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Post by AtomHeartDragon on Apr 27, 2020 12:51:10 GMT
It would be nice, BTW, to have ships automatically retract redundant radiators, only leaving the amount needed for actual cooling. Using custom modules, you could design a type of radiator that let's you cool the reactor using just one "set": basically you choose the reactor, add a single radiator type, then change the number of radiators with the slider (the one that goes from 1 to 20); then you design another type of radiator that is just the first but with a different name or that is just a cm or m longer (haven't tested if changing just the name actually works), then add those too (in equal or greater number, your choice). When in combat, you retract one set and leave the other unfolded, then when it is too damage and can't cool anymore, you unfold the backup set. You can do the same using stock modules too. Yeah, but that's a lot of annoying micro. It would be nice to have it automated, because why not?
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Post by AtomHeartDragon on Apr 27, 2020 9:50:11 GMT
As we all know mods like CFMP attempt to emulate fusion rockets as chemical ones which invariably ends up in comedy gold for primarily one reason - unlike exoenergetic chemical reactions, where it's easy to just ignore ignition, fusion is hard to ignite and keep going which is kind of big deal: - Rocket design assumption based on "just inject the propellants and they go boom" is inadequate
- Fusion monoprop tanks that just go thermonuclear if someone pokes them hard enough are hilariously wrong
I wonder if there wouldn't be less hilariously wrong way to do that. I was thinking about bipropellant where the entire fusion mix would be one of the reactant and the other would be inert remass, but I think game has issues with simulating exhaust from non-stoichiometric reactions and it would not address the mass and volume of extra ignition equipment.
There comes my second idea - have one reagent as fusion mix AND remass (different reagents at number of preset ratios), and the other dummy reagent optimized for making the mass and volume of injector (and tankage) simulate ignition machinery - now the question is would it be possible to do that without creating fake propellant management issues?
Would anyone be able and willing to play with this idea?
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Post by AtomHeartDragon on Apr 27, 2020 9:01:46 GMT
I would be grateful if somebody give me a hint how to force the enemy to do an interlunar transfer, if that's even possible. I would try putting them on transfer trajectory to begin with.
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Post by AtomHeartDragon on Apr 27, 2020 8:55:46 GMT
It would be nice, BTW, to have ships automatically retract redundant radiators, only leaving the amount needed for actual cooling. Oh yeah! Seconding this wholeheartedly. If only @ qswitched would do that, and fix known bugs... I'd buy me a new copy. And re-released on GOG... Would also be nice if he made a new trailer (not for us but to sell the game better), I would happily lend some ships and modules.
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Post by AtomHeartDragon on Apr 26, 2020 10:23:37 GMT
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Post by AtomHeartDragon on Apr 26, 2020 10:22:42 GMT
Basically, "tank some fire" was my point. Ships needs some amount which will let to kill the enemy before getting fatal damage. The problem with stock designs is that they try to tank all the fire. Basically, building ships in such way that getting hit is their normal mode of operation seems to be a losing game. It would be nice, BTW, to have ships automatically retract redundant radiators, only leaving the amount needed for actual cooling. Eh, combustion gun fire is easy to evade with any reasonably manoeuvrable ship even at stock EM guns/lasers engagement ranges. It might be a bit scarier against microdrone dV attrition, but OTOH with custom modules you get to field those 100km/s RGs and long range laser arrays which will burn through microdrones fast at much longer range. And there is always missile/nukegun/turretbomb nuclear PD for swarms. Armour zoning has its own set of problems. If you let it drive your ship's design you end up with very lightweight, yet fiendishly hard to penetrate armour scheme for your crew (sitting in armoured nosecone) and other critical components (or just resilient power generation), BUT you need to constrain your maneuverability and you will likely end up with dead and very flat crew after anything pierces your almost unarmoured propellant tanks. And if it somehow does not kill the crew, constrained maneuverability will ensure your ship won't be able to kill the spin, preventing effective gunnery and letting enemy fire shred it with impunity. OTOH If you don't let zoning drive your ship design, the crew is going to end up near center of mass meaning you'll have to continue your strongest armour layers past half of ship's length. That's going to eat in your mass budget. That's unsurprising, because they are very accurate and effectively drill through the armour hitting the same spot repeatedly. Sniper coilguns, especially multiple firing at single target concurrently are also great armour piercers, with decent (for stock weapon) engagement range too.
