aiyel
Junior Member
Posts: 83
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Post by aiyel on Sept 10, 2016 5:20:34 GMT
Some proper RCS clusters would be nice, especially for drones. Not having to thrust with the main engine to maintain alignment would be nice.
Oh, and way long term, but how about solid fuel rockets for use in tactical missiles? One that only need under a minute of high G thrust.
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aiyel
Junior Member
Posts: 83
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Post by aiyel on Sept 10, 2016 5:16:01 GMT
Go high to go low. You want to start by putting yourself into an elliptical orbit with your apo roughly on your planar node with the target, then performing a combination retro and plane change to put your peri at target altitude, then perform a series of small burns at peri to circularize.
Missiles don't behave well at those insane closing velocities, I actually beat it with a laser ship. Popped the crew can.
The challenge is your initial plane change maneuver. Line it up well and the rest just falls into place.
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aiyel
Junior Member
Posts: 83
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Post by aiyel on Sept 10, 2016 3:33:57 GMT
When playing Vesta, I decided I wanted to overwhelm the larger force with drones, because I kept getting very quickly annihilated by cannon fire and wanted to return the favor. So I modified the Escort Carrier like so: 2 of them came in just under the weight and cost limit, and gave me 200 Stinger Drones to work with. I just kept sending in 20 drone salvos right at the start at 700 mps to 1.2 kps targeting the aft radiators + propulsion on a single ship starting with the Fleet Carrier and working down in size from there. If you set the drones to fire even when out of range, they typically get a vessel kill 2 times out of 3 - first drone wave took out all engines and the reactors on the Fleet Carrier and left it without power. Eventually, one of their drone waves took out one of my carriers, but I finished out the mission with the other entirely undamaged. Completed the mission in under 4 hours. It was awesome. HINT: Hit the cutter first. don't target any specific components, it'll work out just fine targeting the hull. Once the lasers aren't an issue, your drones can loiter a LOT longer. Used this for both Vesta and Venus and it was BEAUIFUL
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aiyel
Junior Member
Posts: 83
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Post by aiyel on Sept 9, 2016 20:18:26 GMT
Awesome can't wait to shamelessly steal draw inspiration from his designs.
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aiyel
Junior Member
Posts: 83
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Post by aiyel on Sept 9, 2016 1:43:28 GMT
Scott Manley, as you may know, is a YouTube content producer who focuses on science and science related games. He's pretty big in the KSP scene, and CODE is probably right up his alley. Suggest you gift him a code like yesterday. It'll be lots of publicity if he plays it on his channel.
Plus, it'll be fun to watch.
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aiyel
Junior Member
Posts: 83
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Post by aiyel on Sept 8, 2016 20:03:08 GMT
Thanks! It's been a long 2.5 years, but I'm happy with where it's ended up, and I hope to continue doing work on it beyond ship. Anybody who has left any playtest feedback (via forum, email, or otherwise), even if it was just one crash or feedback post, will be able to continue playing the game on Steam without issue when it ships. you can expect me to be a part of your feedback team as long as you keep working on the game, then. I can't get enough of it, even if I'm terrible at systems design.
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aiyel
Junior Member
Posts: 83
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Post by aiyel on Sept 8, 2016 19:34:17 GMT
Awesome! Congrats, it must be a great feeling knowing you've made it to the point of a releasable game.
What does the transition to gold mean for those of us who playtested?
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aiyel
Junior Member
Posts: 83
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Post by aiyel on Sept 6, 2016 2:02:25 GMT
It's covered in the blog post (posting again: childrenofadeadearth.wordpress.com/2016/07/20/sensors-and-countermeasures/), in that radar is competitive with heat homing in atmosphere because there are no giant radiators on aircraft, and the ambient temperature is so much higher. In space, heat is the dominant method of tracking/homing. That doesn't invalidate radar, radar is still effective in space, just in terms of cost and mass, IR tracking is the number one method, and hardest to make countermeasures for. So what about Imaging IR sensors that can better distinguish a decoy from the real thing? It's one of the many ways that modern heat seekers use to defeat flares, in that given sufficient tracking time they can determine which is the aircraft and which is the flare because a flare might be hotter and brighter, but it doesn't really look much like a plane. the distraction flares provide agianst such seekers is momentary, and must be combined with maneuvers to get the aircraft out of the seeker's range or to achieve a kinematic kill agianst the missile by forcing it to waste maneuver energy needed to achieve intercept.
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aiyel
Junior Member
Posts: 83
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Post by aiyel on Sept 4, 2016 3:26:50 GMT
This is something that would hopefully be a simple process, but how about making some simple design tutorials to go on youtube where you talk us thorugh the design of each kind of system and put it together with a couple of ships?
