austincurr

First, I want to say I have really been anticipating this and I'm excited to finally get to use it. I do have a few ideas that might make it feel subjectively better to fly. I agree with others that it's too happy to roll the plane and not happy enough to nose down or apply rudder (a perfectly reasonable maneuver to make within limits). I think the amount of maneuvering applied is a bit too much when the mouse is near center, at least on maneuverable planes. It can cause jerking in the intermediate area between full elevator at screen edge to just before you get close to the orientation indicator cursor thing. It works fine for the albatross, for instance, but not as well for fast things with elevators strong enough to make them flex. It doesn't need a big deadzone, the center behavior is nice, but maybe not only lower the sensitivity but dampen any unexpected motion as you approach the center. I'm probably wrong but it feels a bit linear with behavior zones right now. Also, I think the auto-level can be too strong, and might even be nice to fully turn off if the distance from level is more than a certain degree value WRT horizontal- so if you're trying to land or cruise, you'll level, but otherwise it doesn't do anything if you try to fly upside down or something for an extended period. Could make it a smooth gradient? I suppose these sort of preference differences will be the purpose of various behavior profiles. Don't take these suggestions as if I'm saying they're brilliant and this sucks( It's awesome!), only that it seems to make sense to my tired brain to try these out. I'd like to learn to mod KSP, and if I check and you've open-sourced this I'll try it out myself after exams and not bother y'all with it.

Maybe it isn't a good idea to tie all this in with the heat system fully... what about making the heat being generated and used in these devices a resource (some sort of coolant pumped around to transfer heat), and later on add the ability to pull heat from parts and turn it into the heat resource. That could be a function of the radiators maybe.

Slow clap. Well, it could be stirling, but those don't make much power, although they're efficient, so if they were used then there should be other options with more power. If electric, fuel-buring, and stitling motors were added, it would open up a lot of possibilities, and it would be possible to put together, say, a plane powered by a nuclear plant generating heat that runs a stirling engine that turns a propellor. Maybe that's too much to do all at once, but I think that's be a nice goal to aim for? I think other than motors turning parts attached to their nodes, we can do most of this stuff. Infernal robotics has the motors, config editing can make generators turn whatever into whatever, the hardest part would be tying it in with the heat system, right?

Oh, I see an advantage though! What about adding a thermal jet/prop engine? Runs on heat and intakeair, like that one mod. Maybe also add other various stuff like fuel heat generators using intakeair or oxidizer, electric heat generators, etc.

Agreed, except the jokers could be easter eggs, maybe the magic boulder or something... and if number cards are to be astronomical bodies, we need nine bodies. How about 7 planets plus the Mun and Minmus?

Yeah, that seems to be the way at the moment. It's fast, but not convenient if your plans involve flying around kerbin, rather than going to orbit. I find that with the current system it's best to let yourself get a suborbital arc and shut off your engines until you reenter and then do it again if you are trying to circle Kerbin. Oh, as for the shuttle and sr-72, the shuttle used insulation not ablation- the tiles were reusable if they didn't get damaged AFAIK. Ablative heat shields are like what capsules use, and they get used up because the material they are made of actually comes off to carry away the heat, whereas the shuttle just tried to insulate from it long enough to reenter and the jets are built to operate while hot since they are flying around like that not trying to slow down. I'm thinking maybe make the ram air intake and the shock cone intake have even better heat tolerance, and do that to the nosecones too, and it might just be enough.

People have been saying this for as long as I have had the game, and yet there still exist plane parts that aren't for SSTO's. Now that we have contracts, it's obvious by the contracts we receive that some of KSP is actually meant to be exploring Kerbin by air and land. Visiting Gregnor's coral reefs would make as much sense as visiting BillybobBubba Kerman's lake. Why not go fiddle with water a bit? Make water less destructive if nothing else, I hate stuff vaporizing on contact when it would survive on land. If you want to do even more, make lightweight empty parts like the structural mk1 fuselage have good buoyancy, and then add deployable or inflatable floatplane gear. No need for battleships and rudders, the aero parts can be used to steer. No need for complex hydrodynamics right away, just let us try this.

The old engines worked with the old aerodynamics. Interesting. Post release, planes don't have to be built like they used to in order to go 1400m/s on jets, and they can accelerate faster and at lower altitudes. I'll go see what top speed I get on constant thrust nowadays. Okay, by constantly changing the throttle to keep the thrust at around 130 on each turbojet of the Ravenspear Mk1 I got up to 700m/s or so at 20k or so altitude level flight. I imagine a tiny plane like I used to use could do a reasonably good speed like that, but so can a regular sized craft now. Then when I maxed out the throttle, dove for air, and came back up once I had enough speed to ram the air in better at high alt, I got up to 1200 at a 45* angle, and did it much faster than the first time. The higher thrust lets you keep breathing air longer and it's less speed to need to make up with rockets. Space jets go boing boing.You just can't go as fast with low thrust, and it isn't like you can't set the brakes while the engines spool up if you have a particularly heavy aircraft, so thrust at low speed isn't an issue either, the regular engines can take off and accelerate to operating speed on their own generally. Shall I mention again that if the rapiers need turbojets to go with them you might as well use some other rocket engine?

I'll grant you you've edited the first post since I first read it, but I had already seen your precooler idea and I don't agree with it being made necessary, although I'm fine with it having some kind of benefit. Regardless of whether it's realistic in real life, Rapier engines need to keep their one trick intact or they'll be pointless. They need high jet thrust at high speed, high altitude flight. No plane I've made that can do suborbital hops is incapable of takeoff from the runway so in my mind there's just no need for low end thrust that I can see in a spaceplane. If it's not possible to build a spaceplane with only rapiers, I won't see the point of using them, because I could just use two turbojets and a aerospike or something like that rather than two turbojets and a rapier. The center of mass thing was something Gregrox mentioned, not you.

Banned for joining in 2015

Two people have given examples of things they've used ion engines for. Btw, what you are asking for is just a weaker, more efficient nerva except that it requires electricity.

Pcmasterrace incoming!!! reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace Several hundred? Not if you already have a desktop computer to start from. Besides, I think the main reason it couldn't work is that even if all else was good, the ps3 is much weaker than the cheapest computer available, and KSP's physics can't really be simplified to allow it to work, unlike graphics effects and texture size. The new consoles might just barely be able to do it, but they focus more on graphics power than cpu power, so they won't do very well either. Of course, this is just reasons based on the internal hardware- there are probably others, but I am tired and busy, so I'm sorry for not listing them.

banned for being too meta

But if it can produce big performance improvements for some people...

If discovering the heightmap and texture of the body in this way is not acceptable, how about instead (or in addition) let you map the BIOMES so that you know where to go for more science, and maybe even with a notes section so you can note down that you have already been to a given biome or that you need to go back to a biome with your new science equipment. That might be like mapsat- I haven't used it.