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Devnote Tuesday: 1.2 is getting ever closer!


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41 minutes ago, KerbMav said:

Something I just remember: What about the rest of the Asteroid Day Mod? Will the DLC be up to date or integrated into stock shortly after 1.2?

I believe Arsonide said something to the effect of "The camera is going to be updated soon" but that could've been for 1.1. They all run together now.

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37 minutes ago, 0111narwhalz said:

I believe Arsonide said something to the effect of "The camera is going to be updated soon" but that could've been for 1.1. They all run together now.

He did, pre-1.1 they said they'd update the mods (the World Cup one and the Asteroid Day one) but nothing has been said since as far as I'm aware.

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@Alshain yes, 5.4 is being used: required for the wheel fixes.

8 hours ago, Temeter said:

Don't think there are many alternatives for a straight, classic rocket, tho. Without auto struts, I had to put octagonal struts and normal struts to stabilize them. That was always a bit bothersome.

There are camera tricks one can use to place struts (and fuel-lines, for that matter) in awkward places. Possibly a little annoying for some, but it's part of the challenge, really.

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3 minutes ago, taniwha said:

@Alshain yes, 5.4 is being used: required for the wheel fixes.

There are camera tricks one can use to place struts (and fuel-lines, for that matter) in awkward places. Possibly a little annoying for some, but it's part of the challenge, really.

True, but you need sooo many, since you can't connect through other parts. E.g., realistically you'd like to connect 2 tanks of the stages between each other, but manually you got to go tank->engine->decoupler->tank. A real rocket would have those supports basically built into the skin I guess, severing them during decoupling.

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I've never* had to put struts on a rocket that looks like a rocket unless I have an interstage payload or I have radial boosters.  In those cases, you should have to put struts on it and it isn't that hard to do and hide it behind the fairing or between the main stack and the booster.  But I never need struts on a standard stack.

 

*Since like 0.21, whenever it was they fixed joint strength.  There was a time when KJR was nearly required, just hasn't been in a long time.

Edited by Alshain
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37 minutes ago, Alshain said:

I've never* had to put struts on a rocket that looks like a rocket unless I have an interstage payload or I have radial boosters.  In those cases, you should have to put struts on it and it isn't that hard to do and hide it behind the fairing or between the main stack and the booster.  But I never need struts on a standard stack.

 

*Since like 0.21, whenever it was they fixed joint strength.  There was a time when KJR was nearly required, just hasn't been in a long time.

Good for you.

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4 minutes ago, Slam_Jones said:

Good for you.

That comes across as a little rude, no? I believe Alshain was merely suggesting that struts are not necessitated by the physics themselves, but rather by the engineering of the craft. Thus, it is not necessarily true that one needs struts for single-stack rockets, and so it is noted that balancing to fit this need would be erronous.

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26 minutes ago, 0111narwhalz said:

I believe Alshain was merely suggesting that struts are not necessitated by the physics themselves, but rather by the engineering of the craft. Thus, it is not necessarily true that one needs struts for single-stack rockets, and so it is noted that balancing to fit this need would be erronous.

Sort of, yes.  But more to the point was I was trying to say that those of us who have been around for a long time remember the days when KJR was pretty much required because joint physics in Unity were awful.  This got patched in one of the Unity 4 builds, I don't know about tater, but there are still some people who have not tried stock KSP without KJR since.  So what I was saying is that it isn't necessary for a standard stack.  Now, if you are building Whackjobian designs, then I can imagine the Autostrut feature is going to be a godsend, but you aren't really going for realism doing that anyway.  I don't enjoy that sort of thing personally, so I haven't needed that many struts.

Edited by Alshain
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@Speadge Thanks for the source. I appreciate it. I wasn't calling you out, just looking for where you heard it so I didn't have to keep tearing my hair out trying to remember.

 

(Thanks to whatever moderator cut out my one-liner asking for source. Unless you didn't, and I just didn't actually submit that comment. It's been a long night.)

