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[Minimum KSP: 1.12.2] Heisenberg - Airships Part Pack


Angelo Kerman

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On 1/8/2017 at 8:09 PM, Angel-125 said:

Say what? You need the Hooligan Labs Airships mod in addition to the Firespitter mod.

Heisenberg 2.1.6 is now available.

- Updated crash tolerances for the Flight Deck System (FDS) parts.
- FDS Type 1 and Type 2 extension parts now have symmetry enabled.
- The GondoLab's Geology Lab can participate in Pathfinder's Gold Strike mini-game.
- The GondoDrill can convert Gold Strike resource lode resources from Ore.

 

Thank you soo much. I was really bummed when I couldn't use the airship that I had wanted since I started ksp. And now I can!

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On 23.02.2017 at 7:26 PM, Angel-125 said:

Your logs indicate a lot of NREs with JSI RPM.

 

I believe, I've managed to find the source of the problem. It was not in RPM itself, but in VesselViewer for RPM.

Edited by Shnyrik
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On 3/1/2017 at 4:20 PM, DerekL1963 said:

Just curious...  Why does the authority limiter on the HL-10 rudder go into negative numbers?

That allows you to force a control surface to work backwards from how KSP thinks it should work.

You generally won't ever want to do this unless you know why you want to do it.

Edited by RoboRay
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lDT3ntb.png

It takes a couple of clicks with the offset tool to fair them neatly into the hull (which is to be expected, you don't know what radial position they'll be installed in), but the result is seriously sweet looking.  I've got a couple of different configurations to try to see what works best for Norge, but it'll be worth it.  (And takes a fraction of the time that all those tiny NF panels do! :) )

Kudos and thanks!

Edited by DerekL1963
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38 minutes ago, RB101 said:

Bug report:

The "reconfigure storage" for the envelopes is retarded, the battery option always gets replace by inventory upon loading the ship into the world. please fix this.

That could be stated a bit nicer, but I've been seeing similar behavior with the Buffalo chassis segments for a while now.  I hadn't reported because I haven't had a chance to do more than notice it was happening - I wanted to check for interactions a bit first.

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2 minutes ago, DStaal said:

That could be stated a bit nicer, but I've been seeing similar behavior with the Buffalo chassis segments for a while now.  I hadn't reported because I haven't had a chance to do more than notice it was happening - I wanted to check for interactions a bit first.

Sorry, wasn't intending it to be rude or anything, I just didn't want to put unnecessary guff that may cause anyone reading it to misinterpret what it was about :) 

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44 minutes ago, RB101 said:

Bug report:

The "reconfigure storage" for the envelopes is retarded, the battery option always gets replace by inventory upon loading the ship into the world. please fix this.

User report: attitudes like this get an automatic ignore for any future support "requests." Do yourself a favor and uninstall my mods.

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6 hours ago, Angel-125 said:

User report: attitudes like this get an automatic ignore for any future support "requests." Do yourself a favor and uninstall my mods.

.

 

Edited by RB101
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55 minutes ago, Violet_Wyvern said:

In my opinion, the flight deck not only can being used as a carrier deck, but can also service as a good raised platform.

I made this steampunky airborne battleship for example...

That is just too darn cool! :)

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5 hours ago, RB101 said:

Apologies, it was not my intention to offend, I did clarify to someone that I wasn't attempting to be rude :)

In hindsight I can see why my comment came across as rude (again sorry about that) with the use of the word "retarded"

So just to clarify it's use, I was using the word "retarded" as in the transitive verb" seen here: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/retard#Verb ,

English wasn't my strongest subject unfortunately, but I intended no ill will here, my social autism doesn't help at the best of times either.

Again, really sorry about this.

 

You would not believe the number of people who've complained about this mod, so when somebody comes at me with words like "retarted" I get pretty testy. I'd definitely appreciate kinder words in the future to avoid misunderstandings. :) I'll look at the issue but thus far I haven't seen any problems.

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I’ve made some more test flights (this is very much like the real airship carriers history: a lot of tests, very promising results and total restructuring after each flight :wink:) But the more I rebuild, the more experience I get. So, a few more airship-user notes :)

Spoiler

As soon as you start using heavy aircraft (I mean, anything heavier than stick and cloth pre-WWII biplanes :)) you immediately face two severe problems: lack of space and light weight.

In spite of their great size and great weight, the flying behemoths are actually much lighter than any naval aircraft carrier. And that means they are very sensitive to the balance issues. Especially if you use side elevators.

W0y7wq8.jpg

Here you can see how this 10-ton Corsair rotates the flying carrier just by standing on the elevator to the left from the center of mass.

The obvious decision is to parry that oscillation using ballast tanks. What can I say. Despite the obviousness, this is not a very good idea :)

First of all, you will never pump the exact amount of fuel to compensate the weight of the plane, so you will still get some oscillations. Second, the process of pumping fuel in and out is actually longer than elevator operations. So you’ll have to pump fuel (and during this operation the dirigible will roll to the side, where your tanks are located), then climb the skewed flight deck with your plane, then wait, while the dirigible rotates back, lift up the elevator, and then do all those operations in reverse order. Long and tedious. And by the way dangerous: you’ll have to switch vehicles to pump and your uncontrolled plane might slip off the elevator pad.

