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[WIP] Rald planet/moon addon, basically a terraformed mars


KerikBalm

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So I've been toying around with a planet/moon based on mars with some life and oceans added.

I'd like to know your thoughts.

There's some issues though:

* despite the heightmaps being 4096x2048, the ground can still look "pixelated" at medium zoom. I'm thinking about adding noise to cover this up. If anyone has a 8192x4096 heightmap for mars instead, that would be great. I looked at the RSS configs, and I seem to be able to find a 8192x4096 colormap but not a heightmap.

* I can't get the scatterer configs quite right, sometimes from mapmode and orbit, the planet/moon appears way over saturated. If anyone can help me out here, that would be great

* I can't really decide where to put it, so I've included 3 candidate configs:

- as a close orbiting moon/binary companion of Kerbin... at geostationary orbit

- as a replacement for Duna, with Duna as a close orbiting/binary companion of Rald (and then there's what ot do with ike in that case)

- as a more distant moon/binary companion of Kerbin... where minmus used to be, Minmus gets reparented to be a moon of Rald and they are tidally locked to each other

- as a dwarf planet co-orbital with Kerbin ... 60 degrees ahead of kerbin at the "pseudo-L4" point

Dropbox link:

*edit* updated link to later version with more clear install instructions and some easter eggs *edit*

*edit 2* Added more biomes, different choices for scatterer, tweaked science multipliers, added the Duna version, increased the air density from 0-500m of the "Inner Moon" version by 15% to hopefully make using "low tech" airbreathers viable. I figure if its that close and trips are shorter than to Mun, people will want to science there. As the ascent to orbit requires more dV, and moving from biome to biome requires more dV (than Mun), early career airbreathers(juno and wheesley) should be viable... the old version had them producing so little thrust in the thin air that they weren't really viable and you needed at least panthers in afterburner mode to fly around.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/8rvjb8ltrydundo/Release3.zip?dl=0

Pics:

g6G267C.png

dGXk4gf.png

JF0HYts.png

XhzLpBV.png

 

The oversaturation effect that I can't seem to pinpoint the cause of. Even when the scatterer configs are just copies of Kerbin or Duna's configs.

zPr4hTD.png

 

 

Edited by KerikBalm
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Following this thread :)

Not sure where I'll put my Rald... I've had the geosync orbit one until now, but tbh, it's not as useful as you'd hope for gravity assists. I think it's SoI can't stretch far enough to give you any significant time in its influence. Will probably give the Minmus swap a go :)  Although those skies sure are pretty when it's close up... argh! Decisions!

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Well, I'm torn between doing a lower resolution heightmap for "less pixelation", or sticking to the one I have now for better detail.

I've already started adding "easter eggs" to my current heightmap... I may go over it again with a "smooth" function to try and make it seem less pixelated in most places, but preserve detail where desired.

Also, with scatterer waves, its a bit hard to get the water level where I want it when there's some really shallow plains. The plains are above 0 elevation, and with a stock ocean its fin, but the upwellings (visual/cosmetic only) come over the top of this terrain that is very very flat and at a very very low elevation. I don't know... it kind of looks cool, like its marshy terrain... but the movement and view upclose destroys that perception

Spoiler

SoqYjNn.png

qflbyKX.png

I could lower the water level more, but IIRC, I didn't like what it did to the delta area, need to check again

8wqyBkD.png

Pixelation is evident, it seems strange that going to lower resolution reduces pixelation... o.O

 

Pics of the Rald-Minmus version

Spoiler

jI4dxPM.png

DVnsrjY.png

e5RjUJs.png

JaMPYvK.png

LuPTdLQ.png

So, as far as the easter eggs... here they are, you could probably find them easily enough just by looking in the files at the heightmap:

Spoiler

ZZbV4Q2.png

Kerbin has pyramids, Rald has Pyramids (I may add more elsewhere, maybe some smaller ones near this one?)

