Children of a Dead Earth

[VladimirK]

 

[DraQ]

Bump.

Got it recently.
Quite fun (at least for some massively geeky interpretations of fun) and I haven't even unlocked the engineering part yet (you can override this lock if you want to).
Could use more informative HUD, especially for orbital manoeuvrers.

Has anyone got silver or gold in that Mercury L point mission?

 

[Beastro]

It says most accurate space warfare simulator ever, you schmuck. KSP is only a sandbox with retarded green aliens.

Most accurate simulation of a kind of warfare that doesn't exist yet...



I know, I know, we have a rough idea of what's most effective, but when you get people fighting in a new environment they very very quickly develop and adapt to it in ways that no one could've anticipated beforehand.

Look at submarines in their early years, how their weapons were drilling holes in a ships hull or using a spar torpedo which was nothing but a bomb on the end of a long stick hopefully long enough that the sub was far enough away from the explosion to not get damaged enough to survive.

What was Jules Verne's take on sub warfare? A serrated blade on the front top of Nautilus to rip open the underside of a ship, something IIRC, never tried with real subs because when it was feasible subs were too small and too underpowered to do anything to a hull that way and metal hulls were increasingly becoming the standard.

Instead subs went from a hybrid with self-propelled torpedoes and a deck gun, that in practice during the World Wars made them more a surface ship that could submerge and have limited fighting capability while underwater, to what we'd expect of a submarine with the advent of nuclear power (and snorkeling) and self-guided torpedoes fully capable of fighting submerged to the point that being surfaced was nothing but a weakness.

 

[DraQ]

It says most accurate space warfare simulator ever, you schmuck. KSP is only a sandbox with retarded green aliens.

Most accurate simulation of a kind of warfare that doesn't exist yet...



I know, I know, we have a rough idea of what's most effective, but when you get people fighting in a new environment they very very quickly develop and adapt to it in ways that no one could've anticipated beforehand.

Look at submarines in their early years, how their weapons were drilling holes in a ships hull or using a spar torpedo which was nothing but a bomb on the end of a long stick hopefully long enough that the sub was far enough away from the explosion to not get damaged enough to survive.

What was Jules Verne's take on sub warfare? A serrated blade on the front top of Nautilus to rip open the underside of a ship, something IIRC, never tried with real subs because when it was feasible subs were too small and too underpowered to do anything to a hull that way and metal hulls were increasingly becoming the standard.

Instead subs went from a hybrid with self-propelled torpedoes and a deck gun, that in practice during the World Wars made them more a surface ship that could submerge and have limited fighting capability while underwater, to what we'd expect of a submarine with the advent of nuclear power (and snorkeling) and self-guided torpedoes fully capable of fighting submerged to the point that being surfaced was nothing but a weakness.

You don't seem to get the whole point of the excercise that is COADE. It was to start out without assumptions, but just feed a whole lot of physics and solved or at least well researched engineering into the game to then use it to figure out what works and what does not - with the considerable help of infinite monkeys players.
And, some minor wonks aside, it seems to do just that, just fine.

Besides, it's pretty much the only contender here, because aside from COADE the number of space warfare simulations pretending to any sort of accuracy, or indeed simulation is nil.

 

[DraQ]

Beastro:
As clear a statement of purpose as one can make:
https://childrenofadeadearth.wordpress.com/2016/04/15/how-realistic-is-it-actually/

In case it is not obvious by now, Children of a Dead Earth was designed with no vision in mind, unlike just about every other videogame, novel, or movie attempting to do the same. This is because I never wanted to corrupt the ultimate goal of this project, which was to discover what space warfare would be like, rather than to say what space warfare would be like. To have an initial vision when building this game would have been starting with a conclusion, and then twisting reality to support that vision. By starting with no vision whatsoever, the conclusion would be generated by implementing the equations, and observing how they interact. In this way, the end result of Children of a Dead Earth was little like I had ever imagined actual space warfare would be like, and this will probably be true for you as well.

