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[1.0.1/1.1.3][Semi-Retired, Semi-Revived] Zero-Point Inline Fairings v1.0.2 (2016-04-28)


NecroBones

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I really like this mod but I am having some problems. Most notably I am getting phantom forces which do not disappear until I decouple all the fairings off my ship. I am using the Size 1 Medium Expanded Inline Fairings with the Size 1 Regular Nose and it is enclosing a ship entirely made of 1.25m parts + landing legs. I even took off the landing legs and I still get phantom forces, not sure what's going on. I really would like to use this mod, please let me know if I should try anything else to fix it. Thank you!

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Having some issues with the fairings not providing aerodynamic shielding with FAR. Parts are displaying isShielded:false even when inside a fairing and failing during to aerodynamic stresses during flight. Tried using a procedural fairings and they worked fine.

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I noticed an issue with these fairings in v0.6.

If you jettison the fairings, but do not decouple, the fairings will be back when the craft is reloaded.

As an example:

I launched a Mun shot craft. I was using the fairings to cover the lander module. However, I had no intention of ditching the lower stage as that was my return fuel and engine, and the upper stage was my command module. I jettisoned the fairings to allow my lander to undock and get free. I went to the Mun with my lander, and upon my return the fairings were back on the rocket.

So, instead of being able to re-dock my lander inside the craft, I had to spacewalk over to the return craft. I had actually intended to transfer the remaining fuel on the lander to the main rocket.

It seems to me that some value isn't being written to the save.

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Hey all, sorry for the late replies. I've been offline for a solid week.

That was fast! :-D thanks a lot buddy

No problem, thanks for spotting it!

This is exactly the mod I've been looking for. I've just never been able to wrap my head around getting procedural fairings to work and look good inline. KW fairings work great for my unmanned probes, but I hated covering up command pods with fairings. (Making quick aborts impossible), let alone the difficulty of creating Apollo-style rockets that way.
Seems the mod list for 0.25 is almost done, hihi :sticktongue:

Thanks Necro :)

Very cool! Thanks for the quick update for the resize bug fix. (Edit: Or was it the price typo you fixed? Gah... tired. ;) ) It's nice to have a simple alternative to pFairings for those times when I just want something quick and easy.

Thanks, everyone! Yeah, these are the sorts of use-cases I had in mind. Something simple, that works inline, and doesn't look like a giant egg that's as big as the rest of the rocket. :)

I really like this mod but I am having some problems. Most notably I am getting phantom forces which do not disappear until I decouple all the fairings off my ship. I am using the Size 1 Medium Expanded Inline Fairings with the Size 1 Regular Nose and it is enclosing a ship entirely made of 1.25m parts + landing legs. I even took off the landing legs and I still get phantom forces, not sure what's going on. I really would like to use this mod, please let me know if I should try anything else to fix it. Thank you!

This is either going to be a bug in KSP, or a bad interaction between mods. I've seen phantom forces under various circumstances, at least as far back as 0.23.5, but not with any of the testing I did with the fairings. Since the fairings use the stock fairing-jettison module that exists for the LV-N nuclear engine, and no custom mod code, there's nothing on my side to cause this that I'm aware of. I don't suppose you're using Tweakable Everything? I've seen that cause all sorts of odd side-effects before, and we know that it doesn't play nice with the fairings.

Having some issues with the fairings not providing aerodynamic shielding with FAR. Parts are displaying isShielded:false even when inside a fairing and failing during to aerodynamic stresses during flight. Tried using a procedural fairings and they worked fine.

Oh that's lovely. :) I guess FAR isn't detecting the panels correctly. I'll bring it up on the FAR thread. Thanks for spotting it! Hopefully we'll get a fix for this one.

I noticed an issue with these fairings in v0.6.

If you jettison the fairings, but do not decouple, the fairings will be back when the craft is reloaded.

As an example:

I launched a Mun shot craft. I was using the fairings to cover the lander module. However, I had no intention of ditching the lower stage as that was my return fuel and engine, and the upper stage was my command module. I jettisoned the fairings to allow my lander to undock and get free. I went to the Mun with my lander, and upon my return the fairings were back on the rocket.