Remember that face under the ocean on Kerbin? Well I added a face on the plateau here next to the pyramid... may move it under the ocean

XrkB1fi.png

 

While its easy enough to find a place to land... here is a faint equatorial "airport" near the ancient shoreline (assuming the water receded to its current level)

mIkqTvX.png

I had the terrain features near it more exagerated in an earlier version... but as its equatorial, I thought it would make it too easy to spot

WoTJ7Hz.png

Also near the "runway" is this... well whatever it is... a city? a fort? the tops of underground bunkers/ an underground colony? whatever... its certainly different...

bYey5VV.png

 

Edited by KerikBalm
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I've just seen too many of @eddiew's pics and had to come and find the home of that rather beautiful lurking moon. :)

Spoiler

I'm making my first planet and wondering how far I can go with easter eggs. Seeing yours @KerikBalm is pretty encouraging.

 

On 8/22/2016 at 6:44 PM, GregroxMun said:

Using a lower resolution heightmap can make the heightmap less pixelated.

I shall keep this in mind.

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On 8/23/2016 at 4:14 PM, KerikBalm said:

I may go over it again with a "smooth" function to try and make it seem less pixelated in most places, but preserve detail where desired.

Smoothing the map can actually make it more pixelated and blocky. It's not about the map smoothness, it's totally about the Map Resolution vs PQS Level of Detail.

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2 hours ago, GregroxMun said:

Smoothing the map can actually make it more pixelated and blocky. It's not about the map smoothness, it's totally about the Map Resolution vs PQS Level of Detail.

I'm having the same(ish) problem on my Death Star. When I blur the crater, it doesn't show up when I load the texture again or in game. I'll have to try some PQS mods and/or lowering the texture size.

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So I tested a plane... admittedly with Hyperedit, because I figured there would be a few rounds of testing.

zSoKpKv.jpg

Annoyingly I mostly tested glitches like the landing gear not deploying, or a random loss of control. Eventually however, these went away and I got some play time in.

And what play time it turned out to be :cool:  I was worried that the Firebird's limited wing area wouldn't be enough for the thin atmosphere, but I hadn't thought about the lower gravity. Turns out she'll comfortably cruise at around 200-300m/s on 1/3 throttle, which gives a pretty sustained flight time. As for ascent to orbit... my turbocharged KRnD rapiers threw me up to 600km :0.0:  I may have created a monster... but she does need better braking control and maybe some more roll authority.

Ultimately, I'm thinking about putting a science base on the surface of Rald, so I'd like something that can pick up data from LKO, drop things off and return - ideally without needing to refuel, but we'll see how that one works out :) 

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@eddiew Yea... Rapiers are already OP'd for that planet, "turbocharged" ones from some mode that lets you upgrade them will be even more OP'd

For the Rald-Minmus version... I'm guessing with just airbreathing mode you can get into an unstable orbit, or flat out escape, by using Minmus for a gravity assist. Even the turboramjets are OP'd and will boost apoapsis way out there. I was thinking panthers would be a good option but they don't perform so well in the thin air but it may be a problem of ascent profile - anyway I can't limit the atmosphere so that panthers work but ramjets and rapiers don't.

This planet essentially evolved out of my tinkering with Duna - giving an ocean and thicker atmosphere... I was initially going to just change/replace duna... but I liked having a "dead" world, a mars analogue that looks like it had water in the past.... so I wanted to keep duna while also adding something like what mars may have been like in the past... and thus comes my dilemma of where to put it, and how to make it balanced but realistic.

When I was still playing with "DunaWithOceans", upping the gravity by 10% didn't really help with airbreathers being OP'd. I'm seriously considering removing O2 from the atmosphere because the rapiers and turboramjets get planes going way too fast for balance purposes, and the turbofans/juno don't produce enough thrust anyway.

I'd then change the science experiment results to say something to the effect of: "while oxygen is a significant component of this world's atmosphere, the concentration is too low to support combustion".

I could explain this as a combination of the following:

* the air is just thin

* the smaller ocean and large areas of dry land result in less photosynthesis than on Kerbin, thus lower amounts of products of photosynthesis

* the somewhat alien biology favors cyclic phosphorylation   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photophosphorylation#Cyclic_photophosphorylation

and non-oxygenic photosynthesis   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anoxygenic_photosynthesis

to a greater extent than on Kerbin.

