Kerbal Train Discussion

[Madrias]

I might have to give land-trains a try.  Getting a little bored of surface skimming with aircraft over Kerbin's terrain, although it's a rush flying no higher than 200m above Kerbin's surface, diving between mountain peaks, and seeing how low I can go without touching the ground.

Land trains could be an exciting way to explore terrain I already think I know in a way that proves me dramatically wrong.

[Kerbin vonKerbal]

3 hours ago, The_Rocketeer said:

Using Infernal Robotics I lately made a train with steering-bars to make the RoveMax XL3 wheels steerable. Sadly I'm away from my home machine so no pics today but the overall vehicle was a lot more like @Overland's cold-war landtrain photos. Top speed only 10m/s tho.

Speed is the biggest drawback for me at the moment. If my train can't get up to much better speeds, I can't see myself ever putting them to serious use. 10m/s is all very well from a realism perspective, but I have insufficient patience to cruise from KSC to the North Pole at those speeds, and unless I'm going to make such a grand adventure, land-trains aren't going to take off except as a curiosity afaic. < My point here being that I'm looking for ways to make them safer and faster, not that I'm giving up.

I'm with you on that. Maybe an airborne cargo drop in segments would help to alleviate that, if that makes sense. Drop the segments of train from a large cargo plane, then piece them together while on the ground. 

10 m/s all the way to the North Pole sounds excrutiatingly slow as far as I'm concerned. 

[Overland]

what we need is BIG..MORE BIG..BIGGER..TITANIC..GIGANTIC..LANDTRAIN-SIZE dedicated new KSP Scale

One thing I didnt mention historicly is the ancestor of these cold war land trains.. It failed horribly and became a stationary diesel heated base ...where history states its either still there or in the sea.

It was the victim of over-engineered lets bring the armchair and fireplace mentality.. 

But for new uses in KSP..it presents a valuble base and point of which to build upon

The lovable failure...ultimate RV and antartic explorer ( that got stuck in a ditch on testing)

SNO-CRUISER

 

Its very kerbal

Theres a setting in wheel configuration files that ive traditionally cranked up 

Lateral drag..it keeps wheels straight tracking..

Im not so skilled at 3d these days but say KTP attracts someone suitably skilled.. What would be perfect would be wheels the size of size 3 cockpits.. If they were a thing..30ms wouldnt be a problem

[Overland]

in the realworld application of the larger land trains of the cold war.. They serviced the DEW Line early warning radar system..smaller sections were 300km.. No one tried to circumnavigate the world like we do

 

Of which the radar sites themselves ooze kerbal designs by there very nature

 

which leads me to an idea..

Once we get proper land train mods or even working land trains of a common form out of custom mods.. For those dedicated/insane enough we could start a challenge thread with a common persistance file consisting of a world with kerbal constructs radar stations to supply with fuel and kerbals.. And build our own DEW (KEW?) line of spaced out radar stations..once we reach a specified spot..mark it..plant a flag.. Construct a base with KK with fillable fuel tanks..diesel generators and lights of which would then be saved to the shared persistance file thats checked out once each "shift"

 

Eventually building our own line of radar bases spanning kerbin landmass

Once its done (itd take a very long time) 

Other drivers could then.all download the persistance file and do supply runs with trains..aircraft etc

 

In essence making KSP what I envision it would be capable of... The ultimate land train simulator

One could even assume the duty of assigning supply runs and verifying cargo runs..updating fuel.tanks and kerbal count on a central communal persistance file

 

Maybe its just a dream though..but.....Maybe not

Although the average KSP player might assume insanity and madness for all involved

[Kerbin vonKerbal]

2 hours ago, Overland said:

 

Your ideas and ambitions are out of this world overland. You ever done any off-Kerbin land trains? These photos make me think of how cool a convoy road with supply stations and comm links on Eeloo would be. Very ambitious, but would be awesome nonetheless.

[Overland]

I did use hyperedit recently to try.. as a friend put it.. the train did a "dying fly"

indeed it did..

This is 1002, she has fire camo. what was actually originally duna camo..

its just.. well.. she needs a redesign if shes a duna anything other than...

A dying dunian fly...

