Just an opinion, but i always thought space combat is very well written in the Revelation Space novels by Alastair Reynolds. He also obeys the lightspeed limit in the books, so they are doubly interesting.
Iain M Banks is such a great sci fi writer. Matter has by far been my favorite sci fi so far, and I have Surface Detail next to me at the moment. So sad to hear of the sickness.
Macey Dean is a youtuber who builds entire fleets of space fighters, space fighter-bombers, and space carriers ALL FROM STOCK and he LAUNCHES WITHOUT CHEATS. He re-enacts epic space battles. And even performed an in flight repair in orbit after taking damage in one these clashes. One f the coolest things I've ever seen.
Oh, and John Ringo actually pointed out something that many gloss over when they talk about space combat and the ranges/tracking/engagement envelope - tracking systems can only give you targeting information with outdated info with no adaptive capabilities. In "A Hymn Before Battle" he actually points out that human pilots purposely allow themselves to get tracked by Posleen guns and then shift position so that they end up evading the incoming fire and Posleen ships continuously reacquire them.
That ship looks absolutely amazing! It would be fun if the full version of KSP has some kind of really far end of the tech tree where stuff like this is possible.
Awesome! The docking part just needed a bit of "An der schönen blauen Donau." :) I also found it quite amazing that you talked about Iain M. Banks, as I was thinking of the exact same thing while you mentioned space combat. It's very sad about his illness - as far as I know he plans to get two more books done before he dies.
Hi Scott, the reason you say space fighters would be useless is the very reason they would be useful, the crew of giant computer controled space ships with powerful lasers aren't going to be afraid of a small, human controled space fighter, meaning the fighter can get up close and damage key systems, such as weapons, before the bigger ship percieves a threat. Great video, love the Orion class carrier.
Scott that is not ugly, it is beautiful! Any space machine can be beautiful because they all represent the dreams and curiosity of species. (Now if you make a ship that mimics genitalia, that's another story)
If you were using Damned Robotics for the hangar bay doors you were trying to build there are two important things to remember: 1) When you place flat hinges, the symmetry doesn't work properly and the opposite hinge is flipped. 2) Nothing will work unless you assign keys to the servo groups you've created, even though it gives you a click-able control box. I'm in love with using robotics in KSP, but Damned is quite limited. I'd really love a more honed, fully featured robotics kit.
The real beauty on doing something like this is to make it fly to orbit (and beyond) without cheats. I'm currently trying, will post my result on the forums.
Hey Manley, loved the video! Just gonna say though, about that whole "using fuel-tanks to balance the ship", I think most scifi things suggest using some form of anti-gravity to control it. That being said, I think they generate a center of mass to the dead-center of the ship.
I think carriers in space makes sense, something big you can strap smaller craft to. But it itself would probably carry things substantially larger than a fighter. That way you only need one mythical FTL drive.
The issue with lasers in space is that lasers make a huge amount of heat, needing to cool them down you need large radiators or some other way to vent the heat build up or you could do just as much damage to your ship as the enemies. So rapid fire lasers would likely not be used in space combat. I could see them being used as main weapons to take out other ships, but not as point defense.
There is a youtuber called Macey Dean who makes space carriers from stock parts only and he launches them without cheats. He also built fighter bombers and small fighters with space torpedos so he re-enacts full space battles where two fleets clash. It's one of the coolest things I've ever seen. You all should check him out. And Scott you could learn a few tricks for these types of craft.
I think he's talking about the parts clipping in the editor that allows you to stick parts over other parts when they're clipping. The parts become no longer redish and you can playe them nearly everywhere.
They both use a lot of mods and are largely non-functional, but a Minmatar Hurricane is next on my to-do list. I'll try to make it more functional than the others and I'll link the .craft file in the description along with a mod manifest.
Macey Dean used clamps and regular rocket stages to get his big starships into orbit. It's really something and I think you'd be able to do the same thing here. Just tilt the Orion till the command module is facing up, then add your rocket stages and stabilizer clamps.
That's like a seconds from disaster clip at the end I can here it now "Let's retrace the steps of the Orion Class space carrier and see what went wrong"
The same problem about computer-controlled airdefenses was bandied about in the 1960's; the military thought that guided missiles would make manned fighters and bombers a thing of the past, and that guns were a useless addition. Yet American fighters in Vietnam scored numerous gun-kills against MiGs that had shot out their missile load.
