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Post by dpidz0r on Oct 23, 2016 17:50:03 GMT
plus it won't calculate a flyby for missiles due to it ending in a crash - we really need an option to override that. Don't bother with letting the game calculate any of that. Just do it all manually. As son as you have a flyby option, switch to the station as a reference, zoom the camera on it, and keep dragging the sliders until your missile trajectory intersects it. Any tips for how to match orbital inclination? So far I've been eyeballing it, and it's a real PITA. Are there any visualization modes people have found useful for figuring out how to match inclinations? Rotate the camera around such that the plane you're trying to match to is flat and the trajectory of your ship intersects it dead center. Then drop a maneuver node right there (or maybe a few minutes prior in the case of this mission since the burns are long) and add in your out of plane burn. It also helps to line up your orbit such that that point is near your apoapsis. You can use the green axis to skew it one direction or another by a few hundred m/s and get the most out of your elliptical orbit if it's not lined up exactly. As far as killing the station with stock ships, line up the nuke flyby manually (neptune as reference to get close, then switch to station as reference), tweak them constantly a few minutes out so they arrive as centered to the target as possible, full homing mode, then listen to the proximity beeps while keeping your finger on the manual detonate trigger.
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Post by magusunion on Oct 23, 2016 18:08:59 GMT
The polar orbit is genius for defense and still works for economics. But they didn't station any decent defenses nearby preferring to keep their troops nice and comfy at the colonies. This oversight is what has the station ultimately doomed in the given scenario, the one thing they overlooked... that someone starting from within system would in fact be desperate enough to risk people falling into Neptune for a poorly armed craft to pull it off. Yeah, if there's one thing I really don't like about this game, it's basically the lore. Very questionable motives from both factions, lack of regard for human causalities in a post-Earth civilization, and various inhumane practices between both parties when it comes to dealing with insurrection and conflict. I know the game is pre-Alpha, basically, and a re-polished lore would go a long way for immersion.
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Post by captinjoehenry on Oct 23, 2016 18:19:28 GMT
The polar orbit is genius for defense and still works for economics. But they didn't station any decent defenses nearby preferring to keep their troops nice and comfy at the colonies. This oversight is what has the station ultimately doomed in the given scenario, the one thing they overlooked... that someone starting from within system would in fact be desperate enough to risk people falling into Neptune for a poorly armed craft to pull it off. Yeah, if there's one thing I really don't like about this game, it's basically the lore. Very questionable motives from both factions, lack of regard for human causalities in a post-Earth civilization, and various inhumane practices between both parties when it comes to dealing with insurrection and conflict. I know the game is pre-Alpha, basically, and a re-polished lore would go a long way for immersion. While I do agree with you about the lore one thing that needs to be kept in mind is this is a space combat simulator before all else. So while there is lore it is very much a secondary or tertiary or even further removed objective compared to accurately simulating space combat and allowing full user customization and creation of all things. Basicly the lore and story are just tacked on so there's something there. Not even remotely a main feature of the simulation.
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Post by chasergrey on Oct 24, 2016 1:00:57 GMT
Sigh. Can I have another hint from someone? Anyone? I've custom-designed ships with 32 km/sec of delta-v, I've used the stock fleet, I've tried everything, and while I can get close when I try to intercept it's always "gravity overwhelms acceleration." I'm so fucking sick of this mission I could scream, and I hate that I can't play the space combat game I paid for without solving an orbital mechanics puzzle.
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Post by cuddlefish on Oct 24, 2016 1:40:27 GMT
AFAIK, that means is that there's insufficient thrust to get the maneuver done - more dV can't solve that problem, because you just don't have enough ability to employ it in the window required. This becomes a tricky optimization problem, in that usually Thrust and dV are competing goals.
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Post by wafflestoo on Oct 24, 2016 1:43:33 GMT
Sigh. Can I have another hint from someone? Anyone? I've custom-designed ships with 32 km/sec of delta-v, I've used the stock fleet, I've tried everything, and while I can get close when I try to intercept it's always "gravity overwhelms acceleration." I'm so fucking sick of this mission I could scream, and I hate that I can't play the space combat game I paid for without solving an orbital mechanics puzzle. I'll have a video posted tonight (stuck in processing hell at the moment). The biggest hint I can think of giving you off the top of my head is to not try to lower your orbit all at once. Using the stock privateer it still takes me three-to-four orbits to match the station. *cough* ...and you did actually read the game description before buying it, right?
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Post by chasergrey on Oct 24, 2016 2:17:44 GMT
Yes I did, thank you very much. I knew it would involve real orbital mechanics, I'm a veteran KSP player, and I even read Atomic Rockets. But 6-8 hours of fiddling with maneuver nodes is still a bit much.
