Naval Battle League 2016-2018

[ScriptKitt3h]

5 hours ago, Kutsivi said:

I have a question. So let's say that I am having a battle around eloo, and I want to launch a ranged projectile. Does that mean I have to have a satilite network reaching said probe for maximum effiecnty, or is low connection good enough?

I've not battled in 1.2.x, but I'd guess the participants could either plop a relay sat into orbit where you're fighting, or alternatively configure the save file to not utilize the comms network mechanic (which can be turned off in settings IIRC).

[panzer1b]

34 minutes ago, ScriptKitt3h said:

I've not battled in 1.2.x, but I'd guess the participants could either plop a relay sat into orbit where you're fighting, or alternatively configure the save file to not utilize the comms network mechanic (which can be turned off in settings IIRC).

Personally id defenetely disable it or not use probes at all (perfectly possible if you like to have kerbals to man your death traps).  While it actually would be a very neat mechanic to have in combat, there needs to be a way to make it specific to teams and not so that 1 comms sat ends up working for both sides.  If i had the time to spare id actually make a mod that could do that (team based comms system), but its something that im probably never gonna find time to do (i have enough mods i work on both for KSP and plenty of other games).

 

 

In other news, ive finished a new set of 5 competitive tanks.

The first tank i made took design elements from the hetzer (obvious upper hull is obvious) and actually ended up fulfilling a similar role to said hetzer in being very simple (80 parts), cheap, and low mass.  I armed it with 2 quad heavy pulse cannons mounted extremely low allowing it to literally obliterate the suspension of anything that is in front of it, or if said tank happens top have any critical structural parts mounted down low, it will tear the entire tank apart.  Also, while armor may be quite thin, its a unique design that takes advantage of extremely low mounting points making it harder to actually hit and keeping tanks from facehugging it provided they arent specifically designed to destroy this type of chassis.

The next one was based on the hetzer lookalike, except for added turret and smaller front mounted cannons.  The turret has a single quad heavy pulse cannon and the bottom has 2 quad small pulse cannons.  Armor protection actually went up since there is the turret bearing which is fairly solid in of itself and it acts as a shield to protect the tank from critical hits that normally would have ripped the root part to shreds.

After that i ended up making a heavier model, with better armor but more complexity.  Sortof modeled after a T-34 hull with sloped armor all around, although in practice said armor is just aesthetic and doesnt even have any real purpose (there is nothing but the turret bearing at that height).  because the mass of the hull went up i cut the firepower down from the pz-4 and armed it with new triple compact type pulse cannons (heavy in turret and light in hull where the MG would normally be).  They work as well as the standard quad models used in the previous 2 but have the downside of spread leading to inaccuracy at long range and tumbling rounds (when fired the clipped rounds interact with each other giving a slight kick towards the side).

Then i made 2 more based on the heavier hull, but tank destroyer style.  The 4th model has identical firepower to the hetzer but it has the benefits and drawbacks of the above model's armor layout (stronger but more complicated).  The last one has 4 quadruple heavy pulse cannons and there is literally nothing in existence that ive been unable to kill with 16 bloody rounds, both ground and space alike (thats what my SK-103 B corvette carries as its main armarment which is also borderline guaranteed to kill everything in the game).  Ofc its 20T and almost 200 parts so its more of a heavy tanks compared to the rest.

Anyways, ive finished optimization of the decoupler powered ibeams and ive found the perfect velocity to deal with the majority of enemy vessels (has trouble against fairing armor but thats kinda expected).  Im probably never going back to sepatron missiles just because the pulse cannons can pull off a hair less damage but are 2 parts vs 5 parts per ammo (and can be stacked much more compactly if needed).

Now to make a dropship that im actually happy with.  Nomatter what i make im always unhappy with one thing or another, either too high on parts, too heavy, too little range, looks ugly, not enough armor, ect.  If you guys have any tips with dropship design im all ears, one thing ive never made to a point i at least consider acceptable was a working practical and functional dropship to deploy tanks and other land constructs from orbit.

[AlexanderTeaH]

12 hours ago, panzer1b said:

-snip-

Damn, that's cool! I like how compact it is.

