is there a mod that makes asymetrical crafts burn symetrically?

[Artienia]

To be short, For a shuttle there is a lot more power in the Launch systemm (orange tanks) than the shuttle itself. Is there a mod that commpensates for this? Because if you burn too hard you will flip. So basically a mod which acccounts for all acctive engines, and burns them in a way so the Center of thrust is inline with Center of Mass.
PS: I imagine this mod would also be used to build VTOL crafts, if that helps

Thanks

[Rocket In My Pocket]

The real life/stock way to solve this is gimble or tilted engines to offset the torque.

I think there is a mod that does what you are asking for though, sort of cheating imo but you do you.

TAC fuel balancer or something like that it's called.

[steve_v]

2 hours ago, Artienia said:

a mod which acccounts for all acctive engines, and burns them in a way so the Center of thrust is inline with Center of Mass.

The complex:

And the not so complex:

Either will do what you want. TCA has a raft of impressive autopilot-esque capabilities and career integration, though it can be a little daunting to begin with. It even makes VTOLs a snap to fly.
DTC is a lot simpler, both in UI and functionality, and a good choice if you just want individual throttles and balancing for your asymmetrical lifters without any additional clutter.

 

1 hour ago, Rocket In My Pocket said:

sort of cheating imo

Eh? I'm pretty certain flying the real shuttle didn't involve manual fiddling with thrust limiters in flight, there were such things as flight computers in the '80s.

1 hour ago, Rocket In My Pocket said:

TAC fuel balancer

Nah, totally different mod for the balancing and transfer of fuel. Obsoleted by stock functionality for the most part IMO, but still handy if you want to get at all your tanks in flight without PAW sniping.

Edited August 24, 2018 by steve_v

[Artienia]

15 minutes ago, steve_v said:

The complex:

And the not so complex:

Either will do what you want. TCA has a raft of impressive autopilot-esque capabilities and career integration, though it can be a little daunting to begin with. It even makes VTOLs a snap to fly.
DTC is a lot simpler, both in UI and functionality, and a good choice if you just want individual throttles and balancing for your asymmetrical lifters without any additional clutter.

Thanks!

[steve_v]

3 minutes ago, Artienia said:

Thanks!

You're welcome
I should probably also mention the excellent RCS Build Aid, an indispensable tool when designing such craft.

[Artienia]

Just now, steve_v said:

You're welcome
I should probably also mention the excellent RCS Build Aid, an indispensable tool when designing such craft.

Do you happen to know a mod that displays Com and Col in flight? there is a mod like that, i just cant find it

[steve_v]

4 minutes ago, Artienia said:

Do you happen to know a mod that displays Com and Col in flight?

It's been requested several times, but the only mod I can think of that comes close is PWB. Unfortunately it only showed the COM in flight, and it's not up to date for >1.0.5 either.

RCS build aid shows both wet and dry COM in the hangar, so you should be able to get a reasonable idea how your CoM will move as fuel drains. CoL (CoP) is estimable in flight with the aero overlay on, not that you'd often need it.

If you feel like writing a mod to show these markers in flight, it's probably going to be fairly popular.

[Artienia]

1 minute ago, steve_v said:

It's been requested several times, but the only mod I can think of that comes close is PWB. Unfortunately it only showed the COM in flight, and it's not up to date for >1.0.5 either.

RCS build aid shows both wet and dry COM in the hangar, so you should be able to get a reasonable idea how your CoM will move as fuel drains. CoL (CoP) is estimable in flight with the aero overlay on, not that you'd often need it.

If you feel like writing a mod to show these markers in flight, it's probably going to be fairly popular.

weird because i seen one in a recent thread

[steve_v]

You may well be right. I've not looked for one in a long time, and my memory is far from perfect.

[Artienia]

1 minute ago, steve_v said:

You may well be right. I've not looked for one in a long time, and my memory is far from perfect.

thanks anyways

[Rocket In My Pocket]

1 hour ago, steve_v said:

Eh? I'm pretty certain flying the real shuttle didn't involve manual fiddling with thrust limiters in flight, there were such things as flight computers in the '80s.

Neither does flying a well designed KSP shuttle to be fair.

Plenty of engines with good gimbal, which like the real space shuttle engines; will help fight any potential torque.

Cheating is an opinion thing as I said though, certainly not telling him how to play. I would warn him that he's taking most of the challenge, (and thus the fun) of designing a good space shuttle out of the game though.

Edited August 24, 2018 by Rocket In My Pocket

[steve_v]

14 minutes ago, Rocket In My Pocket said:

I would warn him that he's taking most of the challenge, (and thus the fun) of designing a good space shuttle out of the game though.

