[1.1.2] Realism Overhaul v11.0.0 May 8

[StoryMusgrave]

Very few engines actually throttle and those that do, usually are not a 'deep' throttle, but rather to somewhere around 60-70%. One big reason is cost/complexity. For engines that will simply be tossed into the ocean that's added expense that is not otherwise needed. Though some still do. Old Merlins were on-off. So Falcon shut some down as it progressed, being it had 9 of them:) Now with the potential re-use of engines, that cost/complexity becomes less of an issue. So Merlin-1Ds can throttle, and do. Like the LazTek pack, which at this time has yet to be updated.

Edited June 22, 2015 by StoryMusgrave

[Temeter]

Wot, i've actually never noticed how many engines can't throttle.

I guess a manual way to do it is using an engine cluster and e.g. putting half the rockets on a toggle engine hot key, otherwise you could switch them only on for a short time (e.g. by switching the acceleration between 0 and 5%). Worked well for my last mun landing with a single stage lander, even though the engine was kind of overpowered.

Edited June 22, 2015 by Temeter

[Shurikeeen]

Can I use the RP-0 tech tree in 1.0 somehow?

[Sovek]

My engines still throttle, and the Redstone engine has a reverse throttle, actually I think it goes way above what its supposed to if you reduce the throttle. Plus I can restart.

Installed with CKAN, something is obviously amiss.

[NathanKell]

Realism Overhaul does 'recommend' RSS on CKAN. I don't know why it's not being checked automatically.

Very, very few real life engines are throttleable, as StoryMusgrave says; only (a) lander engines are deeply throttleable, and ( some modern lifter engines are shallowly throttleable. And so it is with RO: the LMDE is deeply throttleable, and some modern lifter engines (SSME, NK-33 / RD-170 derivatives, etc) are shallowly throttleable.

It's kind of expected that one will use procedural parts and procedural fairings (for the interstage); RO forces you to realize that no, engines are never "the right size" for the tank; you use the size tank you want, and the size engine you want, and then you cover it up with an interstage.

FinnishGameBox: You can as soon as we update it.

Sovek: that sounds deeply, deeply broken. Verify you have RealFuels and SolverEngines installed.

[Sovek]

Realism Overhaul does 'recommend' RSS on CKAN. I don't know why it's not being checked automatically.

Very, very few real life engines are throttleable, as StoryMusgrave says; only (a) lander engines are deeply throttleable, and ( some modern lifter engines are shallowly throttleable. And so it is with RO: the LMDE is deeply throttleable, and some modern lifter engines (SSME, NK-33 / RD-170 derivatives, etc) are shallowly throttleable.

It's kind of expected that one will use procedural parts and procedural fairings (for the interstage); RO forces you to realize that no, engines are never "the right size" for the tank; you use the size tank you want, and the size engine you want, and then you cover it up with an interstage.

FinnishGameBox: You can as soon as we update it.

Sovek: that sounds deeply, deeply broken. Verify you have RealFuels and SolverEngines installed.

They are. Right now 1.03 has broken RealFuels, cannot get into the engines GUI.

Also is there any way to change when thermal effects start? Right now they start at even 30Km up and stay that way till about 110Km, My craft should not be on fire during ascent.

Edited June 22, 2015 by Sovek

[Temeter]

It's kind of expected that one will use procedural parts and procedural fairings (for the interstage); RO forces you to realize that no, engines are never "the right size" for the tank; you use the size tank you want, and the size engine you want, and then you cover it up with an interstage.

Works perfectly for multiple engines since fairings can just connect the upper node to the tank, but I've always got some fairing overlap on single engines, since you can't make them sit perfectly. It's a 'kind of ocd thing'.

Edited June 22, 2015 by Temeter

[SirKeplan]

What mod does the large command pod clearly seen in example pictures 10 and 14 come from?

[jandcando]

I think most engines can fully throttle?

Btw: Can someone recommend me a good addon pack for engines? The KWR support is good, but i still feel like there are some holes to fill, e.g around the 300kn to 1.2k cryo and generally from 1.5k to 7k.

You should most definitely get the BobCat Soviet Engine pack, and FASA's engines are good replicas of american engines. It is just a bit of a pain to go through and delete everything but the FASA engines, but if you want replica rockets, keeping all of FASA's parts is quite fun, too.