[ScriptKitt3h]

12 hours ago, panzer1b said:

Personally id defenetely disable it or not use probes at all (perfectly possible if you like to have kerbals to man your death traps).  While it actually would be a very neat mechanic to have in combat, there needs to be a way to make it specific to teams and not so that 1 comms sat ends up working for both sides.  If i had the time to spare id actually make a mod that could do that (team based comms system), but its something that im probably never gonna find time to do (i have enough mods i work on both for KSP and plenty of other games).

 

 

In other news, ive finished a new set of 5 competitive tanks.

The first tank i made took design elements from the hetzer (obvious upper hull is obvious) and actually ended up fulfilling a similar role to said hetzer in being very simple (80 parts), cheap, and low mass.  I armed it with 2 quad heavy pulse cannons mounted extremely low allowing it to literally obliterate the suspension of anything that is in front of it, or if said tank happens top have any critical structural parts mounted down low, it will tear the entire tank apart.  Also, while armor may be quite thin, its a unique design that takes advantage of extremely low mounting points making it harder to actually hit and keeping tanks from facehugging it provided they arent specifically designed to destroy this type of chassis.

The next one was based on the hetzer lookalike, except for added turret and smaller front mounted cannons.  The turret has a single quad heavy pulse cannon and the bottom has 2 quad small pulse cannons.  Armor protection actually went up since there is the turret bearing which is fairly solid in of itself and it acts as a shield to protect the tank from critical hits that normally would have ripped the root part to shreds.

After that i ended up making a heavier model, with better armor but more complexity.  Sortof modeled after a T-34 hull with sloped armor all around, although in practice said armor is just aesthetic and doesnt even have any real purpose (there is nothing but the turret bearing at that height).  because the mass of the hull went up i cut the firepower down from the pz-4 and armed it with new triple compact type pulse cannons (heavy in turret and light in hull where the MG would normally be).  They work as well as the standard quad models used in the previous 2 but have the downside of spread leading to inaccuracy at long range and tumbling rounds (when fired the clipped rounds interact with each other giving a slight kick towards the side).

Then i made 2 more based on the heavier hull, but tank destroyer style.  The 4th model has identical firepower to the hetzer but it has the benefits and drawbacks of the above model's armor layout (stronger but more complicated).  The last one has 4 quadruple heavy pulse cannons and there is literally nothing in existence that ive been unable to kill with 16 bloody rounds, both ground and space alike (thats what my SK-103 B corvette carries as its main armarment which is also borderline guaranteed to kill everything in the game).  Ofc its 20T and almost 200 parts so its more of a heavy tanks compared to the rest.

Anyways, ive finished optimization of the decoupler powered ibeams and ive found the perfect velocity to deal with the majority of enemy vessels (has trouble against fairing armor but thats kinda expected).  Im probably never going back to sepatron missiles just because the pulse cannons can pull off a hair less damage but are 2 parts vs 5 parts per ammo (and can be stacked much more compactly if needed).

Now to make a dropship that im actually happy with.  Nomatter what i make im always unhappy with one thing or another, either too high on parts, too heavy, too little range, looks ugly, not enough armor, ect.  If you guys have any tips with dropship design im all ears, one thing ive never made to a point i at least consider acceptable was a working practical and functional dropship to deploy tanks and other land constructs from orbit.

Now how are those i-beam guns firing? If they're using modded parts the guns wouldn't be able to be used in battle, as it wouldn't be stock anymore.

[panzer1b]

30 minutes ago, ScriptKitt3h said:

Now how are those i-beam guns firing? If they're using modded parts the guns wouldn't be able to be used in battle, as it wouldn't be stock anymore.

The weapons are done with cfg edits only and thus are 100% stock compatible.  The basic idea is to take any decoupler and change the %force to something above 100%.