Wow, nice job, that looks really good. It's really hard to make something that actually looks like a spaceship, instead of a giant rocket. Also, when I build a giant rocket/spaceship I almost always lose control and crash whilst trying to fly it. I think a high-speed fly-through would look amazing.
I think its only currently on the forum until the author feels its ready to go on spaceport. The link to the forum should be on the spaceport page for 1.9.8 and you will have to read through the first post of the thread for the download.
Kerbal Space Program Expanded (Aka KSPX), a mod made by someone who has since become a member of the dev team. The part itself is the Panopticon Observation Module. Unfortunately it doesn't have any IVA.
He's right about space fighters. Not to mention the fact that fighter jets need a horizon to hide behind (not found within space). Having been raised by Star Fox 64, this just kills my childhood.
You'd probably have fighters on a capitol ship that are designed to immediately de-orbit and do various things in the atmosphere, like giving air support to dropships. But they, of course, wouldn't be space fighters as such.
For more 'realistic' space battles, check out the lost fleet series by Jack Campbell. They have jump gates between systems, but for battles and in system visualisations they take the speed of light into account. Whatever they're targeting is no longer there and the light reaching them shows them in a previous position. Its all done pretty well.
Airship stabilization can be done easily by placing engines at the front as well, just like a 4x4 car is the most stabile. There's a mod called "fuel balancer" which prevents your CoG shift and more.
1) Quoting Top Gun is quite embarrasing, Scott, but there are several of us who certainly remember it well (the memory's not completely gone flaky with the onset of middle-age). 2) Ghostrider the pattern is FULL, not closed... Epic-scale, if completely impractical build. Plus points for a surfeit of references and use of the word 'Blap'. I too must once again venture to Regula I and Ceti Alpha V... The Iain M Banks books have passed me by tho' so there's something new to read too - thanks!
one concept for getting ships out of your ship quickly would be what they did with the StarFuries from Babylon 5: stick them in little, sort of half enclosed individual bays already pointed outward so you can just undock and burn.
The Higaran carrier from the Homeworld series has side mounted 'fly through' hangers. If anything yours looks more like one of those if anything I must admit.
Scott, I've never commented before, but this thing looks like one of the EVE Online ships and I think that that is awesome. I think that Kerbal Space Program should get some overhaul mods that allow huge ships like this to be usable and useful as an exploration fleet.
imagine if he made little tunnels through the length of it like a hollow square of panels so that kerbals could walk through it as if it were a real ship
one way fighters would work is if you have some sort of ecm that confuses computers about where exactly the fighter is. which would mean that people would be limited to either hoping the computer gets it right, eccm or visual targeting. (which we don't do today even.
Reentry caused the exotic matter reactor to overheat and melt down, thus releasing large doses of radiation that instantaneuously killed everyone on board and fried all the sensors. Said exotic matter caused a uncontrolled warp bubble to appear, tearing space inside the carrier apart. Parts of the hangar bay can now be found on close orbit around supermassive black hole in M64 galaxy.
For 'realistic' space battles, check out the lost fleet series by jack Campbell. He takes relativity into account and does it quite well. They have jump gates between systems, but travel in system is sub light. All targetting, etc is done knowing that what you're looking at is an old image.
Would be great to hear you talk more about books and Sci Fi Scott. I've been thinking about reading Ian M Banks for a while, and you've now convinced me to get around to it!
But at what distance can you actually generate a lock which lets you track the target long enough to destroy it? The energy/area of a laser diverges at about 1cm/km increased beam radius for a 1cm aperture. At 180,000 miles, that means that the same energy would be spread out across 28.7 square km. Even with a much better 10cm aperture, that would still be 0.28 square km. This means that your energy density would be ~0.00000038% your 'point blank' energy output.
Hey Scott. I'm sure you've been asked before, but what software do you use to record your videos? I've been thinking about doing some lets play style videos, and yours seem to come out really well done.
I'm sure Admiral Ackbar Kerbin will happily identify traps from the bridge of this beauty.
IT'S A TTTRRAAPPP!
The Professional Nerd™ don't worry he's a professional nerd he knows this
Why should I fly safe if you dont
+optikid03 HAhahahaha underrated comment
I keep meaning to cover some more games with space combat using newtonian flight models. Looks for my video on the Fan made Babylon 5 game.