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Post by boomertiro on Oct 24, 2016 6:31:54 GMT
Orbit in the opposite direction and adjust your nodes for constant flybys. Hit them hard with everything you got on that first flyby and if that doesn't work you keep hitting them every time you come around.
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Post by dpidz0r on Oct 24, 2016 16:02:08 GMT
while I can get close when I try to intercept it's always "gravity overwhelms acceleration." Stop trying use the automatic flybys/intercepts, they're useless (especially in high gravity with low thrust). Make the intercept happen manually by setting the station as reference. Also don't aim for a low speed pass. My strategy with stock ships was to get the privateer on the same plane in a nice elliptical orbit with a ~8 hour period that matched the station orbit at the lowest point. That allowed me to fiddle with my orbit a little to get close to intercepting, launch a barrage of 5 nukes, then adjust the nukes with station set as reference point until their trajectory intersected it around 4.5km/sec.
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Post by ross128 on Oct 24, 2016 16:16:52 GMT
Hmm, I thought I had already mentioned this (maybe it was another thread), but what worked for me is bringing a submunition (ie missiles or drones) with lots of delta-v (because it's easier to give tons of delta-v to a small thing than a big thing) and a tanker to help my carrier get into position.
I then take a orbit parallel and retrograde to the station. Because of how the orbits start, going retrograde or prograde will have the same cost, it's just a matter of which direction you execute the plane-change in.
I circularize the orbit as well as I can (the circular injection order is useful for this), then start lobbing munitions at the station. The munitions are able to spiral in and match the station's orbit relatively cheaply (you'll spend ~2k-3k dV matching orbits, as opposed to a 10k+dV intercept). The retrograde orbit will slam the munitions into the station for free, completely eliminating the intercept problem. Neptune's extremely strong gravity is likely to screw up your guidance during the intercept, so you'll either want a very high-yield warhead with a generous detonation range (the station is unarmored, a high-yield warhead can fry it from a considerable distance), or a drone with a turreted gun that has a wide firing arc so it doesn't have to be too picky about facing. Make sure you've brought a few spares, so if the first one fails to completely kill the station (for example, it only hits fuel tanks, which is a likely outcome) you can keep launching more until it dies.
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Post by wafflestoo on Oct 24, 2016 16:23:17 GMT
Okay, here it is. It's the "middle" five missions so the total runtime is pretty long so you can skip ahead using either links or the annotations. This was a really crappy run on my part (the game had been bugging out on me all morning and I still hadn't had my coffee), but it illustrates the basics; bi-elliptical transfer to get into the polar orbit, refuel the privateer and then abandon the tanker, and multiple passes at periapse to lower into orbit with the target. That close to Neptune your orbital velocity is simply too high for the engines to get the job done in a single pass. youtu.be/HCcke4zLr0g
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Post by magusunion on Oct 25, 2016 13:16:23 GMT
Sigh. Can I have another hint from someone? Anyone? I've custom-designed ships with 32 km/sec of delta-v, I've used the stock fleet, I've tried everything, and while I can get close when I try to intercept it's always "gravity overwhelms acceleration." I'm so fucking sick of this mission I could scream, and I hate that I can't play the space combat game I paid for without solving an orbital mechanics puzzle. Main Menu -> Infolinks -> Concept -> Unlocking Content and Mods -> button at bottom right. Honestly, this does need to be an 'options' menu click box choice. I'm still stuck on "Homecoming" myself, lol XD
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hal
New Member
Posts: 34
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Post by hal on Oct 26, 2016 14:50:20 GMT
...while I can get close when I try to intercept it's always "gravity overwhelms acceleration."... I ended up winning by using the match orbit command while flying opposite (retrograde?) to the station. Ended up slamming my (slightly modified) privateer into the station and destroying both, which was fine as the tanker was still alive elsewhere. I think the match orbit command is a lot less finicky than the intercept commands while still letting you automate the process.
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Post by Durandal on Oct 26, 2016 16:44:31 GMT
I *finally* managed to get an intercept wth a high-Dv drone last night launched from a highly modified tanker. It was a manual intercept as Ross described, tweaked and fiddled with the thrust vectors until I got the automatic intercept. Note I said "intercept", not kill. Ive redsigned the drone into something better able to kill at angles without turning, hopefully I can test it tonight. The current unit had maybe 3 seconds of flyby time before diving into Uranus. *edit* Kill confirmed
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Post by Ambulatory Cortex on Oct 28, 2016 3:34:01 GMT
So I've found that the game outright lies to you on this mission. I lined up a retrograde orbit, matched orbits, got a true intercept, then watched as my fleet happily sailed right past without ever entering combat.
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