I'd really really really like electric props, turborockets, and ramrockets/air augmented rockets to be made stock though, so that planes would still be viable on this world (but I have those modded as well, and since this world itself is just a mod... maybe I just bundle in a .cfg file for an electric prop?)

 

I'd be tempted to increase the gravity to true Mars gravity (0.376 instead of 0.33), and then increase the planet's radius to something more like 500 km... but I wanted to keep its mass under 10% of Kerbin's because:

#1) For a la grange point to be stable, the object at the lagrange point needs to be small enough in relation to the "primary body". From what I read about the probable protoplanet Theia that formed at Earth's L4 or L5, it likely became unstable and impacted Earth after it exceeded ~10% Earth's mass. I'd like to keep not just the planet's conditions "realistic" (aside from the scale change to fit with the rest of KSP), but also its orbital parameters... which is also why I'm not adding this as yet another moon of Jool, or a companion of Eve(not realistic orbital parameters for its temperature).

-Maybe I could scale up the Rald-Minmus version... but I want to keep the scaling consistent (500km radius with only 0.376Gs seems like its really light compared to 1 G for 600km radius Kerbin) - and I think then it would destabilize Mun. The version inside Mun's orbit would be even worse if Rald's SOI was even bigger.

#2) Keeping in mind the "rescaling" for KSP, I want it to be fairly low mass to explain the atmosphere loss resulting in the thin atmosphere - although as it is, keeping an atmosphere is questionable at its current distance... be we don't know how "old" the kerbal system is.. .1 billion years? Kerbin was seeded with life explaining how life is so advanced so early? Its higher mass than duna... but not so much higher, and Duna has suffered a lot of atmosphere loss (or can we say this happened during a collision that created Ike?) Do we just say that Rald has a higher content of radioactive elements in its core, giving it a warmer core and stronger magnetic field than Duna?

 

So.... I don't really know what to do... I can't make it much more massive without the orbital parameters being excessively unrealistic... but as it is its a bit too small to still have such an atmosphere and oceans that close to the sun if the kerbal system is of a comparable age to our own. At its current size, turboramjets and rapiers are OP'd...

One idea I recently had was not to make it a double planet with Kerbin, but a double planet with a member of the only system in KSP that already seems like a double planet - ie Duna-Ike. So I'd make Rald bigger - I'm thinking 450km radius and 0.376 G's (Yes, this would make planes harder to land, its 13% higher than its current value)... then I place a Duna in orbit around Rald... the more massive Rald has kept its atmosphere, while Duna has lost its atmosphere and oceans.

Then I place Ike in a more distant orbit around Rald... making it somewhat like a 2nd Kerbin system: Rald = Kerbin; Duna = Mun; Ike = Minmus

Thoughts?

Edited by KerikBalm
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19 hours ago, eddiew said:

I was worried that the Firebird's limited wing area wouldn't be enough for the thin atmosphere, but I hadn't thought about the lower gravity. Turns out she'll comfortably cruise at around 200-300m/s on 1/3 throttle ... my turbocharged KRnD rapiers threw me up to 600km ... does need better braking control ... I'd like something that can pick up data from LKO, drop things off and return - ideally without needing to refuel

#1) Yes, the atmosphere is thin compared to kerbin... but its not so thin. Again I'll point out that the molar mass of the gas is higher... about 25% higher. So the press mat barometer's readings are deceptively low if you use it as a proxy for air density - while pre 1.0 atmosphere had a perfect correlation between pressure and density, post 1.0 they aren't the same thing.

At sea level, the air is about as thin as kerbin at about 12.3km IIRC. Factor in the lower gravity, and its like designing a plane to fly at about 7km on Kerbin, at least as far as minimum flying speed ... not soo demanding.

As far as the rapiers and such...high speeds are much easier because at around 900 m/s you need no aerodynamic lift at all to maintain altitude. Even 300 m/s is about 1/3 of orbital velocity, which also significantly reduces the amount of aerodynamic lift that you need.

