Stackable Rocket Boosters (SRB)

[Human Person]

Since the last post was in the wrong subforum, I'll start a new development thread here.

The general idea of this mod would be to have SRB segments in the fuel tank section and nozzels in the engines section that you can combine as you wich. The mod shall be very stock alike, the parts I have in mind are:

 

- .625m SRB segments and nozzles (1 high thrust sea level and 1 low thrust vacuum variant)

- 1.25m segments and nozzles (as above plus a gimballing variant)

- 2.5m segments and a nozzle (only a sea level optimized one with gimbal capabilities)

 

I'm completely new to modding and have just tarted out with this. The mod is in its absolute earliest development state, but I hope to make progress soon.

First I make the parts work as I want them, then I'm going to change models and textures. I'm going to post all progress here and will hopefully have a working alpha soon.

I made a copy of the T200 fuel tank and made it hold solid fuel, also I edited the recources config file to add flow to solif fuel (it still can't be manually transfered)

[cakepie]

You might want to be really careful with changing flow modes here.

Suppose I take that craft in your picture, and insert another part (not a fuel tank, but crossfeed capable) between that T-200 and the Flea SRB.
- Does the Flea SRB still draw fuel from the T-200?
- Is that what you want?

[Human Person]

Quote

You might want to be really careful with changing flow modes here.

Suppose I take that craft in your picture, and insert another part (not a fuel tank, but crossfeed capable) between that T-200 and the Flea SRB.
- Does the Flea SRB still draw fuel from the T-200?
- Is that what you want?

@cakepie

1. Yes

2. No, but I could live with it.

Do you have a better solution? Is there a way to set crossfeed rules for special types of fuel, so that Solid Fuel can only be crossfed through SF Segments?

I changed this from "NO_FLOW" to

 

Edited June 21, 2017 by Physics Student

[artwhaley]

You could create your own resource so that only your engine nozzles would draw it?   SRBFuel or something of the like?   

[cakepie]

@Physics Student It's not the first time this has been requested / attempted, so you could look into what has been done before.

• Here is discussion about another mod that implemented it similar to what you did.
• Here is another discussion, that leads to...
• Here is the dev thread of an abandoned mod that managed to get quite far with the concept. Some implementation pitfalls discussed here by the mod author.
  The github is here, but unfortunately the license (as per dev thread) is ARR, which means you can't reuse or derive from it.

You'll likely need custom code to get the "correct" behavior.

Edit: there's also another approach for "I want a customizable amount of solid fuel but I don't like using tweakables because of wasted empty space in the tank" -- procedurally generated parts.
Lineage: StretchySRB -> Procedural Parts (swamp_ig) -> Procedural Parts (OtherBarry) -> Procedural Parts (Starwaster)

 

Edited June 21, 2017 by cakepie

[Human Person]

Thanks @artwhaley and @cakepie!

Yup, I simply defined a new type of fuel, that worked. Next up will be modeling and texturing, I'll watch a few tutorials for that.

Edited June 21, 2017 by Physics Student

[Human Person]

I'm getting familiar with blender. It's gona take a bit to get going with it. One of the Bolts holding the nozzle is croocked.

 

Edited June 22, 2017 by Physics Student

[Pretorian28715]

Hi,

Take a look at this, it's old, but the SRB's did what you are trying to do. it's also un-maintained, so the author might allow you to revive it

Also please, as I liked it, just think it needed a balancing pass. but so much has changed since then, might need more now.