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2 hours ago, Alshain said:

Sort of, yes.  But more to the point was I was trying to say that those of us who have been around for a long time remember the days when KJR was pretty much required because joint physics in Unity were awful.  This got patched in one of the Unity 4 builds, I don't know about tater, but there are still some people who have not tried stock KSP without KJR since.  So what I was saying is that it isn't necessary for a standard stack.  Now, if you are building Whackjobian designs, then I can imagine the Autostrut feature is going to be a godsend, but you aren't really going for realism doing that anyway.  I don't enjoy that sort of thing personally, so I haven't needed that many struts.

I have played every new version stock for a bit (a couple hours?), then immediately install KJR. Maybe I was just well-trained in awful joints, but I consider KJR mandatory... maybe it's not any more, I couldn't tell you. I'd argue that it was because of Unity, though, wobbly rockets was a design choice Squad made. 

I sort of agree on radial boosters, but I honestly think that struts are incredibly counterintuitive. On a radial booster in RL, and support struts must have pyrotechnics to sever them if they separate. Struts in KSP are magic, they hold on, or sever. If they are to sever, then they should have a staging icon, and you should either be able to cut any strut at any time, or perhaps select which type in the VAB and be stuck with that choice. 

When I first started playing I never used a strut across a decoupler, for example. Not radials, either. Why? Because the purpose of a struct was to firmly attach stuff, and the part in no way suggests that it can sever the connection.

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1 hour ago, The_Rocketeer said:

Late to the party, I know, but I read this and immediately thought 2 things:

Engines.
Lights,

Whether I agree with his opinion or not, you're misunderstanding it. Engines and Lights would be game features that have on/off as a mechanic, inherent to the feature. You cannot turn engines or lights, as features, off. They are always part of the stock game. (I suppose you can choose to ignore them, but that's also not turning the feature off.)

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44 minutes ago, Conventia said:

Whether I agree with his opinion or not, you're misunderstanding it. Engines and Lights would be game features that have on/off as a mechanic, inherent to the feature. You cannot turn engines or lights, as features, off. They are always part of the stock game. (I suppose you can choose to ignore them, but that's also not turning the feature off.)

Nah, he was basically just saying that the former comment was silly. Which I'd absolutely agree with.

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6 hours ago, tater said:

I sort of agree on radial boosters, but I honestly think that struts are incredibly counterintuitive. On a radial booster in RL, and support struts must have pyrotechnics to sever them if they separate. Struts in KSP are magic, they hold on, or sever. If they are to sever, then they should have a staging icon, and you should either be able to cut any strut at any time, or perhaps select which type in the VAB and be stuck with that choice. 

What you are asking for here (stageable struts) would be far more counter-intuitive, mostly in that they would be a user interface nightmare. Something being a user interface nightmare is one of the few places I'll agree with the gameplay-vs-realism* crowd. Indeed, real struts would have explosive bolts or similar if they were meant to disconnect during staging events, and permanent ones would not. KSP abstracts this away, making it easy to place struts where needed without worrying about whether or not they need to break on staging.

For the record, my understanding is the Unity 4(?) change that allowed for better struts was that ConfigurableJoints allowed both endpoints to be specified (rather than the origin being forced to local 0,0,0) and this allowed for better joints between larger parts (eg, 3 offset joints around the node on size-3 parts), and was implemented in either 0.23 or 0.23.5 (certainly there for 0.23.5 as that's when we got the big parts).

Now, I am not arguing that auto-struts should be removed (they should not), or that KJR is cheating (it's not, and I believe KJR's technique is similar to KSP's large-part joints), but rather that I fully expect anyone relying on auto-struts to run into problems caused by the lack of control in strutting: root part may give sub-optimal strutting, and the most massive part will change as fuel drains (and may give sub-optimal strutting anyway). So... good luck.

* normally a silly concept as gameplay and realism are orthogonal, not mutually exclusive.

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Funny, I've never used/relied on KJR at all*. If my crafts are too floppy, I remake them less floppy, with fewer joints and more struts.

True I'm generally not building thousand-part megaliths, tho. vOv

*It could have made it onto my modlist to test something once, but it sure isn't there now

Edit: @Conventia what Temeter said.

