[1.8.1-1.12.x] Modular Launch Pads v2.6.1: Launch clamps evolved: Real-style launch bases and towers [03 July 2023]

[Captainamtrak456]

I have tried to follow the instructions for the launch pad for the shuttle, but its just too big for the solid rocket boosters to fit. I am using SOCK, I need help! Also the craft file isn't properly designed as a shuttle pad, the parts are completely mixed up to the point the shuttle stack isn't correctly on the pad.

[AlphaMensae]

16 hours ago, Captainamtrak456 said:

I have tried to follow the instructions for the launch pad for the shuttle, but its just too big for the solid rocket boosters to fit. I am using SOCK, I need help! Also the craft file isn't properly designed as a shuttle pad, the parts are completely mixed up to the point the shuttle stack isn't correctly on the pad.

The SOCK SRBs won't sit in the exhaust holes the same way that the Cormorant SRBs do, but it is just a cosmetic issue, it does not affect a launch.

There is a craft file specifically for the SOCK shuttle.

[Galland1998]

Am I doing something wrong with the horizontal test stand cradle.  All of the attachment points seem to only connect in the vertical position with when I try to put a tank and engine in it.  The vertical stands work just fine.

[AlphaMensae]

8 hours ago, Galland1998 said:

Am I doing something wrong with the horizontal test stand cradle.  All of the attachment points seem to only connect in the vertical position with when I try to put a tank and engine in it.  The vertical stands work just fine.

The attach node is vertical for both styles. Just rotate the tank or surface attach it instead.

[SpheralFlunky59]

Hello, I installed the mod, but, many parts are missing, in fact only 3 parts are in the game. I'm playing on 1.8.1 and I tried to uptade Animated decouplers, change module manager, but nothing work. What I should do?

[AlphaMensae]

1 hour ago, SpheralFlunky59 said:

Hello, I installed the mod, but, many parts are missing, in fact only 3 parts are in the game. I'm playing on 1.8.1 and I tried to uptade Animated decouplers, change module manager, but nothing work. What I should do?

Sounds like you're doing a Science or Career mode save; most of the parts are in custom tech tree nodes and need to be unlocked first, there is only a few in the start node  

AlphaDev GitHub brancg activity!

The Largeer General Swing Arm is finished:

 

All three new general swing arms, the three beam-type swing arms and the three renamed general drop umbilicals are now on the AlphaDev branch.

Also there are revised bases for the large, medium and small general service towers; made them taller for easier clicking in the VAB.

Old arm parts have been removed

Stock custom category has been updated as well.

 

[AlphaMensae]

Finished the restructuring of the now-named Large General Fallback (Strongback) Tower, and it is now on the AlphaDev branch of the GitHub.

No visual or mesh changes, it's a "restructuring" as I changed how it is set up in Unity, to simplify it, remove duplicated mesh objects and to reduce .mu size (reduced to less than half of the old size).

There's only three height variants now: Default (for the Tundra Falcon 9), Short (9.6m shorter) and Tall (9.6m taller).

The umbilicals are now moved vertically with the upper clamp, but their length can be adjusted horizontally with their deploy limit slider (something I did with the Mini fallback tower).

The Small Fallback Tower will be the next to be restructured, and it's not going to be a clone of the large one, i.e. the upper section options will be removed, leaving just the fairing type.

[AlphaMensae]

The Small General and Mini Fallback Towers (the Mini one no longer has "General" in the name as it has a different appearance) have been restructured and are now on the AlphaDev branch of the GitHub.

The Small General one actually has gotten taller, with just three height variants going from about 20m to about 34m.

 

The Mini one now has just 4 height variants, basically the same ones as before but now increasing in larger increements, with the tallest still being under 20m. Also added a second umbilical.

Mini one is shown with the new Electron from @tygoo7's Dodo Labs: 

 

[cameronisher3]

the general crew access arm needs a deploy limit slider for how far it retracts. is this possible?

[AlphaMensae]

12 minutes ago, cameronisher3 said:

the general crew access arm needs a deploy limit slider for how far it retracts. is this possible?

