Kethane Station Discussion

[MiffedStarfish]

There is quite a bit of wasted space in there. As it is running off nukes, It is way more space efficent to use mk1 fuel tanks, as they are literally half the size and have more liquid fuel.

I have highlighted different points at which I think you could save parts.

Red- Replace the the side by side long fuel tanks with a single spine of MK1 fuel tanks, and move the missile hardpoints in,  giving you more fuel and a more compact design, so less armour parts.

Green- Replace the plate armour with wings, any hit to that part of the ship will knock off weapons anyway, and as wings are larger it means less parts.

Blue- Remove this section. It is a lot of empty space which is wasting parts being armoured. Spread RTGs and batteries around the ship, and the fuel will be replaced by the more space effiecent tanks.

Orange- Remove the outer long fuel tanks, they are just increasing the ship in width and not providing much fuel. It will probably be mostly compensated for by the more effiecent tanks.

Hope this helps!

Edited May 20, 2017 by MiffedStarfish

[Greymangames]

3 minutes ago, MiffedStarfish said:

There is quite a bit of wasted space in there. As it is running off nukes, It is way more space efficent to use mk1 fuel tanks, as they are literally half the size and have more liquid fuel.

 

I have highlighted different points at which I think you could save parts.

Red- Replace the the side by side long fuel tanks with a single spine of MK1 fuel tanks, and move the missile hardpoints in,  giving you more fuel and a more compact design, so less armour parts.

Green- Replace the plate armour with wings, any hit to that part of the ship will knock off weapons anyway, and as wings are larger it means less parts.

Blue- Remove this section. It is a lot of empty space which is wasting parts being armoured. Spread RTGs and batteries around the ship, and the fuel will be replaced by the more space effiecent tanks.

Orange- Remove the outer long fuel tanks, they are just increasing the ship in width and not providing much fuel. It will probably be mostly compensated for by the more effiecent tanks.

Hope this helps!

Thanks and all, but  what do you mean highlighted? Did you edit a picture?

Edited May 20, 2017 by Greymangames

[Mycroft]

@Greymangames cool looking ship! I would suggest as far as part count, get rid of your missiles and replace them with missiles made of a pocket edition I-beam and two or four sepratrons. They are very part efficient, and surprisingly accurate. i used them in my design and you can have a lot of them, giving effectively more firepower. This may not exactly save you parts if you use a lot more missiles but it will give you tons more firepower for your partcount. There are a lot of good suggestions for other ways to save parts in other posts, i would personally implement as many as possible and save that version of the ship so you can go back to it if it doesnt work. 

 

Meanwhile, I was wondering if anyone had any feedback at all for my ship? Also any name ideas? 

Top:

Bottom:

She has a lot of fire power and i managed to get it to 602 parts. Anyone have ideas?

[Spartwo]

Docking ports and RCS?

[MiffedStarfish]

Yeah, my picture didn't work. Hang on, might be able to fix it.

I got Imgur to work on mobile! This day will surely be celebrated for years to come! I have edited the post.

Edited May 20, 2017 by MiffedStarfish

[MiffedStarfish]

Got it working, here it is:

I have edited the first post as well.

[NotAnAimbot]

2 hours ago, Greymangames said:

So I need a bit of help here.

Remove oxidizer tanks, since you're using nukes. If you have RCS, remove it and replace with SAS. Remove the unneeded wing plates and canards, maybe rebuild the cockpit part to be simpler, like using a Mk2 cockpit instead of the complex armor. Use 2x2 plates whenever possible, for example in the bow.

2 hours ago, Mycroft said:

wondering if anyone had any feedback

Maybe add engine armor? Also wings make weak armor at 15 m/s impact tolerance, so you could replace them with 2x2s.

Edited May 20, 2017 by NotAnAimbot

[Greymangames]

6 minutes ago, NotAnAimbot said:

Remove oxidizer tanks, since you're using nukes. If you have RCS, remove it and replace with SAS. Remove the unneeded wing plates and canards, maybe rebuild the cockpit part to be simpler, like using a Mk2 cockpit instead of the complex armor. 

Yeah, in hindsight the Cockpit/escape pod idea was too part intensive to use. Although, why remove RCS? Isn't needed for docking and easier maneuverability?

[Spartwo]

If that's an escape pod you can go a lot simpler to save parts.

[Greymangames]

16 minutes ago, Spartwo said:

If that's an escape pod you can go a lot simpler to save parts.

It was like that because I had drawn out the design beforehand, and I had gone from there what to do with what on it.

In the end I got rid of it.

Edited May 20, 2017 by Greymangames

[Mycroft]

45 minutes ago, NotAnAimbot said:

Also wings make weak armor at 15 m/s impact tolerance, so you could replace them with 2x2s.

Yeah funny thing is, I feel like I've built enough big ships with heavy armor made from 2x2s so I specially built this one without a single one on it, so it has no armor but a ton of weapons. I find when I used 2x2s part count skyrocketed. Also an even weirder thing, I havent been able to damage test it because it seems to be glitched and every missile I use against it did no damage to the actual ship. It was so weird. I've never seen that before.

I musta checked that crash damage was enabled like 15 times and it always was.

[NotAnAimbot]

1 hour ago, Greymangames said:

Although, why remove RCS? Isn't needed for docking and easier maneuverability?

