[1.0.2] NovaPunch 2.09. - May 6th - 1.0 Compatibility Update

[Tiberion]

A couple of things:

You don\'t want much gimbaling on the big 3m engines or they\'ll shake your rocket apart.

Do they use vectoring on Aerospikes? I thought they were pretty much for shaping exhaust for different atmospheric pressures

You are limited to one gimballing object per engine, so all ports would rotate as a single unit about their common mid-point - it looks silly. Can possibly just make a main engine and then attach 4 small thrusters around it that vector to simulate this.

[Herpderpsslerps]

Aerospikes can be used to vector thrust, the original design for that X-33 was to adjust the amount of thrust coming out of the nozzles to either roll, or pitch the craft by adjusting the top or bottom part of the nozzles thrust. You could do the yaw by reducing power on either sides engines. Lose an engine shut off the corresponding engine on the other side.

[Commander Zoom]

Any estimates on when this will be out of alpha and .13 ready? I\'ve been holding off on downloading it.

[Tiberion]

Its 0.13 ready - the remaining issue is the weakened strut connections caused by 0.13, which is stop-gapped by the stronger struts I added last release. Everything should be working as it was on 0.12 now, with just a lttle extra work required to remove wobble from your rockets; Fuel lines work fine with the parts, I added radial-attaching to all tanks to make use of that feature, and fixed all parts that had issues with the new loader.

It being labeled an Alpha is not related to 0.13 - its meant to be in alpha until I felt the 'revamp' and additions needed to make it a complete pack were all done.

I had stated goals when I started, like adapting parts to work with new features, unify the 2 packs with a single 'skin', and add the parts needed for a fully functioning pack; RCS tanks, landing parts, control parts, and so on.

Pretty much the only remaining goal is polishing up all of the shroud decouplers and adapters, to make sure they work for the various engines in the pack now and that they all share a skin. Someone was working on that, and I haven\'t bothered them about it during the busy holiday season, but other than that, this is pretty much 'done' and I could remove the Alpha tag

That would mean the major 'updating and remodeling' phase is done, and going forward is would just be added new things like more engines or things to support new features.

In short, there is no reason not to start using it now, the functionality of the pack won\'t drastically change at this point, its mostly polish now.

[Akane]

I\'d actually like to report something of a quirk: I don\'t know if this is owing to how KSP processes exhaust (ie: impulse on objects in the rocket\'s blast) but whenever I put the escape tower on anything other than the pod /itself/, it fails to have anything more than barely enough thrust to even push it away from a spent stage, let alone a huge, short burst to shove a pod away from a horrible burning wreck.

I bring up impulse, because whenever I do, the pod reports being damaged by the escape tower\'s exhaust in the after-action report. Halp?

[Tiberion]

Well the escape tower is simply a solid booster module - so while it may have 4 visual exhaust trails, the actual thrust is coming out of the middle and going straight down, onto whatever its attached to. So it does do damage to the pod while thrusting.

However, it only has fuel to burn for 1.25 seconds, so its not going to do any real harm, at least not as much as leaving your pod sitting on an exploding, out of control rocket.

As for lifting other things - it produces 180 thrust, which isn\'t weak - but it won\'t accelerate much mass to an escape speed in only 1.25 seconds. What did you have attached to it?

Since solid boosters don\'t support multiple thrusters on a single part, there isn\'t much way to change the functionality of the tower - it WOULD be possible to create the tower and then a separate radial-attached solid booster, which you could place in 4x to make it 'authentic' - but we wouldn\'t actually gain any functionality.

[Akane]

Oh, my pod stack was this:

Esc. Tower

|

Decoupler

|

Mk 3 Para.

|

Bootleg CM

I tested it with other builds, eg, tower-decoupler-CM, decoupler-tower-CM, mk 3 parachute-tower-CM, et cetera, and it all followed a pattern:

Unless the tower was DIRECTLY attached to the CM with nothing in between, it\'d barely have enough ?V to separate it from an inactive stage in space, let alone pull it from a burning wreck.

[Tiberion]

Well, that is peculiar. Downright strange.

Its not a weight issue, because you can carry all of those parts like this:

parachute

decoupler (as dead weight, not used)

tower

pod

decoupler (fires with tower)

and the tower pulls it all 1000m up from the pad. But if the parachute or decoupler is below the tower, it does indeed not lift at all.

Its almost acting like its a variant of the sticky-pad bug where the colliders are intersecting and getting stuck.

I shall investigate further. Good find!

[fairtonybeta]

I\'d actually like to report something of a quirk: I don\'t know if this is owing to how KSP processes exhaust (ie: impulse on objects in the rocket\'s blast) but whenever I put the escape tower on anything other than the pod /itself/, it fails to have anything more than barely enough thrust to even push it away from a spent stage, let alone a huge, short burst to shove a pod away from a horrible burning wreck.

I bring up impulse, because whenever I do, the pod reports being damaged by the escape tower\'s exhaust in the after-action report. Halp?

I too have this problem also, I found it went away if I used a different pod, or parachute.