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aiyel
Junior Member
Posts: 83
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Post by aiyel on Sept 3, 2016 0:36:50 GMT
I'll post screen shots when I can, but experiments with kinetic-missiles have produced some odd results. I've seen a few missiles pass completely through unharmed ships while inflicting no damage.
I suspect it's because there's no collision detection between frames and this particular missile ship causes serious frame drops.
More info to follow as I can get the time to reproduce my results
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aiyel
Junior Member
Posts: 83
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Post by aiyel on Sept 1, 2016 20:04:07 GMT
forget Orion, I want God's Own Flamethrower (the Nuclear Salt-Water Rocket.) Just watch out for those propellant tank hits since your tank is probably made of a bunch of boron straws to keep the stuff from going critical with itself and turning you into a miniature supernova. The NSWR is incredibly unstable - wayyyyyyy too unstable for combat craft when an Orion drive can give you similar performance. A single lucky hit near the engine could destroy your entire propulsion system(the whole ship if you're not lucky). Could be a good idea for long range torpedoes through. Orion by comparison is safer: a hit to a pulse unit will at worst cause the tnt to detonate unevenly, like a radioactive hand grenade - this is a pain to clean up, but since the warhead will not achieve critical mass, you can handle it with blowout compartments as one would with traditional explosives. The pusher plate is also a great deal more robust than the NSWR nozzle and can get hit multiple times and maintain functionality. You're leaving out the most important feature of the NSWR though: It's FUN! (and by "fun" I mean completely insane, of course)
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aiyel
Junior Member
Posts: 83
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Post by aiyel on Sept 1, 2016 19:24:59 GMT
forget Orion, I want God's Own Flamethrower (the Nuclear Salt-Water Rocket.) Just watch out for those propellant tank hits since your tank is probably made of a bunch of boron straws to keep the stuff from going critical with itself and turning you into a miniature supernova.
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aiyel
Junior Member
Posts: 83
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Post by aiyel on Sept 1, 2016 15:29:03 GMT
So I just had a run at Vesta, since I've not beaten it yet on my laptop.
I had an escort carrier and a silo ship.
I successfully dodged all the drones and missiles, and had everything but the cutter rendered unable to move. The cutter ended up succumbing to a long ranged bombardment of devastator missiles combined with a little work fromt he guns, but it left me with no more long-ranged weaponry. My drones intercepted the rest of the fleet and did immense damage to them, but not enough to outright kill more than one.
I encountered one group of drones with very little dV left, but it was enough for them to pop the remass tanks on my carrier before they went dead. My fleet was on an intercept course anyway, so I split the fleet and maneuvered the siloship in for a little gun play beforehand. Several minutes of long-ranged bombardment had them down to just one ship before I accidentally wandered into their range and got my face melted. In drifts my carrier, still on that ballistic intercept course. It enters the battle drifting away fromt he other ship, well outside its range, and proceeds to fill it full of holes. I mean, there was practically nothing left of this ship to begin with, and my carrier continues to hose it down, but with steadily worsening accuracy because of the deprating drift. The only thing wrong with my carrier, aside from expended drones, was a hole in the propellant tank. The loast remaining ship of the enemy fleet could have been used to strain pasta, and couldn't have been combat effective even if it still had engines.
I ran out my ammo trying to kill it.
This still counted as an enemy victory, with Overkill's taunting quote as her flagship drifts off into the void held together by fervent prayer.
Obviously, there needs to be more clear and practical conditions for a mission kill.
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aiyel
Junior Member
Posts: 83
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Post by aiyel on Sept 1, 2016 13:05:03 GMT
One proposed method of dealing with lasers in a space combat environment is a more violent version of a modern spacecraft's thermal constraint maneuver, where a ship enters a roll to prevent all that thermal energy being dumped in one spot. Since the default design in CODE is a cylinder ship with radially-symmetrical weapons mounts, this presents a valid option assuming the ship has the capacity to roll (such as having multiple gimballed engines). It would work somewhat against kinetics, too, by limiting mutiple strikes on the same armor plate. You could make it an option in ship design, which, when flagged, would advise you if you need another main engine to make it work (also, would probably necessitate having a 'roll acceleration' stat. If our ship can only spin up to a useful speed if it has half an hour, probably not an effective option.
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aiyel
Junior Member
Posts: 83
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Post by aiyel on Aug 30, 2016 23:47:28 GMT
The huge frag missiles are working pretty well, too. Trying to optimize the proximity fuse. Max size dpu frag layer with a relatively small bursting charge.
Looking forward to pairing it with a good coilgun launch system so I can use it tactically
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