20,000 Leagues Under the Sea - or Docking Underwater

[Scarecrow]

We all know that docking is one of the most difficult things in KSP to master, but it's well worth the effort of learning how to do it.  Well how about going one further; docking underwater.

I imagine a few of us have dabbled with putting a base on the ocean floor somewhere, discovering which parts in the VAB/SPH float, and which will sink.  But have you given any thought to resupplying that base once it's in position, or rotating the crew that man it?

This challenge requires that first of all you install a base on the ocean floor somewhere.  You can put it where you like, though somewhere just east of the KSC is most convenient.  That's the easy bit.  The main part of the challenge is that you build a submarine that is capable of reaching the base and then docking with it once it gets there.

I have to say that in preparing my own effort, I found there are a lot of things that don't work as you would hope they would, which made it quite difficult to come up with a design that could actually achieve the goal.

 

For anyone who manages to complete this challenge, not only will you be added to the Roll of Honour, but you will also be granted the Underwater Nymph badge to display in your signature.

                                                                                                                                                                            

 

 

Rules.

1. You may use hyperedit to put your base in position, but you may not use it for the submarine

2. You may use wheels to drive your base to position, but your submarine must be 'free flying'.  i.e. you can use wheels to get it to the water, but no driving up to your base to dock.

3. No Mechjeb

4. Stock only

 

The following screenshots were taken from a number of attempts before I finally succeeded, but effectively show how I did it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Captain Nemo's Roll of Honour

1. Scarecrow

2. oAsAo

Edited June 9, 2018 by Scarecrow

[Scarecrow]

I guess most people just aren't into aquatic challenges, or maybe it's the effort of having to build a base before actually trying the challenge that's putting people off.  Be interested to hear from anyone who isn't going to try this challenge the reason they decided not to.  Would help me to possibly amend it to make it more appealing.

Edited June 5, 2018 by Scarecrow

[Aphobius]

Lack of scoring might be a problem.

[Scarecrow]

Difficult to come up with a scoring system - what criteria would you base it on?  I was trying to keep it relatively simple, you either succeed or you don't, with success getting a place on the Roll of Honour board.  Compared to a lot of challenges, I actually found it quite difficult putting a craft together that would allow enough control while trying to dock without either sinking too quickly or floating away, especially once the thrust engines were turned off.  Most submersible vehicles rely on forward motion to enable the dive planes to work, which then allow you to control your depth.  Once you kill your forward motion, which you need to do when docking, control becomes very difficult, which is where the crux of this challenge comes from - building a craft that can be controlled underwater when it has no forward motion.

Thanks for the feedback though.

[Klapaucius]

I think it sounds very cool, but I am just not experienced enough in the game yet to attempt something of this magnitude.  Personally, scoring and badges don't motivate me. Interesting problems do, however. Give me another year and I will be back to try this :-)

[oAsAo]

Hold my bear!

 

Ok maybe not now...

Edited June 7, 2018 by oAsAo

[Gargamel]

On 6/6/2018 at 1:00 PM, oAsAo said:

Hold my bear!

Is that part of the right to arm bears?

 

@Scarecrow, Love this concept, actually makes me want to build submarine bases soon.  I might give this a go some day.   But since it is a simple success/failure challenge, offer a nifty badge for peoples sigs, that will give them something to earn.

And perhaps a hard mode.   Undock from a LKO station, re-enter, then dock with a base on the sea floor.     This I might try.    Gonna have to get some ballast mods working. 

[Scarecrow]

Thanks for the suggestions guys.  I've designed a badge that successful submariners can make use of, it's shown in the original post.  As for a hard mode, whilst I don't doubt that it is probably achievable, I found the challenge as presented threw up some interesting problems that took me a while to overcome.  I was hoping to offer something a little bit different to what you normally see in the Challenge section, which I thought would be enough to pique people's interest.

[sevenperforce]

Extreme mode:

Using an SSTO, take off from KSC, dock with a station in LEO, re-enter, dock with the underwater base, come back to the surface, and fly back to KSC. You should be able to refuel at the KSC and (in theory) repeat. You can refuel at the station and at the base if you like. 

[Scarecrow]

Given how much ore you need to carry to make a vessel sink, I can't imagine what such a craft that was also capable of SSTO would look like.

[sevenperforce]

3 hours ago, Scarecrow said:

Given how much ore you need to carry to make a vessel sink, I can't imagine what such a craft that was also capable of SSTO would look like.

My plan (because jet engines work underwater) would be to put STOL-assist jet engines in the fuselage and simply flip upside-down for submarine activity.

[Scarecrow]

The biggest part of the challenge I found was to be able to control the craft at low enough speeds underwater to actually dock.  I chose to put my docking port underneath my craft, which required control in both horizontal axis, whilst the vertical axis remained fairly neutral.  If you put a port on the nose of your craft, I suppose it would be possible to perform a 'dart lawn' style dock, but I still think control would need to be more precise than you find on your average submersible.

[oAsAo]

full album

And "'dart lawn' style dock" is good thing)

[Scarecrow]

Interesting that I see RCS thrusters on your craft, as I am pretty sure I tried those and found they didn't work underwater.  Or it may have been the 4-way thrusters.

Name added to the Roll of Honour.  Well done

[XLjedi]

On ‎6‎/‎5‎/‎2018 at 2:25 PM, Scarecrow said:

I guess most people just aren't into aquatic challenges, or maybe it's the effort of having to build a base before actually trying the challenge that's putting people off.  Be interested to hear from anyone who isn't going to try this challenge the reason they decided not to.  Would help me to possibly amend it to make it more appealing.

First, and what most turned me off of the challenge; your badge is a bit racy for a Kerbal achievement... not to mention it doesn't seem to scale well and suffers form pixilation when scaled down to a signature.  The rules do not seem to disallow modded or edited craft files; so I could probably edit the buoyancy of any craft file and fly it underwater to dock without much effort.  Whether or not you devise some sort of scoring doesn't typically matter to me.  If anything, scoring tends to prevent folks from even trying once they think someone else has posted the high score and "won".

Edited June 9, 2018 by XLjedi

[oAsAo]

49 minutes ago, Scarecrow said:

Interesting that I see RCS thrusters on your craft, as I am pretty sure I tried those and found they didn't work underwater.  Or it may have been the 4-way thrusters.

Yes.This is my first try just placed them but not used.

[Scarecrow]

@XLjedi Thanks for the feedback.  The badge was knocked up really quickly after a previous suggestion, so perhaps I can re-think that one. As for allowing modded craft, the difficulty of this challenge comes from having to use stock and I didn't want people to feel that they had to install a particular mod to be able to succeed.

[XLjedi]

1 hour ago, Scarecrow said:

@XLjedi Thanks for the feedback.  The badge was knocked up really quickly after a previous suggestion, so perhaps I can re-think that one. As for allowing modded craft, the difficulty of this challenge comes from having to use stock and I didn't want people to feel that they had to install a particular mod to be able to succeed.

Well...  if the intent was to use stock...  nowhere in your rules do you actually say that.  So I actually viewed the challenge as way too easy since there is no stated rule that the craft needs to be stock.  So maybe a few additional rules/guidelines in the challenge would be helpful.

[Scarecrow]

Rules amended to restrict entries to stock.

[The Minmus Derp]

I wanna try this!