To reiterate: Children of a Dead Earth is a simulation first, and a game second. No amount of realism was compromised to make things more fun, or to make things prettier. It is science first, everything else second. Despite this, the game still remains fun, but you’ll find it plays very differently than any space warfare game you’ve ever played.

Or in other words:

I don't need your fucking fun

 

[Burning Bridges]

Yeah let's rip all our clothes off, smear our naked bodies with feces, run outside and yell "we shall have no vision in mind"

 

[DraQ]

Yeah let's rip all our clothes off, smear our naked bodies with feces, run outside and yell "we shall have no vision in mind"

U just jelly, bro.

 

[DraQ]

I have managed to build myself a fairly versatile ship for the Main Belt Extraction mission where you need to knock out a gunship (a tough mofo) without killing its crew (still just stock modules at this point so no nuke shooting autocannons, ludicrous velocity electric guns spamming tens of thousands rounds per second, ravening beams of death or even stupidly powerful NTRs). It can beat it with minimal damage without resorting to long range missile spam EZ-mode.

It started as modification of stock laser frigate that got massive array of redundant 60MW 1mm coilguns (to accont for overheating and attrition) on its nose along with some titanium nitride coating (high melting point and purdy colour - I'm still clueless at armour design), and assorted modifications that drove its price to relatively unreasonable levels (basically filling entire mission budget - credits and mass - with this single ship).
That turned out to be pretty effective and reliable approach as those guns are both tiny (making them difficult to hit) and hideously rapid firing making them excellent at sandblasting radiators and assorted equipment off enemy ships even though they fail to do much against armour, but it still ended up with my ship being noticeably worse for the wear.

So I sat down and started to tweak stuff - stripped ship's rear of armor for lest cost, weight and targetable cross-section, reduced the number of spammy sandblasters and spread them out across the (now much pointier) nose, leaving only 3 pointing forwards (and instantly ready to fire with rest being able to take their time turning - those guns suck at tracking speed, BTW), tweaked the armaments a bit (replaced some stuff with two massive coilguns - secondary sluggers for piercing armor when necessary and knocking enemy ships off-balance, replaced flak blast launchers with nuke blast launchers - mostly used as decoys in this mission as I managed to KO enemy ship before they even made one third their way to the target once, but generally meant to vaporize Wipple shields to offset sandcaster's shit penetration) and adding much more thrusters - both main NTRs and methane-LOX RCS, readding violet laser and making the whole thing purdier by being bilaterally instead of radially symmetrical (fuck you, I evolved on solid ground, I am not some fucking starfish).

The result ended up being both heavier hitting and much more agile. This thing DANCES around enemy bullet streams while maintaining nose forward orientation and spamming its own OUCH. No subsystem damage is quite realistic even if not exactly the expected outcome (you may get a clipped radiator here, a notched RCS nozzle there or even a missing turret) and even though expecting no damage at all would be stretching it, I did manage to do it once with just single hit against my vessel (admittedly, while using nukes as hard to ignore decoys to give enemy lasers something to do - can't dodge those).

 

[Destroid]

I noticed in the video above the missiles would burn all their fuel immediately and not worry about terminal guidance - is this just the way missiles work in CoaDE, or is it simply more effective this way with relatively short ranges and limited acceleration available to the ships?

 

[DraQ]

I noticed in the video above the missiles would burn all their fuel immediately and not worry about terminal guidance - is this just the way missiles work in CoaDE, or is it simply more effective this way with relatively short ranges and limited acceleration available to the ships?

This is, sadly, the missile AI being derp - although if I understand correctly you can customize the AI controller after you unlock module design.
Game's AI and some other aspects aren't very strong (for example combat and pre-combat manoeuvring are kind of disjoint which sometimes produces stupid artifacts) and GUI feedback is rather lacking. It's main strength is incredibly detailed physics and engineering simulation - you can build your own ship and later your own modules and pit that against premade or custom craft in all sorts of scenarios.