So, instead of being able to re-dock my lander inside the craft, I had to spacewalk over to the return craft. I had actually intended to transfer the remaining fuel on the lander to the main rocket.

It seems to me that some value isn't being written to the save.

Yeah, we might be stuck with this one. The stock "ModuleJettison" (what the LV-N fairings use) behaves that way. Since I don't have any custom mod/plugin code, we're at the mercy of what KSP does. Since the panels are not "persistent objects", they're either on the ship or they aren't, and that's determined by the decoupler status, as far as the save-files are concerned.

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Having some issues with the fairings not providing aerodynamic shielding with FAR. Parts are displaying isShielded:false even when inside a fairing and failing during to aerodynamic stresses during flight. Tried using a procedural fairings and they worked fine.

Apparently this is a known issue that also affects the new cargo bays. Ferram's reply to me:

@Necrobones: Noted. I think the dev version fixes it.

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Talking about the dev version of FAR, I can't find it... Unless i'm being dumb and he hasn't released it yet ;)

He replied to someone else in the thread:

Try the dev version on the github repo.

... but I don't see it either. Admittedly, I don't spend a lot of time on GitHub, though.

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Yeah, we might be stuck with this one. The stock "ModuleJettison" (what the LV-N fairings use) behaves that way. Since I don't have any custom mod/plugin code, we're at the mercy of what KSP does. Since the panels are not "persistent objects", they're either on the ship or they aren't, and that's determined by the decoupler status, as far as the save-files are concerned.

Thanks for the reply. I've worked around it now. Instead of sending Jeb out all alone, I send him out with Bill and Bob in the Mk 2 command module instead of just him in the Mk 1. That way, I can hop back to the craft, jettison the fairings, and dock the lander.

Although, on my last flight to the Mun, I nearly hit the lander with one of the fairings....

Even despite this, I prefer your fairings to others.

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Talking about the dev version of FAR, I can't find it... Unless i'm being dumb and he hasn't released it yet ;)

Someone posted instructions here: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/20451-0-25-Ferram-Aerospace-Research-v0-14-3-10-15-14?p=1478588&viewfull=1#post1478588

Thanks for the reply. I've worked around it now. Instead of sending Jeb out all alone, I send him out with Bill and Bob in the Mk 2 command module instead of just him in the Mk 1. That way, I can hop back to the craft, jettison the fairings, and dock the lander.

Although, on my last flight to the Mun, I nearly hit the lander with one of the fairings....

Even despite this, I prefer your fairings to others.

Awesome, I'm glad you have a way to get around it. :) Yeah, there are always limitations when you try to use stock modules in ways they weren't originally intended.

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Someone posted instructions here: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/20451-0-25-Ferram-Aerospace-Research-v0-14-3-10-15-14?p=1478588&viewfull=1#post1478588

Awesome, I'm glad you have a way to get around it. :) Yeah, there are always limitations when you try to use stock modules in ways they weren't originally intended.

Thanks dude :)

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  • 2 weeks later...
Where has this been all my life? I've been looking for some simple stock-alike fairings forever. I never liked the way the procedural fairings looked. Great mod!

Glad you like it! Are you using the Lite or Full version? (just curious, because I have no idea which one is preferred by most people)

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I had an Idea to lower the part clutter in the editor. Perhaps you could put all three fairings with the same base into one part. I made a quick demonstration. I tested it and everything works fine in game.

I6ogMPi.png

I would have made it sooner but Unity hates me today for some reason.

I don't mind the part clutter but this seems like an elegant way to do things. I just wanted to put my idea out there.

Edited by xub313
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I had an Idea to lower the part clutter in the editor. Perhaps you could put all three fairings with the same base into one part. I made a quick demonstration. I tested it and everything works fine in game.

http://i.imgur.com/I6ogMPi.png

I would have made it sooner but Unity hates me today for some reason.

I don't mind the part clutter but this seems like an elegant way to do things. I just wanted to put my idea out there.

