Naval Battle League 2016-2018

[SG Aero]

Lol. Seriously though can you help me with my armor as I'm pretty bad at making armor

[MiffedStarfish]

yeah i can, from what ive seen you attach armour directly to squishy parts, you need to build armour of a girder skeleton and attach fuel radially to the core.

Heres pics:

 

There was a fairly large intact segment with engines left, but i figured it probably didnt have any fuel, so i left it alone.

Spoiler

No I didn't.

Bang. NOTHING CAN ESCAPE MY G3 TORPEDOES!

I think thats all your ships dead, but you can have the persist if you want to weapons test?

Edited April 8, 2017 by MiffedStarfish

[SG Aero]

Ah. Well that explains it. 

[MiffedStarfish]

@ShadowGoat I just edited in the battle report, thats all your craft dead but if you want you can have the persist for ship testing. Also, you can have some craft files for my ships if you want to study the armour design, but no ripping off!

[SG Aero]

Yes plz. Don't worry I wouldn't copy.

Edited April 8, 2017 by ShadowGoat

[MiffedStarfish]

Did you read the spoiler? I am truly sorry.

[SG Aero]

What are you talking about. That was my little brother. Not me. Also can I have the persist. (I totally didn't not see the spoiler) 

[MiffedStarfish]

The thing about the poltergeist still being alive? Oh your being sarcastic and i fell for it again.

Persist: https://www.dropbox.com/s/9p0hbph3puxmelc/Persistent.sfs?dl=0

Also here is the craft file for the EX-2 Poseidon, my all round workhorse of the fleet, for you to study the armour: https://www.dropbox.com/s/kevbfp4vuxc3wek/F-Tech EX-2 Poseidon.craft?dl=0

(oh by the way if you have read it do you have any feedback on the first 2 parts of Duna Raiders?)

Edited April 8, 2017 by MiffedStarfish

[SG Aero]

Hm can I have a link to the runs raiders? Maybe I'm I'm blind and not seeing it, or I missed it in the chat but I don't know how to get to the Dina raiders thing. Also I've already started on my first new ship. If you can't tell I try to name My ships after ghosts, so I'm stretching the name a little, but since shadow ghosts are a thing I'm naming the class the sc shadow.

[MiffedStarfish]

Nice, I really enjoyed that battle, and when you have upgraded and rebuilt your ships i would totally be up for a rematch. Just remember, don't overbuild, try to keep mass down, and never attach anything important I.E engines, weapons hardpoints to fuel tanks.

Link to Duna Raiders:

 

[SG Aero]

Yeah the duna raiders thing is good. Also heres a pic of the very early version of the shadow.

Yeah sorry about the taskbar at the bottom i cant get it to go away.

[MiffedStarfish]

Looking good, but if you use nuclear engines with jet fuel tanks you get twice the fuel and a lot more efficiency. (At the cost of speed, which doesn't matter in turn based except for rendezvousing)

[SG Aero]

I keep forgetting about how they changed the fuel thing with the lvns.

 

[panzer1b]

58 minutes ago, ShadowGoat said:

Lol. Seriously though can you help me with my armor as I'm pretty bad at making armor

If youd like, i could give you my advice from what ive found to work in KSP armor wise.

There are 2 truly unique build styles, with some variations when it comes to armoring ships.  The first, and the more common/conventional method is using a so called structural spine along the ship from front to back.  This is almost always the XL girders since they are both easy to work with and are nice and strong structurally at least.  Basically lay down as many girders in a row as you desire the ship to be lengthwise, and build outwards.  From the spine you should have another structural piece (ibeams or more girders or even structural panels) to which you can attach an outer shell of whatever material you choose (for best armor use structural panels, but even wings work if you are building something like a carrier or its a part of the ship that is less critical). 

As you can see, there are 3 girders lengthwise, which the outer shell is attached in multiple locations (to keep one lucky shot from removing an entire side of armor), as well as to which the fuel is attached.  Ive had mixed results with fuel directly attached to teh spine.  On one hand, it increases protection against multiple weaker weapons (ibeam spam), but it seems to make it more vulnerable to direct hits from high powered phasing torpedoes (1.2m), so if you expect to deal with hard hitting weapons, it may be a good idea to have the fuel tank attached to another structural part that is attached to the spine instead of directly attaching fuel to the spine.  Basically this is the more reliable build style, and if you have enough redundancy (engines in teh front, weapons in teh back, ect) you are all set in the likely event of being split in half (its almost inevitable to happen sooner or later with this design, but once split its possible to remain a threat with proper hardware placement).