#2) For braking, I suggest doing what I do, even on kerbin... use parachutes mounted rear of the cg. Aside from having them behind the cg, have them inline with the cg... ie not above or below it as that puts a torque on landing gear. If you have them out of line with the cg, have them above. I made the mistake of putting a pair below. Deploying them on touchdown made it want to nose over too much (even after all 3 wheels were down)... extra force on the nose gear is not good for stability on wheels... I ended up having my parachutes be unusable at higher speeds. Have them inline but behind the cg, and they'll stabilize it, and make it brake much faster. On kerbin I use radial "drogue" chutes, but for rald and duna, I would use radial 'primary' chutes (in this case I'm using them as drogue chutes, but not using the ones with drogue in the name).

Just have an engineer able to repack them before you need them again

#3) from LKO? or LRO? LRO is easy enough... its easier than doing it on laythe. From LKO... well that should be doable too. That shouldn't be harder than making an SSTO that can launch from the surface of kerbin, and then land on Minmus and return. Starting from LKO with full fuel means just the transfer to rald (for either moon version, the cost of that is equal to a minmus transfer or less), and the ascent back to rald orbit is much cheaper than ascent to kerbin orbit, as the airbreathers give you >100% of the velocity that you need.

As I'm using the L4 version, the return journey is a bit harder if you want to do it in a reasonable timeframe. I'm not looking for a rald-kerbin shuttle, just a surface to orbit and back to surface shuttle (or orbit surface orbit) with payload.

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Hmm, my 2p on the oxygen would be to keep it because it makes the planet such a wonderful and fun playground. If you're concerned about balance, I'd suggest up front that I don't think that's anything for modders to worry about :)  A lot of people using mods have already done most of the stock options for gameplay, and they're looking for new things that they haven't encountered previously. If Rald can't have jets then... it's kind of just a green Duna, and we've already got a Duna ^^;

If you really want to avoid it being a potential science farm then...

  1. You can knock down the science multipliers to less than Mun. This makes it a lovely spot to visit and explore, without allowing you to take a jet and max your tech tree.
  2. In companion, you could consider more biomes. If each biome was worth only say 1.5x as much as a Kerbin biome, but there were 3x as many of them, then it becomes an explorer's paradise.
  3. Early-game, I don't think it's any more accessible than Minmus (or even Mun), and people are quite capable of maxing the stock tech tree on just those if they want to.
  4. While it is still plausible/possible/likely that some people will choose to put a science base on the surface of Rald, realistically, this isn't much easier to visit than one on Minmus - if any easier at all. Particularly you don't gain anything over Minmus until you have turbojets or rapiers, so it's not really an abusable source of early-game science.
  5. Bear in mind that my game is heavily modded, and near the end of the (community) tech tree. All I have left to unlock is some advance Near Future engines and generators, and the Alcubierre warp drive. I use KRnD and as a result can dump spare science into any parts I choose, with the result that my plane parts are 10% less weighty, my rapiers have 20% better isp and thrust, and my nervas are the gods' own engines with 100kN and 1000 isp. The result is that it feels like I'm flying in 0.90 when anything was possible with jets! Seems like I'm the last person you want to use to judge balancing :) 
  6. Also, single player game. Let people cheat if they want to :wink: 

Regarding Rald vs Mun, I agree that they would struggle to cohabit. Options that I can imagine are:

  1. Co-orbital but opposite sides of Kerbin. An unlikely but rather cool arrangement that would need some careful navigation to avoid.
  2. Rald being where Mun is, Mun being where Minmus is, and Minmus... being a moon of Dres, because why not. Might be a bit less boring and potato-y then :) 
  3. Eject Mun to L4, put Minmus in tight Kerbin orbit, let's say just outside the range it would perturb geostationary installations, and let Rald be somewhere out on the edge of Kerbin's SoI.

I have also thought in the past that it would be nice to have a tropical world between Kerbin and Eve - although I really do love Rald as a moon of Kerbin. It gives some fantastic views from everywhere in the SoI :)  Although as yet I have failed to get a meaningful gravity assist off it. Maybe if it were closer in...

Rald as a Duna replacement? Yyyes... maybe. It doesn't take a major upgrade to get a Mun rocket to go to Duna, especially if you just want to orbit. It's more about interplanetary planning and how early in the game players will encounter it. As above, I love Rald as a moon but of course it's ultimately your choice not mine :) 

Edited by eddiew
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This... is what I'm talking about by the views :)

yLGeyci.jpg

How is that not better than being out at L4? :wink:  (Small island in the river delta, slightly north of the equator. There's quite a lot of flat land here, it may make a good site for a science base.)