You know, that's actually a really good idea. I'll probably want to combine the meshes on the blender side, to keep everything neat and tidy. This will of course also break existing save-games, but we're still in a "beta" release anyway. This is exactly the sort of thing that I was holding out for. ;)

Thanks for the suggestion! It hadn't even occurred to me, but I think it should work.

The only caveat is that with multiple floating nodes, someone might accidentally hook up more than one, but that just leaves them with the responsibility of building their rocket cleanly and not having multiple overlapping fairing panels. :)

I think I'll probably work on this soon.

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I had an Idea to lower the part clutter in the editor. Perhaps you could put all three fairings with the same base into one part. I made a quick demonstration. I tested it and everything works fine in game.

http://i.imgur.com/I6ogMPi.png

I would have made it sooner but Unity hates me today for some reason.

I don't mind the part clutter but this seems like an elegant way to do things. I just wanted to put my idea out there.

You know, that's actually a really good idea. I'll probably want to combine the meshes on the blender side, to keep everything neat and tidy. This will of course also break existing save-games, but we're still in a "beta" release anyway. This is exactly the sort of thing that I was holding out for. ;)

Thanks for the suggestion! It hadn't even occurred to me, but I think it should work.

The only caveat is that with multiple floating nodes, someone might accidentally hook up more than one, but that just leaves them with the responsibility of building their rocket cleanly and not having multiple overlapping fairing panels. :)

I think I'll probably work on this soon.

OK, so I'm working on this, and rebuilt one of the fairing bases to test with.

Gameplay-wise, it works fine as far as I can tell. But the VAB/SPH interface hits this bug, which only seems to have work-arounds for parts with too many resource types. My problem here, is that I need 3 decoupler nodes, and that also triggers this interface bug. It's not game-breaking, but it looks absolutely awful to have the part image zoom infinitely from the VAB icon and disappear.

I'm tempted to go forward anyway, since it's not game breaking, and it will reduce part clutter, and the next version of KSP is supposed to have an overhauled interface for the VAB/SPH too. But so far, I can't find a work-around, other than to only allow two lengths per fairing base, instead of three. And I don't want to use this an excuse to force people to have to put their own decouplers at the top of the fairings, or end up using the "omnidirectional" decoupler module (which would detach the fairing base from the payload and the rocket stack underneath simultaneously to the top).

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The good news is that the "LITE" version of the mod doesn't have this problem, since it's limiting to two lengths per base anyway.

I have the edits made on my side. It reduces the number of menu-parts quite a bit. The full version of the mod consists of 6 bases and 4 nose cones, and the "Lite" version reduces that to just 3 fairing bases.

The bug we may have to live with:

Edited by NecroBones
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The good news is that the "LITE" version of the mod doesn't have this problem, since it's limiting to two lengths per base anyway.

I have the edits made on my side. It reduces the number of menu-parts quite a bit. The full version of the mod consists of 6 bases and 4 nose cones, and the "Lite" version reduces that to just 3 fairing bases.

The bug we may have to live with:

Ah, I forgot to mention that bug. I thought it would be fixed by reversing this and adding extra resources but It seems like you already tried that. :(

I'll be doing some testing today to see if I can work around it. I'd be willing to live with it though.

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Ah, I forgot to mention that bug. I thought it would be fixed by reversing this and adding extra resources but It seems like you already tried that. :(

I'll be doing some testing today to see if I can work around it. I'd be willing to live with it though.

Yeah, I was hoping that would work too, and apparently not. I've tried toying with adding some other things in there, and nothing has worked so far.

I also have a thread going about this in the modeling section: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/98984

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I was reading your other thread (I posted here since I have nothing constructive to say for to your problem) and I think the 2 & 2 split with an additional length would be a good idea as I felt that some of the larger diameter parts had short versions that were too long. I often build lander probes using the shortest, stubby little 2.5m tank as a base so that it will have a stable, low center of gravity and a wide base for landing legs. They usually don't even make half way up the S2 short/regular fairings.

