Boat Building?

[plotz]

Hello everyone,

for quite a while I have been wondering how people manage to build nice and sleek (and quick) boats in KSP. My own attempts so far usually stall at around 5 m/s in the Great Kerbal Seas. Is there any guide or advice on how to make things float in KSP?

Thanks!

[Slam_Jones]

Here's the first successful boat I've built:

The way I went about it was to mainly put structural panels and girders along the bottom (I hear air intakes work just as well, if not better), which, due to their high damage resistance, aren't likely to give in while under way.

Generally, you want to keep all your vital bits (parts with low crash tolerance) above the Center of Mass: as this will usually keep them out of the water.

Also, here's an amphibious rover that I made for a circumnavigation challenge. It uses an Infernal Robotics part (telecoping piston) to extend a monofoil below the rover. This pulls the CoM down and lifts the rover out of the water. It was capable of 40m/s in 0.90... the aero overhaul in 1.0 may have slowed it quite a bit.

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Edited May 19, 2015 by Slam_Jones

[Venusgate]

Bouyancy is a little tricky if you want speed, but generally, look for parts that have a high crash tolerance (40m/s+) and use gobs of those as your water contact surfaces.

This is why many boats in ksp are not pretty

[Geschosskopf]

With stock, you're pretty much limited to hydrofoils using panels and girders. You can get these pretty fast but they won't turn unless you're nearly sitting still. Control surfaces are useless---only torque and RCS seems to work.

There are a number of mods that solve this but most of them make big changes to the buoyancy of other parts (and EVA Kerbals), plus I don't thinky they've been updated to 1.x yet. So that leaves Firespitter, which has pontoons. The pontoons not only float but have rudders that work in water and the option of retractable, powered wheels so you can be amphibious. With them, you can make excellent boats (essentially wingless airplanes) but if you go much over 200m/s, the pontoons explode.