Naval Battle League 2016-2018

[SG Aero]

I got the body done. Is it bad that my only thought is that it looks derpier than id hoped?

Anyone have any suggestion for this... thing? Ship, maybe? I'm not sure what to call it.

EDIT: I added some "strategic" parts so that it would look less derpy. Lately a lot of my ships have been looking increasingly like bugs. This continues the trend.

Preliminary testing reveals that i need to rework the engine shrouds and the armor in some areas

 

Edited April 9, 2017 by ShadowGoat

[0111narwhalz]

Alright, my first legitimate attempt at a warship. Note that I haven't skinned it yet.

It's based on the keel-rib-plate paradigm. It has six of the 4-Sep I-beam torps @panzer1b mentioned last page. Also, they're reloadable. The magazine ejects straight out the tube, and it should be easy enough to shove a new one in with some kind of claw tug. Four LV-N's give it a respectable acceleration of a little over 5m/s², and their arrangement should make it possible to run on only two. It currently masses 47T, and has a part count of 198. (Some of the above numbers will go up and others will go down as I add the armor.) The ribs are not strutted to anything, so they should allow flexion and absorb impacts relatively well. I think.

What kind of ammo count do you guys use? Six seems insufficient for the "spam them in numbers" approach panzer advocated. This ship might need a munitions freighter or something.

Edited April 9, 2017 by 0111narwhalz

[panzer1b]

3 hours ago, 0111narwhalz said:

Six seems insufficient for the "spam them in numbers" approach panzer advocated.

If its your one and only weapon 12 at a bare minimum for an actual "capital" ship, around 6 or so for a support ship or heavy bomber, and around 3 for a heavy fighter optimized to hit capitals.  The reason i would go with 12 at least is that most ships ive tested require at least 6 before they start to fall apart, and (at least imo) ships kinda should expect to be able to kill/neuter around 2 enemy targets, with bombers being capable of killing 1, and fighters just doing some damage but not killing a capital ship solo.  Thats at least how much i carry on my ships if they are actually only carrying ibeam weapons.

If they are a secondary or aux weapon, 6 is plenty.  most of my ships that arent designed to use loads of ibeams have 1 SRM-6 launcher on the front as backup firepower (so 6 of the ibeams).  If they are a truly last resport and you have other weapons, as few as 4 will do you well, ive seen a few others use 4 ibeam style weapons as a good backup option. 

As for other weapons, it really depends on how powerful they are.  For 1.2m torps, most of my ships carry between 2-4 of them, with flagships or excessively heavy vessels carrying 6-8.  Generally speaking, my modern 1.2m weapons are capable of killing the majority of targets in 1-2 good hits, so having 4 of them is a solid choice, with say a handful of backup weapons.  For guided 0.6m stuff, id say you want around 6-8 of them, since they are heavier and usually more accurate then unguided models as well as somewhat more klethal, so you dont quite need 12 to kill 2 ships bad luck aside.  Finally, for anti-fighter weapons (rcs powered kinetic drones and similar) i like to have 4 on my ships, and they tend to make good secondarys in a desprate situation against a capital ship although you dont want too many of them on ships that arent dedicated flakboats (anti-fighter) since they do weigh a bit and the part counts tend to stack quickly when you go overboard and bring 20 of the things...

 

 

Also one more somewhat unrelated thing with regards to ibeams, the best way ive found is to fire groups of 2 and just keep hitting them in teh same spot (from teh same side of the ship for best results).  Itll dislodge armor quickly and tear a nice hole in the target, oftentimes destroying the spine/core if your aim is good.  Best choices for targets (if you are using manual aim) is either the engines or weapons if the target happens to not have redundified the crap out of them.  If they are so redundant that this is pointless, aim center of mass and hope for a clean kill via root part/spine.

Edited April 9, 2017 by panzer1b

[0111narwhalz]

Some time later...

It looks a little like a stereotypical "rocket ship." I took some potshots at it with a rubbish tug carrying missile racks, and neither of the two shots that hit disabled it. In one case, the projectile was destroyed by a fuel tank! I don't know how that makes sense, considering the tank in question has an impact tolerance of 50m/s, but it happened. The second shot got wedged into the armor after killing the tank it hit, but eventually got squeezed out.

As for resupply: The racks eject straight down the tubes, as planned. Getting new ones in is a little rough, but that's mostly just because my tug is terrible. I ended up pulling the rack out of the tube with the tug, rotating the ship, and guiding the ship around the rack.

3 minutes ago, panzer1b said:

If its your one and only weapon 12 at a bare minimum for an actual "capital" ship, around 6 or so for a support ship or heavy bomber, and around 3 for a heavy fighter optimized to hit capitals.

I think I need to turn the decouplers around to do that. I don't know why I decided to do it the way I did; it makes their diameter too big to fit more than three in the tubes (which are 1.25m plus a bit at the corners). If I turn the decouplers around and tighten up the Sepratrons, I should be able to fit at least double.

Also, it can fit 1.25m torps in the tubes, if they have the appropriate docking port + radial attachment point on the back and don't protrude radially. 1.25m torps will probably be easier to handle, if only because I can grab them from the front.