Didn't think about that one. Just that RCS requires at least 5 parts (Nozzle for each movement axis + fuel tanks) while SAS requires only one module. 

[MiffedStarfish]

Quick question @HatBat, would you accept ships that use stock hinges? Because I'm thinking of building something with moving turrets that makes use of the new multi vessel action groups in the 1.2.9 pre release. I've done some testing and I have got a design to lock on and hit a moving 0.6m decoupler 15 metres away by only using the target lock, and I'm about ready to mount it on ships. They all would be capable of re-attaching to the main ship via docking ports, so time warp wouldn't be a problem. This would allow "broadsiding" ships, which would look very cool.

Edit: Here it is.

It has full 360* horizontal motion, and around 80* vertical.

Itcan reliably dock back to the main ship.

Edited May 21, 2017 by MiffedStarfish

[Spartwo]

wait, WAIT, WAIT!

 

Multi vessel action groups?

[Halban]

Could you provide a video, @MiffedStarfish?

[MiffedStarfish]

Maybe, I don't have YouTube but I could give you a raw wmv file if you want. I mounted it on a EX-7 Hyperion in place off the communication array, and I have discovered the main problems are recoil and accuracy, both of which I think I can fix with a bigger pod and more SAS. It's not finished yet, though the picture version is slightly outdated. I have a subassembly craft file if you want to test it, but it only works in zero gravity, so you might want to either hyperedit it to space or use the cheat. It still needs work, but I'm pretty sure I fix or minimalize the problems. 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/t6g3phjfv9cem00/F-Tech Turret Assembly.craft?dl=0

Hack gravity and then press action group 10, this decouples the docking ports and decouplers. The vertical docking ports might not reattach instantly, pitch it up the highest it can go and then try again and it will work.

@Spartwo yes, azimech discovered it when testing helicopter blade pitch, and a Dev confirmed it. It's only in the 1.2.9 pre release right now though, so we'll have to wait for 1.3, which isn't to bad, as from the weekly updates dates I'm guessing we will get it within 3 or 4 weeks.

[Spartwo]

I've stuck with 1.2.2 for now cause mods.

[ScriptKitt3h]

@MiffedStarfish, that's a beautiful turret. Hopefully it works when the main release gets multi-vessel AGs; I'd love to make some point defense gun-style setups on vessels.

That being said, I've been taking a look at some of the older ships I helped make for the series recently, one of them being the Helios. It's still a great ship aesthetically and flies well, but looking back at it and comparing it to more recent builds got me thinking...

^Carries up to 2 stacks of 1.25m, and has twin i-beam guns for line-of-sight shooting in addition to decoy probes. Crews 4.

I'm calling this prototype the Osiris for now. If @HatBat is interested, I'd be happy to work on getting it series-ready. If not, I've no problem with continuing to service the Helios, as the ship is indeed still functional, but a bit dated design-wise now due to the insane rate of tech dev in KSP currently.

[Spartwo]

From the back that doesn't look very Helios but from the front the resemblance is uncanny.

Things are moving fast right now. Not the level of this time 2013 but still pretty damn fast.

Edited May 22, 2017 by Spartwo

[VeryShyProxy]

What does HatBat want most in his submissions?  Aesthetically pleasing craft, low part counts, lots of weapons, or what?  What should we be designing towards? 

[ScriptKitt3h]

1 hour ago, VeryShyProxy said:

What does HatBat want most in his submissions?  Aesthetically pleasing craft, low part counts, lots of weapons, or what?  What should we be designing towards? 

From what I understand, a good balance of aesthetics, functionality, and not being so complex per ship that the game turns into a lagfest while he's recording.

Additionally, you don't necessarily need to make most of your vessels (this goes for everyone in here) arsenal ships carrying massive munition loads, but just enough to be effective.

For example, most of my ships have 1 or more 1.25m guided missiles (but not much more than 3-5 normally), and perhaps some small i-beams or small guided anti-fighter weapons. Since I know my weapon designs can semi-reliably deal major damage on a direct hit to most ships out there, I tend to try and keep loadouts lean to reduce part count, which also gives me more room for armor, internals, and aesthetic areas of the outer hull, as less weapons = less space needed to store them internally. It also doesn't hurt to pay attention to your ships' range(s), as (minus a few instances with warp drives being used to advance the plot rapidly), most of the interplanetary travel in the series is done with actual burns, meaning a ship does need to be able to travel a decent bit without using up all of its fuel rapidly.

[MiffedStarfish]

Ok @HatBat, I got a video. I fixed the accuracy by removing the casing and changing the missile staging to single-fire, and along the way the recoil all but disappeared somehow.

Now all I need is a ship to mount it on, the Hyperion is already to high on part count.

@ScriptKitt3h That new Helios Gen 3 looks great, did you fix the issue where all the wing plates fell off when you shot it top-down?

Edited May 22, 2017 by MiffedStarfish

[Spartwo]

That just looks like 2 separate ships to me. Rotors are cool nonetheless but it's nothing new.

[MiffedStarfish]

Yes, it is right now, but in 1.3 you will be able to fire it from the main ship, and hopefully hold target SAS, making it a remote control auto-tracking turret, which will be immensely useful when multiplayer comes out in version 9.99.9999.

Edited May 22, 2017 by MiffedStarfish

[Aveeeno]

When should we expect to see a new episode? Knowing would give me a deadline to work for.