Now i will admit that it is something id rather not do (it feels a tad more cheap then my ion engine alteratiosn with integrated fuel and battery capacity+ablator to add the corresponding dry mass), but with part count being such a major pain to deal with i ended up using them simply because i have no choice if i want to enjoy the game to its fullest.  That said, with all my testing ive come to the conclusion that properly designed sepatron powered ibeam weapons are still superior in firepower and damage dealing abilities shot to shot, but with over twice the part count (i can bring 2.5 pulse cannons as i like to call em for every 1 ibeam+4 sepatron missiles and have the same part counts).  Im still of the opinion that they arent exactly OP given that you have 2 issues that cannot be solved using the decoupler cannons.  For one, the ship firing said weapon gets 100% of the recoil and because of that you have to actually design the ship to be able to handle recoil (this may or may not affect where and how you can place weapons on the craft, for me ive had to reinforce the launch points on at least a few ships), and you are stuck with the ibeam velocity you build the craft with.  The latter is actually a major downside from my experience because you cannot cater to multiple target types, you want higher velocities when dealing with very thick targets, and lower when dealing with fighters and thinner capitals, sepatron powered ones allow you to pick what distance you fire from and thus impact velocity, pulse cannons you get a flat velocity nomatter what you do (best bet is to go with omni-purpose mid velocity but you are still going to be too high or too low if you didnt modify them for every battle).

The only real spot where i have to say pulse cannons are superior in almost every way is with tanks since you can be very accurate when you more or less facehug the enemy as the rounds get up to speed instantly.  Might have to make a rule for tank battles akin to no shooting from closer then 50-100m if we even consider such weapons ok to use in the first place (myself im all for it as part count and they do have clear ups and downs).  Based on preliminary tank vs tank testing, their lethality is incredible if and only if you facehug (or something like 10-20m) not because they are so inherently powerful, but because you can almost guarantee whatever you are targeting gets hit with the rounds.  Past about 50m they become comparable to standard weapons where you are nolonger guaranteed a hit on target.  Also worth mentioning is that the more powerful the cannon the more lethal it is to the user, ive had to tone down the weapons on my tanks a few times because they kept flipping the tank, tearing the turret out of its bearing, ect, so its quite hard to make em work right outside of the super low mounted hardpoint style ive used in my TDs so that recoil doesnt instantly flip you.

[Canberra_Gaming]

So anybody up for a battle?

[quasarrgames]

14 hours ago, Canberra_Gaming said:

So anybody up for a battle?

I'm almost ready. Just have to touch up my old fleet.

I do hope we can continue our honorly interplanetary conflicts in Naval Battle Club 2017.

I've been doing some "research"...

I've created a 4-part missile that can actually destroy the near-indestructible NX-16, sometimes in only one shot:

Then i mounted 6 of them on a reboot of my oldest design, the Neeson Phoenix "battleship in a box" escort subcapital.

I really don't like the partcount of conventional armor (84 parts for this little thing! Can you believe that?) but it should be able to withstand light-medium missiles without much trouble.

I'm also in the process of creating another version that uses mk2 cargo bays as armor, which offer about the same armor protection on account of their thin walls, but should reduce the part count significantly.

[ScriptKitt3h]

7 hours ago, quasarrgames said:

I'm almost ready. Just have to touch up my old fleet.

I do hope we can continue our honorly interplanetary conflicts in Naval Battle Club 2017.

I've been doing some "research"...

I've created a 4-part missile that can actually destroy the near-indestructible NX-16, sometimes in only one shot:

Then i mounted 6 of them on a reboot of my oldest design, the Neeson Phoenix "battleship in a box" escort subcapital.

I really don't like the partcount of conventional armor (84 parts for this little thing! Can you believe that?) but it should be able to withstand light-medium missiles without much trouble.

I'm also in the process of creating another version that uses mk2 cargo bays as armor, which offer about the same armor protection on account of their thin walls, but should reduce the part count significantly.

Nice, though I would say that virtually all of my ships are outdated by this point in my opinion.

I've been working on making some new designs to replace some of 'em, but it's slow going with real life and other hobbies taking up time.

[panzer1b]

On 12/31/2016 at 1:38 PM, quasarrgames said:

I'm almost ready. Just have to touch up my old fleet.

I do hope we can continue our honorly interplanetary conflicts in Naval Battle Club 2017.