[quasarrgames]

4 hours ago, ShadowGoat said:

Anyone have any suggestion for this... thing? Ship, maybe? I'm not sure what to call it.

The armor looks a lot better, that's for sure.

Same to you, @0111narwhalz. Never tested mk2 cargo bays as spaceship fuel tanks, so i'm very interested to see if the increased structural integrity is worth the extra size.

 

I've been busy as well...

This is the Eversor, a reboot of an old, very successful battleship of mine. 129 parts, 3 engine pods, 5 control points, 11 unguided and two guided heavy missiles, and the toughest armour I've ever seen.

Seriously. I fired almost the entire ship's ordinance at itself, and IT STILL SURVIVED!

One of the engine pods and most of its weaponry was knocked off, but it was functional. Gosh i love double layer cargo ramp armour.

Of course it's slightly OP so i may avoid using it in battles (and at 99 tons, i won't get to use it in many battles anyway) and just keep it as my trophy capital ship. Still, i'm happy with how it turned out.

 

I also made this 86-part, 52-ton cruiser to compliment it. Has 8 unguided missiles and 1 guided one. Had many problems with its aim, but at the end it turned out fine.

 

On the conventional armour side, i made this 123-part, 57-ton cruiser, nicknamed "flaming steel". 7 unguided and 2 guided missiles and decent armour (capable of repelling most light missiles and a few heavy missiles).

 

Finally i made this bad boy, nicknamed the "Aucturus". Made entirely with conventional armour, it has 3 engines, 4 control points, 9 unguided and 4 guided heavy missiles. It's capable of withstanding 4 of its own heavy missiles, thanks to the strategy i found to spam structural girders where all your utilities are, so missiles that phase through or destroy your outer armour will hit the girders before hitting your important bits. And all this for 166 parts and 79 tons.

 

I would like to release all these ships to the public, all i really need are some good names for them. Do you guys have any suggestions?

Also, given the number and diversity of the ships i have created, i may create a short cinematic series with them.

 

[0111narwhalz]

Why double the arms when you can triple them?

And on the ship itself:

Do any of you guys deal with reloadables? If so, how do you get them to be precise enough for general use? These things have absurd spread when fired rapidly.
I mean, look at this!

What are those two in the lower right doing over there?

They also have a little difficulty exiting the tubes once empty. But at least they're pretty.

 

What's the general feeling towards ships which sole purpose is to carry ammunition for the combat-ready ships? Do they qualify as carriers or no?

18 minutes ago, quasarrgames said:

Never tested mk2 cargo bays as spaceship fuel tanks, so i'm very interested to see if the increased structural integrity is worth the extra size.

I haven't the slightest idea. Probably far more fuel than I need, considering I'm running nukes. Perhaps it's just an interplanetary warship, capable of flying anywhere in the system. I dunno.

20 minutes ago, quasarrgames said:

I would like to release all these ships to the public, all i really need are some good names for them. Do you guys have any suggestions?

Note that my ship is called "Warship 001." 

[MiffedStarfish]

 

@panzer1b Thanks for letting me use the ships, they'll show up in some later parts of my story, looks like it won't be so short after all...  weapon wise I basically have one go to missile I fire from 1.5km away and which hits at around 250-300ms, that usually partially phases through targets, and I'm yet to have one pass straight through that wasn't fired at optimal range. (I also tend to fire the missile facing the ship lengthwise, so it impacts the ship at angle that puts the most internals in its path. It deals good damage to, usually either insta killing the root part or tearing a hole in the enemy vessel. I need to develop some more diverse weapon types though, I've only got that, and an ultra-heavy blunt tipped impactor propelled by a vector that's impratical for everything execept larger 100+ tons capital ships, as they weigh 6 tons each. And some basic I-Beams.

@0111narwhalz Unfortunately, for perfect accuracy with i beams mounted that way the most you can get away with is 4, on a small structural plate with the decouplers edges just clipping. Anything more and on release they have go everywhere. 

Also, a suggestion for your warship, you could offset the front structural girder in the front back so it just extends past the fuel tanks, add a plate and a docking port on it and change the long I-Beams into shorter ones, giving you another weapon hardpoint to mount another cluster of I-Beams or a 1.2m missile. Just a suggestion. 

@quasarrgames 3 weeks on, I finally found the QSS Itself. Very sneaky "cloaking," I had heard of it before but now I have reverse engineered it. 

Oh and by the way, I just wrote the third part of duna raiders for anyone interested.

Edited April 9, 2017 by MiffedStarfish

[0111narwhalz]

3 hours ago, MiffedStarfish said:

Unfortunately, for perfect accuracy with i beams mounted that way the most you can get away with is 4, on a small structural plate with the decouplers edges just clipping. Anything more and on release they have go everywhere. 

Even though the decouplers stay on the rack? The issues I've been having are related to flexion, not clipping. I made sure that no torps were clipping. It could be related to the way the torps are offset from the axis of the decouplers or something. I'll put some struts on it tomorrow and see how it does.