Still, this is a game where you can design your own craft complete with your custom reactors, lasers, railguns, rocket engines and spaced armour, etc. manoeuvre it around using detailed orbital physics (and the techs available are not nearly powerful enough to allow you to simply ignore orbits around anything more massive than mid-size asteroid) and blow shit up in an avalanche of nukes and railgun fire which is immensely awesome if you crave for diamond hard SF experience.

 

[DraQ]

Full Changelist
1.2.0 (12/18/2017)
- Foreign Language Support
--- Non-English languages are now supported, and fan-made translations can be imported. A fan-made Chinese translation is in the works.
--- A language file with all strings can be imported, as can language specific images (such as the main logo), and font files.
- Ship Design
--- Form fitting, concave armor is allowed on ships. Concave armor has a smaller cross section and can sometimes save mass, but also can suffer from multiple bullet ricochets.
--- Polygonal cross section armor for ships allowed, such as triangular, hexagonal, and so on.
--- Spinal modules can be pushed inwards or outwards, allowing setups such as propellant tanks around crew modules.
--- Front and back facing attached modules also can be pushed inwards or outwards, allowing setups such as frontal guns stacked with different frontal guns.
--- Ship armor can be radially rotated about the ship (you can now edit the start and end percent for each radial span).
--- Radiation shielding is more properly calculated.
--- Weapon firing arcs can be limited by ship armor now. Ship design warns of these cases.
- Module Design
--- Added Fuse modules, which are tiny modules which can trigger Ordnances or Engines after a set amount of time. Allows for time-delayed flares or timed explosives, or for launching dumbfire missiles (with optional timers).
--- Reduced Remote Control size.
- UI
--- Materials, modules, and spacecrafts are all listed in a grid view when choosing them. The grid organizes items by mass, cost, and every other property, each of which can be toggled or sorted.
--- Ship and Module Design menus can be toggled to a grid view rather than the default list view.
--- Can enter degrees into radians sliders.
- Graphics Updates
--- Spacecrafts cast shadows on themselves and each other in combat and design.
--- Many stock spacecrafts are updated to have form fitting armor and sloped nose cones. Some have polygonal cross sections now.
--- Radiators are animated in module design. Engines bells and gun barrels too.
- Mods
--- Exposed ship armor limits in Limits.txt.
- Other
--- Renamed weapon Payloads to Ordnances to prevent confusion with ship Payloads.
--- Numerous bug and crash fixes. Notable bugs include: Temporal Burn Dragger no longer deletes previous burns, dozens of small material and chemical reaction tweaks, radiators start out cooler in combat if you have more than enough, ship design no longer stacks heat and power incorrectly.

 

[Destroid]

Tried this out, it's pretty simple but fun to play so far. I'm sure it will get more interesting with ship/module design.

 

[DraQ]

Tried this out, it's pretty simple but fun to play so far. I'm sure it will get more interesting with ship/module design.

Well, the main beef of the game are sandbox aspects - design, then using simulation to test ships, components and tactics in various scenarios, campaign is pretty much an afterthought.

 

[DraQ]

Oh, and BTW:
Polygonal armour is of course less efficient in terms of mass and cost. It's main use so far seems to be making your craft look badass, but there also seem to be somewhat niche ways to also make it genuinely useful:

• for dedicated, half-armoured broadsider (like vanilla Sentinel, which got an upgrade to polygonal) you can use it to maximize slope (for symmetrical broadsider it only offers nice flat surfaces to pierce in some orientations, so only use it if your craft has well defined "towards enemy" side).
• For head-on combat ships it might be useful to help force weapon layout irregularities which may be helpful for head-on rolling to make targetting our individual weapons harder and to stack multiple limited angle weapons with the same facing - it seems to be marginal but I haven't explored that fully.
• If you use RCS for attitude control, you can use polygonal layout to massively improve your craft's rolling performance.

