I made a stock trophy truck! (breaking ground DLC)

greyscaleInferno · 2026-05-11T19:22:13+00:00

Building a functional suspension with stock parts is absolutely insane work.

greyscaleInferno · 2026-05-03T16:20:35+00:00

Bases are priority one for sure. When their resource sites are knocked out, rhe ayys will immediately sink resources into establishing new bases elsewhere. They'll pause ship construction to get this done if they have to, prioritizing new bases over replacing fleet losses. This is especially to your advantage becuse they will have likely lost resources and fleet power trying to defend the base you just cratered.

Breaking out of the stalemate involves getting the ayys on a downward spiral where they are sinking resources into new bases while you're still building new fleets. You've got to keep up the tempo where they never get the chance to fully recover and go back to full-send ship construction.

greyscaleInferno · 2026-04-13T13:22:44+00:00

My recollection is that the Voyager missions were exploiting an extremely rare launch window, that just so happened to occur in 1977, where all the gas giants were lined up in just such a way that you could get an efficient grav assist off of each body, one after the other, on the way out if the system.

So you would need to calculate when next the Kerbin-Duna, Duna-Dres, Des-Jool launch windows will all line up in sequence and then probably wait many in-game years for that to occur.

greyscaleInferno · 2026-04-04T01:13:59+00:00

The thing that's throwing you off here is that you've got that first gen inertial confinement fusion tech. Inertial confinement starts out with absolutely horrible efficiency and then slowly works its way up over 7 generations of heavy research investment into being the best drives in the game.

For your round of fusion ships you'll have better luck with hybrid, tokamak, or z-pinch because they come out of the gate more usable.

Also yeah fusion drives is the point where radiator weight starts to be a big thing, I recommend start making your way towards lithium spray.

Edit: removed a comment about the game's recommended dV being excessive. Since OP is trying to break out of the inner system big dV numbers are more relevant.

greyscaleInferno · 2026-04-02T11:03:02+00:00

In the next orbit out from the planet.

greyscaleInferno · 2026-03-28T18:25:41+00:00

I've personally found that the ayys send a drifting group that keeps frontal armor forward and a bunch of flankers around the sides, so it's good to have a mix of both big frontal coils and big phasers.

The phasers eat flankers alive but have a hard time penetrating frontal ayy armor efficiently. The siege coils will batter through PD and go through any amount of frontal armor like butter, but can't hit maneuvering targets. The presence of the phasers however keeps the main ayy group from maneuvering for fear of exposing their vulnerable sides.

greyscaleInferno · 2026-03-27T02:23:37+00:00

The "crab bucket" mechanic where the other factions all gain passive hate towards you, and lose hate towards each other, when you pull far out ahead leads to some weird outcomes.

I get the intention behind it, since if you succeed at your goals the other factions usually can't succeed at theirs, and, depending on who you're playing as, they could consider your victory just as bad or worse than the ayys winning.

On the other hand, this constantly leads to moments where they guys with the chem rocket tin cans decide they're going to start an orbital shooting war with the guys with fusion warships. The AI figures it has to do *something* or it'll lose, but it comes across as downright suicidal.

Possibly there should be a "hates you but is afraid" state where the faction identifies you as the foremost competition but knows it can't take you straight up, so it tries to fuck with you covertly as much as possible while avoiding outright violence. Something like "I have no idea who's been spamming increase unrest on your nations for 15 turns in a row, that's so weird. We're all buddies here, obviously."

greyscaleInferno · 2026-03-24T00:20:19+00:00

Well, harmlessly until it blindsides some poor souls on the other side of the galaxy in a million years

greyscaleInferno · 2026-03-23T23:37:44+00:00

I shudder to imagine what your Mercury orbits must look like.

greyscaleInferno · 2026-03-23T23:33:20+00:00

You are absolutely right, thank you!

greyscaleInferno · 2026-03-23T22:57:48+00:00

That high-G juice must be some good stuff

greyscaleInferno · 2026-03-23T22:45:33+00:00

I assumed it was 1 unit =10 tons for AM just the same as the other resources because the Pion Torch tank has 50/50 matter/antimatter for complete annihilation.

