The Mastodon is way too weak to warrant use over the mainsail in a launch situation.

[klesh]

11 minutes ago, Tyko said:

The Wolfhound and Skiff stats seem to be swapped. if you look at the thrust and ISPs it's pretty obvious they're using the wrong models.

Try using Wolfhounds on S2 and S3. Then use the Skiff on the Service Module...

 

The Wolfhound is supposed to be "in league with the Poodle", per Squad.  Compare the asl ISP's with that in mind. They're definitely not swapped.

[Tyko]

7 minutes ago, klesh said:

 

The Wolfhound is supposed to be "in league with the Poodle", per Squad.  Compare the asl ISP's with that in mind. They're definitely not swapped.

Really? try it out...if you build a saturn V analog with Skiffs in S2 and S3, and a Wolfhound on the SM you end up with S2 / S3 being dramatically underpowered while the Wolfhound is pushing the CM/SM around at well over 2Gs.

If you swap them, the 5 wolfhounds do much better job of lifting S2, the single Wolfhound works for S3 and the Skiff power is much more balanced for the weight of the CM/SM.

One last point...the ISPs of the Wolfhound are more in line with with the Hydrolox engines used on S2/S3 while the ISP of the Skiff is much closer to the RL CM engine.

i'm not saying it's a direct 1:1 comparison, but if you swap them it's LOT closer to what you need to build a Saturn V analog.

[DerekL1963]

3 hours ago, ndiver said:

Has someone tried to include the Porkjet's legacy as alternative to the stock parts using the new switching options?

To some degree with this mod:
 

 

[sevenperforce]

On 3/18/2018 at 8:54 AM, Just Jim said:

While I don't disagree it's not quite as beefy as a Mainsail, I absolutely love the new Mastodons. And I think y'all are kind of missing the beauty of this engine by comparing it to a Mainsail in a single engine-to-engine basis.

The real nice part of the Mastodon are the variants, and how you can cluster them together. For example, this is my Sarnus-V rocket, turned sideways. As you can see, I have 5 Mastodons, with the outer 4 set to bare-variant, and the center one to mid-variant. And they're nestled nicely into the adapter, which gives me insane thrust, even with something this big.

<snip>

Mainsails don't come with variants, and are just too big to fit into the same adaptor

<snip>

The same idea applies to the new engine plates. With the mid and bare variants of the Mastodon, you can easily mount 4 to a large engine plate. But the exact same engine plate can't hold 4 Mainsails without looking... well... terrible.

<snip>

This is why I love the new Mastodons... Sure, they're not quite as powerful as a Mainsail... But when you can fit 4-5 of them into the same space 1 Mainsail takes up, it totally becomes my new favorite heavy lifting engine.  

How are you getting ANY kind of TWR on your first stage?

I built a clone as follows:

Yet, even with almost all the tanks almost completely empty, I still have a TWR under 1:

What am I missing? I've got to be missing something here. 

[Just Jim]

27 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

How are you getting ANY kind of TWR on your first stage?

I built a clone as follows:

Yet, even with almost all the tanks almost completely empty, I still have a TWR under 1:

What am I missing? I've got to be missing something here. 

Admittedly, she is very, very slow off the LP, but it does lift off. 

I can post the craft file if you want to try it... It's not an Emiko ship, so I don't mind. But it uses one of the bugged (over-sized) fairings, so I'm afraid it's not going to work right until the next patch drops. Once it does, she should lift off fine.

 

Edited April 25, 2018 by Just Jim

[klesh]

23 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

What am I missing? I've got to be missing something here. 

 

What is the weight at launch?   I'm able to get a SatV off the pad, with a bunch of the fuel removed as well.

You've got 2 fairings there.  Check the drag information on the 2 parts directly attached below the fairings.  You might be getting wildly high drag being applied.

[sevenperforce]

31 minutes ago, klesh said:

What is the weight at launch?   I'm able to get a SatV off the pad, with a bunch of the fuel removed as well.

You've got 2 fairings there.  Check the drag information on the 2 parts directly attached below the fairings.  You might be getting wildly high drag being applied.

I cut it down to the smallest tanks I can (just the adapter on S1, the smallest 5-meter tank on S2, and the smallest 3.5m tank on S3), and my TWR is still < 1 with those tanks full:

Liftoff mass is 149.64 tonnes.

If I go back up to the realistically-sized tanks and clip two Mastodons into each of the adapter spaces, THEN I can get off the pad with a reasonable TWR. But that is a horrible, horrible kludge.

EDIT:

HOLY CRAP I just realized what the problem was.

I was using Skiffs, not Mastodons.

I KNEW I was missing something!

Edited April 25, 2018 by sevenperforce

[klesh]

8 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

I was using Skiffs, not Mastodons.

 

 

Yup, that'll do it.