RLA Stockalike v10 released 11th August

[Scotius]

What engine would that be for? I can't get the FX in game just yet since I need a small plugin to make the Kethane particle system function with engine throttle on non-Kethane parts. It's not a huge problem though, Majiir will either add that himself at some point, or stock KSP will have custom FX added.

Electric and nuclear ones. Have you seen any video or photo of VASIMR or Ion engine test? I'm thinking about that sweet blue or purple glow around the business end of the engine

Edited July 1, 2013 by Scotius
Typo

[leopardenthusiast]

Electric and nuclear ones. Have you seen any video or photo of VASIMR or Ion engine test? I'm thinking about that sweet blue or purple glow around the business end of the engine

If anyone's looking for pictures now, Wikipedia has great ones.

[Ferrit]

I just have to say the RCS Stockalikes are brilliant! Been hoping that someone would introduce these for ages (even to the point of considering learning Blender just to make them myself) and they have proven massively handy. Many thanks

[hoojiwana]

Thanks for the support guys, I really appreciate it! If you've ever created something and seen or heard peoples comments about it, you'll know what I mean. On the matter of particle FX, what the Ions and similar engines will have will be as close to the real thing as I can get. The image that is in the first post and page or two back were just some ideas I had while I was learning (playing) the Unity particle set up. Each one is two or three emitters and each emitter has a very low number of active particles at a time as I could get away with, since I had no idea how they impact performance. If I add a significantly higher number of active particles per emitter I can definitely get the right effect, as long as it doesn't end up looking too bright!

If anyone has any suggestions for things I can add to Stockalike I'll be glad to try implementing them.

I'm also going to cross post a Spaceport comment on the Electric Engines over here since it was an interesting post.

Nice idea and nice models, I like the trusters and would really like to use them. But I cant, because:

Big downside is that the TWR on all the engines is very bad: equal or less to the standard Ion engine but with less Delta V due to relatively high fuel consumption.

This makes them unusable for most of my projects, even the space probes are better of with standard ion engines.

Please have a look at the engine performances. Using more fuel/lower delta V is fine, but at least give them a higher TWR then. Anything below 0.5 on such a small engine is basically un-usable because when you power a probe on it you drop below 0.1 often.

Xeon tanks are also not in line with the other Xeon tanks they have too much xeon per ton, which makes them a bit cheating.

And my reply:

Thanks for the feedback.

The way I’ve balanced the parts is simply as multiples of the stock one (or same size for the Arcjet/Resistojet). So the larger engines have the same mass and thrust as 4 small ones, and the radial ones have the same mass and thrust as half of the small ones.

Arcjets have twice the thrust of an Ion, Resistojets have four times the thrust. That goes the same for the 1.25m engines, except as mentioned before, they are equal to 4 of the small engines.

I think of it in burn times as well. The stock ion/RLA 0.625m ion with 1 stock tank worth of Xenon has ~96 minutes of burn time available. The arcjet, with half the ISP and twice the thrust, has a burn time of 24 minutes. The resistojet has a burn time of only 6 minutes, but a lot less dV available.

As for the Xenon tanks, they are balanced in the same way, multiples of the stock one. The smallest 1.25m tank is equal to the dry mass of 4 stock ones, and has 4 times the capacity. They are essentially there to lower part count.

More engines are on their way eventually though, some of them I’m aiming to have TWR on par with the LV-N atomic engine, but with a tremendous power requirement to match. If you can’t wait for that then feel free to edit the configs however you wish, though the ISP and propellent ratio might be a bit confusing to figure out.

I really should sort out a table or something that displays all the information clearly for people to check out before they download.

Am I wrong in my balancing? I've always wondered if things work out as I believe them to, and seeing posts like Desperado's always brings back my fears that I've buggered it up somewhere and it's all horribly under/overpowered.

[CrazyIvan]

Two updates tonight, the first was to the MMRTG to update its texture, and to bring its folder structure inline since it is also included in the new Power Generation pack that you can go download right now! There's not much in it besides the SRGs that you've already seen since I'm working on getting solar panels to function, and there wasn't a point having them just sat on my hard drive doing nothing.

What engine would that be for? I can't get the FX in game just yet since I need a small plugin to make the Kethane particle system function with engine throttle on non-Kethane parts. It's not a huge problem though, Majiir will either add that himself at some point, or stock KSP will have custom FX added.

That's exactly what the coming updates to the Power Generation pack will include, and possibly even some HiPEP-like designs for Electric Engines. If you want to test anything I tend to put up stable updates on Spaceport, so go download it, break it, and report back!

I actually kinda have if you remember someone bugging you about power and fuel consumption on the spaceport that was me! ows its going btw are you waiting for .21?

[CrazyIvan]

Also if you are you are using a JIMO type reactor then you may want to add radiators that glow also!

[Virtualgenius]

I use your radial stack extenders alot any chance we can get a full range of sizes say from really small to really big i like to keep things symetrical thanks for your mods

[Retro.Humanoid]

Any news on the VASMIR engine?

[Psyckosama]

Any news on a conversion of Stockalike to the new version?

[hoojiwana]

Hey guys, sorry about the lack of updates, didn't want to really post if it was just a single thing. That and I've been enjoying summer and doing other stuff that's not KSP related so I've not had much to update with anyway! Thanks for checking up on this thread and posting your questions, I'll go through them now.