Yes, but it would make it more complicated and non-intuitive, as the arm would have to start in the retracted position (due to how the deploy limit works, which was designed for the cargo bays), which is not very helpful and confusing when attaching it to a tower. Sorry, but no.

[cameronisher3]

18 hours ago, AlphaMensae said:

Yes, but it would make it more complicated and non-intuitive, as the arm would have to start in the retracted position (due to how the deploy limit works, which was designed for the cargo bays), which is not very helpful and confusing when attaching it to a tower. Sorry, but no.

thanks for reply. thats unfortunate 

[Capt. James T. Kirman]

Are there any plans to include a SpaceX crew tower for Falcon 9s/Starships?

[RealKerbal3x]

38 minutes ago, Capt. James T. Kirman said:

Are there any plans to include a SpaceX crew tower for Falcon 9s/Starships?

Since pad 39A was a shuttle pad before SpaceX started using it, the tower that astronauts will use to board Crew Dragon is the same one used for the space shuttle - and that is already in the mod. Maybe the black netting that SpaceX added could be added as a variant though.

A Starship tower would be cool though, even though we don't know exactly what it will look like yet.

[AlphaMensae]

51 minutes ago, Capt. James T. Kirman said:

Are there any plans to include a SpaceX crew tower for Falcon 9s/Starships?

Funny you should mention that.....I've been working on adding an alternate style to the Shuttle FSS tower parts....

It's not done yet, as it has turned into something more complex than I had figured, since I'm also laying groundwork for the big remake of the Saturn and Shuttle pad parts for v2.2--stuff like rearranging the UV Maps and restructuring the parts.

The side "panels" (I first had a solid panel behind the "stringers", but I removed it to make it see-through and more like mesh, but can't make it too fine a mesh as that leads to moire and mip-map problems) are each separately toggleable per tower side. The interior boxes are also toggleable.

Also, only the FSS tower parts--base, core, crew access and top sections--have the alt black&white color option, not the other shuttle pad parts that go on the FSS tower 

For v2.1, both the Saturn and Shuttle towers will have separate parts, not the merged multi-part I did in the mania of mesh merging that happened in the v2.0 dev period. The tower core section will still be a multi-height one, just without the crew access and top sections, and I'm redoing how it's set up in Unity to cut the .mu file size by removing duplicate meshes. The crew-access floor, now part of the crew access section and adjusted with a deploy limit animation, will become a separate part so it can be moved with the offset gizmo like the crew arm.

Also shown is the Rodan Crew Access Arm, a modification of the 2nd alt-style General Crew Arm, sized up a bit for the Tundra Rodan pod, and made to fit on the Shuttle FSS tower.

I plan now to remove the General Crew Arm in that style, and make the alt style an option for the truss-type general arm, by making the side panels an option over the truss, so I don't have to have a whole duplicate arm. I only made the SpaceX-style as a request from the Tundra Ex users, and so it will become exclusively for that pod, much like the Saturn and Shuttle crew arms are exclusive for Apollo and the Shuttle,

Edited January 19, 2020 by AlphaMensae

[Capt. James T. Kirman]

5 minutes ago, AlphaMensae said:

Funny you should mention that.....I've been working on adding an alternate style to the Shuttle FSS tower parts....

It's not done yet, as it has turned into something more complex than I had figured, since I'm also laying groundwork for the big remake of the Saturn and Shuttle pad parts for v2.2--stuff like rearranging the UV Maps and restructuring the parts.

For v2.1, both the Saturn and Shuttle towers will have separate parts, not the merged multi-part I did in the mania of mesh merging that happened in the v2.0 dev period. The tower core section will still be a multi-height one, just without the crew access and top sections, and I'm redoing how it's set up in Unity to cut the .mu file size by removing duplicate meshes.

Also shown is the Rodan Crew Access Arm, a modification of the 2nd alt-style General Crew Arm, sized up a bit for the Tundra Rodan pod, and made to fit on the Shuttle FSS tower.

I plan now to remove the General Crew Arm in that style, and make the alt style an option for the truss-type general arm, by making the side panels an option over the truss, so I don't have to have a whole duplicate arm. I only made the SpaceX-style as a request from the Tundra Ex users, and so it will become exclusively for that pod, much like the Saturn and Shuttle crew arms are exclusive for Apollo and the Shuttle,

Sweet! Can't wait!