The challenge isn't entirely in design, even something without sufficient gimbal will fly if you fiddle with the thrust limiters. Doing this is just very annoying without automation.
If we're given infinitely throttleable engines (which is highly unrealistic anyway) and a thrust-limit slider, I see no problem with automating the fiddly mouse clicks. It's simply making a stock feature more user friendly.

Calling TCA "cheating" is just another variant of the ever-recurring "MechJeb is cheating" argument, and I get mildly irritated every time one appears.
It might take the fun out of it for you but the OP clearly wants it anyway, otherwise the question would not have been asked to begin with.

[Rocket In My Pocket]

Well..MechJeb is cheating though? Lol, kidding! (Mostly.)

To each his own though, for me KSP is at it's heart a game about solving engineering challenges. Removing those challenges seems counter intuitive to me.

Let's agree to disagree though, he got his answer, and I've no desire to argue with you, apologies if what I said offended you, I'm on my phone and my responses are much shorter and to the point because of this, so maybe I came off as dismissive or short with the OP. Didn't mean too. 

[steve_v]

9 minutes ago, Rocket In My Pocket said:

MechJeb is cheating though

I'm pretty sure cheating doesn't exist for a single-player game like KSP, no matter what you get up to.
Personally I like to nerf the the obviously OP stock parts (vector, wolfhound, reaction wheels, etc.) and add some "hard mode" mods, so it works out much the same anyway. Season to taste and all that.

7 minutes ago, Rocket In My Pocket said:

Let's agree to disagree though

Fair enough.

8 minutes ago, Rocket In My Pocket said:

apologies if what I said offended you

Not at all.

[Randazzo]

Some things never change. 

[4x4cheesecake]

ShadowZone just uploaded a new video on building a spaceshuttle incl. balancing things. There are a few things I'm doing differently (like using RCSBuildAid) but it is better explained than I could ever do

 

 

[Laie]

4 hours ago, Artienia said:

Do you happen to know a mod that displays Com and Col in flight? there is a mod like that, i just cant find it

MechJeb has this, hidden under "Attitude Adjustment". It can also do what you originally asked for, it's called "differential throttle" under "Utilities".

[Dman979]

This discussion of add-ons has been moved to the Add-on Discussions subforum.

[MR L A]

On 8/24/2018 at 12:24 PM, steve_v said:

Eh? I'm pretty certain flying the real shuttle didn't involve manual fiddling with thrust limiters in flight, there were such things as flight computers in the '80s.

Erm not manual no, but they did automatically. As well as design the craft in the first place to have a proper placement of CoM and CoT. You really do not need mods to build a working shuttle. You just need to build it properly. 

[Laie]

On 8/24/2018 at 1:24 PM, steve_v said:

Eh? I'm pretty certain flying the real shuttle didn't involve manual fiddling with thrust limiters in flight, there were such things as flight computers in the '80s.

Nope, they just built it so that all thrust vectors about lined up with the CoM, then let gimbals handle the rest. No fancy thrust controllers required. You can totally do that in KSP, however, you then run into the problem of the thrust vector not lining up with the vessel's idea of "prograde". Hold on, let me illustrate...

This is not a shuttle, but bear with me for a moment. Do you see how the engine's exhaust goes noticeably downwards? And the nuke on the back (the Orbital Maneuvering System) is tilted, too. Both line up with the CoM, at least well enough that gimbals and reaction wheels can cope with the remaining torque.

I can assure you that it works just fine. However, In OMS mode, if you just point the vessel to a maneuver node and light up the engine, you will end up going in circles. In order to fly straight, you need to hold the nose some five degrees up from wherever you want to go. This is getting tedious, real quick.

It should be a trivial issue, but I'm not aware of any mod that will take offset thrust vectors into account. Even TCA will only try to control the engines such that the compound vector lines up with the vessel's idea of prograde (that is, where the cockpit is facing).

On this particular craft, I've worked around the issue by placing a small probe core that's lined up with the nuke  (zoom in and you may see it, just above the rapiers). While in space, I control the vessel from there -- and can use maneuvers as usual.

So, to summarize: balancing a shuttle (or any vessel) by angling engines works well (and RCS build aid makes it easy to set up). Compensating for the offset thrust vector isn't that bad or hard to do at launch time. Once you want to do precision maneuvering in space, however, having a combination of engines and control points lining up with each other is a real quality-of-life improvement.

[Apaseall]

12 minutes ago, Laie said:

Nope, they just built it so that all thrust vectors about lined up with the CoM, then let gimbals handle the rest. No fancy thrust controllers required. You can totally do that in KSP, however, you then run into the problem of the thrust vector not lining up with the vessel's idea of "prograde". Hold on, let me illustrate...