I've been doing some "research"...

I've created a 4-part missile that can actually destroy the near-indestructible NX-16, sometimes in only one shot:

Then i mounted 6 of them on a reboot of my oldest design, the Neeson Phoenix "battleship in a box" escort subcapital.

I really don't like the partcount of conventional armor (84 parts for this little thing! Can you believe that?) but it should be able to withstand light-medium missiles without much trouble.

I'm also in the process of creating another version that uses mk2 cargo bays as armor, which offer about the same armor protection on account of their thin walls, but should reduce the part count significantly.

Curious, how heavy are those torpedoes?  It looks like you clipped 2 RT-5s together (they do make decent impactors alone) and have a girder there.  How much fuel do you have per SRB because i think those would be bloody heavy if you used full fuel level. 

Anyways, with 1.1 (and now 1.2) the whole idea of a girder core is pretty much outdated.  It is still ALOT better then not using structural parts, but ive come to teh conclusion that such a core layout is nolonger that great as it dies way too easily to plain ibeam weapons, and an ibeam weapon is like what, under half a ton and like 4 parts if you could the decoupler and only use 2 sepatrons.  Ive also come to the conclusion that what used to be compettive torpedoes are nolonger as practical to use these days (the concept of high part count and complexity is not necessary anymore to do alot of damage).

It seems to be the combination of 1.1's new engine (physics interaction between 2 objects has changed alot recently), and the fact that squad seems to have made joints alot harder to break apart (this leads to more ships dying not of being broken apart but of parts being destroyed outright).

Luckily my early 1.1 ships are still viable to an extent (though id love to do something about the part count insanity), because they rely more on sheer redundancy then actual armor protection.  Seems that the best armor these days is abusing cargo bays (in the correct layout it can make a ship near invincible and also very low on parts), and then making the ship inherently redundant as well so that if the thing takes a nasty hit, what is left can still fight to an extent (my newest gen ships are all based on ion/probe spam and are armed with like 10+ hardpoints with multiple weapons all over and no stacked anything (that can be shot off entirely with 1 good hit), good luck disarming/immobilizing these things without throwing at least 10 ibeams at it (even if it gets cored out you still have to deal with all the drones that are left behind, each of which can shoot you and move around on its own)...

Still, im working on creating better protected ships without settling for insane redundancy (the part count goes through teh roof, its like 200 parts for the above ship).  Maybee ill make some breakthrough in combat technology for KSP ...

[quasarrgames]

21 hours ago, panzer1b said:

Curious, how heavy are those torpedoes?  It looks like you clipped 2 RT-5s together (they do make decent impactors alone) and have a girder there.  How much fuel do you have per SRB because i think those would be bloody heavy if you used full fuel level. 

Right you are. I only used 42 units of fuel in each RT5, so each missile weighs a little over a ton. The weapon is really just a small structural beam with a huge amount of thrust behind it to get it up to speed. It has a tendency to just barely phase through most armour and hit the structural beam holding it in place.

Oh, and i'm almost finished the Mk2 variant of the Neeson. I like the way it turned out!

[panzer1b]

6 hours ago, quasarrgames said:

Right you are. I only used 42 units of fuel in each RT5, so each missile weighs a little over a ton. The weapon is really just a small structural beam with a huge amount of thrust behind it to get it up to speed. It has a tendency to just barely phase through most armour and hit the structural beam holding it in place.

Oh, and i'm almost finished the Mk2 variant of the Neeson. I like the way it turned out!

I like it, its so simple but it looks good at the same time.  I doubt that the armor is going to be as good as structural panels, but it should still hold up against anti-fighter weapons, and based on teh design, i dont think you envisioned this thing slugging it out with actual capital ships so that isnt a big deal.

Kinda wish there was a 0.6m SRB so i didnt have to use sepatrons (or modded decouplers) for my weapons, 1.2m parts are just way too big and hard to carry multiple of without going with a vulnurable stacked approach...

[quasarrgames]

On 03/01/2017 at 6:03 PM, panzer1b said:

I like it, its so simple but it looks good at the same time.  I doubt that the armor is going to be as good as structural panels, but it should still hold up against anti-fighter weapons, and based on teh design, i dont think you envisioned this thing slugging it out with actual capital ships so that isnt a big deal.

