[WIP][1.8.x] SSTULabs - Low Part Count Solutions (Orbiters, Landers, Lifters) - Dev Thread [11-18-18]

[tater]

Just leaving this here for future reference...

Need a time sink? http://paul-lloyd.deviantart.com/gallery/ Awesome work!

 

[Vrana]

Concerning the latest release - 0.5.33.127.

 

It seems several parts are missing textures. They are: SC-D-CM Reentry Module, SC-D-LAS Launch abort system and the SC-D-SM-Service module. Other then being texture-less the parts appear fine.

 

Can someone confirm this is actually the case and i didn't somehow fudge my install? I guess it might also be possible these parts are unfinished and this is normal, first time i am using this mod.

[Sudragon]

If I could claim befuddlement...

Upgrades for things like the custom decoupler. I cant seem to find them in the tech tree.
Lower fairings on fuel tanks. Still a thing? Is there an upgrade node?

[Zaphod12]

I also had the problem of many parts being invisible in the editor, also, using TweakScale, I only could make the parts smaller, not bigger.

[pheenix99]

Are the station segments still "unfinished prototypes" as indicated in their descriptions? They appear finished.

[Temeter]

3 hours ago, Vrana said:

Concerning the latest release - 0.5.33.127.

 

It seems several parts are missing textures. They are: SC-D-CM Reentry Module, SC-D-LAS Launch abort system and the SC-D-SM-Service module. Other then being texture-less the parts appear fine.

 

Can someone confirm this is actually the case and i didn't somehow fudge my install? I guess it might also be possible these parts are unfinished and this is normal, first time i am using this mod.

You mean the parts that have wip and untextured in their description? Oo

[Vrana]

Just now, Temeter said:

You mean the parts that have wip and untextured in their description? Oo

 

I guess there's a lesson in this about reading first or something similar...

 

 

Anyway, thanks for the help. Issue resolved.

[Temeter]

1 minute ago, Vrana said:

Anyway, thanks for the help. Issue resolved.

No problem

Edited October 18, 2016 by Temeter

[Jimbodiah]

The shipcore D parts are placeholders I think, no textures to begin with despite others that went missing in the last version.

Regarding station parts, they work fine except there are no longer any nose/mount options like in the 1.1.3 version.

[tater]

7 minutes ago, Jimbodiah said:

Regarding station parts, they work fine except there are no longer any nose/mount options like in the 1.1.3 version.

Yeah there are.

It's not a pull-down any more, it's in the list, "select top" and "select bottom." You then get a list with icons that show the adapters.

[Jimbodiah]

Color me stupid then, I'll see how I missed that.

[Shadowmage]

7 hours ago, Vrana said:

Concerning the latest release - 0.5.33.127.

 

It seems several parts are missing textures. They are: SC-D-CM Reentry Module, SC-D-LAS Launch abort system and the SC-D-SM-Service module. Other then being texture-less the parts appear fine.

 

Can someone confirm this is actually the case and i didn't somehow fudge my install? I guess it might also be possible these parts are unfinished and this is normal, first time i am using this mod.

SC-D are placeholder parts, and as such have no textures (yet).

 

5 hours ago, Sudragon said:

If I could claim befuddlement...

Upgrades for things like the custom decoupler. I cant seem to find them in the tech tree.
Lower fairings on fuel tanks. Still a thing? Is there an upgrade node?

Decouplers use the... fairing upgrade I think?  I dunno, would have to look in the file....

Yep, they use the fairing upgrades:

	UPGRADES
	{
		UPGRADE
		{
			name__ = SSTU-FR-D1
			maxDiameter = 2.5
		}
		UPGRADE
		{
			name__ = SSTU-FR-D2
			maxDiameter = 3.75
		}
		UPGRADE
		{
			name__ = SSTU-FR-D3
			maxDiameter = 6.25
		}
		UPGRADE
		{
			name__ = SSTU-FR-D4
			maxDiameter = 10
		}
	}

Will probably be making a structural/decoupler specific upgrade part/path, but did not have time to sort that out for the initial releases.

 

5 hours ago, Zaphod12 said:

I also had the problem of many parts being invisible in the editor, also, using TweakScale, I only could make the parts smaller, not bigger.

