[WIP][1.8.x] SSTULabs - Low Part Count Solutions (Orbiters, Landers, Lifters) - Dev Thread [11-18-18]

[Jimbodiah]

@Jiraya  Most parts were changed back from having multiple ports a few versions ago as it was giving issues like not decoupling. You can add a stand-alone sstu port here to complete the part. Plus, I know Mage is not a fan of having multiple copies of the same part  

SSTU also has the welding ports, it just looks a little different. It's called  SSTU-ST-GEN-WDP and can be found together with the other SSTU ports/decouplers.

Edited January 7, 2018 by Jimbodiah

[Jiraiyah]

5 hours ago, Jimbodiah said:

@Jiraya  Most parts were changed back from having multiple ports a few versions ago as it was giving issues like not decoupling. You can add a stand-alone sstu port here to complete the part. Plus, I know Mage is not a fan of having multiple copies of the same part  

SSTU also has the welding ports, it just looks a little different. It's called  SSTU-ST-GEN-WDP and can be found together with the other SSTU ports/decouplers.

great, thanks. the only reason i wanted such a part was that it would be a good starting piece for many different space station designs but i will do what you said.

[Cheesecake]

@Shadowmage Is it possible to build in a taper-diameter to the interstage petal adapter to build a fairing like Saturn IA and Satun IB? Here`s a pic of Bluedogs fairing compared tot the SSTU-petal:

https://imgur.com/a/fjWNX

And do you have some plans for Sepatrons?

 

Edited January 8, 2018 by Cheesecake

[tater]

6 hours ago, Cheesecake said:

And do you have some plans for Sepatrons?

Sepratrons are needed because of problems with KSP more than anything else. I'm happy not to need them any more.

[Cheesecake]

@tater Which problems???

[tater]

Mostly side boosters not properly separating, requiring sepratrons. I've never used any since SSTU.

[Cheesecake]

I don`t understand. For me they work very good and I didn`t use them only for sideboosters instead for the Corestage too to separate it from the upper stage.
Solidfueld Boosters og SSTU have built-in sepatrons but i asked for a separate part.

[Shadowmage]

7 hours ago, Cheesecake said:

@Shadowmage Is it possible to build in a taper-diameter to the interstage petal adapter to build a fairing like Saturn IA and Satun IB? Here`s a pic of Bluedogs fairing compared tot the SSTU-petal:

https://imgur.com/a/fjWNX

And do you have some plans for Sepatrons?

 

Uhh.. pretty sure that capability already exists.   There should be three diameter controls -- bottom, taper, and top.

Separatrons -- nope.  Already have the 'separator' parts that I need (RBDC, ISDC).

[tater]

51 minutes ago, Cheesecake said:

I don`t understand. For me they work very good and I didn`t use them only for sideboosters instead for the Corestage too to separate it from the upper stage.
Solidfueld Boosters og SSTU have built-in sepatrons but i asked for a separate part.

There is a core part as well, you know, right? The ISDC part.

[chrisl]

On ‎1‎/‎5‎/‎2018 at 6:30 PM, Nightside said:

This patch should resize all parts with SSTUModularStationCore to a realistic proportion (1.6x).

Note: it is only tested in ksp 1.3.x, Not sure if it will work in older versions of sstu/ksp.

//Resize SSTU station cores
@PART[*]:HAS[@MODULE[SSTUModularStationCore]]:NEEDS[SSTU]
{
    @MODULE[SSTUModularStationCore]
    {
        @topDiameter *= 1.6 
        @coreDiameter *= 1.6  
        @bottomDiameter *= 1.6 
        @CORE[*]
            {
                @volume *= 1.6 
                @volume *= 1.6 
                @mass *= 1.6
            }
    @SOLAR,*
    {
        @POSITION,0
        {
            @position[*] *= 1.6
            //rotation = 0, 180, 0
            &scale = 1, 1, 1
            @scale[*] *= 1.6
        }
        @POSITION,1
        {
            @position[*] *= 1.6
            //rotation = 0, 0, 0
            &scale = 1, 1, 1
            @scale[*] *= 1.6
        }
    }    
}

This is from my Transmogrifier patches. There is some of this stuff is on my Github, but the SSTU is  WIP so I'm not sure if what is on there is current, might be helpful though. feel free to follow up on the thread in my sig if you have any questions about getting this to work.

I'll definitely give this a try.  Thank you.  One question.  Why do you multiply volume by 1.6 twice?

