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[0.21.1] Alien Nostromo (ver. 1.3.7)


jcogs

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I decided to try this one out. It works incredibly well and looks great! It\'s fairly cheaty as you can fly to and from the moons... quite a lot before running out of fuel, but I don\'t really care. After all, it is an interstellar commercial towing vehicle. It really should have a lot of range.

Thanks for posting this!

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MechJeb users rejoice! Kind of, anyway. After messing with it all weekend, I have figured out a solution that gets mechJeb to kind of work. In the nost_crewCompartment part.cfg, change the rotPower from 0 to .1. That shouldn\'t make it fly any differently, but should help mechJeb to at least point it in the right direction. Or try to, anyway. The ascent autopilot seems to work quite well, and I have gotten it put me in Munar orbit, but Smart A.S.S has a tendency to overshoot by a lot, I am looking in to a solution. I have a suspicion that it has to do with how mechJeb dynamically updates the kp, ki, and kd of itself. It should also come as no surprise that mechJeb does not like doing anything with the landing engines active, so no horizontal landing yet.

While messing with trying to get mechJeb to work, I discovered an error in my math for calculating the ideal center of mass for the ship with respect to the landing engines, so I am going to attempt to fix that. Hopefully it helps eliminate some of the tendency of it adding forward momentum when trying to land. It might also help with landing stability (see below).

Regarding landing stability, I don\'t think it is a question of weight/mass. My original mass and thrust values were about 20 times higher than they are now, and the same hopping occurred on landing. The ship was also a lot more unstable. I believe that the current issues might stem from two sources, one being the current way that the game handles physics and inter-part connectivity (which might be fixed in the next release), the other being the location of the landing gear with respect to the center of mass. In order for the ship to turn correctly the center of mass must be located between the four landing engines/rcs thrusters. The rear landing gear are positioned slightly behind this point, making the craft decidedly back heavy. For a truly stable landing do not deploy the landing legs and just land on the landing engines. This provides a much more stable landing platform due to how the center of mass is balanced between them.

Creation of normal maps is ongoing. I will hopefully have some screenshots to post soon.

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Good news, thanks!

I tried some even bigger value for rotPower (1.0) and also added some gimbal (0.5) to main engine. Now the craft is somehow manageable by MechJeb. But still in some occasions it starts spinning in an uncontrollable way.

It\' an awesome model and I hope it can be made more flyable.

Maraz

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@chrisdanger - Make sure to transfer the nost_pluginModule.dll that is in the plugin folder of the download to the plugin folder in your KSP directory. Without that it will not recognize the engines since they are a custom part. That is the only thing that I can think of that would cause the issues that you are describing. If you have already done this and it is still not working, I would recommend downloading again as your previous download may be corrupt.

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WOW, I only knew about this because Menecroth is my bro -- and posted pics on FB. Now must try!

My question is, when docking is implemented, do we then get a refinery.part? :D

Max! Good to see you, my dear brother! And yeah, I have to agree it\'d be fun to drag the refinery around the star system. Maybe, as the game evolves it could actually serve some purpose? Hopefully, there will never be an LV-426 to land on... I\'d really rather avoid all that trouble. ;)

Also, someone a couple posts up suggested that the builder of this mod create a Firefly class transport. I wholeheartedly agree as that would be sauce which is awesome.

-Menecroth

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Awesome craft, pretty detailed too. Not sure if its just me or not, but mechjeb really does not seem to like this thing in either of the available take off positions or in orbit, no idea why. However, the ship is pretty easy to fly by hand considering its size so autopilot isn\'t really needed.

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Okay, here is the deal. I am not opposed to doing a Firefly. I quite like the design as it is visually interesting and has a lot of little articulated bits that I would like to try to incorporate into a mod. My big issue is with the physics of it. KSP is a physics based game, and center of mass plays a huge role in the handling of a spacecraft. Anyone who has tried to build an asymmetrical rocket has found this out. In general the net thrust vector of the engines must pass through the center of mass of the rocket or the engines will apply torque and the rocket will rotate. Due to this idea the Firefly has a definitive location for its center of mass. It needs to be positioned very accurately to maintain balanced flight, especially since the engines need to swivel for landing. Looking at a profile of a Firefly reveals the problem with the design in regards to this balance:

fireflyCoM.png

Notice that the visual distribution of mass is balanced on the rear half of the craft, but the front of the craft has most of its mass distributed above the center of mass. This makes it very hard to balance, as any mass that you add to the rear-bottom to balance the front-top will require the front to have more mass to balance the added weight to the rear, causing a horribly vicious cycle.

Compare to the Nostromo:

nostromoCoM.png

Notice how the visual mass is more evenly distributed around the center of mass.

There are a few things that can be done to cheat it, but it will still be difficult to balance. When I have time I will attempt to do a quick mockup and run it through my mass solver.

I do ask that the community to be patient as my free time is dwindling. Most of the Nostromo was done while I was on break from work, and I am back on a new project with more responsibilities, so updates will likely be slow.

@SquirrelMachine - As mentioned a few posts ago, I designed the Nostromo without taking into account the mechjeb plugin. There are a few modifications that can be made to the part.cfg files to make it somewhat workable with mechjeb, as mentioned in previous posts.

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Sorry, hadn\'t read the whole thing, just tried it and wanted to post my results. Still, not really complaining about mechjeb not working, its really not an issue since it handles so well without it. You\'ve done some awesome work here, keep it up.

Some ship suggestions (hopefully easier that Firefly, thought it would be incredible if you managed to make it work.)

Puddle jumper from Stargate

X-302/F-302 from Stargate

USS Daedalus from Stargate

Yes...I\'m a Stargate nerd, lol.

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  • 2 weeks later...

According to the sources that I used to build the ship, this is the Nostromo, separate from the refinery. If I wanted to be completely accurate I should have named it Refitted Lockmart CM 88B Bison M-Class starfreighter.

http://cache.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/8/2011/10/nostromo-blueprint---enclos.jpg

http://nostromo.joeh.org/content/nostromo/..html

http://avp.wikia.com/wiki/USCSS_Nostromo

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