Kinda wish there was a 0.6m SRB so i didnt have to use sepatrons (or modded decouplers) for my weapons, 1.2m parts are just way too big and hard to carry multiple of without going with a vulnurable stacked approach...

Thank you, and yes i agree that it would be a lot better to have a 0.625m SRB. 

Also, In the process of creating a ground assault weapon, i realised that i have officially lost my sanity.

I built this weapon:

I guess it's kind of hard to see in detail. It's a mass accelerator tank with a giant clip of Ibeams. Basically a Bren LMG scaled up so it fires 130kg projectiles.

It's stupid and heinous but it works and i love it!

Surprisingly, It's actually a pretty deadly artillery weapon. Fires 20 i-beams into an approximately 20m x 20m area roughly 1150m away, so it has a decent chance of hitting and disabling an enemy tank with a rain of fire and metal.

Edited January 5, 2017 by quasarrgames

[camulus777]

This looks familiar. I was part of the original gentalmen's battle club back in the day, nice to see someone is continuing the tradition. Looks like fun. Do you have room for another player?

[Servo]

It's more of a forum on stock warfare nowadays. Of course there's room, just share a few designs and challenge someone.

[camulus777]

Cool thanks I missed Spartwo and the others. It has just been crazy.

[Spartwo]

4 hours ago, camulus777 said:

This looks familiar. I was part of the original gentalmen's battle club back in the day, nice to see someone is continuing the tradition. Looks like fun. Do you have room for another player?

Someone as in the same person. Good to see you back after so long. You've missed ... about 400 pages.

Edited January 8, 2017 by Spartwo

[camulus777]

Hey spar I meant other players are playing

 

[panzer1b]

Does anyone have any good core layouts?  Im literally stuck, with pretty much every single core type ive tried unable to withstand just a few hits from basic ibeam weapons or RT-5s.  Sofar my saving grace ship wise is redundancy, excessive redundancy (as in every ship is for all intents and purposed like 10+ smaller self sustaineable vessels), but i cant seem to get away from redundancy without being more or less fodder. 

I know from experience (believe me, ive wasted weeks trying to figure out a way to make "indestructible" cores) that the idea of an invincible ship is impossible, but does anyone here have any good armor/core layouts that actually capable of eating like 6 ibeams one after the other and not desintegrating 50% of the time?

[Frozen_Heart]

camulus777.... that's a name I havn't heard in a long time.

[camulus777]

Hows it goin  yall? As for a good core, go with the square on, it has the highest weight to structure tolerance ratio of them all. Surround it inside a structural hex beam and it should be good.

 

[Alphasus]

I might make something new for this, but lost all the time needed for battles.

[SuperHappySquid]

Hello, all. :¬)

I haven't posted here in a long time, so I thought I would show you guys one of my most recent ships. 

http://imgur.com/2erw1jc

The Daring Class Corvette!

http://imgur.com/XOZA54q

http://imgur.com/NGpO9vL

I've been away from the whole shipbuilding seen for well over a year now, so my designs are pretty rusty. I don't imagine this thing would last very long in an engagement, her armour is very thin and a well placed torpedo will saw her in half. She does pack a punch though, with 16 I-Beam torpedoes. 

http://imgur.com/Wrn6HDs

I'm still pleased with how she turned out though. :¬)

Edited February 3, 2017 by SuperHappySquid

[Ultimate Steve]

I have followed the NBC for quite some time, however. I might have to actually join sometime.

But I did notice... you might want to change the title now that it is 2017.

[Spartwo]

Sorry about that, haven't been very active in the last few months.

@SuperHappySquid I'm getting some heavy Pillar of Autumn vibes

Edited February 3, 2017 by Spartwo

[ScriptKitt3h]

On 2/3/2017 at 6:26 PM, Spartwo said:

@SuperHappySquid I'm getting some heavy Pillar of Autumn vibes

Yeah agreed. @SuperHappySquid's got a nice hull shape there.