[Cheesecake]

50 minutes ago, Shadowmage said:

Uhh.. pretty sure that capability already exists.   There should be three diameter controls -- bottom, taper, and top.

Separatrons -- nope.  Already have the 'separator' parts that I need (RBDC, ISDC).

No, there are only a taper hight but no taper diameter. The only diameter-controls are bottom and top.

[Shadowmage]

7 minutes ago, Cheesecake said:

No, there are only a taper hight but no taper diameter. The only diameter-controls are bottom and top.

Oh, right.  Because the part was never intended to be able to 'close'.  The 'top' diameter was supposed to be the taper diameter.

Anyway -- gotta pick your battles.  You want something that you can reconfigure and adjust diameters on... or you want something with a complex form-factor?

Edited January 8, 2018 by Shadowmage

[Nightside]

17 minutes ago, chrisl said:

I'll definitely give this a try.  Thank you.  One question.  Why do you multiply volume by 1.6 twice?

Heh, I'm not totally sure what I was going for there. I think it is leftover from an early attempt to use MM variables so the user could set one value that would affect all parts. Consider it a typo. 

For your case I would suggest setting it directly to some volume (in cubic meters, not liters) of fuel that gives a satisfactory delta-v or find the actual fuel tank volumes on Wikipedia, for similar spacecraft.

[Jimbodiah]

...

I wanted to ask something, but for the life of me can't figure out what it was after I started typing... 

Edited January 8, 2018 by Jimbodiah

[Cheesecake]

1 hour ago, Shadowmage said:

Oh, right.  Because the part was never intended to be able to 'close'.  The 'top' diameter was supposed to be the taper diameter.

Anyway -- gotta pick your battles.  You want something that you can reconfigure and adjust diameters on... or you want something with a complex form-factor?

The only thing I need is an additionally control for taper-diameter.

[chrisl]

3 hours ago, Nightside said:

Heh, I'm not totally sure what I was going for there. I think it is leftover from an early attempt to use MM variables so the user could set one value that would affect all parts. Consider it a typo. 

For your case I would suggest setting it directly to some volume (in cubic meters, not liters) of fuel that gives a satisfactory delta-v or find the actual fuel tank volumes on Wikipedia, for similar spacecraft.

So the resizing works just fine.  I've now got generic space station parts that are sized correctly.  But the mass and volume aren't working correctly.  In the code you provided, you have "@mass *= 1.6".  By default the mass of the ST-DOS-TKS (as shown in "SSTUModularStationCore") is listed at 2.9758.  After the code you provided, it's now listed at 4.76128 which is right.  But in game the mass jumped from 3.348t up to 19.502t (dry mass).  Volume is doing something similar.  I'm guessing that the actual mass and volume are being calculated instead of relying just on the mass and volume keys.  I'm just not sure what it's using to make the calculations.

[Nightside]

2 hours ago, chrisl said:

So the resizing works just fine.  I've now got generic space station parts that are sized correctly.  But the mass and volume aren't working correctly.  In the code you provided, you have "@mass *= 1.6".  By default the mass of the ST-DOS-TKS (as shown in "SSTUModularStationCore") is listed at 2.9758.  After the code you provided, it's now listed at 4.76128 which is right.  But in game the mass jumped from 3.348t up to 19.502t (dry mass).  Volume is doing something similar.  I'm guessing that the actual mass and volume are being calculated instead of relying just on the mass and volume keys.  I'm just not sure what it's using to make the calculations.

Are you sure that is dry mass? RL launch mass of Russian station segments is usually in the neighborhood of 20 tons, but that would include a lot of propellant.  

[chrisl]

8 minutes ago, Nightside said:

Are you sure that is dry mass? RL launch mass of Russian station segments is usually in the neighborhood of 20 tons, but that would include a lot of propellant.  

Yup, I'm sure it's dry mass.  Wet mass was in the 35t neighborhood.  I'm still not exactly sure how the mass is being calculated, but it's definitely got something to do with the "topDiameter", "coreDiameter" & "bottomDiameter" keys and multiplied by the "mass" and "volume" keys.  I ran a number of tests.  I set "@mass = 1.0" and left it there.  Then I started changing the diameter values.  Setting them to "*= 1.0" I ended up with a dry mass of 1.0.  Setting them to "*= 1.1" resulted in 1.331t.  Using "*= 1.2" resulted in 1.728t.  Using "*= 1.3" resulted in 2.197t.  Using "*= 1.4" resulted in2.744t.  Using "*= 1.5" resulted in 3.375t.  Using "*= 1.6" resulted in 4.096t.  If I changed "@mass = x.x" to something other than 1.0, it basically acted as a multiplier.  So in the end I have all the diameters set to "*= 1.6" as you suggested, and I used "mass = 1.6".  The nets me at a dry mass of 6.554t (7.271t after including DOS-M solar panels).