 

In addition:

A recent discovery of the IR docking washer's configuration file shows promise for self centering spring loaded .. rotation limited dedicated land train couplings.. something needed to allow increased speed and safety while preserving being able to turn in their own length

 

 

Edited June 20, 2016 by Overland

[Overland]

It would seem road trains or land trains as well being in service in ww1 and before it via steam.. Was also a thing as early as 1934 in Australia, Russia and South Africa..

A 1934 AEC land train ...also.nice design for a kerbal version

[Overland]

 more details of the 1930s road train..although im not into trucks..theres a difference between road train and land train..the later in its pure form is all terrain not requiring roads..

None the less this AEC train blurs the line a bit..fits both

Wheel configuration im finding interesting.history says only 2 of the 4-5 wagons were self steering..the other two were traditional hitch..could this be the solution for us too? Powered IR docking washers DO flex but take long Ibeam couplings to do so.. Ill experiment through the week and report success.. Also trying to get tweakscale to work with wheels

Edited June 21, 2016 by Overland

[Overland]

Self-Tracking Trailers..

a term I keep coming across in research..but how does it work??

Most trains ive ever built with steering drawbars on both wheelsets worked great around corners

 

...and kept.doing so....until the train was no train but a tentacle of then krakens noodly appendage..

So...i searched...researched..airport trains.

Industrial powertrucks..mine equiptment.. Finally settling on this

 

THIS is the underside of a basic steering trailer..they dont use the following trailer to steer..they steer.....themselves..and the next one after that steers itself..the pivot.bar steers opposte wheels to track perfectly.. Very kerbal to upscale indeed

 

EDIT:

 

Ahh beautiful infernal robotics with KAS Struts.. a match made for one another

it kind of works.. in that the wheels do steer eachother realisticly.. but im still confused how to do more than 1 wagon so far

Edited June 21, 2016 by Overland

[Hannu2]

On 1.6.2016 at 11:49 AM, Overland said:

Its not just me theres plenty more obscure train drivers of kerbin and beyond.. Im...just past the shadowy stage..where I freely admit KSP has what it takes to become the ultimate train simulator..although currently focused on land trains

It is much said about a game in which it is impossible to make any tracks. 

But I would like to see even a rudimentary implementation of the rail traffic. For example something in Factorio, tracks, turnouts and simple signals. It is certainly out of the scope of the vanilla game but it would be very interesting mod. There could be for example many ore drilling units on area of several square kilometers and an automated train would collect the ore and haul it to the refinery. Unfortunately, it seems that KSP's current game engine would not allow it.

[Madrias]

Well, until the mess with wheels is fixed in Unity 5 KSP, I'll try land-trains in 1.0.5.  I keep blowing up before I even get near the coast because I've yet to figure out the best settings with these new wheels, even with the Buffalo wheels (to be fair, the Buffalo wheels are good, but I'm spoiled because I've been using Kerbal Foundries wheels and tracks in 1.0.5 for just about any craft that needed self-powering wheels...)

But, I think I'm making progress.  Still not sure what cab I want, other than I want good forward visibility.

[Kerbin vonKerbal]

12 minutes ago, Madrias said:

Well, until the mess with wheels is fixed in Unity 5 KSP, I'll try land-trains in 1.0.5.  I keep blowing up before I even get near the coast because I've yet to figure out the best settings with these new wheels, even with the Buffalo wheels (to be fair, the Buffalo wheels are good, but I'm spoiled because I've been using Kerbal Foundries wheels and tracks in 1.0.5 for just about any craft that needed self-powering wheels...)

But, I think I'm making progress.  Still not sure what cab I want, other than I want good forward visibility.

When it comes to forward visibility I personally think the Cupola reigns superior. Nothing but forward facing windows.

[The_Rocketeer]

14 hours ago, Overland said:

Self-Tracking Trailers..

*snip snip*

it kind of works.. in that the wheels do steer eachother realisticly.. but im still confused how to do more than 1 wagon so far

Is this any help @Overland? From the looks of things, each A-frame/draw bar couples to an articulated hitch on the trailer-bed rather than the bogeys. I'm looking at the little triangles at the back-end of the wagons here.