[AlphaMensae]

The new v2.1 Shuttle FSS Tower parts and Rodan Crew Arm are done and on the AlphaDev branch of my GitHub. Also included is a new craft file, Ghidorah 9 + Rodan MLP v2_1, which is this:

 

The Shuttle Lightning Mast got a new FSS mount, which is now the default. It still has thee crane and general tower mounts.

The Hammerhead Crane was also changed, the rotation is now an animation of 90 degrees. I was getting collider weirdness with the new FSS top section even though I used the same colliders (crane just bounced around), and I didn't want to waste time messing around with it, so I just made it animated instead of free-rotating. This is for the better, as now I don't have to worry about the colliders anymore.

The Saturn tower hasn't been updated yet, so for a little bit more the top section will still have the crane mount.

This was all just a preliminary revamp to add the black&white color and side panel options, but the former merged multi-FSS tower part (and soon the Saturn tower) is also now in separate parts: the base section, the multi-height core section (6 heights as before, but restructured to reduce .mu file size), the crew access section (2 heights as before) and a separate crew access floor, which snaps into the crew access section. There's also some more toggle options to turn on/off various details.

 

[AlphaMensae]

One thing I forgot about was the remnant RSS hinge for the current state of the FSS tower. I decided to make the hinge a separate part, so you don't have to attach the entire RSS just to get the hinge, and this keeps the hinge out of the tower base, allowing it to me adjusted if necessary.

The hinge will have the black alt color, and the details (platforms and discs) can be toggled off to give it the current appearance.

[AlphaMensae]

I also forgot to upload the revised texture (GeneralPads03.dds) for the Rodan Arm....since the arm is still in the General Pads folder.  The update makes the window border objects I added black. I'll get it on the git when I'm back home.

[AlphaMensae]

Ok, updated GeneralPads03.dds texture is now on the AlphaDev branch.

 

[AlphaMensae]

The new revised Shuttle RSS and the now separate hinge with the alt color option and the detail toggle are done and now on the AlphaDev branch of the GitHub.

Existing shuttle craft files with the pad will be missing the RSS hinge, but otherwise will work the same, as KSP now doesn't update attach nodes on existing parts if those parts had their nodes changed.

 

[Anonim2]

When I use this mod I have a big lag (4 s) when I unlock clamps, after that my game has no lag

[AlphaMensae]

8 hours ago, Anonim2 said:

When I use this mod I have a big lag (4 s) when I unlock clamps, after that my game has no lag

I do not understand this as there are no details. I have no problems.

[KnedlikMCPE]

What shuttle mod is the shuttle pad made for?

[RealKerbal3x]

36 minutes ago, KnedlikMCPE said:

What shuttle mod is the shuttle pad made for?

Cormorant Aeronology, though AlphaMensae is working on making it compatible with Shuttle Orbiter Construction Kit as well.

[AlphaMensae]

1 hour ago, KnedlikMCPE said:

What shuttle mod is the shuttle pad made for?

 

56 minutes ago, RealKerbal3x said:

Cormorant Aeronology, though AlphaMensae is working on making it compatible with Shuttle Orbiter Construction Kit as well.

Yes, it was designed around the Cormorant Aeronology shuttle stack, and the Mk 3 cockpit in general, but it can be used with benjee10's SOCK as well with a few adjustments, the differences being cosmetic only except for the crew access arm, which has to moved to the center of the FSS tower.  The SRB hold-down bolts will be inside the aft skirts of the SOCK SRBs. The beanie cap has to be moved up a slight bit to avoid having the SOCK ET top spire from poking through.

There are craft files for both the Cormorant and SOCK shuttles on the shuttle pad.

Note that those craft files (as well as most of the others in the v2.0.7 release) are outdated with the v2.1 dev builds, as the Shuttle FSS tower and RSS have been revised. All new craft files will come with the v2.1 release.

The shuttle pad parts (along with the Saturn pad ones) will be given a full revamp later for v2.2, and it will get options to accomodate both shuttles.