I'm still working on volume.  With "volume = 1.6" I'm getting 5.64kL but because I'm also using RO, that means I'm using ModuleFuelTanks instead of SSTUVolumeContainer so I expected some tweaking to be needed.

[Jiraiyah]

@Shadowmage

Sorry to bother you this way, I have a heavily modded instance and when i run it, there are tons of parts under SSTU name with you as developer that has no models, looking into their configs, the model is set to empty proxy, what is going on? are they parts from an older instance that I derply installed or are they in development and should not be there or should not be used yet? please help

one of them for example is named : SSTU - PC-HECS2

another one : SSTU - SC-GEN - PPC - Custom Probe Core

another example :

Edited January 9, 2018 by Jiraiyah

[Jimbodiah]

Did you install all the directories? This comes up every other page, and I think Mage will come in and say you need to post logs for him to give support

You need these:
\000_TexturesUnlimited
\SSTU
\KSPWHeel

Do a clean install of SSTU.  Also try the latest version of Textture Unlimited (1.0.0.7) as I think there were issues with the one included with the last sstu build (1.0.0.6).  Link to TU

Edited January 9, 2018 by Jimbodiah

[Shadowmage]

1 hour ago, Jiraiyah said:

@Shadowmage

Sorry to bother you this way, I have a heavily modded instance and when i run it, there are tons of parts under SSTU name with you as developer that has no models, looking into their configs, the model is set to empty proxy, what is going on? are they parts from an older instance that I derply installed or are they in development and should not be there or should not be used yet? please help

one of them for example is named : SSTU - PC-HECS2

another one : SSTU - SC-GEN - PPC - Custom Probe Core

another example :

 

The config files are as expected.  KSP mandates that there must be a model specified in the config file, but as most of SSTU's parts have complex models that are loaded at run-time, using an 'empty proxy model' was the chosen workaround.

 

I would say that you've installed something incorrectly.  Missing dependencies, version mismatch, or incorrect install locations are the likely candidates.  Either way, it looks like something is preventing the SSTU plugin from loading properly.

(in the future, please provide log files with any support request; even if you don't think they are needed it saves me time from 'guessing' at what the problem is -- with the log file I would probably know exactly what was missing).

[Jimbodiah]

I think this might also be caused by a missing color in the ColorPresets.cfg file for TU. If you removed one of the stock colors that is referenced by sstu parts some strange things happen as well; it's why I keep them in my own presets file.

[Jiraiyah]

1 hour ago, Shadowmage said:

The config files are as expected.  KSP mandates that there must be a model specified in the config file, but as most of SSTU's parts have complex models that are loaded at run-time, using an 'empty proxy model' was the chosen workaround.

 

I would say that you've installed something incorrectly.  Missing dependencies, version mismatch, or incorrect install locations are the likely candidates.  Either way, it looks like something is preventing the SSTU plugin from loading properly.

(in the future, please provide log files with any support request; even if you don't think they are needed it saves me time from 'guessing' at what the problem is -- with the log file I would probably know exactly what was missing).

sorry for lack of log files. honestly i didn't know which one to send. but, can prunning some parts being the reason? I didn't prune anything from vanilla but some other mods got some parts pruned. if you guide me which log file should i send i will provide it

1 hour ago, Jimbodiah said:

I think this might also be caused by a missing color in the ColorPresets.cfg file for TU. If you removed one of the stock colors that is referenced by sstu parts some strange things happen as well; it's why I keep them in my own presets file.

no i didn't touch color files

[Sorabh]

Hello,

For some weird reason, I can't seem to have any crew on any of the station core parts. Not only that, the DOS/TKS parts can't take any crew? Am I doing it right?

[Shadowmage]

13 minutes ago, Sorabh said:

Hello,

For some weird reason, I can't seem to have any crew on any of the station core parts. Not only that, the DOS/TKS parts can't take any crew? Am I doing it right?

 

1 hour ago, Shadowmage said:

(in the future, please provide log files with any support request; even if you don't think they are needed it saves me time from 'guessing' at what the problem is -- with the log file I would probably know exactly what was missing).

^^^^