[Overland]

Yeah thats what was confusing me lastnight.. I saw that diagram but couldnt visualise it until I saw it in KSP

that and what friction setting..but! It blows my mind a bit just how all this IS possible in ksp with a few mods.. Way better than Gmod thats for sure.. It works..ill upload a video later of a wagon upside down turning..ive also put some turn limit mod lines into the washer config file

 

This goes way beyond the original docking ports flex and space plane fuel tank trains...

Venturing into.realworld real engineering steering systems.. All I can do is think wow

Edited June 22, 2016 by Overland

[The_Rocketeer]

Yeh, when I got the steering-bar and XL3 roverwheels to work it was very cool.

The main downside was the high partcount - with all the hinges and bracing, it was about 20 per wheel, not counting 'fuselage'/fuel parts or power generation. From a resources perspective this got my PC a little warmer than usual, but from a gamplay perspective it was probably worse due to the inertia of a big train and the amount of stretch in all the joints. For the first time since I got KSP 3 years ago I've been thinking about using KJR - till now, never really had a problem!

[Overland]

13 minutes ago, The_Rocketeer said:

Yeh, when I got the steering-bar and XL3 roverwheels to work it was very cool.

The main downside was the high partcount - with all the hinges and bracing, it was about 20 per wheel, not counting 'fuselage'/fuel parts or power generation. From a resources perspective this got my PC a little warmer than usual, but from a gamplay perspective it was probably worse due to the inertia of a big train and the amount of stretch in all the joints. For the first time since I got KSP 3 years ago I've been thinking about using KJR - till now, never really had a problem!

Ive got a potato too

One of the reasons ive stuck to prefabricated rovers like puma, buffalo, malamute is thier usually very compact..built to be so and require minimal bracing if any.. Meaning physics friendly so better framerates

For size 3 trains we need size 3 wheels.. The big rigs with small road wheels were a recent idea..

For the size..weight.. And torque of steam wheels are rather big.. As are electric driven landtrains of the cold war

Even the earliest gas/electric hybrids followed the rule

Big loads..big wheels..less flexing..

Or in my case downsize to something smaller..until we have massive wheels of which to sling control cabs and wagons between

Eg.. 

A train is a train is a train... . The land train cooperative of KTP grows more well known and complex as time goes by..something im proud to be a part of.. As well as many others are im sure.

Along the way ive learnt history and how things work far beyond that of which rail based trains would have taken me.. Irrespective of if the trains built by people end up being show peices..explode within meters (like mine have) or conquer the vast lands of kerbin.. Everyone is something to be happy with..progress..trial and error..destruction..screaming flaming death..

Those are the foundations of kerbal land trains and thier evolution

[Madrias]

If someone could make that kind of cab, it'd be awesome.  Huge visibility, and it'd be my constant go-to train cab.  Granted, this is still pretty fun.  Base experiments have been going well, and I've come up with a 1.0.5 design that seems very stable...

If you put your free-rotating docking washer so that the pivoting center-point is basically on the line that would be your rear axle (or in between your rear-main group, if you're doing multi-axles at the back), a straight-dragged trailer will quite happily follow your cab unit.  And this can be extended out to surprising lengths and still be very controllable.

I'll try to get a screenshot of my trailers later.

[n.b.z.]

Very interesting thread & discussion.

Overland, I have to thank you for the nice comments on my little train. That was quite motivating to hear - and the reason I didn't reply earlier was that I have been very busy with developing this stuff much further.

My train, that used to become dangerous and scary above 5 m/s on perfectly flat terrain when fully loaded with fuel, has now been seen ascending the hills west of the KSC at over 10 m/s with the same load - oftentimes taking 5° slopes head-on without even slowing down all that much.

And while I did make very good progress with tuning the wheel settings and optimizing my magnetic, non-docking coupling, there is a sobering limit to how much tensile load this type of coupling can handle. Research has proven that docking ports can't be sensibly spammed into a tight space to produce stronger magnets.

I am thus glad that I can report that most of the progress that I made came not from inside the KSP editor, but from my modest little text editor.
 

On 19.6.2016 at 7:43 AM, Overland said:

ive often looked for a way to couple without being one vessel, as it brings the kraken when shunting..

