salsathegeek

So, after some research, I've found that I should have modeled it in a different orientation. Now that I know that, time to see if I can do a better job this time around.

So, there's issues, but before i get into them. Woo! It's in the game! Even better! It works! ish. So there's a couple of issues with it. The first is the collision mesh, and the second is all the screwed up stuff in the config. I'm not even sure that the emissives are working correctly, for example (though that's mainly because of the collision mesh) I also apparently royally messed up the orientation on this thing. It's hard to tell because it's so small, but it's supposed to be pointing nozzle up. Instead, it's pointing to the left. Thankfully, it's a square from the side, and since the plume seems to be right (if waaaaaay too big.) It also seems my fears about this being fiddly as all get out are well founded. I'm going to have to see what I can do to minify the node sizes in the VAB. But that's a problem for tomorrow's Salsa. This Salsa is going to be proud he figured out how to do this and go relax. There's a GIT repository for those that want to take a look and tell me everything I did wrong. You can find it up above in the first post or here. Honestly, I could use all of the help I can get. I've included the source files and the GameData files if you want to see (Also included the unity project used to get the thing into KSP. Oops.) Right now, my priority is to get the engine working. After that, I'm going to sit down and nail down how I need to structure this project so I don't keep worrying about if I've got things in the right place.

Okay, this is odd. I was planning on backing some AO into the texture to give the part around the Ion engine some depth, and this happened when I tried to bake it. Anyone have any ideas what's going on? The glow mesh is black though it should be white to gray and there's this big black circle that matches the hole for the ion engine. No clue how it got there, either. I think I'll just save it for later and just try getting the texture painted.

I'll be shooting for Stock-a-like textures at least until I get some skill at it, then I'll probably go with Restockalike as a variant. I'm not sure about BDB. It feels like their supposed to be stock-a-like, but they feel off. As for the tanks and other bits, I'm going to be getting rid of the interiors. I wasn't really happy with the way the supports came out for the profile with the recesses anyway.

@Tirehtoori R.I.P The videos have made my day. they're just so silly to me that I can't help but smile.

That's one reason, but the idea is that these would only be about ten or twelve parts apiece. The're small, sure, but I think it'll be easy enough to assemble, and you can make a subassembly for the base satellite and just add the mission-specific stuff once you have it added to your craft. I think this is going to be the smallest I go at any rate. I'd like for these to be general purpose and much smaller would make it way too fiddly without getting into very specialized and complex parts, I think. If SCANSat integration doesn't look too difficult, I may tackle that once the phase 1 release is done. More progress on the tanks. The second image has the previous version for reference. Okay, I like these new tanks a lot more. The downside is they have a lot of polys. The 10cm tank has about 1100 tris and the 20cm tank has about 1900 tris. That's a bit much for detail that's going to be hidden I think and I still have done the bracing around the tanks. I've got a couple of options, I think. Ditch the detail and imply the structure through less demanding means. Do 1, but keep the detailed version as a variant tank. Keep on with this version and accept that it's going to be heavy. Personally, I'm leaning towards 1 with 2 as a distant second, but maybe I'll feel differently when I've slept on it.

I think it's fine. The issue with what @nmc was saying we could do is that it's not as compact nor would it look as nice. I would guess that structural parts like this aren't as hard to maintain, but I don't know for sure. And thanks for the kind words. It's not going to be coming soon, but I'm making progress on the FlatPakSats. I'm going to try and get enough parts to have a bare minimum for the pack to start testing over the weekend. Looking forward to seeing what comes up next.

Eventually, but not for a little while. I still need to work on the Phase 1 stuff. Glad to know I'm not the only one who's been wanting a small satellite platform to use for their games. Makes me more confident that I have a good niche to fill!

Cool. It looks good, which is making me nervous about my mod. ^^;

Okay, redid some work, but I'm much happier with how this is turning out. From top to bottom these are roughs for the tanks, the RCS thruster module, and the ion engine. Behind the parts you can see the reference for the profile of these parts and to the left is a 50cm long, 62.5 cm diameter cylinder (Size 0 in the game) used mainly to show how small these parts are. I'm shooting to keep a complete satellite about 60 to 70 cm long, but we'll see how that works out. One thing I am happy about is that the design of the RCS thruster module means that you only need eight ports to get full control. It's also large enough that I could add a monoprop tank in there and not have to worry about if it'd be realistic. Next up is figuring out how to add some interest to the connection faces and what detail to add to the engine module. I think I'm going to be working on a support frame for the tanks as well. Speaking of, the cutout in the top and bottom of the tank part is for letting communications antennae and solar panels lay flat while this is being launched and deployed.

Sorry for the double post. I missed this the first time. It's this one.Very much a work in progress at the moment. I wanted to make a set of parts that'd work for a Starlink-style deployment and figured that 31.25 cm x 10 cm was a good size for the profile.

Noice. Is the big one you're making also going to be hubless?

Cool! I remember that being the showstopper when you were working on it then. I'm looking forward to seeing it in action again. Well, back to redoing the ion engine for my mod. Wasn't happy with how things were going with it.

Wow, I just had visions of bushbots go running and exploding through my head. Looking forward to seeing these get added. I'm also happy to hear about the wheels. Would that also include the Mecanum ones that you teased a long time ago?

Nice. I'll be looking at this for my own game when it's released. I think the parts would look a little better if you domed the bulkhead some to keep it from looking flat. That would increase the polycount, but not by much.