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I was reading your other thread (I posted here since I have nothing constructive to say for to your problem) and I think the 2 & 2 split with an additional length would be a good idea as I felt that some of the larger diameter parts had short versions that were too long. I often build lander probes using the shortest, stubby little 2.5m tank as a base so that it will have a stable, low center of gravity and a wide base for landing legs. They usually don't even make half way up the S2 short/regular fairings.

That's actually really good to know... The fact that some shorter fairings might be useful.

With the 2/2 split, what I might do is consolidate the long/medium lengths, and add a shorter length to the short ones, to consolidate there, rather than adding a longer design at the top of the list.

Since the fairings of different stack diameters are just rescales of the smaller ones, the length goes up proportionately. So the choice comes down to adding longer variants to help with the smaller diameters, or adding shorter ones to help with the larger diameters. But since I agree, the long ones are quite long, some short ones might be in order.

In either case, I think the lengths that the "Lite" version of the mod uses are very good, so even if those end up being the "middle" lengths from the full mod that would normally be on separate bases, I think that's OK.

I may do a mock-up with one of the existing ones and see how it looks, before deciding on how to proceed.

Splitting and combining all of these is becoming a bit of a pain, but I think once we have it figured out, I can probably leave it alone for a very long time.

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Splitting and combining all of these is becoming a bit of a pain, but I think once we have it figured out, I can probably leave it alone for a very long time.

Instead of using different models for the different pairs of fairing lengths you could try putting it all in one model and changing the config for each part.

For example, you could have a model with 8 different fairing lengths. For the 6 you don't want to use set the x value of the fairing node to an arbitrarily high value (so it will be outside the editor). That way anyone can customize the fairing lengths they want by just editing the node positions (and edit the decoupler nodes) in the config.

That way you would only need three models for the fairings and the lite version and full version would be practically the same thing. Hopefully this isn't too much work :).

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Instead of using different models for the different pairs of fairing lengths you could try putting it all in one model and changing the config for each part.

For example, you could have a model with 8 different fairing lengths. For the 6 you don't want to use set the x value of the fairing node to an arbitrarily high value (so it will be outside the editor). That way anyone can customize the fairing lengths they want by just editing the node positions (and edit the decoupler nodes) in the config.

That way you would only need three models for the fairings and the lite version and full version would be practically the same thing. Hopefully this isn't too much work :).

Huh, I see what you're saying. That might actually save me some time/effort. I'll experiment with it a little (and make sure the stupidly far-away nodes don't break things). Thanks!

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  • 2 weeks later...
Huh, I see what you're saying. That might actually save me some time/effort. I'll experiment with it a little (and make sure the stupidly far-away nodes don't break things). Thanks!

BTW, I haven't forgotten about this. I've just been trying to pound out the 5m / heavy-lift pack in a short amount of time.

I'm going to try to get an update out soon with these changes and let people try it out.

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Updated with the new consolidations, and additional (small) sizes for the "Full" version.

NOTE: This is savegame breaking! The mod was changed considerably to reduce the part-count in the menus, and consolidate the models. However, upgrading should be safe if no ships are currently using the fairings.


0.7 (2014-11-14) - Beta Release -- WARNING: Incompatible & Save-Breaking update from Previous Versions
- Consolidated fairing bases to reduce part clutter.
- "Full" version reduced to 12 bases (from 18), with two lengths each (adding 6 new total sizes)
- "Lite" version reduced to 3 bases (from 6), also with two lengths each (same sizes available).
- Now, choose a base, then choose length by selecting a floating node to stack onto.
- Note: Be careful not to attach other parts to the other floating nodes accidentally.
- Added shorter versions of fairings (in "Full" version only)
- Overhauled mass and cost of all fairings.
- VAB/SPH icons now show just the fairing bases (not the fairing tube panels).

Edited by NecroBones
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Awesome.

However, is there a size-three nosecone? I see size-3 bases but no cones that fit.

Also, is there a non-expanded size-1? I'd like to be able to put a fairing around my teeny satellites without needing a big expanded fairing.

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