Dude, you should try to recreate this carrier in Space Engineers
Just an opinion, but i always thought space combat is very well written in the Revelation Space novels by Alastair Reynolds. He also obeys the lightspeed limit in the books, so they are doubly interesting.
I agree
Yes, Macey's stuff is more functional, this is larger.
major like for mentioning Iain Banks, amazing author.
I was thinking of doing a tour of the Kerbal system to discuss each of the planets and moons.
Thanks for the heads up - we may see a reentry yet.
That too.... Although I did edit the save file to upgrade MJ for testing.
The disk containing this got corrupted, still trying to come up with a way to rescue the data.
Iain M Banks is such a great sci fi writer. Matter has by far been my favorite sci fi so far, and I have Surface Detail next to me at the moment. So sad to hear of the sickness.
It's the physics that's causing the slow frame rate, not the graphics rendering.
"Orion"
The capsule?
Scott's son?
A spacecraft powered by nuclear bombs??
The world may never know
+Jonah Beale Don't forget the star system
!!! ITS CONFIRMED. ORION WANTS TO HAVE A CHUNK OF THE MILKY WAY AND A CAPSULE AND A NUCLEAR ROCKET!!! HE WANTS TO TAKE OVER THE GALAXY!!
Wow... Really appreciate the time you spent here! Great job Scott! :D
"The wrath oh KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!"
MY EARS SCOTT... MY EARS!
Macey Dean is a youtuber who builds entire fleets of space fighters, space fighter-bombers, and space carriers ALL FROM STOCK and he LAUNCHES WITHOUT CHEATS. He re-enacts epic space battles. And even performed an in flight repair in orbit after taking damage in one these clashes. One f the coolest things I've ever seen.
IVA for it was demoed in a recent stream, so, give it time.
Read them in order, and make sure you read all the books in between. Then add Hydrogen Sonata as well.
I've been waiting for them to release something for about 5 years.
I love all of your references :3 had me giggling like crazy :) I also plan on reading that book series, sounds exactly like the kind of thing I enjoy!
Well thanks but I don't really have enough hours in the day. I remember WH40k back in the 80's when it was subtitled 'Rogue Trader'
Halo frequently tips its hat to Iain M Banks
Never a bad decision.
It's built around airship parts.
last frame= wallpaper, screenshot, framed icon; rambling in videos=interesting new topics you probably wouldn't tell us normally
Oh, and John Ringo actually pointed out something that many gloss over when they talk about space combat and the ranges/tracking/engagement envelope - tracking systems can only give you targeting information with outdated info with no adaptive capabilities. In "A Hymn Before Battle" he actually points out that human pilots purposely allow themselves to get tracked by Posleen guns and then shift position so that they end up evading the incoming fire and Posleen ships continuously reacquire them.
Part limit is contrainet by physics which is CPU bound rather than GPU
I would *love* to fly some Kerbal clones of Eve Ships
That ship looks absolutely amazing! It would be fun if the full version of KSP has some kind of really far end of the tech tree where stuff like this is possible.
Awesome! The docking part just needed a bit of "An der schönen blauen Donau." :)
I also found it quite amazing that you talked about Iain M. Banks, as I was thinking of the exact same thing while you mentioned space combat. It's very sad about his illness - as far as I know he plans to get two more books done before he dies.
Hi Scott, the reason you say space fighters would be useless is the very reason they would be useful, the crew of giant computer controled space ships with powerful lasers aren't going to be afraid of a small, human controled space fighter, meaning the fighter can get up close and damage key systems, such as weapons, before the bigger ship percieves a threat.
Great video, love the Orion class carrier.
Scott that is not ugly, it is beautiful! Any space machine can be beautiful because they all represent the dreams and curiosity of species. (Now if you make a ship that mimics genitalia, that's another story)
the shadow on the kerbil's face as he exited the craft made him look like he was falling asleep
Scott, I think it looks fantastic. Nothing ugly about it.
That last frame was totally worth it! Epic re-entry shot :D
That shot at the end- reminds me of one of the Odyssey's being frozen in time in the finale of Stargate SG-1.
I was kinda falling asleep with earphones. Then you yelled KHAAAAN! I'm never going to sleep again. Ever.
And many other paper & pen RPGs.
I just bought ever DnD game from GOG last week.
