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[unique gyro]

#1133839891873157242 message

[steady horizon]

EDIT: This suggestion will be completely reworked.

[lament warren]

on the main idea, the inner 2 should only be able to equip drones, i think letting people mount weapons there would be too much

and also maybe a bit strong, id suggest making that only 1 hardpoint in the middle, that or 0

[unique gyro]

My idea would be:

• strip middle rail (it's just mass)
• add two braces (1 across the high stress hardpoints, the other near reactors) - also mass but useful, can be interlinked into truss
• strip crew compartment from secondary hull (same crew as vanilla K37)
• bolt a high stress mount in the middle of front brace (power routed from original primary hull high-stress mount)
• bolt another high stress mount to the reinforced section where crew section was on secondary hull (power routed from original secondary hull high-stress mount)
• either strip 1-2 inner low-stress mounts or rearrange them changing type (small "harbor" with docking port, drone only mount, etc.)

[unique gyro]

So basically two K37 stuck into truss, missing half the rails, with some hardpoint fuckery, one bereft of crew section.

[steady horizon]

I would keep the middle rail

It's how propellant and minerals get passed back and forth

We know the plumbing connections already exist for that because the rail has thrusters mounted on it, and the arms that carry containers can transfer minerals in and out. Plus if we got rid of the middle rail we would have nowhere to mount additional thrusters.

So in essence the only nonstandard part on a K2X37 is a double sided rail that connects to a fuselage on both sides.

The rest of that seems a bit complicated and kitbashy to me, I'd prefer if it was literally just a twin K37, two whole K37s attached together. At least for the base variant. You can definitely branch out into specialist designs from there.

[unique gyro]

Just put umblicals between hulls.

Rail serves no purpose, it just looks sloppy out of universe and inexplicable in universe.

[steady horizon]

And jury rigging a truss doesn't?

The rail already exists, it is load bearing, it has plumbing and power connections. Why wouldn't you use it

[steady horizon]

Come to think of it, I would do the reverse. Allow forward firing weapons for the inner low stress points, but the outer hardpoints are restricted to drones, containers and turrets. Weapons that are located too far from the centreline would be difficult to use.

[unique gyro]

Truss is existing, effective solution for transferring loads.

Rail designed to transfer the forces of RCS firing and ocassional lowe velocity impact is not going to be enough to hang entire second K37 off it.

[steady horizon]

The rails are already pretty strong, just look at them. The worst load you can throw at them is four racing thrusters tuned to maximum all firing at once in different directions at 800kn each. That's individually more force than the stock K37 engine can create, but the rails can withstand them indefinitely and are essentially impervious to impacts and any other damage short of a reactor explosion.

And besides, I'm not talking about using a standard rail.

The middle rail on a K2X37 is going to be a nonstandard custom rail that is specifically designed to attach two hulls together. If making it stronger is necessary you can easily do that, either by making the existing rail more rigid interally, or just making a new bigger rail. In all likelihood it will be the strongest part on the entire ship.

[final grove]

I feel like the Cothon is a better answer to the problem. Two fully closed bays is just wasted mass that's looking for a problem that it can be the solution for.

[lament warren]

tie FOUR k37s together

[final grove]

Or make a bigger Cothon? Any number of ships you can strap together, you can scale better and more cheaply as one bigger ship. Like, you can make the bay four times bigger without needing two reactors. You can have twin main drives without twin reactors.

Also a lot less mass to enclose one volume, than to enclose 1/4 the volume four times.

[steady horizon]

What problem?

What problem is the kitsune a better answer to?

Why does there need to be a problem, it's just an alternate way to play.

Twinning aircraft is something that was done IRL for practical reasons, and k37s are canonically the most common mining ship with the biggest pool of salvaged parts for kitbashes and other experiments.

Hell, there's a whole capsule hotel on enceladus made out of k37 habs.

[steady horizon]

The idea just makes sense to me because it's the logical conclusion of the k37 existing. Someone wants a bigger ship than a k37, with a better power to weight ratio than a K44, but not as expensive as a 225, while sitting on top of a mountain made of second hand k37 hulls. It's just a matter of time before someone puts 2 and 2 together.

