being very careful and I got to circular equatorial 150km Laythe orbit with 960 units of fuel left. But I was lucky - I got Laythe encounter without directly when coming into the Jool system, so no need for aerobrake over Jool got directly to Laythe aerobrake. But ship was without any cargo...

Damkina Proto C with probes still attached

Falcon SSTO (ex-Sparrow by zombiphylax) doing turn before final landing aproach on small island on Laythe.

Edited May 5, 2013 by Tada

[Octobomb]

Ooh! Pretty! But anyway: Executive desicions to be made: 4 or 8 clips? (240/480parts + mothership respectively)

[Tada]

Less is sometimes more :-D I think even 240 will melt my computer :-D

[Octobomb]

Yup. Four clips it is then. Who knows, maybe it won't be too bad ;-).

[Tada]

Well, I think that most viable option of arming (in case of need) Damkina is use those 4 small radial docking ports, just dump small missiles of defense system and replace them in orbit with more powerful ones...

[Octobomb]

You mean arming the actual Damkinas rather than the Hive ships (read: modified Damkinas)? Yeah, good idea. They could even use ports for their own tiny fighters. Finally: Are we go for the Laythe ammo station? (Trails in the same orbit 10km behind the regular station, stores ammo to keep all the computers from melting. )

[Tada]

Yes, arming Damkinas would make sense in some situations and would be efficient.

Well, I´ve pictured hive ship like a kinda station... It floats in orbit with its ammo and fighters drop by when they need reload.... It will contain ammo and one grub droid to move ammo...

[Octobomb]

Cool. Was thinking something like that. I was wondering if it needed a bee on board as one part of the process is notably unwieldy (taking the clips off of the clip carriers (which need an insecty name) and docking them). I could have it so the grub sits on top of the bee - that would work. Ill start designing as soon as I can.

[Tada]

Well, both Bee and Grub would be nescessary for those ammo trailers I proposed for Damkina mothership.

Onboard of Hive, if it will be independent ship, you would need just a Grub.

[Octobomb]

I think we might be having two conversations here. I'm proposing that the Hive is a refitted Damkina, I'm calling the trailers clips and four go on to the Hive at a time. I suppose you could manage with just a grub but if you say wanted to add supplies to the laythe station proper or just for general flexibility a bee would probably help.

[Tada]

Ok, now it is clear

Well, I think we would use just "clips" fitted to regular Damkina class ship no need for special ship there - ships are expensive

[Octobomb]

Fine. The Damkina needs a bee and adaptor and a grub, but otherwise we're good. Ill post pics when I can. Can you think of a name for the lifter for the clips?

[Tada]

Well, ascent stages are not important enough to be named... I make the docking adaptors for Damkina that they have big port on one side and small port on other side - grub can go on that small one and bee can go on big docking port on nose if nescessary.

[brobel]

Hey i know this is off topic and probaly not going to happen for a few weeks but what are we going to do when the update comes out (theres a chance it could break save file) and would we start mining operations (would could make a minmus base that are ships could go by and refuel before leaving kerbin sphere of influence.

[Tada]

Well, lets hope save won´t brake... At leas lets hope that at least the craft files won´t brake. In case save file will break, but craft files remains ok, I think that editing crafts back to orbits where they were would be legit...

Mining operations are in plan - outer moons of Jool to supply fuel for Laythe.

Edited May 6, 2013 by Tada

[llamatoes]

I have a design for the bee and the hive, but I have IRL for the whole of the long weekend so I can only upload tonight.

[Tada]

Ok, looking forward to see what you came up with!

At the time until "Saphire" is established I´m testing some new SSTOs, ground fuel refueling system for these and of course Temstars huge antena array