Tweakscale is neither supported nor needed with my parts.  If one of my parts doesn't support scaling, there is usually a darn good reason for it.

Invisible parts -- github issue?  Have not seen any issue tickets on that problem in the latest release.  Also, make sure you are using the release posted yesterday, as the one from Sunday did have a few problems.

 

 

4 hours ago, pheenix99 said:

Are the station segments still "unfinished prototypes" as indicated in their descriptions? They appear finished.

Yes, they are still WIP -- only the most basic of things on them is 'finished', and in most cases nothing is finished or finalized.  Even the textures are not done, zero of them have been finished for the station parts.

Just because they are usable does not mean they are done or as I intend them to be when finished.

12 hours ago, Temeter said:

Seems like I found an actual bug now:

When you switch a standard tank to 0.25 or 0.75m, then body type and v scale vanish. Options still seems to get applied if you changed those values at other sizes (at least cry tank type, cry frame switched back to cryo normal).

 

Indeed, those two tank sizes do not support scaling.  The other body variant types also don't exist in those lengths - so the buttons disappear as there is nothing to switch to at that length.

Sounds like it is all working as intended.

[tater]

Some giant-sized versions of standard KIS containers would make this look about spot on (just needs a hatch, and I need to bump the tank length up)---obviously better legs would help rather a lot.

Edited December 19, 2017 by tater

[tater]

For the craft above, I used a 3 engine cluster. Why are there 2 gimbal controls on the right-click for that cluster?

[blowfish]

1 minute ago, tater said:

For the craft above, I used a 3 engine cluster. Why are there 2 gimbal controls on the right-click for that cluster?

Is it an RS-68?  If so, one is for the main nozzle and one is for the roll control nozzle

[tater]

9 minutes ago, blowfish said:

Is it an RS-68?  If so, one is for the main nozzle and one is for the roll control nozzle

A Merlin, actually.

[Shadowmage]

17 minutes ago, tater said:

For the craft above, I used a 3 engine cluster. Why are there 2 gimbal controls on the right-click for that cluster?

Hmm.. there probably shouldn't be.  I can't really tell from the image -- what engine is it?

I had thought I had moved all of the vernier enabled engines to use a single gimbal.  Err.. scratch that.  They use a single ModuleEngines, but may use multiple gimbals.

^^ That would apply to the Merlin 1 A/B (have gimbal on the exhaust nozzle for roll control), RS-68, and RD-107/108.

Edit:  Ninja'd while I was talking to the boss....

Edited October 18, 2016 by Shadowmage

[tater]

Control was a little wonky, frankly, it was wobbling a lot. Engine was a Merlin 1A.

I might do some lander tests tonight using the ones with 2 gimbals and compare vs identical craft with just 1. The craft seemed to roll, and not want to lock down onto retrograde SAS (set to surface for landing).

[Shadowmage]

Just now, tater said:

Control was a little wonky, frankly, it was wobbling a lot. Engine was a Merlin 1A.

Yeah, they have actual thrust coming from their turbo exhaust nozzle.  With three engines it should be symmetrical and stable; but with a single engine it helps to align the exhaust nozzle with the pitch axis ( pitch instability is less noticeable during ascent than yaw instability).

Also, MechJeb really -hates- the 'useGimalSpeed' setting that I use on gimbals -- seems to create a lot of wobbles with any engines where it is enabled.  Quite likely the stock SAS suffers from this problem now as well.  Seems that the PID cannot handle the delayed response very well.

18 hours ago, GoldForest said:

Is the SSTU -ST-GEN - DSP-DOS-T solar panel supposed to be broken? One of the inner panels is rotated about two to four degrees outward while the others stick straight out.

No, it is not supposed to be.

Unity however has some sort of hate for the animation that I'm using for that part.  Works fine in blender, but as soon as I import it into Unity everything goes jittery and misaligned.

And as it is a Unity problem, it means I need to have access to my home computer (with KSP and Unity on it), -and- have a couple of hours to sit down and dig into it.  Sadly I have not had that kind of time recently, not that I could dedicate to tracking down an aesthetic problem anyhow (was a choice between packing up a release for 1.2, or fixing the solar panels -- figured you guys would rather have a 1.2 release, even if the panels are a bit... wonky).