[feral hound]

YEAH THIS ONE

THATS THE CORRECT ANSWER

[steady horizon]

As an added bonus it recycles existing assets both "canonically" inside the game and for the developers too. You wouldn't have to make an entire new ship with new art and new lore, while still providing new and unique experiences. Twinned ships would fly very differently because they have more mass and less thrusters per facing. Equipment being mirrored over two hulls means you could downgrade certain items like reactor rods and turbines for the same amount of power, or you could max out everything to run energy weapons and dual smelters. Simply having two separate MPUs opens up a lot of build possibilities.

[unique gyro]

Two fully closed bays means two different MPUs. That alone is a strong unique selling proposal.

[final grove]

I don't feel like it's actually an alternate, really. It's basically a K37's handling mechanics, with fewer RCS per kilogram, and much more annoying to actually use, because you can't centerline ore and land it in the excavator.

Multiple MPU's . . . mmm. Requires a new feature, but that seems like tha sole possible thing that might be considered an unmitigated improvement.

I have doubts that'll convince Koder, though, because we make players make a strategic choice for a reason.

[unique gyro]

Strtategic choice here is using a specific and otherwise shitty ship.

Also, you can make other twin hulled variants as well. Cothon would be a good candidate.

[final grove]

Do you mean the stock K37? It's still a solid ship. It's one of the best battlewagons in the game, in my opinion. Some players build it out for their endgame over other ships or variants.

It's got a robust RCS layout, a good weight/mass ratio, some of the best forward-facing firepower in a relatively nimble package.

I don't think we have to invent better K37s to make more people play it. If it's not a sidegrade ship, then make that argument and we'll look at ways to make it a solid sidegrade.

Like, we can make it better if you feel it's not comppetitive. If it's really not competitive, we' prefer that.

[unique gyro]

I mean two stock K37s bolted together with half the RCS and added heavy structural frame.

At the very least it's going to be not very mass efficient.

[final grove]

I feel like the Cothon is basically that already. The K37's basic layout, but with more cargo and more mass, and worse RCS.

[unique gyro]

You get like 14t storage per ore and pretty meh manoeuvrability (though K37 RCS layout is seriously good).

So you're having a chonker ship with the only real selling point being twin bays.

[final grove]

The dual MPU argument is the only real selling point I'm seeing here. Most of this is boiling down to "Let's make it intentionally bad to justify one advantage."

[unique gyro]

It's not "make it intentionally bad", it's literally "let's bolt two hulls together" will all the consequences of such approach.

And we've had aircraft built like this, so it's definitely viable with unaerodynamic bricks.

[unique gyro]

Yeah, bolting multiple hulls together is not optimal way to design a bigger ship, so it yields less than optimal bigger ship.

You were worrying that it would be too good - I doubt it would be.

[final grove]

I was?

[unique gyro]

But it would be good at specific things.

[unique gyro]

I have doubts that'll convince Koder, though, because we make players make a strategic choice for a reason.

And again, K37 is not the only ship I could see people building twin hulled variants of. Cothon would be another obvious candidate being obsolete hull existing in surplus.

And if you're worrying about it being too weak then you can always engage in hardpoint shenanigans - justified too because you need structural frame/bracing of some sort connecting the hulls.

So you can, for example, shift one hi-stress to midline on the frame and align the other with one of the bays.

[final grove]

Oh, that wasn't about being too good. That was about not having to make a choice that we introduced because we wanted to choose. Up until we mentioned MPUs, I actually couldn't see any advantage at all.

The other reason is that it just seems goofy that an aerospace designer would mickey-mouse a whole spacecraft design without asking themselves why they need two reactors on it.

Koder's gonna look for a real-world role for it, and that's a question he's gonna ask.

Yeah, I certainly wasn't worried it'd have six forward facing mounts, because Koder would definitely just say 'no' and rework the mountings.