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Post by AtomHeartDragon on Apr 24, 2020 21:35:01 GMT
Agreed, stock ships are basically gunboats with engines needed only to move through the map mode. I've done a bunch of experiments with high-gee crafts yesterday, 0.75-1G seems to be optimum there. Larger thrust leads to problems with crew capacity, dV management and low burn time. Crew issues are easy to avoid but there is no sidestepping endurance problems so this seems to be the sweet spot. Armour to defeat weapons is a losing battle. Attacker only needs to pierce it in at most few places while defender has to put it all over. It's best to only put enough armour to tank some fire, every gram more is better put pretty much anywhere else.
Unsurprising given that any of my stock module ships is shooting stock guns, of which only 60mm cannon and sniper CG are reasonably accurate.
What's the utility of armour past the point where everything outside of it is shredded? The ship won't be going anywhere or fighting anything with power generation gone, no weapons and crew slowly baking in own waste heat, even if still has engines and delta-v. You could have gotten more offensive power, manoeuvrability, delta-v or redundancy instead. Also, I don't go for large swathes of thick, monolithic diamond for a reason.
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Post by AtomHeartDragon on Apr 24, 2020 15:47:39 GMT
I've already checked out your designs, and they are very good. Learned how to do some stuff after their reverse-engineering. Well, that's not exactly the same as "redesigned stock". Stock ships have some designated role, weapon layout and external design. The main issue with keeping the flavour of redesigned stock is two-fold: - Lack of good stock NTRs other than methane ones
- Specialization being crippling for all but smallest ships, as with generalist ships you can reuse powerplant, radiators, engines, good portion of crew and armoured hull for multiple weapon systems. With specialized ships all of that get added as overhead to each ship. There is really no good reason to not drop a laser PD grid onto a missile ship or carrier, or to not add a bunch of 60-100MW CGs and a spare laser to a Solar Lance (I think small, specialized ships are going to be more popular on defending side for variety of reasons).
Stock craft are mostly built of fatal flaws, though. If it's any consolation, my "Dragon" class gunship and its variants actually started out as heavily modified laser frigate back when everything was a (tapered) cylinder or (truncated) cone. Gunship does have some redundancy, just not enough and in areas where achieving redundancy and good layout is actually the hardest (crew, due to G-forces concerns), while neglecting the rest (radiators, reactors), even though it would be much easier to achieve resilience there. It has two 60MW reactors, BTW. Also, most of the stock ships have four flaws: - Poor maneuverability - you probably don't need hours of burn time for the kind of engagements that happen in COADE, but being able to dodge enemy fire for a few minutes is nice to have.
- Explosive modules nestled right besides crew modules ensuring spectacular crew kills. I do my best to build ships to survive even ludicrous ammo explosions (or make them nigh impossible).
- Low power for given armaments.
- Disproportionately large amounts of armour - armour doesn't move you closer to victory, it only makes winning harder for the enemy. Weapons (supplied with right amount of power and ammo) or propellant (fed into right amount of engines) usually make for more effective armour than armour as far as damage prevention goes as dead enemy cannot shoot you.
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Post by AtomHeartDragon on Apr 24, 2020 10:50:11 GMT
Aluminium radiators on warships potentially exposed to nukes is a joke. I'm playing with redesigning stock ships now, and they've got a HUGE upgrade potential while keeping them in mass+cost+dimension limits simultaneously. Especially the Corvette, it sucks since it got an AAA battery instead of a normal power supply for its coils. I've been redesigning stock ships with stock modules for quite some time (or more accurately designing counterparts fitting within the same performance envelope and budgets), with pretty good results (usually able to take on 5x-10x originals, my 2.5kt stock module cutters solo Vesta guns blazing), although they all tend to end up being in my particular build style: steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=1371073716
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Post by AtomHeartDragon on Apr 22, 2020 9:53:58 GMT
Laser drones have a too high risk of being disabled before reaching the fire distance. I'd rather pack a few more Stingers which start to deliver the punch immediately. I don't really know how efficient Beams are as radiator melters, but my intuition says that the same amount of Stingers will yield much more of a profit. Especially if the enemy has got a laser ship in his fleet, like in the Retaking Ceres. Laser drones are harder to disable in the first place because a laser drone with weapon shot off is still a threat (as guided KKV) and laser drone with damaged propulsion can still track targets. Stinger without propulsion can't aim, while Stinger with destroyed weapon had ammo explosion make hash of its internals. Both are wreckage and only a threat to smaller ships if they accidentally collide with them (had gunboats killed by Stinger wreckage). OTOH some stock ships like laser frigate and gunship have massive Achilles heel in form of non-redundant aluminium crew radiators and are ripe picking to lasers. Beam drones do just fine in this role. Also, unless they aren't adequately cooled there is pretty much no downside to ignoring range with lasers especially if you outnumber enemy lasers (the only slight disadvantage is that you expose your delicate mirrors).