Also, what is the best way to deal with engine farings? Especially using a small engine below a larger tank is a bit of an issue, even with proc farings.

I do something along the lines of this:

I manually deleted the .cfg lines involving adding decouplers to these fairing bases, because that it really annoying when you are using the fairing bases like this.

[plomp90]

I've done extensive testing and discovered that none of the heatshields work in normal reentry conditions, i.e. reentering from a 180 km orbit at around 6.8 km/s. It seems like the heatshields aren't being updated by RO, but I've redownloaded and reinstalled both DRE and RO, and nothing seems to work.

[Arctic Sesquipedalian]

I have a bug report, similar perhaps to the issue reported back on page 184 by Mastodon and Warp11.

KSP 1.0.2 (same issue on 1.0.3).

I've just done a completely clean CKAN install of RO, so have all its dependencies:

AJE 2.0.4

Community Resource Pack 0.4.2

Crossfeed Enabler 3.3

FAR 0.15.3

KJR 3.1.3

ModularFlightIntegrator 1.0.0

ModuleManager 2.6.5

ModuleRCSFX 4.1

RealFuels 10.3.1

RO 10.0.0

Smoke Screen 2.6.3

Solver Engines 1.3

Problem: Once I get a ship outside the atmosphere, the controls go crazy: the yaw, pitch, and roll seem to set their own trim, without any control input from the user, without SAS being turned on, without engines being on, without anything. I'm attaching a the log from that install, as well as a picture of the identical problem from another install, where you'll see all three control directions way off the baseline. Mod-X doesn't cancel out the trim, nor do using Remote Tech's flight controller or MechJeb's Smart ASS. There is no problem inside the atmosphere, just outside.

I've isolated this specifically to RO. If all the above mods other than RO are installed, no problem. If RO is installed, controls go mad.

Log: https://www.dropbox.com/s/gd887vpyo23k1v3/output_log.txt?dl=0

Pic: https://www.dropbox.com/s/7bgyhvl66h988xe/screenshot1322.png?dl=0

I've reproduced this problem on two separate KSP installs, one with the mods above, one with those plus a whole lot more (it first arose in the latter).

It's rather maddening to have a ship wanting to turn every which way on its own! Makes orbital manoeuvring somewhat challenging.

Let me know if there's anything more you need.

Best,

Jeremy.

[Tonnz]

The paths for the NearFutureTechnologies reactors are outdated and do not work anymore.

The reactors didn't show up in the VAB, i thought they were temporarily removed from RO, to be sure i had a look in the MM-files.

The paths of the reactor-parts (+ RTGs) and their models has changed from:

model = NearFutureElectrical/Parts/Nuclear/reactor-0625/reactor-0625

to:

model = NearFutureElectrical/Parts/FissionReactors/reactor-0625/reactor-0625

I've also tried NanoExplorers IonWarp (suggestion from Felger), unfortunately there was a bug with the fuel consumption (off by a huge factor, depletes fuel instantly).

I made a fix for me and also completely revised the velocity-change calculation (integral-approach, unnecessary, but i was bored). Works, i'll try to contact NanoExplorer about this tomorrow.

[NathanKell]

Sovek: Ah, I didn't realize you were on 1.0.3. We don't support that yet, evidently.

And yes, RO will be tweaking the aeroFX.

SirKeplan: that's the Taurus pod.

jancando: uh...why are you doing that with fairing bases? That's what the interstage base is for, and you need only one of it. But yeah, other than those changes, that's what I do too. Here's an LV family from ferram that demonstrates it.

plomp90: are you on 1.0.2? Because it works fine for me...what heat shields are you using?

Arctic Sesquipedalian: You're using 1.0.3. It's not supported yet, we hope to soon.

Tonnz: thanks for the catch! Fixing. And awesome re: IonWarp!

[Arctic Sesquipedalian]

NathanKell, I had exactly the same problem on 1.0.2. Let me know if you want a log from the 1.0.2 install.

I forgot to mention in my report that the problem only occurs if there's an SAS module on the vessel.

EDIT: Ok, it doesn't only happen when there's an SAS module. Here's the log, from my 1.0.2 install: https://www.dropbox.com/s/hrvoigdb85zol0f/output_log%20without%20SAS.txt?dl=0

Edited June 23, 2015 by Arctic Sesquipedalian

[jandcando]

jancando: uh...why are you doing that with fairing bases? That's what the interstage base is for, and you need only one of it. But yeah, other than those changes, that's what I do too. Here's an LV family from ferram that demonstrates it.