[Tiberion]

Wel.. something is considerably broken here, and I don\'t get it.

http://i.imgur.com/8XPxn.png

Left arrangement works, right one does not.

Left staging is: stageDecoupler+Tower then Chute, with the 'Decouple' unused (just there to have the same weight between tests)

Right staging is: stageDecoupler+Tower, Decouple + Chute - but when I fire the 1st stage the tower visually thrusts but doesn\'t lift the assembly away.

I tried firing the decouple THEN tower too, no effect.

Here is where it gets weird:

So I look into the actual DAE file and find that the origin of the collider is right at the bottom of the mesh, which can cause errors. So I move the origin up into the middle of the part, then adjust the nodes so they line up again.

Now it won\'t lift away in EITHER arrangement.

After an hour of trying to figure that out, I bring back the original file. It works again in the Left build only. Then I tried adjusting the bottom stack node so that the collision mesh wasn\'t so low.

Once again, it broke the part and won\'t lift ANY amount of weight.

Finally, I decided to look at Moach\'s Escape tower part, which is arranged slightly different but functions the same. I found that Moach\'s LES tower actually doesn\'t work at all anymore. So some update has broken the escape tower mods in some obscure way. They\'re just solid boosters, nothing fancy. But I am at a loss and will need some help to figure this one out.

[semininja]

You could try placing the thrust vector(s) so there are four corresponding with your effects but you have a net force directly upward at center? It\'s extra work but it might make the difference...

[Tiberion]

solid boosters don\'t allow multiple vectors like RCS blocks do, so it would need to be 4 separate parts attached to a middle column.

It does seem to be an issue with how the center of thrust interacts with colliders below it. I took a stock SRB and put it on top of a CM and it will not lift off - it must be UNDER the CM to lift it.

So that is the same thing that is happening with the tower boosters, both the NP and Moach\'s. It appears at some point the physics engines changed and broke the parts.

I am not sure why the NP tower works when its on top of the CM - but it does seem to clip into it pretty deeply, so it may be doing something weird with the colliders.

[Cepheus]

If I may offer a suggestion: You could follow Xemit\'s example: the LES tower is in halves, and bolted onto a decoupler. (I believe that Moach once made a LES decoupler) That way, the non-vertical vectors of thrust should be cancelled out. Just a thought, may or may not work.

[Technical Ben]

PS AFAIK thrusters/engines fail to provide proper thrust if blocked by another part. IE if your escape tower engines are blocked by a part, they will not lift. PErhaps move the origin for the rockets? Hmmm... Don\'t think you can on a SFE, it\'s always centre?

[Gojira]

Moach\'s LES works for me.

[Lord Strange]

Firstly, I love these parts, every single on of my current rockets involves at least one of them, thank you for keeping it alive, and improving them ;D

Secondly, I have also had the problem with the escape tower, but it\'s nice to see you rooting about to find the problem!

Good work!

[Tiberion]

Lord Strange: Thanks, glad you\'re enjoying them.

Gojira: can you take a screenshot of the arrangement that Moach\'s LES works for you (in 0.13)?

Ben: Well that wasn\'t always the case, because these LES towers worked before pretty flawlessly. Something has changed. Why isn\'t the engine blocked when attached to the pod only, if its blocked when the decoupler is there?

[Herpderpsslerps]

I\'ve been tinkering with the Verniers in this pack, truthfully having them stick out as far as they did didn\'t look right to me aesthetically. I\'ve just about halved the thurst vector, combined with the more restrictive gymbal angle\'s, it is still able to stabilize my rockets but looks more like model\'s true natural thrust vector.

First pic is the edits I\'ve done, and the second is the original angles

[Guest Flixxbeatz]

Tiberion, you\'re taking requests aren\'t you?

If so, can you make an inverted (flipped upside-down) 3m 7x1 adaptor plate?

I\'m sure people are waiting for it to be used for sinister helpful purposes.

[CardBoardBoxProcessor]

make the proton Rocket series

[Tiberion]

Actually Sunday made the required adapter thing to make the Proton-style launcher a long time ago, there\'s a flange piece and a cone decoupler, to which you can add 1m tanks and engines pretty easily.

Its not a replica or anything, but none of these are aimed at being replicas.

Flixx: Yeah... I don\'t think NP needs any more bloat - there\'s really not room for weapon mods in here, especially since they don\'t fit with the theme at all. I am afraid I\'ll have to leave that one to someone else.

Wouldn\'t be too hard to do though, so if someone makes a 3m bulkhead I can help you with the nodes if you need it.

[Guest Flixxbeatz]

make the proton Rocket series

Proton is pretty easy to kerbalize.

[MC3craze]

Proton is pretty easy to kerbalize.

*slow point to your youtube channel*

[Guest Flixxbeatz]

*slow point to your youtube channel*

Tweaked the Orbital Achievement Devices for max realism. Much better now 8)

[Gojira]

Launch abort tower is not working.

Simply sticks on top of the rocket while firing.

Any idea why?