cdm86

I did some more testing. It may not be part count after all. More like part count vs mass or something like that. Observations: 1) Using a tank of fuel (or ore) to adjust the amount of mass of a craft can start and stop the shaking. The shaky craft from my previous post stops shaking when all ore is removed from its tank. It also stops shaking if another tank of fuel is added to it (a sufficiently large one). 2) Adjusting the fuel in the second tank to where the craft has just enough fuel to not shake and then burning of the fuel with an engine does NOT make the craft start shaking. @Atario You said your bases exploded when you switched to them after having built them? It (or none of them) exploded while building them, only when reloading them after they were previously assembled?

If I may ask a question about that... What is your part make up of your bases? Specifically how many physics-less parts compared to how many 'non-physics-less' parts? You may be able to 'fix' your base by adding parts actually (parts effected by physics). So long as your Computer can handle it I guess. (note: actually don't do that, remove physics-less parts instead, I just wanted to intrigue the reader) I'll make some pictures of some wheeled vehicles I was tinkering with to show what I mean. I made these vehicles to be about the same size but with differing part counts. In design 1 I used small struts, in design 2 i used larger struts. Both designs are roughly the same size. The ore canister in the middle is full. The fuel tanks I latter added to stop shakiness are empty. A shaky rover - prograde marker not in picture because it is flying around wildly - vehicle shakes until a wheel brakes A slightly shaky rover - it settles after a few seconds after launch - pro-grade marker wiggles a little and slightly off center in image Added empty fuel tanks to design 2 - no shakiness at launch - pro-grade marker still slightly off center but less so Added alot of empty fuel tanks to design 1 - no shakiness at all - pro-grade marker dead center The Take Away: The kraken hates physics-less parts and tugs at them continuously. By shifting the balance of physics-to-non-physics parts towards physics parts shaky kraken doom can be averted.

RemoteTech has some dish type antennas which have to be oriented. linky linky Normally though you orient them by telling them where to point. I do not know if it would work by "manually" adjusting the orientation of the craft they are on. The relevant part of the description on its github reads as such: Now "not need to be physically rotated" does not necessarily mean "physical rotation would also work". If I were to code such a mod, I would probably simply have dishes set to pretend to be pointing at a target and then calculate the FoV and distance from the craft to the target for connection logic. This would also get around certain limitations of the game such as physics and thus current rotation not being calculated for far away craft. Maybe you are already aware of this because you noticed that f.e. solar panels sometimes magically work while the craft they are on are on the night side of a body because the last time physics was calculated for them was when the craft was on the day side, at least I believe this to currently be the case. But how it actually works I do not know.

...well I was still motivated and thought I could do better. craft file here 28 parts now, removed science jr and tweaked everything a little I realized when I actually tried using my previous plane in a career game that one science part and no antenna really isn't all that efficient, but with an antenna and a science part or two science parts its possible to do 3 or more contracts per flight. It also goes much faster at altitude now and a zoom climb now makes sense. Edit: After flying it for a bit longer I realized that the plane is very difficult to land. While reexamining it again I noticed I had pitched the tail down instead of up as I had intended ( which explains many tail explosions ). I also realized I had left the engines more or less untouched in the configuration I had use on the previous plane. Now on that plane I had tried to keep adjustments as simple as possible and only did 5 deg increment changes (shift rotate with angle snap) which had brought me to a config in which the engines themselves were slightly angled. Now that the plane goes faster it would be good to straighten them out in regards to the pitch the plane holds when flying at altitude to gain speed. I guess this means a version 3 which may go still higher might be made over the weekend.

First post. Be gentle. craft file here MODs FAR (dev build as of 30th Jan 2017 version file lists it as 0.16.0.0) Built in the SPH in KSP version 1.2 max altitude 18.6km Part Count 29 Length 11m Width 19.5m Height 3.7m Mass 4.395t Cost 13,515 Will require runway level 2 to launch Not pretty but uses low tech to get to above 18 km alt. to complete those pesky "above xxx" altitude contracts. Be sure to add the right science part as 30th part to be able to do the contract. During take off you can throttle all the way up, but should throttle down once the plane gets shaky after having gained some speed. Just continue the ascent at lower throttle till ~8 km alt at which point you can throttle up again. It may start shaking again once you've picked up more speed, just throttle down a little again and wait to ascend to thinner air again before throttling up again. Around 15-16 km alt. the plane will start pitching down, deploy flaps to (1) and it will continue ascending to around 18.4 km alt. where the engines will be suffocated. It will continue to coast upwards on speed till about 18.6 km alt. I guess you could: - turn on RCS at some point to gain extra speed edit: noticed thusters are further up in the tech tree. (probably have to readjust CoM / Col / CoT for the next two) - take out some fuel to make the plane lighter - remove/replace the middle sience jr. and go slightly higher ... but oh well. Was looking for something like this. Didn't find it. Made it. "Low tech" being nothing above Basic Science and Aviation. I guess I really should have left the science jr. out...