What can we do instead? Instead we can use the weight of the plane itself to compensate the rotation.

You should remember, that there actually is no danger of turning the dirigible upside down just by moving planes on top of it’s flight deck (of course, if those planes are not super heavy :), the dirigible will rotate only to a certain degree and then stop. Besides, it is very large and inert, so the rotation will be slow.

kHOyDsL.jpg

So, if you act fast, the airship will not have time to rotate too much. And if you have a parking pad on the opposite side from the elevator (just like I do on this heavily modified Diamond’s sistership KAS “Emerald”), then you can drive your plane there and make the airship rotate the opposite direction.

0IASZcE.jpg

You can make this process even more fast and convenient if you use motorized wheels from KerbalFoundries mod and if you assign your elevator to an action group and then control it remotely by Radio-GAGA from SmartParts mod.

gGjpT7n.jpg

Another problem is the size of your hangars. Well, what can I say, use InfernalRobotics to fold wings and even your tailfin. And get some practice in cramped parking :)

YGm9NfS.jpg

Elevators are also a bit of a problem. They only seem big and wide. When you put a jet fighter on one of them, you will not be so optimistic :)

riMVmXR.jpg

You can stack two common elevators together to get some more space. This decision, unfortunately, has one serious minus: it steals your hangar space. If you are concerned about that, then side elevator is your best friend. It allows lifting a bit bigger planes than it’s common colleague.

qj5VWDe.jpg

The airship carrier flight decks are also much-much shorter and narrower then the flight deck of even the world’s smallest navy aircraft carrier – Thai “Chakri Naruebet”, not mentioning gigantic atomic carriers (you can download the model of “Enterprise” with the Aircraft Carrier Accessories mod and compare yourself).

What can we do here? Well, of course, one of the possible solutions is to use helicopters or VTOL planes. But what if we need something bigger and faster? In that case naval carriers use ski-jumps and catapults. We can even combine :)

jdW7XAl.jpg

The yellow square is the catapult from Aircraft Carrier Accessories mod downscaled to 50% by TweakScale. Together with ski-jump and afterburning Panther jet it can accelerate this Corsair to takeoff speed.

YsqBUl0.jpg

Whew!

iex55No.jpg

Of course, you can just put more engines on your craft and it will always take off even without those accessories :)

G2TxEXF.jpg

Landing is the most serious problem. Here I can offer just one solution: use the only advantage flying carrier has over it’s waterfowl brothers – it’s speed. Actually, kerbal airships can fly at speeds compared with landing speeds of most jet planes.

And one more advise – after you landed plane on a moving airship do not park the airship immediately, let it stop slowly first, or inertia will launch your plane back to orbit :)

 

Edited by Shnyrik
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@Shnyrik: Very nice! You always have great airship advice. :) To alleviate some of the issues, I have considered making a follow up mod with generic hangar panels and elevators and such to let you build hangars and craft of any desired size. Imagine a series of panels similar to aircraft wings that you click together to form your hangar. Some of the parts are elevators, some are doors, some are end caps. You would then attach airship hulls to make truly enormous flying aircraft carriers. :) Part of the idea comes from watching @Kuzzter build his Intrepid from stock parts, and seeing the struggle to get auxiliary craft to fit- of course that is part of the fun.. The other inspiration is to reduce part count and lag when making really big craft.

Well, gotta finish up Buffalo Wings so I can finally take my airship and go explore Kerbin...

Edited by Angel-125
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10 minutes ago, Supercheese said:

I bet it would make the rotation issues and such a lot easier if the hangars opened downwards and you could use trapezes to dock on the underside of the airship -- just like in real life! :)

Easy to do, just flip the hangar hull upside down, and you're good to go. :)

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14 hours ago, Supercheese said:

I bet it would make the rotation issues and such a lot easier if the hangars opened downwards and you could use trapezes to dock on the underside of the airship -- just like in real life!

Actually, it would only if you place trapezes under the line of symmetry :)

You might also want to add deploy limits to hangar part's animation so that it looked more like the real Akron's hangar.

 

This design, unfortunately, has some severe limitations. You'll have to have a slow plane without a risk of stall at typical dirigible speeds. You'll have to dock in motion all the time, without even a chance to land on a parked airship. And, finaly, in-flight docking would require much more precise maneuvering, than landing on even a small deck.

Hmm, but, of course, nothing stops you from trying to dock a hovering VTOL plane to parked airship from beneath :wink:

Edited by Shnyrik
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@Angel-125  Could you, please, consider in some future release making flag on rudder part togglable name plate just like on other HL-10 parts? This could be very convenient for putting flags on both upper and lower airship’s fins. With current flag mechanics one, unfortunately, has to select either upper, or lower stabilizer, for on the other part flag would be turned upside down.

Edited by Shnyrik
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