[unique gyro]

My idea (for 2K37) was:

• two lateral low stress mounts (outer)
• forward structural brace replacing high stress mounts (connecting to already reinforced parts of the hull)
• one midline high stress mount added on front brace (powered from primary hull original high-stress) - unsuitable for ARM (other than towing), but good for plasma thrower.
• another high stress mount added on secondary hull where its crew cab originally was (presumably very strong area structurally because it was originally protecting the crew, powered from secondary hull's original high stress, so connections are there), aligned with secondary bay

If that's too much you can actually strip the low stress mounts as well.

[final grove]

I think the real-world consideration is probably the more important concern, because it won't go anywhere until you convince Koder, and it seems a little too Voltron for a major aerospace corporation to just start bolting spaceships together into ultramegaspaceships.

[unique gyro]

But I think this layout would be pretty ok - same hardpoints as OCP, much worse capacity, dual MPUs, screaming for single plasma thrower.

[unique gyro]

We have baldie. This could be similar kind of thing with different motivation.

[final grove]

I did glance at aircraft, as suggested, but most of these seem to be amphibious, which makes sense. (And I think my 'p' key is dying.) Some very few take advantage of a unique airflow principle I don't understand, apparently.

[unique gyro]

You also have https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_F-82_Twin_Mustang

As orky as it may seem it was a fighter.

[final grove]

Hence why I said most. That one was just a two-seat fighter ~~ bomber ~~(Whoops, checked sources, scratch that part) that wanted system redundancy and much improved range -- without the cost of designing a new airframe from scratch.

I feel like you can cut parts off a spaceship and have a working spaceship pretty easily, while trying to integrate the fuel lines and control systems of two spaceships is . . . something else. But I'm venturing into opinion, so I'll stop here.

The last thing I'll write is that, assuming I convinced Koder to make a ship with two cargo bays and different MPUs, I'm more confident I could get him to engage the project if I brought him a sketch of a frankenship with a new model. I don't think I'd ever get him to want to implement this model because it just looks too silly for the world.

[unique gyro]

Eh, in this case it's just two complete K37s, one headless (as in stripped of crew compartment) with the same kind of pumping functionality as you'd normally have in a craddle, set up between the hulls and configured to automatically balance remass.

And to make it less silly you need to make it look more like real thing, so strip the middle side rails, redundant crew compartments, and add structurally sound loking bracing connecting both hulls.

And another thing, twin Cothon might be easier to make look good because Cothon is basically a big bucket wrapped in isogrid truss (they'd probably need to be rotated for radiator layout - that would make it distinct sprite-wise too).

[lament warren]

i definetly dont think this is somthing the original manufacturer of the k37 would ever make, this is much more likely to be something made by either a company crewed by 3 guys in a shed or just a random engineer that had a few too many k37 hulls lying around (because they are very common and thus why the conecpt is of a douuble k37)

[unique gyro]

Note that 3-guys-in-a-shed can make a state of the art racing craft with very unorthodox torch layout.

[final grove]

Just gonna reiterate that I feel like I'd be more likely to engage Koder on the concept with an entirely new frankenship model. I don't think it being easier is gonna override the Voltron silliness of the look.

[mystic moss]

3 guys in a shed made one of the most well known and iconic sniper rifles of all time. So why not make an iconic ship!

[soft urchin]

I could see it as a meme one-off design that gets you looked at funny.

[final grove]

I mean, if it looked as good as the L96A1, I probably wouldn't have objected.

Most of my objections are more along the lines of "If you want this implemented, this is what I believe will be a dealbreaker when it hits Koder's desk."

[soft urchin]

I like it because it's an absolute meme of a design that anyone who looks at it will hate.

Ideally none of the autopilots are calibrated for it too!

[unique gyro]

That's why I think it needs to be up-realed.
Two K37s sharing a rail are no-go.
Two K37 braced and tubed together, with inner rails removed, crew sections removed from one of then and hardpoints messed with should be fine.

[soft urchin]

But mostly I like the notion of a ship so raggedy that even at class d starports the guy waving the little light sticks is like "wtf are you driving bro"

"i found a second K37 because ours doesn't pass inspection"
"does it pass inspection?"
"no"
"well then what good is it?"
"Perhaps... together, we could pass?"
"they won't rate two ships as one, idiot"
"but what if they were one ship"

[final grove]

The autopilots shouldn't have issues. The only things they tend to have issues with are misaligned centers of mass or bad RCS layouts, like when we tried to run the EIME on nothing but two gimballed RCS thrusters (technically four, but physically represented as two double power thrusters.)