If you were using Damned Robotics for the hangar bay doors you were trying to build there are two important things to remember:
1) When you place flat hinges, the symmetry doesn't work properly and the opposite hinge is flipped.
2) Nothing will work unless you assign keys to the servo groups you've created, even though it gives you a click-able control box.
I'm in love with using robotics in KSP, but Damned is quite limited. I'd really love a more honed, fully featured robotics kit.
Scott, you made my day with the top gun reference!
Another KSP player Macey Dean does some awesome stuff with space combat that shows that some of our notions of space combat aren't too far off.
dear god you scared the crap out of me when you screamed KAHN!!!
The real beauty on doing something like this is to make it fly to orbit (and beyond) without cheats. I'm currently trying, will post my result on the forums.
Holy mother of god,Scott that thing is Glorious!
Hey Manley, loved the video!
Just gonna say though, about that whole "using fuel-tanks to balance the ship", I think most scifi things suggest using some form of anti-gravity to control it. That being said, I think they generate a center of mass to the dead-center of the ship.
One thing to consider as well is that that larger craft would more than likely be faster than all those small ships. It could just outrun everything.
I think carriers in space makes sense, something big you can strap smaller craft to. But it itself would probably carry things substantially larger than a fighter. That way you only need one mythical FTL drive.
Looks like quality "Manley" work like usual :) Keep it up sir, look forward to re-usable space program, hopefully before I got on deployment!
The issue with lasers in space is that lasers make a huge amount of heat, needing to cool them down you need large radiators or some other way to vent the heat build up or you could do just as much damage to your ship as the enemies. So rapid fire lasers would likely not be used in space combat. I could see them being used as main weapons to take out other ships, but not as point defense.
That final frame ... that'd make an awesome desktop background!
There is a youtuber called Macey Dean who makes space carriers from stock parts only and he launches them without cheats. He also built fighter bombers and small fighters with space torpedos so he re-enacts full space battles where two fleets clash. It's one of the coolest things I've ever seen. You all should check him out. And Scott you could learn a few tricks for these types of craft.
I think he's talking about the parts clipping in the editor that allows you to stick parts over other parts when they're clipping. The parts become no longer redish and you can playe them nearly everywhere.
They both use a lot of mods and are largely non-functional, but a Minmatar Hurricane is next on my to-do list. I'll try to make it more functional than the others and I'll link the .craft file in the description along with a mod manifest.
Macey Dean used clamps and regular rocket stages to get his big starships into orbit. It's really something and I think you'd be able to do the same thing here. Just tilt the Orion till the command module is facing up, then add your rocket stages and stabilizer clamps.
Could you upload this to the spaceport or something? This is awesome.
My computer had a stroke just listening to you talk about this!
That's like a seconds from disaster clip at the end I can here it now "Let's retrace the steps of the Orion Class space carrier and see what went wrong"
The same problem about computer-controlled airdefenses was bandied about in the 1960's; the military thought that guided missiles would make manned fighters and bombers a thing of the past, and that guns were a useless addition. Yet American fighters in Vietnam scored numerous gun-kills against MiGs that had shot out their missile load.
Wow, nice job, that looks really good. It's really hard to make something that actually looks like a spaceship, instead of a giant rocket.
Also, when I build a giant rocket/spaceship I almost always lose control and crash whilst trying to fly it.
I think a high-speed fly-through would look amazing.
I tried to it crashes the game.
Can't agree more about the Star Trek I scene :P
Also, that's one biiiiiig ship. Bigger than anything I've ever (successfully) constructed...
Oh man, that must be a truly mighty computer you are running.
That last frame is beautiful!
I think its only currently on the forum until the author feels its ready to go on spaceport. The link to the forum should be on the spaceport page for 1.9.8 and you will have to read through the first post of the thread for the download.
Kerbal Space Program Expanded (Aka KSPX), a mod made by someone who has since become a member of the dev team. The part itself is the Panopticon Observation Module. Unfortunately it doesn't have any IVA.
He's right about space fighters. Not to mention the fact that fighter jets need a horizon to hide behind (not found within space).
Having been raised by Star Fox 64, this just kills my childhood.
You'd probably have fighters on a capitol ship that are designed to immediately de-orbit and do various things in the atmosphere, like giving air support to dropships. But they, of course, wouldn't be space fighters as such.
Scott fanboying is the funniest thing I've ever heard.
That final shot was so epic!
