I would like to suggest mounting point and methods for armoring turrets.

[Cavilier210]

Just something to make it a little more possible than it is right now. I've been trying to armor a cradle and its seems impossible. I've tried different methods of mounting, and so on, but i always run into the problem of just too much weight on not enough support.

Perhaps a part for armor mounting on the cradle arms.

I'll be trying a new turret design soon, but after a few days of trying to make a non-angry armored manned turret, I feel a bit beaten.

 

[Meetbolio]

There's already a part in the game to mount on cradle arms.

 

[Cavilier210]

Where? I have yet to see it. Turret armor, the part, is not what I'm talking about.

 

[Meetbolio]

Called Side Armor if I remember correctly...?

 

[Cavilier210]

No. I'll show you here.

See how the whole thing is red? I've had to bolt this assembly more than I have had to bolt any other assembly I have ever built. I place a bolt in one section, and it upsets the balance so much that somewhere else is over stressed. I'm chasing stress around this frame. The other part is the stresses are imbalanced, even though its symmetrical. Minus autobolt joiner plate placement in a few spots.

Plus since its yellow, its not part of the ship frame? Its just very very hard to do this. I don't honestly mind a challenge, and this is better than the last few iterations, but its enough to pull your hair a little lol.

 

[Meetbolio]

Yellow means the frame's a bit weak. Will still work fine, just will break quicker. Green means good, red means that thing's going to fall off

 

[Cavilier210]

I know what they mean. The problem is that there's 8 bolts in half the joiner plates there just to turn the beams yellow (they won't turn green) and then you end up chasing the stress around the frame. The ships frame itself doesn't require this much effort.

 

[CalenLoki]

Yellow means the frame's a bit weak. Will still work fine, just will break quicker. Green means good, red means that thing's going to fall off

That is not correct.
Yellow means that those beams are not part of the frame. They act as any other non-frame component (i.e. plates).
There is no point in using beams on sub-constructs (turrets, doors, ect.), as they don't provide any extra structural benefits.

Non-frame components have certain limited structural integrity based on used material and mass. So attaching small plate to bit one is OK, but attaching big plate to small one is weak. Even if you use the same amount of bolts to attach parent object to the frame.

Attachment plates, when not used as part of the frame, have the lowest possible mass, so are terrible at holding anything.

The best path IMO is trying to keep armour plating connected in as few steps to the frame as possible, starting from bigger ones and going down to smaller.
Turntable -> Large plate -> medium plate -> small plate seems most reasonable.
Turntable -> beam -> attachment -> beam -> attachment -> beam -> attachment -> beam -> plate, not so much.

Frame is the largest group of beams connected by attachment plates, with at least one thruster properly attached via hardpoint.


What I wrote is my observations, not an official statement. So may be incorrect.

 

[dusty]

Echoing what Calen said; my 'subconstruct' builds generally benefit from an extremely lightweight frame (see: as few beams as possible).

 

[Cavilier210]

Ok, I'm giving Calen and Dusty's idea a try here.

 

[Meetbolio]

Alright, guess I was wrong. Sorry about that then.

 

[Cavilier210]

It happens