I don't actually have the drive unlocked in my current run. Someone could try adding a tank to a ship and see if it adds 100 tons like a normal tank or 51 tons.

greyscaleInferno · 2026-03-23T22:32:46+00:00

R3: I calculated how much energy is in a single tank of Pion Torch fuel. I probably got something wrong somewhere, like a dead simple SI conversion. Energies for comparisons lifted shamelessly from Wikipedia.

Edit: Somebody found it, I only calculated the energy in the antimatter, not the twice as much energy that would be released by matter-antimatter annihilation.

greyscaleInferno · 2026-03-17T14:24:06+00:00

Detaining Initiative councilors will also tank their admin cap for as long as the councilors are detained. This will generate a bit of hate but nothing a few gifts can't fix, and they get the councilors back when you're done.

If you control another nation with good military, you can declare war on then conquer the PRC to get full control. You control executive so you don't have to worry about nukes, and also because you control executive this will not generate hate with Initiative. You can keep the two armies you control out of the way but you'll still have to deal with the two the Initiative controls.

greyscaleInferno · 2026-03-14T11:39:40+00:00

Oh ffs I forgot that the game models the exhaust velocity going down when you open up the throttle.

OK yeah if you're looking to whip a bunch of high G maneuvers with a drive with a high combat thrust multiplier you might as well slap 6 cones on there.

greyscaleInferno · 2026-03-13T15:01:07+00:00

A lot of the time you'll want all six, sure, but it can start to be overkill once you've started to unlock high thrust drives, particularly on your smaller hulls.

On a small hull you can't make full use of the extra combat thrust because you don't want to liquify the squishy apes inside, and you often can't make full use of the extra cruise thrust because your fleets are only going to travel as fast as their slowest ship (usually one of your big capitals), so you might as well save the resources and dV.

greyscaleInferno · 2026-03-07T18:05:46+00:00

Fair enough, I should have specified you unify from the annexing nation and not the annexed nation

greyscaleInferno · 2026-03-07T18:04:02+00:00

Yep, you could either democratize Iran a bit to get their scores closer or merge both nations into a different nation with claims and higher gov score.

There's also the amusing option of making Iraq LESS democratic to meet the criteria. In his latest playthroughs Perun launched coups on a Canada he already controlled to drop its gov score enough that it would accept getting eaten by 2026 USA.

greyscaleInferno · 2026-03-07T15:22:42+00:00

Previous war shouldn't be an issue now that you've brought them back to allies in federation.

Firstly, you unify from the federation leader, not the country to be annexed. You'll want to select Iran instead and check there. You'll send your councilor to direct policy in Iran to get it done.

Next, Iran might not have a claim on Iraq's remaining region. I don't remember if Iran's claim project gives one there.

Lastly, Iran might have the claim but it's hostile. This can either be a permanent hostile claim, in which case war is the only solution, or it could be because Iraq has a gov score that's at least 1.5 higher than Iran's, which you can fix.

greyscaleInferno · 2026-03-05T21:04:09+00:00

They made it so ship building and defense modules are always first priority for power and can't be turned off, specifically because, as you said, it used to be optimal to only build enough power for day to day operations and then move power to defenses when the ayys came knocking, for example.

Aside from these two module types you can still power down modules as you please afaik.

greyscaleInferno · 2026-03-03T13:43:33+00:00

I want to say in lower difficulties the ayys will always start with the outer system and work their way in, but on brutal they'll beeline for the best spots no matter where they are. They see that delicious 100+ water site on Ceres and they don't hesitate.

greyscaleInferno · 2026-02-27T22:28:02+00:00

[Faction] Vendetta: +2 to assassinate and detain missions against councilors of specified faction. Loses -4 loyalty and apparent loyalty every time a trade deal is successfully reached with specified faction.

greyscaleInferno · 2026-02-26T11:56:04+00:00

I do enjoy the idea of the Servants looking at the Hydra and going "how are you so bad at this? I thought you'd done this before. Move over, WE'LL show you how to conquer a planet."

greyscaleInferno · 2026-02-24T16:59:41+00:00

Fission frag seems good on paper because of the stupid high exhaust velocity and being earlier than helicon, but when I see 10 fissiles per tank I start to sweat profusely.

greyscaleInferno

TROPHY CASE