[tater]

I don't have anything on my SSTU test build right now (not even KER!  ) so I presume it's a stock issue.

Completely aside from SSTU, I wonder if that Boeing design has rails that lower the cargo pods to the ground, then leaves them...

I'm already thinking ahead to EPL-type stuff (I honestly love precision landings on airless worlds---heck, I love "pure" spacecraft).

Edited October 18, 2016 by tater

[Temeter]

The statins parts and solar panels are awesome!

(especially when the module finally docked; after a bit of an odyssey that included rendeszevousing the wrong spacestation :^)

3 hours ago, Shadowmage said:

Indeed, those two tank sizes do not support scaling.  The other body variant types also don't exist in those lengths - so the buttons disappear as there is nothing to switch to at that length.

Sounds like it is all working as intended.

Things that struck me as weird is that scaling/tank type settings I modified beforehand were still affecting them to some degree (changing size and color). Functionally it's working just fine tho, I agree it doesn't really matter.~

Edited October 18, 2016 by Temeter

[Shadowmage]

24 minutes ago, tater said:

I don't have anything on my SSTU test build right now (not even KER!  ) so I presume it's a stock issue.

Completely aside from SSTU, I wonder if that Boeing design has rails that lower the cargo pods to the ground, then leaves them...

I'm already thinking ahead to EPL-type stuff (I honestly love precision landings on airless worlds---heck, I love "pure" spacecraft).

Hehe, was just thinking that those side-containers looked to be mounted on decouplers.  Seems logical that they would leave them behind; less mass to lift back to orbit... unless they needed them on-orbit for some reason.

On a semi-related note -- I do plan on making a couple of generic container type 'tanks' at some point.  Haven't quite nailed down what their geometry will be -- would like at least 2-3 variants (standard octogonal, and a couple slightly irregular shapes).

 

11 minutes ago, Temeter said:

The statins parts and solar panels are awesome!

 

(especially when the module finally docked; after a bit of an odyssey that included rendeszevousing the wrong spacestation :^)

Things that struck me as weird is that scaling/tank type settings I modified beforehand were still affecting them to some degree (changing size and color). Functionally it's working just fine tho, I agree it doesn't really matter.~

That may be a bit of a bug on the rescaling -- I likely didn't check to revalidate the current 'scale' setting when the tank was changed.  Should be easy enough to fix up.

Textures should still be available even on those two odd tank sizes -- they use the same textures as everything else; there just aren't multiple body variants.

Edited October 18, 2016 by Shadowmage

[Temeter]

3 minutes ago, Shadowmage said:

That may be a bit of a bug on the rescaling -- I likely didn't check to revalidate the current 'scale' setting when the tank was changed.  Should be easy enough to fix up.

I see. The v scale option does indeed jump around when it's not 1 and you're changing body size.

[pheenix99]

@Shadowmage I was just concerned about breaking a station built with those components should they be updated to any significant degree..

[Shadowmage]

7 minutes ago, pheenix99 said:

@Shadowmage I was just concerned about breaking a station built with those components should they be updated to any significant degree..

Understood, and it is a valid concern.

Anything with textures should be stable from a model/geometry perspective.  However I would recommend against using any of the StationCore parts in games that you care about as they are still in active development and will almost certainly be seeing other potentially game-breaking/effecting changes (PartModules, mass/cost/crew/balance).

The untextured parts -- those WILL be getting new geometry and major changes to their configs; is part of why they are untextured.  They should be good enough for -testing- purposes, but generally not used beyond that.

As I remove the 'prototype part' stuff from the part descriptions, it generally means that those parts no longer have any planned changes (though sometimes unplanned changes are needed).  I will also add some info/details to the release notes when parts move from prototype to finished/usable, so it is a good idea to keep an eye on the patch notes.  I also try to put warning notes in the patch notes when parts do undergo game-breaking / effecting changes... so one more reason to read those before installing a release (gives you time to de-orbit, remove crew, or plan for replacement craft before installing the update).