They judge usefulness of thrust to rotation or translation on a per-thruster basis, so their biggest problems are when you're actually missing a thrust vector, or don't prioritize rotation or translation, and don't have enough gimballed thrust to maneuver.

[soft urchin]

but it’d be better if they did

[steady horizon]

I think I'm just going to bow out and try again at a later date

[hushed edge]

The dual hull idea isn't new, i.e. F-82 Twin Mustang (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_F-82_Twin_Mustang), but it's very impractical and IMO pretty much useless outside of some very specific scenarios where there isn't a better solution available.

This is about the only way I think it would work.

(sorry about my MS Paint skills)

The result is a bigger cargo hold and a beak big enough to swallow the smallest roids.

It might have 2 high stress hardpoints aligned with the reactors. The disadvantages are many, since it would probably be wider than a Titan but a lot less maneuverable.

This is the kind of project only an engineer with too many K73 hulls and too much time on their hands could come up with so it would probably be a unique one-off you'd get from a quest.

[steady horizon]

but it's very impractical and IMO pretty much useless outside of some very specific scenarios where there isn't a better solution available.

That's the entire point

There is no better solution easily available

[hushed edge]

To what problem?

As far as I can tell having 2 MPUs (which AFAIC is not a problem that needs solving) is the only thing that would benefit from sticking two K37 together.

For everything else you can take your pick between a Pelican and a Titan.

[steady horizon]

sigh

[hushed edge]

What is it you really want? 4 HS hardpoints? Sighing won't answer my question about what problem are you trying to solve by sticking two K37s together.

[unique gyro]

Having limited funds and crew, but wanting more space, also having access to skilled technicians and having a spare, mostly intact K37 lying around.

[hushed edge]

If you have limited funds you won't have enough to properply equip two K37s. And let's face it: if you're low on cash and have an extra K37 hull you'll just sell it unless you want to keep it for the name.
By sticking them together you'll double your space but also yout tonnage and you'll sill have only 4 lateral thrusters to operate a ship that will handle like a beached whale. The end result is going from one the cheapest and most cost-effective ships in the game to one that will increase your maintenance costs by a factor of at least 2 for not enough gains to compensate for all the drawbacks, unless you already have all the money in the game and just want a ship like the OCP that isn't the OCP. I'm not saying it's impossible in-universe that some engineer with more skill than common sense would think of this and do it, but engineers tend to think in terms of problem-solving and optimization, i.e. Bald Eagle optimized for "racing" by solving the problem of "being faster and more nimble" at the expense of cost-effectiveness for anything else.

[final grove]

The twin mustang is kind of a rarity, and was mostly because it was faster and cheaper than designing a new airframe.

As for wanting two MPUs, I can see switching between them, going high-yield for mining and low-yield for remass recovery.

I don't think it's something that needs solving for gameplay, but I can see players wanting it. I can see it solving the problem that choosing an MPU requires comromise. The problem is, if you're not compromising, you're eliminating a strategic choice, so I think making the argument that it can carry two MPUs is going to be counterproductive in convincing Koder (or me).

The game is very much designed so that everything you do requires choosing between different things you want. Once you have everything you want out of a ship, gameplay can get dull fast. I know that's not true of every player, but it's true of enough that the design is built around choice.

If you make significant amounts of tradeoffs, you could get past that; but I think you'd have more luck with successful implementation if you designed a dual-bay ship from scratch, instead of bolting together ships in any configuration. The game has a certain aesthetic, and extending ships forwards makes a lot more science sense than extending them sideways.

Ships are designed around things like the torch's radiation shadow cast by the reactor and fuel tanks, avoiding casting drive shine on the crew compartment or other radiators, the center of thrust expected, transmission of stress through the frame, etc. Forward extension just makes a ton more sense, such as with the K44.

Like, you can cut a K37 in half, and put the midsection of another K37 in the gap. Fix up the remass lines in the rails and make sure the wiring connects, and you're almost done.

