A "KSP Loading..." Preview: The Rockomax RE-L10 “Poodle” Engine Revamp

[V7 Aerospace]

19 hours ago, MaverickSawyer said:

I'm torn on the Skipper though... It's a pretty decent model, and I wouldn't mind it if it remained. But if it changed, then... *shrugs*

Honestly, to me the skipper is the best looking engine in-game.

Looks realistic enough while still keeping the Kerbal aesthetic. I like the MH engines, but it feels strange putting Human engines on Kerbal rockets. The KSP parts have their own identity that the MH parts can never compare to.

[Tyko]

59 minutes ago, V7 Aerospace said:

Honestly, to me the skipper is the best looking engine in-game.

Looks realistic enough while still keeping the Kerbal aesthetic. I like the MH engines, but it feels strange putting Human engines on Kerbal rockets. The KSP parts have their own identity that the MH parts can never compare to.

Agreed that the Skipper was one of the best. I don't mind all the pipes being hidden and it kind of ties in with the fact the Kerbal engines are heavier and much more reliable than human engines.

Frankly, I'd be happy with many of the different aesthetics / art styles present in the various parts. The problem it's such a hodgepodge of mixed texture quality, art styles, different whites, etc! If they'd just pick one, call it the standard and update the parts to that standard I would have been fine. All I really want is to be able to slap a bunch of parts together and have the resulting craft look somewhat consistent.

Many of the people with more art/3D expertise than me hold Porkjet parts as the gold standard for stock-alike. I'm happy to bow to their greater wisdom. The Porkjet proposals for updated engines have more pipes / pumps than the old stock, but they don't overdo it either. A happy medium as far as I'm concerned.

[V7 Aerospace]

53 minutes ago, Tyko said:

Agreed that the Skipper was one of the best. I don't mind all the pipes being hidden and it kind of ties in with the fact the Kerbal engines are heavier and much more reliable than human engines.

Frankly, I'd be happy with many of the different aesthetics / art styles present in the various parts. The problem it's such a hodgepodge of mixed texture quality, art styles, different whites, etc! If they'd just pick one, call it the standard and update the parts to that standard I would have been fine. All I really want is to be able to slap a bunch of parts together and have the resulting craft look somewhat consistent.

Many of the people with more art/3D expertise than me hold Porkjet parts as the gold standard for stock-alike. I'm happy to bow to their greater wisdom. The Porkjet proposals for updated engines have more pipes / pumps than the old stock, but they don't overdo it either. A happy medium as far as I'm concerned.

Maybe a model revamp of the Skipper? A higher quality model and upgraded textures, but still keeping the same design. If this was done, we could have treatable sizes, I'd be imagining the standard 2.5m and a 1.85m variant without the base plate.

Edited December 6, 2018 by V7 Aerospace

[Tyko]

25 minutes ago, V7 Aerospace said:

Maybe a model revamp of the Skipper? A higher quality model and upgraded textures, but still keeping the same design. If this was done, we could have treatable sizes, I'd be imagining the standard 2.5m and a 1.85m variant without the base plate.

would have been an interesting direction choice a year and a half ago. With MH out now I think Squad's direction is set and I'd much rather them continue on that course than make yet another direction change. I'm not an artist with a strong preference for one particular direction. I'm an OCD gamer with a strong preference for  picking ONE direction   

If you're looking for more engines that match the old aesthetics take a look at RLA Reborn. 

[Brotoro]

The old Poodle was ugly and unscientific.

This is better.

[iLikeRovers]

I do like the more accurate bell shape, but it still seems a bit too fat. I mocked up a slender version.

[klesh]

The whole reason the bells are fat is because its a vacuum specific engine and fat bells work better in space.  He briefly directly addresses the Poodle at 7 minutes in.

 

 

Edited December 8, 2018 by klesh

[iLikeRovers]

5 hours ago, klesh said:

The whole reason the bells are fat is because its a vacuum specific engine and fat bells work better in space.

Maybe I shouldn't have used the word "fat", my intuition is that a vacuum optimised bell has a more slender shape proportionally, with a smaller nozzle exit angle so you minimise the component of non-axial (sideways) exhaust velocity. Its also proportionally a longer bell to best match the vacuum pressure like Scott Manley's excellent video mentioned. But I'm not a rocket engineer, so I might be wrong on some things!

There's an interesting bit here on bell nozzle shapes.  http://www.braeunig.us/space/propuls.htm

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

30 minutes ago, iLikeRovers said:

Maybe I shouldn't have used the word "fat", my intuition is that a vacuum optimised bell has a more slender shape proportionally, with a smaller nozzle exit angle so you minimise the component of non-axial (sideways) exhaust velocity. Its also proportionally a longer bell to best match the vacuum pressure like Scott Manley's excellent video mentioned. But I'm not a rocket engineer, so I might be wrong on some things!

There's an interesting bit here on bell nozzle shapes.  http://www.braeunig.us/space/propuls.htm

I agree, the expansion ratio looks too large relative to the nozzle length to me.

https://www.spacex.com/sites/all/themes/spacex2012/images/reveal-merlin-inner.png

[Gapone]

Make it onenozzled. Maybe this as a diffirent part. RE-L10 "Poodle" and RE-L20 "Twin Poodle", which has two times the thrust.

[RealKerbal3x]

2 hours ago, Gapone said:

Make it onenozzled. Maybe this as a diffirent part. RE-L10 "Poodle" and RE-L20 "Twin Poodle", which has two times the thrust.

Twice the nozzles doesn’t necessarily mean twice the thrust. It’s still one engine, just with two nozzles instead of one.

Edited December 9, 2018 by RealKerbal3x

[sh1pman]

49 minutes ago, RealKerbal3x said:

Twice the nozzles doesn’t necessarily mean twice the thrust. It’s still one engine, just with two nozzles instead of one.

Also has two combustion chambers instead of one. The only shared thing is a turbopump.

[Death Engineering]

Landing on the side of appreciating the single gimbal point choice over having both bells gimballing. While having the roll feature is great, in fact I remember when KSP first supported that function, roll has never been part of the Poodle.

#noRollPoodle

[releansol]

The old nozzle dazzle. Ring my Poddle bells. This engine will be great!

[Tyko]

6 hours ago, releansol said:

The old nozzle dazzle. Ring my Poddle bells. This engine will be great!

Oh gosh...shoot me now! I just imagined a mod that changes the Poodle's bells to red and green and swaps out the rocket sound for the sleigh bells "ching ching ching" sound  ... ugh...sorry.

[JadeOfMaar]

On 12/9/2018 at 3:14 PM, Death Engineering said:

Landing on the side of appreciating the single gimbal point choice over having both bells gimballing. While having the roll feature is great, in fact I remember when KSP first supported that function, roll has never been part of the Poodle.

#noRollPoodle

From what I know, the new Poodle does not gimbal on its bells but the superstructure that holds them, in which case, it cannot roll (at all) as you are expecting.

[Red_Horizons]

I think its a little wierd, looks like 2 cheetas strapped together

[Tweeker]

The new model looks great!

However,

now that it is clearly a double RL-10 you need to adjust the thrust to match,

It's thrust should be 50 if it is intended to be 2 RL-10s like on the centaur upper stage.