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Raptor's Craft Download Catalog - Tested & Proven


Raptor9

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Now that I'm mostly satisfied with how the parts and pieces work on the Mun surface, now I just need to worry about getting it all there.  The LV-3C cargo lander on top of the Titan 3M rocket is still the best option so far, tested to safely carry up to 8 tons of cargo to the Mun surface.  That means it can handle the laboratory module, which is around 7.8 tons and the largest outpost piece thus far.  I haven't calculated the empty weight of any of the mining/ISRU rovers, but I doubt any of them are that heavy.

LV-3B%20Cargo%20Lander_zpszldfefsa.png

PHOTO: Un-crewed LV-3C carrying a utility module and crew passageway module from a 50km parking orbit to the surface outpost test site.

Edited by Raptor9
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The first craft file published to support extended Mun surface operations is the LV-3A 'Bullfrog' lander.  The LV-3A has been on KerbalX for a while, but this new version adds a couple of new features.  The most important feature is the simplest one, a small docking port mounted at the base of the descent stage opposite the crew access ladder for connecting a fuel transport rover, or plugging the descent stage into the Surface Resource Distribution (SRD) system.  While testing this new feature, I ended up rebuilding the entire descent stage (was able to shave off a few parts from the total count in the process), and even making a few refinements to the ascent stage.  Now that it's feasible to use the left-behind descent stage in the future for propellant storage or power generation, I needed to prevent the ascent engine from damaging it on lift off.  The new LV-3A now launches from the Mun surface using a "Cold Launch" method.  A quad of Sepratrons propel the ascent stage 20 to 30 meters in altitude before the LV-909 ascent engine ignites, keeping the rocket plume from firing directly into the descent stage.

The next ones up for publishing should be a series of LV-3C cargo landers, each preloaded with surface modules like in the post above.  Real-life job has me pretty busy this week, but I should have plenty of time to get them pushed out the door this weekend at the latest.

Edited by Raptor9
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The LV-3C un-crewed Mun cargo lander with preloaded Base Mobules (BM-series) is now published on KerbalX, links available in the OP.  The base modules themselves come in five flavors: Processing Lab, Habitation, Utilities, Passageway, and Airlock.  To place the modules on the surface from the LV-3C cargo platform, the BM assemblies "jump" off the lander via mono-powered thrusters.  The smaller modules are lifted two at a time via a deployment rack, whereas the lab and hab modules have their own integrated RCS thrusters and O-10 'Puff' engines.  In the case of the BM-H and BM-PL, these provide a secondary purpose; when moving around on the surface on the wheels, the BM-H and especially the BM-PL are very top heavy.  The RCS thrusters can provide stability control, and if necessary to move the modules a significant distance, the O-10 engines can "hover-taxi" the modules quite effortlessly.  Aside from that, the wheeled modules provide an easy solution to outpost assembly, but use rover inputs gently in the low-gravity environment of the Mun otherwise they may go toppling.

LV-3C%20Bullfrog%20amp%20BM%20subassembl

As with the updated version of the LV-3A, the LV-3C can be plugged into my upcoming Surface Resource Distribution system, as can the BM-U module.  The BM-U module has two small docking ports on either side for this purpose.  Depending on landing procedures and location, you may elect to use the LV-3C for multiple sorties to and from the Mun surface.  Replacing the docking port in the VAB with a different size to accommodate player-specific payloads or missions takes seconds.  In the words of Scott Manley: "Fly Safe" :)

SRD network and Mining/ISRU rover family are still being tweaked slightly, but they're coming.  Additionally, I'm working on a comms tower, as well as a small hub BM assembly for docking several BM-P, BM-A, or BM-U's together by themselves.

Edited by Raptor9
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This is incredible!

Absolutely amazing!

One question though, that does the BM-U do?

I see it has Fuel Cells but what's its use?

Wait!

Nevermind, it's fuel storage and Power Generation.

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Launching the BM-PL now, and with my Potato Computer this is taking a while!

250 parts! How!?

WHY!?

Anyway I will be able to put these to great use in 1.1, right now setting up a test base.