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Quote

If Rald can't have jets then... it's kind of just a green Duna, and we've already got a Duna ^^;

Well, there are the oceans, thicker atmosphere, and pretty different terrain. The looks are quite distinct. If it stays as a moon of Kerbin, then its also different in that you can visit any time for less than to several kerbin days of gametime. I've seen people asking for a moon of kerbin with an atmosphere on multiple occasions

Quote

If you really want to avoid it being a potential science farm then.

Science farm wasn't my concern. Just difficulty. I want it to pose some challenges. The thin atmosphere makes horizontal landing a bit of a challenge... but hutes+ propulsive landing is easy... getting back to orbit... ridiculously easy. I don't know... I want it to feel like a bit of an accomplishmentto be able to land and get back to orbit. Minmus is already enough of a science farm, I'm not using the mods which you use to make more use of science. I just convert science to funds.

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In companion, you could consider more biomes. If each biome was worth only say 1.5x as much as a Kerbin biome, but there were 3x as many of them, then it becomes an explorer's paradise.

IIRC, I gave it 10 biomes... thats one of the highest numbers of biomes in the game, more than Minmus. I think it has enough... I was thinking about adding a minor craters biome... but addint all those little craters would end up being a lot of work :P

Quote

Co-orbital but opposite sides of Kerbin. An unlikely but rather cool arrangement that would need some careful navigation to avoid.

That would mean that rald/mun would be at each other's respective L3 points. L3 points are unstable, unlike L4 and L5. While stock Jool has some orbits that are unstable IRL (ie bop and val's orbits), I would like to stick to orbits that would probably survive tens of thousnads of years of N-body simulations.

Quote

Rald being where Mun is, Mun being where Minmus is, and Minmus... being a moon of Dres, because why not. Might be a bit less boring and potato-y then :) 

I suppose it could work... Minmus always bothered me... if its icy, it shouldn't be so close to the sun without sublimation destroying it. Although I'm not quite sure what minmus is supposed to be or what the explanation would be for its topography.

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Eject Mun to L4, put Minmus in tight Kerbin orbit, let's say just outside the range it would perturb geostationary installations, and let Rald be somewhere out on the edge of Kerbin's SoI.

Mun at L4 would be more stable than Rald at L4... hmmm. Although In that case, I might leave rald in a tight orbit, and leave minmus where it is.

Quote

Rald as a Duna replacement? Yyyes... maybe. It doesn't take a major upgrade to get a Mun rocket to go to Duna, especially if you just want to orbit. It's more about interplanetary planning and how early in the game players will encounter it.

Well, note so much as a replacement, but an addition to and recentering of the Duna system. The Duna system would be a whole lot more interesting in that case, no? I'd be particularly interested in doing one of those "Alien Space Program" mods

 

With the start on a bigger version of Rald... with Duna hanging low in the sky... and Ike as sort of an alien Minmus

Quote

How is that not better than being out at L4?

yes, the views to and from kerbin are why I put it as an inner moon of kerbin in the first place... but I also have some gameplay elements in mind as well.... although I suppose more than one planet could be added. The idea for L4 was a combination with something else I wanted for gameplay... the ability to go interplanetary without paying attention to transfer windows. Mission from Kerbin to rald and vice versa can be launched at any time equally well. In that capacity, Rald serves as sort of an interplanetary trainer... encountering very different conditions, plotting maneuvers from within kerbin SOI to solar SOI and intercepts with targets... etc... except no waiting/timing departure for windows - much less of that "planning" you mentioned (2nd quote above this)

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I love Rald as a moon but of course it's ultimately your choice not mine

Well, its my choice what I put in the .cfg files that I upload, but those are easily changed. I modify mods files that I've downloaded from other people to suit my desires. I make little part and planet mods to suit my desires.

I would expect others to do the same. Even if I claimed copyright of this, you're free to make derivative works for your own use.