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Post by AtomHeartDragon on Apr 16, 2020 15:31:52 GMT
but employing beam drones as fighters tends to work better To be honest, that's the only successful application I've found for them. They are a complete piece of shite as an offensive weapon. And even burning enemies's drones and missiles can take minutes. As far as stock weapons are concerned they make for decent radiator melters, especially crew radiators. They're stupidly expensive, though.
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Post by AtomHeartDragon on Apr 10, 2020 14:23:56 GMT
www.youtube.com/results?search_query=retaking+ceresHere's a YT comment on one of those videos: the basic strategy that I've found for this is to let the missiles come to you, and fire decoys from the carrier to avoid them, for the enemy drones deploy your beam drones as a separate fleet and engage them before they reach your capitals - you don't need to kill them, just need them to exhaust their dV dogfighting around you. then you fire all your own missiles in a massed barrage aimed at the laser frigate's UV laser, and once that's down send in your stinger drones for the kill, with your capitals coming in last to mop up anything they may have failed to destroy. the problem is that even when you prioritize targets sometimes your missiles just don't kill the frigate's laser and you have to restart, and you need to be careful that your stinger drones have plenty of dV for engaging their capitals There are several different strategies possible. Anyway, the only actually tricky part of this mission is dealing with enemy drones (IIRC the intended method is "dancing" them out of delta-v with repeated small orbital manoeuvres, but employing beam drones as fighters tends to work better). Everything else is painting by the numbers. How about not forcing the people who spent money on your game to try and beat missions which are literally unbeatable before they can use the editor? Why don't you just get good? The game won't be getting easier from that point onwards, you know (unless you count cheesing with Mm laserstars after VO as playing).
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Post by AtomHeartDragon on Mar 7, 2020 22:53:43 GMT
2.5 kt for Vesta Overkill might be too little for a hard-difficulty campaign. Maybe you need a special AtomHeartDragon-difficulty campaign or something One of those guys should be sufficient: steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1735149904steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1735150154Is there any way to make the AI just sit still, launch the drones, but keep them with fleet? If not, then something small, methane propelled, armed with as many 60mm cannons as possible (ignoring range) would be a good idea. Maybe a humble laser skiff? kdiff3 or bust. (I have always liked Meld's look, though.)
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Post by AtomHeartDragon on Mar 7, 2020 13:27:35 GMT
Main Belt Extraction: No changes to the enemy fleet — I don't know if this will affect the mission scripting, and the story isn't very permissive of a larger enemy force in this mission. Default allied fleet changed to a Laser Skiff and a Raider to increase difficulty by lowering the mass and cost limit (which is determined automatically by the default fleet's parameters rounded up to the nearest 100t & 10Mc). As per Rocket Witch modifications. Your mission budget now is 3.3 kt (27.5% of the original 12.0 kt) and 50 Mc (22.(72)% of the original 220 Mc). Against a Gunship (11.7 kt and 286 Mc). And without module design. I'll let you people decide if this is too hard. I can fairly reliably take out a Gunship with 0.6kt stock module vessel and survive, without killing majority of Gunship's crew, and that's with following constraints: - Gun range battle (would be even easier with just a missile bin with engine, that doesn't ever approach gun range)
- Reasonable delta-v budget on the ship (>4km/s)
My perspective on what is a reasonable challenge level might be skewed. For the reference, my VO mass budget with same constraints would be around 2.5kt. Ooh, tell me how and if it works out.
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Post by AtomHeartDragon on Feb 29, 2020 23:05:11 GMT
I have seen some creations on this forum about KKVs with a micronuke that detonates within the target. Would that be an impact detonation or a delay trigger option, as I am trying to replicate that. Just contact should work. Note that impact will probably destroy missile so firing salvoes is recommended. Also note that it might need high velocity and guidance precise enough to put have remaining missiles thread the needle.
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