Form-fitting armour may be useful or detrimental depending on your ship's layout. It seems like a good idea if you would like to make partially armoured craft but fear nukes, as it allows you to make full armour (with partial layers) without broad and heavy skirt on the rear end.

Even tinkering with just layouts is fucking addictive.

 

[DraQ]

Ok, Vesta Overkill was a pretty

experience.

Good thing I picked up the zombieship trick which allowed me to keep use of my new experimental frig after loss of all hands on board due to getting in the way of swarm of BRRRRAP from swarm of drones, and getting gutted (and my stupidly overcomplicated frig pretty much saved the day as it was the only ship that could, even gutted and with fraction of power generation, be referred to as "operational" at the end - I've lost one due to stupid decision, one I don't even know when, and one remained alive but without delta-v nor any armaments that would count).

Could probably have been easier if I didn't lose my small drone carrier (stock) early - drones make better counter than missiles against both missile swarms and other drones and they are downright scary against capships because they can bring tons of heavy, low-velocity conventional bullets close enough to be practical, when your typical spaceship relies on lightweight spaced armour that only really does well against hypervelocity impacts by relatively small rounds that can be reasonably accelerated to high velocities in sufficient numbers to hit.

I also decided to replay Main Belt Extraction which has turned into my quickie ship test scenario using default stock fleet instead of my own attempts at enjineeraning and shit was epic, with my badly messed up (after fire exchange) ships hurtling past that little moonlet Remus and then also scarred enemy ship deciding to navigate around and give chase resulting frenetic fire exchange between barely functional and badly scarred ships against the receding backdrop of the asteroid (all in all noticeably less cratered than any of the combatants).

 

[DraQ]

Went through Vesta once more, this time with my newly reworked 12kt destroyer (bigger crew, internal spall shields, some neat shooting toys like nuke autocannon and flak missile autocannon and some improvements over vanilla stuff - mostly accuracy and turret survivability) and, to fill up my mass budget, tiny 1kt light attack craft I made (partially armoured, and using the same design philosophy as all my ships to date - dedicated methane-LOX RCS and booster to enhance combat manoeuvrability, but retaining gimbals as backup and to not waste LOX out of combat, angular armour for better rolling, and relying on armour sloping rather than thickness).

Ended up cutting everything to ribbons - mostly hands off too - I mainly just decided when to fire the nuke gun (to soften drone swarms and the like) and enabled/disabled RCS thrusters to conserve LOX, while taking only minor damage (mostly because I fucked up handling one drone intercept) - tinyship suffered from clipped radiator and destroyed auxiliary booster (which generally dangled free outside of armour), while destroyer lost all laser turrets, some radiators, a gun or two, an RCS thruster and suffered one actual armour penetration (that did fuck all - flew a short way inside then thunked into spall shield) - mind you, that's after getting BRRAPPED all over by leftover drones (due to aforementioned fuck up).


Ok, I was lying - that was on my second attempt, on my first one with this set up I decided to fire everything when finally intercepted by enemy capital fleet which first dropped the FPS to (low) fractions, then after a while crashed the game because there was just too much shit flying around.


Still, it went remarkably well without resorting to drone spam and laborous counter intercepts of enemy drone and missile fleets, or some ludicrous feats of engineering allowing you to wipe everything megameters before they get you in their weapon range - just a massive ship with good maneuvrability, sloped armour and lots and lots of gun.


I also dropped the zombieship trick as it's pretty much a 'sploit.

BROTIP:
Hitting enemy ships in any launchers (or big, conventional guns) they have is remarkably effective as 'splody munitions hurt a lot.

 

[Runciter]

Screenshots or it didn't happen

 

[DraQ]

Screenshots or it didn't happen

Which ones do you want? I have some from the original run, with enemy fleet being cut to ribbons, and a bunch from 2 reruns yesterday, featuring this + post completion shots.