For more 'realistic' space battles, check out the lost fleet series by Jack Campbell. They have jump gates between systems, but for battles and in system visualisations they take the speed of light into account. Whatever they're targeting is no longer there and the light reaching them shows them in a previous position. Its all done pretty well.
I'm pretty sure he was talking about balancing the thrust which is extremely important for spacecraft
Well, you heard the man...hearing Benedict Cumberbatch gives Scott Manley 'goose pimples'
Airship stabilization can be done easily by placing engines at the front as well, just like a 4x4 car is the most stabile. There's a mod called "fuel balancer" which prevents your CoG shift and more.
You sir. I want to thank you for introducing me to Iain Banks.
1) Quoting Top Gun is quite embarrasing, Scott, but there are several of us who certainly remember it well (the memory's not completely gone flaky with the onset of middle-age).
2) Ghostrider the pattern is FULL, not closed...
Epic-scale, if completely impractical build. Plus points for a surfeit of references and use of the word 'Blap'.
I too must once again venture to Regula I and Ceti Alpha V... The Iain M Banks books have passed me by tho' so there's something new to read too - thanks!
yeah they were having issues with extremely slow loadtimes , they seem to have fixed that part and are making everything is in working order again
one concept for getting ships out of your ship quickly would be what they did with the StarFuries from Babylon 5: stick them in little, sort of half enclosed individual bays already pointed outward so you can just undock and burn.
My god, I have never heard so many geeky sci fi references in a single video, ever.
I'm sure if he set his mind to it, Scott could devise some truly devastating weapons. He already has orbital bombardment down...
The Higaran carrier from the Homeworld series has side mounted 'fly through' hangers. If anything yours looks more like one of those if anything I must admit.
I wonder how would contraption fly with the newest 64 bit version of Ksp, with texture compressor, of course.
Scott, I've never commented before, but this thing looks like one of the EVE Online ships and I think that that is awesome. I think that Kerbal Space Program should get some overhaul mods that allow huge ships like this to be usable and useful as an exploration fleet.
imagine if he made little tunnels through the length of it like a hollow square of panels so that kerbals could walk through it as if it were a real ship
one way fighters would work is if you have some sort of ecm that confuses computers about where exactly the fighter is. which would mean that people would be limited to either hoping the computer gets it right, eccm or visual targeting. (which we don't do today even.
*Huge spacecraft explodes*
"I'm Scott Manley! Fly safe~!"
This is great! Love your videos Scott!
Actually, never mind. The deadly reentry mod isn't in the spaceport, it's in the forums only.
Reentry caused the exotic matter reactor to overheat and melt down, thus releasing large doses of radiation that instantaneuously killed everyone on board and fried all the sensors. Said exotic matter caused a uncontrolled warp bubble to appear, tearing space inside the carrier apart. Parts of the hangar bay can now be found on close orbit around supermassive black hole in M64 galaxy.
I remember seeing a HDD with bluetooth functions so you could ALWAYS get your data back, I don't know if yours has it.
For 'realistic' space battles, check out the lost fleet series by jack Campbell. He takes relativity into account and does it quite well. They have jump gates between systems, but travel in system is sub light. All targetting, etc is done knowing that what you're looking at is an old image.
It's kind of a shame that the only country still flying the F14 is Iran.
Here's hoping that KSP will some day add in in-orbit spaceship construction, so that you *could* build massive ships that don't enter the atmosphere.
Would be great to hear you talk more about books and Sci Fi Scott. I've been thinking about reading Ian M Banks for a while, and you've now convinced me to get around to it!
But at what distance can you actually generate a lock which lets you track the target long enough to destroy it? The energy/area of a laser diverges at about 1cm/km increased beam radius for a 1cm aperture. At 180,000 miles, that means that the same energy would be spread out across 28.7 square km. Even with a much better 10cm aperture, that would still be 0.28 square km. This means that your energy density would be ~0.00000038% your 'point blank' energy output.
Agree 100% those books are awesome!
Hey Scott. I'm sure you've been asked before, but what software do you use to record your videos? I've been thinking about doing some lets play style videos, and yours seem to come out really well done.
Scott please for the love of all that is bright and burning in the universe upload this to Space Port
Just when I start thinking I am getting good at KSP, watching Manley brings me back down lol
I'm 15 and Top Gun was my childhood, and the reason why F-14 Tomcat's are my favorite fighter jets