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[WIP Plugin](0.90) Burn Together! Alpha v7.0 (3/29/15)


BahamutoD

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6ZV6CZq.png

Ever wish you could send a whole bunch of ships across the solar system without having to do the transfer burn for each ship, one at a time?

Well now, you can Burn Together!

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[td]V5 update video:

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[td]EnterElysium's Modlight

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How it works:

Rendezvous the ships with each other and kill your relative velocities.

Select a vessel to be the leader, which you will control.

Set other vessels to be followers. The followers will mimic the steering, rotation, and thrust of the lead vessel, AND hold relative velocity using RCS.

(Or, press All Follow Me, and all nearby ships equipped with BT will follow your active craft)

If the lead ship's TWR is higher than its followers, throttle will be automatically limited.

Warping: During on-rails timewarp, followers will be locked in relative position with the leader (no more drifting away).

Rovers: Landed vehicles will now use wheel throttle and steering to follow leaders. (Only tested with stock parts so far).

Demonstration Cinematic (not instructional)

Download from KerbalStuff.

Source on GitHub

If you want the module built into your command modules and you don't want the extra part:

1. Install ModuleManager

2. Extract the included zip file called "BTforCommandModules.zip"

3. Delete the parts folder.

Known issues:

- auto steer damping settings can be better

- NRE if follower goes out of phys range (generally harmless)

Change Log:


alpha v7.0
- new follower control system
-- follower oscillation reduced
-- custom steering settings option
-- angular momentum limited
- fixed error when turning off BT from leader
- followers now block out user input
- followers thrust ratio constantly updated
- leader's thrust limit constantly updated
- fixed occasional loss of followers during warp
- fixed velocity of followers after warp
- other small bug fixes

alpha v6.0:
-0.90 compatibility
-a bit of code clean up

alpha v5.1:
-timewarp lock occurs only if followers are within 0.1m/s of leader
-fixed loss of followers during high timewarp

alpha v5:
-added some rudimentary rover support
-ships lock in position during timewarp

alpha v4:
-added the rest of the 10 action groups for the "AG Mimic" function.

alpha v3:
-works with ModuleEnginesFX now (for new .23.5 engines and hotrockets(?))
-Added "Toggle AG Mimic" button to make followers copy leader's action groups. (Currently only supports landing gear and lights)
-Added action groups for main functions
-TWR matching now takes engine throttle limit tweaks into account.
-leader ships with higher TWR than followers will now have their max throttle limited.
-followers will now cut engines if the leader runs out of fuel
-improved RCS kill rvel function.


alpha v2:
-followers use RCS to kill relative velocity to leader
-part indicator light (red: off, blue: follower, green: leader)
-BT turns off when vessel is uncontrollable (command module detaches, probe out of electricity, etc)
-followers automatically activate SAS and RCS.

alpha v1:
-Initial alpha release
-followers use sas to copy leader's attitude
-followers copy leader's twr.

CC-BY-SA

Edited by BahamutoD
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Cool!

One question: is there a way to make another craft to stay at a certain distance and won't move?

Because i want to grabble it with a arm using infernal robotics (fix is being made atm) and dock it to the station.

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This sounds really nice! Do you have to add a certain part to the ships so they can lead or follow?

Yeah, its a small part about the same size and appearance as mechjeb.

Can. This. Work. In. Atmopshere!

Imagine, having a group of planes on the runway and flying... :D

Sounds like SOMEONE (me) Is going to fly aircraft in formation!
Oh, god..... bring on the Hueys and the music "Ride of Valkyries".

Haha, sorry guys, but not yet. At the moment, the control mimmicry isn't so robust (it just sets the SAS's lock heading) so it won't work too well in atmo. But here's a demo anyways:

Edited by BahamutoD
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Yeah, its a small part about the same size and appearance as mechjeb.

Haha, sorry guys, but not yet. At the moment, the control mimmicry isn't so robust (it just sets the SAS's lock heading) so it won't work too well in atmo. But here's a demo anyways:

maybe have it use the mechjeb old SAS? or mechjeb smart A.S.S? that should work better than .21 sas. also, if you ask me, it looks like a good release version from the videos i saw.

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maybe have it use the mechjeb old SAS? or mechjeb smart A.S.S? that should work better than .21 sas. also, if you ask me, it looks like a good release version from the videos i saw.

Am I allowed to do that? I'll look into it.

how about commands such as landing gear and such??? mass invasion force landing all at same time. muhahahahaha...

I honestly didn't really see this doing much more than making transfers with a bunch of crafts at once but there appears to be more potential to this. I'll see what I can do about other commands like that once I polish the original function.

I've added a new button called "All follow me" which will set the active ship as the leader and all nearby ships equipped with BT as followers. Demo:

Also, I'm making the first alpha version available. Please try it out and post comments, ideas, complaints etc. Thanks!

(Download link on the OP)

Edited by BahamutoD
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This is really cool and something I didn't know I wanted until I saw this. I played around with it and had a blast having the mess of little probes do what I did. I found you absolutely had to put reaction wheels on the probes or else their own torque wasn't enough to follow the leader. It'd be cool if this worked in atmosphere with rovers so I could have a little overland convoy. Or If translation commands also worked so I could use RCS on the probes. ooh you could even have different frequencies to control different groups of probes. This mod really gets my imagination going.

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Amazing :D With this mode we will no longer be forced to send giant, 1000 parts behemoths barely able to turn around - instead we could send four smaller, much more manageable ships in formation. Well done. :) Have some rep.

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