 

[Runciter]

Show us everything you've got! But seriously, interested in the realistic designs that turn out to be the efficient space fighters they are. I spent some time reading the CoaDE blog posts on realistic space combat and it's fascinating.

 

[DraQ]

Show us everything you've got! But seriously, interested in the realistic designs that turn out to be the efficient space fighters they are. I spent some time reading the CoaDE blog posts on realistic space combat and it's fascinating.

At 12kt, length around 200m and somewhere around 100 personnel on board I would hardly call it a fighter and I can't really vouch for its efficiency other than that it massacres stock designs for less mass and much less cost and does a pretty good job not getting shot up much and not dying if it does.
It started prior to last patch as modification of stock laser frigate utilizing redundant array of inexpensive coilguns (stock 60MW 1mm) to sandblast the enemy, then I fiddled around with it trying to get it to suck less - generally aiming for better agility, armament and configuration allowing it to survive frontal assault without taking much damage, while also doing my best to make it look badass and be a pleasure to fly (because if I didn't want a cool ship I would have probably gone with giant flashlight or a tincan full of missiles, both of which seem to be effective, although I'm reserving my judgement until a patch allowing multi-intercepts, because those should wreck MPD propelled flashlights hard).
It's a continuous work in progress, because I'm tweaking things all the time - for example I have recently added methane MPDs for long distance cruising, made some new railguns, backup RTGs for crew modules (that should allow for things like shutting down whole main power generation), creative gun fired payloads involving nukes and blast fired submunitions (would make it a missile, but missile with launchers on it thinks it is a drone), and experimented with somewhat nuke resistant propulsion scheme.
It would be interesting what a seasoned optimizer could do with my ship even staying away from abuse of nonphysical corner cases and insane engineering practices (let's make our crew modules of potassium - it's light and cheap!).

Anyway, here goes (gah, I hate uploading tons of screenies):

The ship itself

[OLD] Early versions (previous patch) during Main Belt Extraction

Basically what happened after "well, modified frigate wins this battle but gets badly shot up, moves like a brick, and also got too big to be called a frigate, also it would be nice to just lose less coilguns instead of having to haul an buttload of spares":

Later Evolution and testing during Main Belt Extraction scenario (which became my go-to quick test scenario)

Vesta Overkill

Take 1, with more or less the ship mentioned and 1kt helper craft:

Take 2, similar config with tweaks, this time with completion screens and showcasing battle damage (I launched some staged strikers towards the end but failed to get an intercept due to multi intercept bug - anyway, stock missiles suck ;_; - flak missiles were cannon launched and fared better, but didn't make it to the enemy in time, so they were left floating in space - alone and forgotten):

Take 3, because I like to tweak things and see how they turn out (also, I wanted to take some cinematic screenies):

more Main Belt Extraction

Sandblasters:

Sheer BRÜTALITY:

Some smaller vessels (frigates and corvettes):

Done with vanilla ships, for lulz:

early attempts at something unorthodox which may also be somewhat non-consensual towards in-game ship editor

 

[DraQ]

Runciter
Uploaded some more stuff in my previous post.

 

[Destroid]

This non-combat mission after Ceres is really hard (first mission you can make your own ships)

 

[DraQ]

This non-combat mission after Ceres is really hard (first mission you can make your own ships)

You can beat it with one of stock tankers or a similar construction.
You need tons of delta-v but without negligible acceleration of most MPDs, so NTRs attached to huge blob of propellant tanks and a hab tucked somewhere.

 

[RhodokMasterRaceOfficial]

You can beat that with the stock methane tanker. Large one I think.

Might be worth shaving some of its unnecessary mass off to squeeze an extra km/s or two of Dv out of it, but it's probably not necessary. That's mostly just to get used to the practice of optimising your crafts.

 

[Destroid]

I made a better tanker, I guess I'm just bad at orbits.