I am starting to like the idea of a 3 body duna system centered on Rald...but I already have rald at L4 in my major career save, with a mission en route consisting of 3 seperate crafts... so for my main save I'm kind of stuck with the L4 version... but I could do the duna=Rand binary version in another save.

Th view of duna from rald and vice versa could be cool too.... and that version I'm thinking of should be big enough that its orbital velocity is high enough that turboramjets and rapiers don't go so much above orbital velocity.

But doing an alien space center mod... hmmm... I've never done one of those.. that could be fun...

if sigma binary doesn't work on kerbin, then I don't think I can do an alien space center mod for Rald if rald is orbiting a planet... ie if rald is a moon of kerbin.

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Why not release versions with all of the options, and one as @eddiew said as a tropical planet between Kerbin and Eve. My system with a few things I want (with - -)

Moho - with a moon -

Eve (with Moons Of Eve mod)

-Rald-

Kerbin

Duna (With Moons Of Duna Mod)

Mios

Dres

Richell

Jool

 - I want a planet here, kinda like Eve, but less atmo (~2 atm), 1.4 gee and yellow-green-

Sarnus

 - A small ice/rock planet like Duna, but with oxygen. 0.4g, atmo similar to ~10KM on Kerbin at Sea Level. Gray oceans of something-or-other. Two moons similar to Bop or Pol-

Urlum

Neidon

Plock-Karen

 

 

Edited by OrbitalBuzzsaw
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8 hours ago, OrbitalBuzzsaw said:

Why not release versions with all of the options, and one as @eddiew said as a tropical planet between Kerbin and Eve. My system with a few things I want (with - -)

Well, for now that's sort of what I've done... with 3 configs for "suggested" places to put this moon. Its just text editing if you want to move it somewhere else

Quote

Sarnus

 - A small ice/rock planet like Duna, but with oxygen. 0.4g, atmo similar to ~10KM on Kerbin at Sea Level. Gray oceans of something-or-other. Two moons similar to Bop or

I made Slate somewhat similar to this... 0.376 (mars' gravity precisely), and a thin atmosphere (equal to mars' molar weight and density/pressure) - no oceans.

As to putting Rald between Kerbin and Eve... again, I doubt that orbit would be stable. Also that close to the sun, a basically Duna mass object is definitely not going to be able to hold on to its atmo and oceans - especially if Duna lost them (unless we presume Duna lost them due to a collision that spun off Ike).

You can put it there if you want, as I said, its just text editing. I think later today I'm going to try to make the Rald-Duna-Ike system that I was talking about

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So i did the calcs for rald scaled up to 450km radius and 0.376 gs... its just over 2x the mass of duna then. A duna-bigger rald system cries for sigma binary... and without it ike would orbit too slow as 1/3 of the mass it orbits would be missing... which makes me want to just move ike to the neighborhood of dres... its nearly the same mass as dres... I don't want to make that a binary system too... so I'm thinking moving ike to make it a vesta analogue, making duna a moon of rald, and making rald bigger and putting it where duna is now... thoughts?

*edit* additional thoughts: I still like the idea of something at kerbin's L4 or L5 points, as "trainer" planets for interplanetary trips. For realism purposes, that planet needs to be small in comparison to kerbin. Trying to keep Rald down below ~10% Kerbin's mass is undesirable I think. Ike should fit there just fine and be stable. Its also suitable as a "trainer" because landing on it is pretty much the same as landing on Mun, its actually a bit easier.

Next time I upload something (with the height and colormaps containing "easter eggs") I'm going to include another set of configs: A Bigger rald where duna is, a config moving duna to orbit of rald, and a config moving ike to Sun-Kerbin pseudo-L4.

If you like nice views of kerbin from the surface of rald and vice versa, you may like views of duna from the surface of rald and vice versa.

I'll keep the other configs as well, just with the minor changes to specify the new height+color map for the "easter eggs"

Maybe I'll give the easter eggs their own biomes too? so you can find them easier, and get a reward for finding them?

Edited by KerikBalm
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4 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

Maybe I'll give the easter eggs their own biomes too? so you can find them easier, and get a reward for finding them?

