Suggestion for Jet Engines

[Shadowkey392]

Hello,

I couldn't help but notice that, in the 1.0.5 update, you made it so that jet engines drain fuel equally from all tanks at the same time, even those separated by decouplers.  The things is, this only works well with ordinary planes which are not intended to fly into space.  For spaceplanes, it does NOT work that well.  This is because the jet engines drain the fuel from the tanks which are intended to be used by the rocket engines, which is not a good thing.  So, my suggestion is that you make it so that players can select (or toggle) which tanks they want the jet engines to drain fuel from.  That way aircraft can be set up so that the fuel is burned in such a way that the plane remains balanced, while at the same time preventing the jets from burning fuel intended specifically for rockets (or detachable craft).  Please make this happen!  PLEASE!!!!!

[jros83]

Isn't there a way to turn off decouplers from allowing fuel flow?

[rocketbuilder]

Decouplers do stop fuel flow for jet engines.

[Nuranon]

yep, just disable crossfeed...but this can't be done in flight can it? Basically locking you in on your decission if you want to have it or not.

[Shadowkey392]

2 hours ago, Nuranon said:

yep, just disable crossfeed...but this can't be done in flight can it? Basically locking you in on your decission if you want to have it or not.

 

8 hours ago, rocketbuilder said:

Decouplers do stop fuel flow for jet engines.

They do?  Alright then.  But for spaceplanes which DON'T have decouplers, it's still an issue.  Which is why I think there should be something to allow players to toggle which tanks they want the jet engines to use.

[Pthigrivi]

I thought you could toggle tanks? With that little green arrow on the side? You can't hotkey them though, which would be boss. I also feel you used to be able to hotkey docking ports but then I couldn't recently?

[Shadowkey392]

15 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

I thought you could toggle tanks? With that little green arrow on the side? You can't hotkey them though, which would be boss. I also feel you used to be able to hotkey docking ports but then I couldn't recently?

You CAN toggle tanks with the arrows, it's just a tricky thing to do mid-flight, particularly with rocket fuel tanks (especially if you have two rocket engines side by side).  I do wish you could use hotkeys for that, but yeah, you can't.

[panzer1b]

i would like to see an ooption per engine that lets you select fuel flow rules for it.  Maybee not super elaborate, but at least give us an option between using the old rules for engines (from 0.25 days), or use the whole pull fuel from anywhere rule they gave jets now.  I would love to set my rocket engines to do that, so that my planes remain balanced for most of the flight and the nuke doesnt pull fuel out of the nose (and making CoG go behind CoL forcinbg manula fuel transfer or flips of doom on reentry to any atmosphere).  If jets (and even the rapier in rocket mode for some reason) are allowed to drain equally, why cant a regular rocket engine do the same?

[NathanKell]

Uh....90 is what introduced "jets draw from all tanks".

What's changed in 1.0.5 is that now crossfeed is actually respected, whereas before they drew from literally all tanks. Now you can at least turn crossfeed off for docking ports/decouplers/whatever. Also what changed is that they draw an equal percentage from each tank, rather than an equal amount. In most cases that will lead to balance being preserved, whereas before your CoM could shift a lot before returning to DCoM.

[Nefrums]

There is a small mod that lets you lock/unlock fuel in tanks with action groups.

http://kspmods.net/tank-lock-mod/