The other style of building is the so called "all or nothing" approach, where you have one critical part that you build the entire ship up off of.  This has its share of issues but can potentially be much harder to destroy as you have to get a direct hit to one and only one part to kill it, with shots to any other portion of the ship doing damage, but being unable to completely cripple the ship. 

Ive had alot of luck with this style recently, and most of my semi competitive ships these days utilize it as ive found the older style of structural spines to be harder to completely wipe out, but easier to do critical damage to as you just aim for the midsection and it goes away.  Its a bit of a gamble as one hit can 1 shot your ship, but ive found that risk to be worth the ability to tank insane amounts of damage to anywhere but the root part.

One more somewhat unrelated tip if you like to plate your ship externally with wings, is to place the wings not direclty onto the outer hull but via a cubic strut or other small weak component, so that if the wing takes a massive impact, it just falls off and does not transfer excessive forces into the actual armor beneath it (ive had ships torn apart this way by hits to the outer wings destroying the core through force transfer). 

Anyways, good luck with your design, most of my ships right now are being redesigned (as i dont quite like them atm and many are outdated) but if you want to take a look at some of my ships go to my company's craft repository and the majority of my ships that i have made that werent trash are there.  Also, feel free to try variations of these styles, ive found something like a H spine to work well (2 spines side by side with some armor between them so that if one spine goes you still have over half a ship left), and dont forget redundancy, its better to have something left over and functional after you are split apart then relying on a single control point and or a single weapons mount/engine cluster.

[SG Aero]

Cool thanks!

Edited April 8, 2017 by ShadowGoat

[SG Aero]

@panzer1b any advice on weapons?

[MiffedStarfish]

@panzer1b Thanks for that advice as well, I will incorporate that into some of my new designs. My ships tend to be compact, with only 2 or 3 part half length girder spines (lengthwise), and I have found they can take a few hits, but nothing more than a decent 1.2 meter guided missile. @ShadowGoat I would add that you shouldn't strut too much, as if everything is completely rigid with the ships core it could cause more damage, as an impact will be worse if the armour section can't dissipate the blow by moving. As for weapons, Really Pointy, Really Fast.  Seriously though, my top tip would be to not overbuild, only add just enough fuel and try to keep size down. Also experiment with different ranges, tips and propulsion, don't stick to one design. 

Edit: panzer, I just saw your craft repository, and those ships look amazing! Would you mind if I used some of them in this thread? You would be credited, of course. 

 

Edited April 8, 2017 by MiffedStarfish

[SG Aero]

I tried the pointy fast tactic but that didn't work well. My missile requires multiple runs to even deal minimal damage.

Edited April 8, 2017 by ShadowGoat

[MiffedStarfish]

It works for my torpedoes, do you have pictures?

[SG Aero]

I'll have them up later

 

[panzer1b]

1 hour ago, ShadowGoat said:

@panzer1b any advice on weapons?

There are a few things that ive found work weapons wise fairly well.  the simplest and cheapest weapon i use is a single long ibeam propelled by 4 sepatrons (or using a modded decoupler if im desperate to save part count to propell it to ~200-250m/s).  The idea behind these is to spam them in numbers and keep hitting the same part of a ship one shot after the next until you literally drill a hole through the entire thing.  Since they are very small you can cram alot of them into the ship's frontal profile.  A step up from this is the same concept, but instead of sepatrons, the ibeam has a probe core, engine, and fuel tank behind it allowing it to fly guided.  Ive never had extremely good results using these, but you can carry alot of them for a given mass/part count, and with some luck a good hit can split the entire ship apart.