Edited by The_Rocketeer
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3 hours ago, taniwha said:

What you are asking for here (stageable struts) would be far more counter-intuitive, mostly in that they would be a user interface nightmare. Something being a user interface nightmare is one of the few places I'll agree with the gameplay-vs-realism* crowd. Indeed, real struts would have explosive bolts or similar if they were meant to disconnect during staging events, and permanent ones would not. KSP abstracts this away, making it easy to place struts where needed without worrying about whether or not they need to break on staging.

For the record, my understanding is the Unity 4(?) change that allowed for better struts was that ConfigurableJoints allowed both endpoints to be specified (rather than the origin being forced to local 0,0,0) and this allowed for better joints between larger parts (eg, 3 offset joints around the node on size-3 parts), and was implemented in either 0.23 or 0.23.5 (certainly there for 0.23.5 as that's when we got the big parts).

Now, I am not arguing that auto-struts should be removed (they should not), or that KJR is cheating (it's not, and I believe KJR's technique is similar to KSP's large-part joints), but rather that I fully expect anyone relying on auto-struts to run into problems caused by the lack of control in strutting: root part may give sub-optimal strutting, and the most massive part will change as fuel drains (and may give sub-optimal strutting anyway). So... good luck.

* normally a silly concept as gameplay and realism are orthogonal, not mutually exclusive.

I understand the point of the abstraction, actually, and while I even agree it is better in some ways, it is none the less entirely counterintuitive.

This is not a "realism" issue in the least, it's a UI issue. Part descriptions matter, that's a UI issue.

As I said, it never occurred to me to place struts across a separator when I started playing for this reason. They were struts. Had the part description said that when placed between stages they would automatically have explosive bolts, I would have used them that way. Add that line, and we have no disagreement.

It's exactly the same as the lander part descriptions. When a part description says the part cannot possibly survive in an atmosphere, it caused ME to not consider that part for a Duna lander, for example. Ie: I was dumb enough to actually believe the part description. I think that description needs to change, or it should crumple/burn in the early stages of EDL.

Heck, I also put nosecones on rockets from the start (we're talking ~0.24 (.23?) here), because I assumed that should matter (because physics). At the time of course, they didn't matter at all, they were in fact a bad idea because of added mass with no aerodynamic improvement. 

There is a video of a stack of the smallest 1.25m tanks with a mk1 on top, and an engine on the bottom looking like a flying noodle (current version). Assume for the sake of argument that if we were to build an actual rocket this way, that would be realistic. The trouble is that no one would ever actually build a rocket that way. The V-2 wasn't made of stacks of small pieces, and therefor wobbly. No LV I can think of did this, regardless of how early a design it was. The point of the small tanks in career should not be to make new players make absurd contraptions, it should be what I assumed they were for back in the day---small, upper stages. The idea that someone should have to stack 10 tiny tanks, then add "struts" is absurd.

Edited by tater
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6 hours ago, taniwha said:

For the record, my understanding is the Unity 4(?) change that allowed for better struts was that ConfigurableJoints allowed both endpoints to be specified (rather than the origin being forced to local 0,0,0) and this allowed for better joints between larger parts (eg, 3 offset joints around the node on size-3 parts), and was implemented in either 0.23 or 0.23.5 (certainly there for 0.23.5 as that's when we got the big parts).

Went back and looked it up Unity 4.2.2 was implemented in 0.23, however the joint changes were not done until 0.23.5.

2 hours ago, tater said:

There is a video of a stack of the smallest 1.25m tanks with a mk1 on top, and an engine on the bottom looking like a flying noodle (current version). Assume for the sake of argument that if we were to build an actual rocket this way, that would be realistic. The trouble is that no one would ever actually build a rocket that way. The V-2 wasn't made of stacks of small pieces, and therefor wobbly. No LV I can think of did this, regardless of how early a design it was. The point of the small tanks in career should not be to make new players make absurd contraptions, it should be what I assumed they were for back in the day---small, upper stages. The idea that someone should have to stack 10 tiny tanks, then add "struts" is absurd.