Easter egg biomes sounds good :) 

Do you have a version with them that you'd be prepared to share? I've had a preliminary scout with my latest bird and found a very flat spot with nice views about 6 degrees north of the equator, but I'd be interested in checking out the ancient runway too ^^ 

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9 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

Well, for now that's sort of what I've done... with 3 configs for "suggested" places to put this moon. Its just text editing if you want to move it somewhere else

I made Slate somewhat similar to this... 0.376 (mars' gravity precisely), and a thin atmosphere (equal to mars' molar weight and density/pressure) - no oceans.

As to putting Rald between Kerbin and Eve... again, I doubt that orbit would be stable. Also that close to the sun, a basically Duna mass object is definitely not going to be able to hold on to its atmo and oceans - especially if Duna lost them (unless we presume Duna lost them due to a collision that spun off Ike).

You can put it there if you want, as I said, its just text editing. I think later today I'm going to try to make the Rald-Duna-Ike system that I was talking about

Yeah, but I have no idea how to edit .cfg files to make it work

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1 hour ago, OrbitalBuzzsaw said:

Yeah, but I have no idea how to edit .cfg files to make it work

Reparenting a body is surprisingly easy. MinmusRaldOuterMoon in the download is a fine example:

@Kopernicus:AFTER[Kopernicus]
{  
    @Body[Minmus] 
    {
        @Orbit
        {
            @referenceBody = Rald
            inclination = 7
            eccentricity = 0.03
            semiMajorAxis = 3000000
            longitudeOfAscendingNode = 78
            argumentOfPeriapsis = 38
            meanAnomalyAtEpoch = 0.899999976158142
            meanAnomalyAtEpochD = 51.5662001957363
            epoch = 0
        }
        @Properties
        {
            rotationPeriod = 56705.861
            tidallyLocked = True
        }
    }
}

Basically, set the reference body and choose some orbital parameters. Nab the orbital numbers for Kerbin and Eve and you can take a fair stab at placing it between the two. Might take a few shots, but you'll get something reasonable fairly fast I think :)

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25 minutes ago, KerikBalm said:

Will be uploading something very soon, I'll try to make the folders and stuff easier to understand

A readme that says which configs to use for which setup would do :) Took me a little trial and error to figure out which ones to use and which not ^^; 

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Uploading now, will post link when its done, and start posting some pics from the duna addon - although Its a little out of data because I miscalculated the proper distance to put duna to have it match rald's rotation period, so duna will appear slightly smaller from the surface of rald. Also I miscalculated earlier, and rald is now about 4x more massive than duna, not 2x. (it was this mass miscalculation that threw off the orbital period).

No biomes for the "easter egg" locations though. The Runway's spire has been made a bit bigger, and the runway itself is biiiiggggg.... no need to worry about running out of runway

 

Dropbox link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/2tg5e51nci337x1/Release2.zip?dl=0

Edited by KerikBalm
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pictures of the duna version uploading now, also lots of pics of the "runway" feature from the Duna-Rald version (in which the runway is 45/32 x bigger as the whole world's radius has been increased by 45/32). That version also has a higher surface gravity... making landings significantly more challenging (14% higher gravity)... still has a lower landing speed than duna due to the thicker atmosphere.

 

Runways:

Spoiler

So the overview, a east-west runway, and a north south. There are 4 "bunkers" and 1 spire near the intersection:

AsTTCES.png

MkDuqP0.png

 

It can be a little hard to makeout as the area around it is pretty flat anyway, but the east end of the runway has a noticable "lip"

mtsS3az.png

Don't come up short when approaching from the east.... but if you have trouble lifting off, the lip at the east may allow your craft to pivot

Rkj3quG.png

vJFD9TN.png

This runway is exceedingly long, take your time setting your craft down

eeh14W3.png

 

Rald-Duna and runway combo

Spoiler

I'm not sure which position for duna looks coolest

hanging in the sky west of the runway:

U9K3G8d.png

or east of the runway, in the direction you'll probably take off from

I0JMy8x.png

VhjC5rk.png

And... other shots of duna and rald

Spoiler

3kMq3Zo.png

FZV4Zu0.png

PLYNHrO.png

rWzuGb8.png

 

Edited by KerikBalm
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