I use your radial stack extenders alot any chance we can get a full range of sizes say from really small to really big i like to keep things symetrical thanks for your mods

Stockalike 0.6 is in the works, with a remodel of the stack extenders to look more like the other stock structural elements, particularly the stack bi/tri/quadcouplers and adapters. This will almost certainly break any existing craft that use the current stack extenders unfortunately, so keep that in mind when it eventually comes out. 0.625m stack extenders will also be added, and I'm umming and ahhing over doing 2.5m ones.

Any news on the VASMIR engine?

A VASIMR would require a plugin to work, and I absolutely cannot code for the life of me, so it's going to have to wait.

Any news on a conversion of Stockalike to the new version?

With the exception of the Inline Avionics the existing version should work just fine. Next update the Inline Avionics will be discontinued since it now serves no purpose, feel free to delete that part.

EDIT: Oh and Bac9 gave me some tips to improve the look of my parts and this is me giving them a go with my new tablet. UV mapping needs to be completely redone, and I need to figure out how to do the AO better.

Edited August 4, 2013 by hoojiwana

[AlmightyR]

Using electric engines and stockalike packs.

RLA's packs are some of the best out there...A must-have in my opinion.

[Benzschwagel]

Hoojiwana, I was wondering if you could put out a release of your stuff with fixes for the .21.1 update. I understand that you are making new stuff and also busy enjoying summer, but I was just hoping that it might just be a couple of quick fixes to get them working well with 0.21.1. Go ahead and take your time, it's cool, I've got stuff going on, too (enjoying summer as well). And keep up the good work, thank you for the mod.

Also, do you or anyone else know which ones already work with 0.21.1?

[hoojiwana]

Also, do you or anyone else know which ones already work with 0.21.1?

As far as I'm aware they should all work just fine with the exception of the Inline Avionics in Stockalike.. Nothing really changed as far as I'm aware going from 0.20 to 0.21+, with the exception of the new SAS, so I didn't see a need to change them to show [0.21] on their Spaceport pages.

EDIT:

Oh look, something new!

Edited August 11, 2013 by hoojiwana

[Benzschwagel]

works for me, downloading, and thank you

[betaking]

thank you RLA! this looks good.

[Scotius]

Now that's a huge cousin of humble RCS-es

[Behronzo]

I've been having trouble getting the 5way block to load. Is there any way to fix this?

[hoojiwana]

If you have any simple requests for parts for Stockalike 0.6, now is the time to make them! Here's a little list of what I'm aiming to include:

• 1.25m Monopropellent engine
  
• 0.625m Monopropellent engine
  
• Small Radial Monopropellent engine
  
• Remodelled radial stack extenders
  
• 0.625m LFO tanks, since I've been making lots of rockets in that scale and stacking Oscar B's is getting pretty dull!
  

And here are some potential things, though I might push these back to the next update since there's not much point having the above unreleased for too long.

• Linear RCS version of the 0.625m MP engine, for all your gigantic craft maneuvering
  
• Radial reaction wheels
  
• 0.625m LFO engine that's between the LV-1 and the 48-7S
  
• 0.625m nuclear engine
  

I've been having trouble getting the 5way block to load. Is there any way to fix this?

What exactly do you mean having trouble getting it to load? Does the game get stuck on the first loading screen before the menu? Or is it an issue in the VAB/flight scene?

Check that you've installed it correctly in the GameData folder.

[betaking]

what about like, a monopropellant engine, that uses roughly the same model as the linear RCS, its pseudo-radial, like it attaches to the bottom of tanks.. I think there are some AIES engines that are like that.

Edited August 15, 2013 by betaking

[Supernovy]

Monopropellent engines, just what I always wanted, makes the large RCS tank much more useful. The 0.625m long tank sounds good too, and an intermediate 0.625m engine means I can stop clustering LV-1Rs.

There is one extra thing I just thought of: A fuel cell, simply a part with a togglable liquid fuel + oxidiser to electric charge generator. Another way to get electricity for those hungry reaction wheels, though you might need to define some junk resource in order to conserve mass with the cell.

EDIT: Another thing I just thought of, how about instead of a 0.625m NTR, you use a Radioisotope Rocket, essentially a nuclear thermal rocket but with radiodecay providing the heat instead of a nuclear reactor. It seems like it has similar performance to the stock LV-N, but IMO more fitting for a probe-sized engine.

Edited August 15, 2013 by Supernovy

[mushroomman]

Could you make some jumbo sized RCS blocks?

[hoojiwana]

EDIT: Another thing I just thought of, how about instead of a 0.625m NTR, you use a Radioisotope Rocket, essentially a nuclear thermal rocket but with radiodecay providing the heat instead of a nuclear reactor. It seems like it has similar performance to the stock LV-N, but IMO more fitting for a probe-sized engine.

Thanks for that link, I didn't know that was an engine type! Certainly about the right stuff for a probe-scale LV-N, we shall see!

Could you make some jumbo sized RCS blocks?

There will probably be a large linear RCS port based on the probe sized MP engine, whether or not those get made into really big 4-way blocks I don't know.

Oh, and here's what I've been working on rather than any of the things I've listed:

The Rockomax "Cutter" Linear Aerospike with higher thrust but lower ISP than the stock toroidal one.

[Nutter]

How about ion/resistojet/arcjet manoeuvring thrusters?

[CrazyIvan]

Why would you need to code for a vasmir engine? Also any clue about the more powerful nuclear reactors you thinking of making?

Edited August 19, 2013 by CrazyIvan

[Nutter]

You can run the VASMIR with high thrust and low impulse or low thrust and high impulse. And that's not fully supported by the game code so it needs some extra work.