What was done in the R/C high performance packs was end soldering. Generally the different classes were pack weight limited and weight generally just made gravity suck harder so less was more. First with NiCad's then with NiMh.
Pre-Tin the ends of the cells with the Fat Iron shown then drop them in a simple jig slide the re tinned iron in between two cells to melt the existing solder (2-3 seconds max because of the tip mass) remove the iron and slap the cells together to solder. Good for a few hundred Amps. Packs shown are the last NiMh Round cell packs I have and are off an old buggy but the same assembly job was used on the sticks of three with a silver bar between them.
Yeah, I used to do that until I broke the cathode caps off some very expensive SANYO cells due to pack flex and crashes. That's when I moved to saddle-packs and brick-packs instead of the dirt-donker dynamite sticks; they allowed you to put the weight where you wanted it. Copper 1mmx13mm shunts FTW, Baybee!!!
mnem
*shunted growth*
When you crashed 200+km/hr plane weighing in at 2.5kg with a 1.1kg 27 cell pack inside, breaking the pack was generally the least of your issues
Oh, NOW you're taking the conversation airborne...
I never was a speed-freak; when I was young and had the reflexes for ducted-fan and turbine craft, I was hopelessly klutzy and inexperienced. I had no interest in the mess and hassle of nitromethane, so I routinely pissed off the old plank-wankers at my local RC airfields, who looked down on anything electric as a "kid's toy", even though electric powerplants were evolving at breakneck speeds. Thank Ifni for Kyosho and to a lesser extent, eFlite...
Anyways when I got back into model RC in my 40s, of course the whole industry had changed. Electric was everywhere, and even the cheap all-plastic basher trucks from Traxxxas were brushless and Li-xx power was taking over everything. I started futzing around with multirotors before the naze32; my interest was in making an AP platform small enough & cheap enough to stuff in a backpack and take anywhere. On that road I got into acro quadcopters; which when engaged in FFF actually fly a lot like a plank, only you can flip and roll at a whim.
Nowadays we have amazingly powerful flight controllers; more sophisticated and reliable than the stuff the government was using on guided missiles just a couple decades ago; most of it developed in ordinary people's garages by amateurs. And of course, while we "quad pilots" used to loathe "fuckwits with Phantoms" pretty much universally for flying in stupid places and then posting videos of their idiocy on social media... the fact is that the dji Mavic is EXACTLY what I was trying to make when I first got back into "little whirry flying things" back then.
You can now buy a perfectly serviceable AP rig with truly noob-friendly UI AND HD camera for $50-100; if you want better quality and higher resolution
all you have to do is spend a little more money.
mnem
Launchpad McQuack is my Spirit Animal.