Come to think of it, I could probably just use a bigger docking port. Then the joint would be stiffer. Or I could do a triple-lock and also have orientation-preserving racks, which themselves open some very interesting possibilities. Hmm. Hmm. Hmm!

3 hours ago, MiffedStarfish said:

Also, a suggestion for your warship, you could offset the front structural girder in the front back so it just extends past the fuel tanks, add a plate and a docking port on it and change the long I-Beams into shorter ones, giving you another weapon hardpoint to mount another cluster of I-Beams or a 1.2m missile. Just a suggestion. 

See, the problem then becomes "to what do I attach those centerribs?" A very thin strip of armor along the dorsal and ventral midlines has its root there. Perhaps I could put a structural fuselage and stuff some kind of specialist torp in it? Guided missile sort of deal.

[SG Aero]

@quasarrgames Would you give me a favor and do some testing of my new ship? Once I adjust the armor so the missiles don't hit it and prevent the engine shroud from turning into a k-drive upon any impact I'd gladly give it to you. Also those are some nice ships

@0111narwhalz Of course they spread at 2.5 km! In an actual turn based battle I beams are mostly used from several hundred meters away. For me at least the range limit is about 200. For you you could use it as a space shotgun. By which I mean get close to their ship and fire. Not sure how viable this is, but why not? Also if it's perfectly symmetrical it doesn't matter the weapons are orrientated. 

[MiffedStarfish]

I think the proble mis they spread imemdiatly at firing, and though inaccurate at long distances, if the I-Beams have a smooth launch the will only spread a few metres in my experience. Also, heres my latest ship, the EX-11 Atlas:

it features the new G5L Light Torpedo, a smaller and lighter missiel which trades stopping power for less weight and a more compact shape.

Its meant as a carrier fighter, at 14.5 tons. I guess that means i have an excuse to build a battle carrier...

[SG Aero]

Thanks for the wonderful pictures of your new torpedo which I will promptly copy. 

[MiffedStarfish]

19 hours ago, ShadowGoat said:

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

You... You lied...

i wouldnt if i were you, I havent even fired it at anything yet. I will not fall for this again.

Edited April 9, 2017 by MiffedStarfish

[SG Aero]

Wow. Just wow. You aren't good at detecting sarcasm/humor are you? Then again I'm not good at making sarcasm/humor.

Edited April 9, 2017 by ShadowGoat

[MiffedStarfish]

Is the shadow finished? Would you mind giving me the craft file? You know, since i gave you the poseidon.

[SG Aero]

Sure. I'll have to give it to you sometime tonight, since I can't use my pic till then. Can you test its armor/munitions? Just a warning unless I fix it a hit to the engine may result in a part glitching inside the armor and becoming a k drive.

[SG Aero]

Here's the craft file.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/hze0vm9w76f8exx/SC Shadow.craft?dl=0

[SG Aero]

Heres a picture of my so far unnamed new ship. At the center you can see the core, where all the magic™ happens.

 

[Spearka]

I'd like some people to give my ship designs a whirl, download links are shown below as well as pics and stats

On 1/4/2017 at 7:09 PM, Spearka said:

 

Download Link

Download Link

Download Link

Download Link

Download Link

[SG Aero]

I can do some testing if you want... or we could just battle?

[MiffedStarfish]

@Spearka I could also do some testing if you wanted?

Quote

2- Carrier fighters have a mass limit of 15 tons, anything heavier will be included as another ship.

Also, I have finished the Atlas and it is 14.9 tons. 

I realised that fighter squadrons are basically impossible to use effectively with the way ships and tonnage works, so I wrote a draft of rules for fighter squadrons to be used effectively. Let me know if you think this is unfair, I just want to see what people want and hopefully some version of these get into the official rules.

Fighter Squadrons

1. In a fleet, in place of normal ships, you can instead use a squadron of three identical fighters. They count as one ship, and you can have as many as you want within the specific battles ship limit.

2. When attacking or being attacked, the squadron effectively count as one ship, you can attack all three in one turn and all three can attack in the same turn.

3. Each fighter must be of the same class (though you could possibly use different loadouts) and under 15 tons each, to bring them in line with carriers. Their tonnage is added to your fleet combined.

 Example: My fleet consists of one battleship at 75 tons, 2 pickets at 40 tons each, and a squadron of fighters at 45 tons. Total mass: 200 tons.

Please give me your thoughts on this, do think it is balanced?

Edited April 11, 2017 by MiffedStarfish

[SG Aero]

Yeah it's balanced. Did you start testing on the shadow? I'm working on the spirit, which is intended to be the gunship of my fleet. Where have you been the past 17 hours, btw?

Edited April 11, 2017 by ShadowGoat

[MiffedStarfish]

Not yet, I've been busy building this:

I'll test it in a few hours. 

 

[DarkOwl57]

5 hours ago, MiffedStarfish said:

Also, I have finished the Atlas and it is 14.9 tons. 

#ThugLife

[SG Aero]

@MiffedStarfish What the- WHAT IS THAT? What is it even supposed to do? It's from portal,right?

[0111narwhalz]

It's GLaDOS, of course.