I like to use faring bases because then I'm sure that I get a complete seal. The interstage method has always been finicky to me because of all the tweaking required to get it aligned with the top tank the way I want. With fairing bases, I can 100% accuracy every time.

This is as close as I can get to covering the interstage before this happens:

I really don't like having that edge there, it doesn't seem aerodynamic and I'm not sure if the parts inside are even shielded at that point.

[coldblade2000]

@Jancando You can manually change the width of the fairings, you don't have to have it like that, just make the width lower.

[jandcando]

@Jancando You can manually change the width of the fairings, you don't have to have it like that, just make the width lower.

I can make the width as low as I want, but it will auto-wrap around the tank it needs to.

[NathanKell]

jancando: that looks like you're attaching the interstage to the engine by its middle node, not its floating top node. Use the floating top node, and set extraRadius to as far left as you can, in the right-click menu. That should work better. You can also finely vary the "extra height" (and the other settings) rather than going in 0.1m steps, and that should give you a perfect seal.

[jandcando]

jancando: that looks like you're attaching the interstage to the engine by its middle node, not its floating top node. Use the floating top node, and set extraRadius to as far left as you can, in the right-click menu. That should work better. You can also finely vary the "extra height" (and the other settings) rather than going in 0.1m steps, and that should give you a perfect seal.

Oh that does work pretty well... I guess I was using these things wrong. So let me get this straight: The floating node is decoupling node, not the middle node. And the middle node only exists in case you want to do some sort of Apollo-style concealment of something in the faring (like the LEM)? Also, is there any danger if the faring does go into the tank above it slightly?

[Temeter]

I made the same mistake as jandcando, it never occured to me to use the upper node+extra height instead of the lower connector. Well, that will change how i build these rockets.

You should most definitely get the BobCat Soviet Engine pack, and FASA's engines are good replicas of american engines. It is just a bit of a pain to go through and delete everything but the FASA engines, but if you want replica rockets, keeping all of FASA's parts is quite fun, too.

Thx, i'll try these packs! Actually wanted a soviet pack, but really wasn't sure what to go for.

[JebThrillMaster]

Anyone got suggestions with reentry angles? I did this and ended up blowing up with no warning and with a ton of ablator left. Note: The initial entry interface began off the coast of Acapaulco.

http://i.imgur.com/cOYgBk9.jpg

[Temeter]

Anyone got suggestions with reentry angles? I did this and ended up blowing up with no warning and with a ton of ablator left. Note: The initial entry interface began off the coast of Acapaulco.

http://i.imgur.com/cOYgBk9.jpg

Am I understanding correctly that you're basically on collision course with the planet? You need a very flat angle with DRE, depending on your speed. Afaik you will (almost?) always want a periapsis quite a bit above ground. DRE just starts killing stuff as soon as it sees something it doesn't like.

[plomp90]

Double-checked everything, upgraded everything. Here's a screenshot of my game seconds before the heatshield explodes:

The heatshield is a 3M one, the maxTemperature of which I edited to be much higher than normal, with absolutely no change in how quickly it explodes.

Is this normal?

Edited June 23, 2015 by plomp90

[Temeter]

No problem, I absolutely know those bothering issues. Another guess: Did you check F3 to see what's causing the damage? Maybe it's not actually heat, but aerodynamic forces from the brutal reentry angle? 47k is where it's getting tough.

[NathanKell]

jancando: Yup, you got it!

There shouldn't be danger if the fairing clips a bit, it probably doesn't even have a collider in that part of it.

Note that the floating node will decouple when either (a) you decouple the part OR ( you decouple the interstage fairing sides, whichever comes first.

You can also stick guidance units on that middle node, I do that all the time for RP-0.

JebThrillMaster: What were your apogee and perigee? Or, failing that, velocity and angle at interface? Can't really tell from your shots. But my guess is you went too steep.

Assuming an initial orbit of 185km (Mercury level) a perigee > -20km is safe. Assuming a 300x300 orbit, I wouldn't have a perigee lower than 0km, and even that's a bit dangerous. 40-60km is probably the sweet spot, has nice low Gs (higher peak load but lower peak flux than a steeper descent). Lunar reentries shouldn't be lower than 55km EVER.