This is not a shuttle, but bear with me for a moment. Do you see how the engine's exhaust goes noticeably downwards? And the nuke on the back (the Orbital Maneuvering System) is tilted, too. Both line up with the CoM, at least well enough that gimbals and reaction wheels can cope with the remaining torque.

I can assure you that it works just fine. However, In OMS mode, if you just point the vessel to a maneuver node and light up the engine, you will end up going in circles. In order to fly straight, you need to hold the nose some five degrees up from wherever you want to go. This is getting tedious, real quick.

It should be a trivial issue, but I'm not aware of any mod that will take offset thrust vectors into account. Even TCA will only try to control the engines such that the compound vector lines up with the vessel's idea of prograde (that is, where the cockpit is facing).

On this particular craft, I've worked around the issue by placing a small probe core that's lined up with the nuke  (zoom in and you may see it, just above the rapiers). While in space, I control the vessel from there -- and can use maneuvers as usual.

So, to summarize: balancing a shuttle (or any vessel) by angling engines works well (and RCS build aid makes it easy to set up). Compensating for the offset thrust vector isn't that bad or hard to do at launch time. Once you want to do precision maneuvering in space, however, having a combination of engines and control points lining up with each other is a real quality-of-life improvement.

I believe there is a mod that will help with what you are trying to do. Or two even. Let me make sure by stating what I think you are trying to do. I think you are trying to pitch the nose up five degrees.

1. A mod I think is being taken care of by linuxgurugamer, it allows you to set the trim. Trim up enough and I bet you get your five degrees.

2. Atmospheric auto pilot, whilst not being strictly a point to prograde will fly your craft I am confident to state.

3. You could try using mechjeb and manually set the pitch by using the smartass autopilot set for reference to surface. Leave the roll, or not, and yaw, but set the pitch up. Lol just looked up and saw you did just that. Doh! That will teach me not only to read the words but look at the pretty pictures too. Lol.

[steve_v]

14 hours ago, MR L A said:

You really do not need mods to build a working shuttle.

Of course you don't. The OP asked for a mod to do a certain thing, and I directed him to it. Nothing to do with thrust vectoring or cheating.
No, you don't need TCA to build a shuttle. It does make one easier to control however, and has a lot of other uses besides.
Why some need to imply that using it is somehow unfair, suggest that the OP (and me, by the sound of it) is doing it wrong, or drop by to show off their designs, is entirely beyond me. Question asked, question answered.
 

24 minutes ago, Laie said:

Hold on, let me illustrate...

While the OP may find this useful, I do happen to know how thrust vectors work. I also know how to build a shuttle, though personally I consider it an excessively complex and expensive way to do what a rocket or SSTO spaceplane can do better.
I have no idea why you're trying to explain this to me.
 

24 minutes ago, Laie said:

balancing a shuttle (or any vessel) by angling engines works well

Of course it does. But again, you're directing it at the wrong person.

Edited August 26, 2018 by steve_v

[Laie]

1 minute ago, steve_v said:

I have no idea why you're trying to explain this to me.

Nah, it was mostly meant as an apropos for the whole thread. Most of it had been said already, I just thought I could say it better... and your post provided a convenient quote as an attachment point, that's all. I didn't want to berate you personally.

@Apaseall: don't get too hung up on that particular vessel, it was just a picture I had lying around that (I hope) illustrates offset thrust.

However, you seem to have missed a key point: offset thrust isn't much of a problem until you want to do precision maneuvers. During launch, it hardly matters. Well, maybe if you want to launch to rendezvous... but as long as your destination is nothing more specific than "an AP outside the atmosphere", you probably don't even need to compensate.

[MR L A]

19 minutes ago, steve_v said:

Of course you don't. The OP asked for a mod to do a certain thing, and I directed him to it.

I cut the rest of your response here because it is entirely irrelevant to my post and the post (yours) that I was responding to - which, I seem to need to remind you, was your comment about NASA and not going to do with OP. 

I’ll reiterate, you are right that NASA didn’t manually adjust fuel loads or thrust, this was done automatically - but they did NOT build a craft that was asymmetric around CoM and CoT, it was balanced in terms of where engines were placed and how much thrust was produced - they did not construct a wildly unbalanced craft then fix it with computer piloting - it was balanced mechanically from the outset - with thrust vectoring to pick up the slack as fuel depleted, shifting the CoM over time - CoM and CoT were accurately aligned at launch.

in summation, my suggestion was that OP simply build a better shuttle than rely on mods to fix a poorly built craft.

 

[guesswho2778]

On 8/24/2018 at 9:16 PM, Artienia said:

Do you happen to know a mod that displays Com and Col in flight? there is a mod like that, i just cant find it

im fairly sure mechjeb can do that

somewhere in one of its many menus