RCS thruster balance for rotation or translation

[Anglesmith]

When using docking mode, you can set RCS thrusters on rotation or translation modes. This doesn't make the spacecraft rotate in full translation or rotation. Rotating on rotation mode will induce a small translation. The only way to fix this is to place all thrusters at exactly the same distance from the center of mass.

For example, if  I am using two thrusters pointing perpendicularly to the turning axis and one of them is at the centre of mass, that thruster wont fire. What I want is for both to fire with the same thrust. That will get rid of the induced translation.

It would be nice if the the thrusters were balanced to act in full rotation or full translation. Otherwise, being able to edit which thruster pair you want to fire when rotating on each axis would solve this.

Edited April 14, 2016 by David0gdh

[Red Iron Crown]

Welcome aboard!

You'll be pleased to hear that one of 1.1's new features is tweakables for RCS thrusters, so you can tune whether each thruster is used for translation or rotation and on which axes.

Also, in earlier versions of KSP pressing Caps Lock to enter fine control turns on thruster balancing, which can handle somewhat unbalanced thruster placement (though if you really unbalance it then it won't be able to cope).

[Anglesmith]

Thank you! That's really good to hear! I'm downloading the pre-release version now XD

[Alshain]

13 minutes ago, Red Iron Crown said:

Welcome aboard!

You'll be pleased to hear that one of 1.1's new features is tweakables for RCS thrusters, so you can tune whether each thruster is used for translation or rotation and on which axes.

Also, in earlier versions of KSP pressing Caps Lock to enter fine control turns on thruster balancing, which can handle somewhat unbalanced thruster placement (though if you really unbalance it then it won't be able to cope).

Gosh, I'm really really trying hard to stay away from the pre-release.  You aren't making it easy RIC   Second time today haha.