After that you have your 1.25m weapons.  The most basic weapon ive found reliably is the smallest SRB (drained to low fuel, leave ~40-60 solid fuel in there) with either 1-2 structural panels on the tip or a ibeam on the tip.  These things are brutal against thinner more compact ships (like many of mine) but lack the firepower to truly destroy thicker more heavy ships that have alot of parts between the outer hull and the core.  Use them when part count is the primary concern, a single one is like 3-4 parts and it can some decent damage, with the main cost being space requirement and vulnerability to enemy fire compared to 1.2m weapons.  As for guided design, the most important thing is to utilize 80m/s or higher parts as the "warhead", and push it to the optimal speed within a reasonable distance (this dictates your engine size and choice).  Its extremely varied what works and what doesnt, but there are 2 major types of warheads that seem to be around, either armor piercing (kinda pointy with ibeams on the front) or fragmentation (lots of smaller structural "shrapnel" embedded inside) where there is a weak part (like a fuel tank) holding the shrapnel parts and when it breaks apart on impact the smaller stuff flies throughout teh vessel and guts the weaker components inside.  On the modern battlefield ive found a combo of these 2 to be the best (as in like 3-6 shrapnel parts combined with a AP tip) but it really depends on what you want to take down with it.  There are many ships that are very good against one type or the other, and even the combos are never guaranteed to work.  Overall, shrapnel is worse against compartmentalized ships since the shrapnel is stopped by armor or by the fact that not all the components are accessible, while AP is less damaging then shrapnel but will often do more damage against very well protected ships then a shrapnel round would.

Also worth mentioning is that one way to increase your weapon's power is to up teh mass.  Its not mass efficient to make heavier weapons, but if your current designs arent working (assuming they have some sort of structural warheads) try to add more mass to the missile for extra firepower.

46 minutes ago, MiffedStarfish said:

@panzer1b Thanks for that advice as well, I will incorporate that into some of my new designs. My ships tend to be compact, with only 2 or 3 part half length girder spines (lengthwise), and I have found they can take a few hits, but nothing more than a decent 1.2 meter guided missile. @ShadowGoat I would add that you shouldn't strut too much, as if everything is completely rigid with the ships core it could cause more damage, as an impact will be worse if the armour section can't dissipate the blow by moving. As for weapons, Really Pointy, Really Fast.  Seriously though, my top tip would be to not overbuild, only add just enough fuel and try to keep size down. Also experiment with different ranges, tips and propulsion, don't stick to one design. 

Edit: panzer, I just saw your craft repository, and those ships look amazing! Would you mind if I used some of them in this thread? You would be credited, of course. 

 

You are correct that struts, when used wrongly, can actually make your ship easier to kill.  Strut together only the parts that need to stay intact like the cor/skeleton itself, and leave sacrificial parts like fuel tanks, ect unstrutted.  As for weapons, pointy and fast may not alwasy be the best choice.  Pointy and fast is good against very thick and well armored ships (since a more blunt impactor might not penetrate to the internals), but against more compact or lighter armored ships shrapnel or frag rounds are flat out best.  You just need to get a feel for the target, some ships (due to each design's individual quirks) are easier to take down with a different type of weapon, as well as velocity.  Also, in case you didnt know, over-penetration is a thing, ive had bad results when hitting all but the largest targets at excessive speeds (above 500m/s relative) since they just pass through after blowing out a few irrelevant bits of armor.  At excessive speeds you also gamble more, yes you are theroeticxally capable of doing more dmg and or instakilling the ship with a direct hit to the root part, but you are also much less likely to achieve such a hit as you are less capable of changing trajectory and hitting the desired spot.

Ohh and yeah, feel free to use my ships and ideas in whatever, i do not believe in keeping secrets, if i make a ship that i believe is good, i sure as hell will show it off so other can use it/learn from it/blow it up.  The only stuff i keep secret and in progress designs and stuff that i feel isnt actually competitively useful (i have my share of terribad ships i keep around that ive never told anyone of )...

[SG Aero]

K thx. is it okay is i auto strutted my armor to the fuel tanks, they're the heaviest parts?

[panzer1b]

5 minutes ago, ShadowGoat said:

K thx. is it okay is i auto strutted my armor to the fuel tanks, they're the heaviest parts?

Autostruts are BAD for armoring from my experience, do not use these for "armor" unless you are running into a major part count problem.

[SG Aero]

Ah.

[SG Aero]

am i the only person who doesnt like rcs because it just means having to store extra mass?