Lots more internal connections, like from the reactor to the forward remass tanks and such, and I don't think the turbines are as far back as the reactor, but at that point it's just connecting things the same way they were already connected.

[lament warren]

i think it was koder that wanted more wide ships though

[hushed edge]

That's exactly my point. The air force needed bomber escorts for longer missions and nothing in their inventory could do it so they resorted to a stopgap solution that only lasted until a better solution came along shortly after. Unless there is a specific need for a dual-body craft, i.e. Stratolaunch (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scaled_Composites_Stratolaunch) having a single body design is cheaper and more effective all around.

[final grove]

Wide ships are fine. Nothing wrong with that. But you're gonna do a lot better getting a dual-bay ship implemented if you have a design ready, or jut suggest a dual-bay ship, I think. I suspect just gluing ships together will get skipped over just because it looks too silly.

Like, the last thing you want is to have the problem you want to solve (needing two MPU's) ignored. Because on the surface this looks like "I want to be Voltron!" or "I want more mounts with no tradeoffs," and I suspect notifications on this thread got disabled when he saw two ships stuck together with duct tape.

[lament warren]

i dont get why you keep mentioning voltron

[hushed edge]

You can have 2 MPUs like this. Again, sorry about my MS Paint skill and slightly obscene picture.

[final grove]

Because it's about spaceships that combine.

[final grove]

One of the immediate realistic science problems is that drive shine will be directly heating some of your radiators, for instance.

[hushed edge]

That was just me using Paint to try to make two K37s into something more practical than sticking them together side by side. There is not doubt in my mind you can do a far better job, so if you like, feel free to tweak it around until you get something that makes sense.

[final grove]

Well, part of the reason that I say you'd probably see more success making a new ship than trying to slap two K47's together. Even if you had two, you'd have more success and gain more advantage cutting the midsection out of one and inserting it in the other. That just requires connecting things they way they used to be connected. Combining the infrestructure of two reactors and power systems in a way that they understand that there's a system they need to cooperate with is not really a junker-making-a-bus-into-an-RV scope of project.

[hushed edge]

TBH, I don't dislike the idea of using widely available K37 parts to make some Frankenship. Having 2 separate hulls bolted together is what bothers me, because what I would do with them IRL is either sell one or crew it and put it to work.

[unique gyro]

I think that misses the point because it requires vastly more modification, at which point completely new hull with two bays would make more sense (which to be fair would also be cool idea, though twin K37 helps justify two separate bay as not just design choice but inevitability resulting from construction method).

[unique gyro]

That's absolutely fair and valid. Some ships like Cothon even have that characteristic radiator taper.
OTOH we do have more extravagant designs already in game, like CERF with its absolutely horrid (from radiation management PoV, but not only) dual hull layout, ships manoeuvring in close proximity to one another ands having to deal with backscatter from all the orbitting ice.

That said a fully new two-bay design would be absolutely rad, and knowing Koder I don't doubt he'd pull some clever nasty little trick to make it less great than it would seem on paper (like "Chonker"s offset excavator being PITA to load, or 🟡 twin hi-stress being nowhere near as OP as they would appear).

[final grove]

Pretty sure CERF positions its radiators on the outer sides, and that, theoretically, we have reaction mass tanks to cast a shadow over the crew compartment.

[hushed edge]

I don't think the amount of modification was the point. The point was having 2 (or possibly more) K37s and doing something with them that resulted in a tangible benefit, i.e. 2 MPUs, and enough drawbacks to follow Koder's sidegrade policy. Having 2 separate hulls bolted together will only benefit from having 2 different MPUs which in turn requires you selecting every single time which chunk goes into which cargo hold. Just that alone is enough to change the whole gameplay loop from mining to sorting chunks with the added difficulty of doing it if using a hard to handle ship because you have the same number of lateral RCSs to move double the mass.

You can do it. It just makes no sense to me, at least in the base game. I wouldn't bat an eye if someone made it as a mod.

[final grove]

There are certainly some frankenships in mods that rival this. Dual MPUs, too.

IOE has some pre-processors and such that would qualify, and can be installed on most ships.

[steady horizon]

.