 

On 19.6.2016 at 7:43 AM, Overland said:

KOS, I think thats the best way we could go..id love to see it done programming wise not so much.. im happy to say this thread seems to be turning into less about overlands trains and more about the goto resource for all things land train.. this pleases me greatly

I have been successful with remote controlling the wheel-throttle and the brakes of all my non-docked cars so that they mirror what the locomotive is doing.

Unfortunately, KOS used to have the ability to control any vessel from any KOS processor, but this very powerful feature seems to have been classified a "bug" by the developers, and has been removed!
That means, we'll sadly have to slap a KOS unit on any train car that we want to control remotely.

Also, currently there seems to be no good "official" way to exchange data between different "vessels", something that is obviously needed for our undertaking. It seems that some data exchange mechanism is being worked on... in the meantime I'm using some ugly hack to get this done.

Obviously, once I had the basic functionality worked out, some new questions and issues emerged, which need to be properly adressed to turn this stuff from an experiment that only works in a laboratory, to a reasonably stable and dependable solution that anyone would trust enough as to base an entire train's conceptual design on it.

Question such as:

• What happens if some cars get accidentally decoupled? (Try chasing them with the locomotive whilst they are still aping your moves...)
• What happens when you intentionally park some cars, drive the locomotive out of their physics range, only to come back later?
• What about (re-) loading a savegame?
• Could one combine cars into one train, that were brought into the world by "launching" multiple craft files? Maybe even completely different ones that only share a common coupling?

I actually believe to have an answer for most of these concerns, and am currently in the middle of re-writing absolutely everything from scratch in order to eventually arrive at the "dependable solution" I mentioned above. Give it some time...

For now, I'm not planning to support any other method of coupling than the "magnetic", not-actually-technically-docked docking ports. Turns out that these are surprisingly nice to handle from the coder's perspective.

In the meantime, I have two questions for all train drivers:

1. Do you use SAS when driving trains?
2. Do you use RCS when driving trains?

Reason I'm asking: I intend to re-assign these nice three-letter acronyms for slightly less spacefaring purposes. Why would I want to deplete (or block) any of the numbered action groups, when we have these nice train specific features built into KSP for us?

Because, as far as I can tell, ...

• RCS = Remote Car Supervision
• SAS = Slope Assist System

My TODO-list is still rather long... so as I said before: give it some time.

[Madrias]

I'm a novice at train driving, but I do use the SAS.  With reaction wheels (if any) set to SAS-Only, then the computer helps me keep from rolling on slopes.  But most of the time, I don't have reaction wheels onboard, and turning SAS on is an artifact of me being a keyboard-pilot.

[Overland]

When I was driving diesel electrics with just locomotive power, they had RCS ports on the bogeys.. With RCS and SAS enabled they acted as an auto sander...firing when a train went up hill..where SAS was trying to keep the locomotive level.. Thus causing good additional traction.. And firing down when ascending..that would cushion any airborne landings

It worked well but this was when wheels were wheels.. The alternators and wheel motors worked on monoprop as a transmission medium..so there was always a supply..

My modern day RTG electrics have none of the above

[n.b.z.]

OK - I will try to make it configurable which action groups can be used. I just need 2 groups (probably) for controlling this stuff.

[Overland]

No shame for using RCS and all action groups

For me on current puma class trains,

R is Rotator Beacon

1 is horn, Abort is ladder, 2 is spotlights

[n.b.z.]

Today, some progress!

For the first time, I dared reloading a savegame of my almost-but-not-really-coupled train while all cars and the locomotive were running my KOS scripts.

Surprisingly, that stuff just worked! Brakes off, advance throttle, whole train starts going. So the effort to refactor that first prototype seems to be paying off.

Also, I did some screenshots of my "final" couplings: 

 

 

[T-Bouw]

Very insightful thread!
I had no idea that KSP (land)trains could be so complicated to build/drive.

But I've always been wondering, where did the hype train come from?
I suppose it's one of you that's responsible for this infectious phenomenon!

[Kerbin vonKerbal]

A little update; I've started a new career save after a failed mission that involved lots of modules docked and heading towards duna. Kerbal Corps of Engineers is a land and air based program that will focus on land trains, airplanes, and rovers performing missions all over Kerbin's various biomes.