I just don't understand how that can be different on different computers though.  I'm not saying it isn't (not calling you a liar), it's just confusing how there is such a massive difference in our experiences.  Here is my Tier 4 payload lifters.  They stack multiple tanks just like you suggest and have decouplers and 0 struts (except the last one which has 2 struts on top of the SRBs).  They are as rigid as a can be.  I can put anything on them I want, within their mass limits as long as it fits in a fairing and isn't too tall (or the payload is strutted).  I don't have pictures of all of them, but I have similar ones in the 2.5m range (Tier 5, not 6).

invVjM1.png

Edited by Alshain
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13 minutes ago, Alshain said:

I just don't understand how that can be different on different computers though.  I'm not saying it isn't (not calling you a liar), it's just confusing how there is such a massive difference in our experiences.  Here is my Tier 4 payload lifters.  They stack multiple tanks just like you suggest and have decouplers and 0 struts (except the last one which has 2 struts on top of the SRBs).  They are as rigid as a can be.  I can put anything on them I want, within their mass limits.  I don't have pictures of all of them, but I have similar ones in the 2.5m range (Tier 5, not 6).

I have not had the experience myself, and I never said I have. I said I saw a video on this forum recently (last few weeks) showing wet noodle rockets in the current version. When 1.1.3 came out, I played briefly in stock, then immediately installed my "won't play without them" mods, which includes KJR, KAC, KER, etc).

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1 minute ago, tater said:

I have not had the experience myself, and I never said I have. I said I saw a video on this forum recently (last few weeks) showing wet noodle rockets in the current version. When 1.1.3 came out, I played briefly in stock, then immediately installed my "won't play without them" mods, which includes KJR, KAC, KER, etc).

Oh, I'm sorry I misunderstood.

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6 minutes ago, tater said:

I have not had the experience myself, and I never said I have. I said I saw a video on this forum recently (last few weeks) showing wet noodle rockets in the current version. When 1.1.3 came out, I played briefly in stock, then immediately installed my "won't play without them" mods, which includes KJR, KAC, KER, etc).

So you did not experience undue bending in your rockets, yet you installed KJR anyway?

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3 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

So you did not experience undue bending in your rockets, yet you installed KJR anyway?

I tested in career. My first launch was a mk1, chute, flea, and some fins (not even needed). Maybe my third might have been a few fleas stacked with separators, and within a few more I had bigger stuff.

I didn't have terribly floppy rockets even in far earlier versions, as I never made anything that looked less like a real rocket than the images posted just above. My usual complaint was that kickbacks required struts---when I first started playing, I tried to make them not bend by placing 2 radial decouplers, one several meters above the other. This made complete sense to me, as I deeded something impermanent, not a strut---because the strut part description doesn't say anything about it separating.

Honestly, after many versions with floppy rockets, I never bothered checking---I check for career improvements, and those never happen, for example. Why would floppy rockets be any better?

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1 minute ago, tater said:

Honestly, after many versions with floppy rockets, I never bothered checking---I check for career improvements, and those never happen, for example. Why would floppy rockets be any better?

If you found them floppy after the last update where they explicityly said they strenghtened them, then no, you shouldn't expect them to be less floppy now. But if you never bothered to test after that then I think you are jumping the gun on installing KJR. I'm in the opposite boat to you, I never used KJR, be it before or after the change in joint stiffness. Of which I think there were two, the most recent in 1.0, though I could easily be mistaken. It was not important to be because a little teeny bend in a rocket (which is what I experienced in all but the most ridiculous rockets) was fine by me.

1 minute ago, tater said:

the strut part description doesn't say anything about it separating.

I can commiserate here. This problem (descriptions - to put it bluntly - sucking) is not limited to struts. I actually think that the fact that all 5 of the early tier "lego" wings have exactly the same completely useless description that says nothing about their size or orientation has done more to keep me from building planes than anything else. If I have to grab more than 2 wrong parts EVERY SINGLE TIME I want to build 1/10th of my wing, I'm going to bail and go back to doing something actually fun.

Last night I actually started work on a ModuleManager config to put better part descriptions on things. I'll make sure to include the disconnectiveness (Look at me making up cromulent words) of struts when I get to them.

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