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As a clarification to some changes in the past hour to some of the recent posts in this thread, the OP has been updated with some new craft file designations:

LV-3B cargo lander redesignated LV-3C
LV-3C research lander redesignated LV-3BL

All LV-3-series craft files have been updated on KerbalX as well (again).  For anyone familiar with my LV-1 'Frog' landers, the LV-1A was the early generation Mun lander, and the LV-1B was a redesign to carry a rover on board the descent stage.  I've created a derivative of the LV-3A crew lander in similar fashion, with a redesigned descent stage to carry a rover.  This will be the new LV-3B.  To summarize the LV-3 line-up, which is rapidly growing to become my lander workhorse:

LV-3A Crew lander
LV-3B Crew lander with rover on board
LV-3BL Research lander with rover on board (used for on-site research not requiring a full-outpost or permanent habitiation)
LV-3C Cargo lander (as seen a few posts above, used to ferry equipment, rovers, surface modules to the Mun surface)

2 hours ago, DMSP said:

Launching the BM-PL now, and with my Potato Computer this is taking a while!

250 parts! How!?

WHY!?

Anyway I will be able to put these to great use in 1.1, right now setting up a test base.

This is all (BM-series modules, mining rovers, SRD system) really geared toward 1.1 optimizations I'm afraid.  But really, any large base anybody makes is most likely going to be high in part count no matter what you do.  I would love for Kerbal Planetary Base Systems to become stock so we could have awesome looking part modules and a lower part count in general, but it is what it is I guess.  Ultimately, if you want to keep part count low, just send a LV-3A/LV-3BL combo for Mun surface science research.

Edited by Raptor9
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8 hours ago, Raptor9 said:

As a clarification to some changes in the past hour to some of the recent posts in this thread, the OP has been updated with some new craft file designations:

LV-3B cargo lander redesignated LV-3C
LV-3C research lander redesignated LV-3BL

All LV-3-series craft files have been updated on KerbalX as well (again).  For anyone familiar with my LV-1 'Frog' landers, the LV-1A was the early generation Mun lander, and the LV-1B was a redesign to carry a rover on board the descent stage.  I've created a derivative of the LV-3A crew lander in similar fashion, with a redesigned descent stage to carry a rover.  This will be the new LV-3B.  To summarize the LV-3 line-up, which is rapidly growing to become my lander workhorse:

LV-3A Crew lander
LV-3B Crew lander with rover on board
LV-3BL Research lander with rover on board (used for on-site research not requiring a full-outpost or permanent habitiation)
LV-3C Cargo lander (as seen a few posts above, used to ferry equipment, rovers, surface modules to the Mun surface)

This is all (BM-series modules, mining rovers, SRD system) really geared toward 1.1 optimizations I'm afraid.  But really, any large base anybody makes is most likely going to be high in part count no matter what you do.  I would love for Kerbal Planetary Base Systems to become stock so we could have awesome looking part modules and a lower part count in general, but it is what it is I guess.  Ultimately, if you want to keep part count low, just send a LV-3A/LV-3BL combo for Mun surface science research.

Yeah, bases are the best, and I love setting them up, but I can't seem to maintain them past 300 parts.

I guess I have to wait for 1.1... :(

I'm going to try out some of your planes!

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20 hours ago, DMSP said:

Yeah, bases are the best, and I love setting them up, but I can't seem to maintain them past 300 parts.

I guess I have to wait for 1.1... :(

I'm going to try out some of your planes!

 

On 14/2/2016 at 10:29 PM, Raptor9 said:

This is all (BM-series modules, mining rovers, SRD system) really geared toward 1.1 optimizations I'm afraid.  But really, any large base anybody makes is most likely going to be high in part count no matter what you do.  I would love for Kerbal Planetary Base Systems to become stock so we could have awesome looking part modules and a lower part count in general, but it is what it is I guess.  Ultimately, if you want to keep part count low, just send a LV-3A/LV-3BL combo for Mun surface science research.

Yup, it's hard to keep part creep from overwhelming base builds. But, with a lot of thought, you can do wonders at mitigating it. As I said elsewhere, I am very happy to report, that my next iteration of the pack, when deployed on the ground, is a mere 75 parts right now, plus a 25 part rover for an even 100 parts for a fully functional base. And I'm talking about five modules joined by four independent corridors, each with a clear and different function (and a ~2.5m diameter). Even packed up with all of it's descent/assembly extras, I don't think it goes over 250 parts... But it's hard, especially if you add as much greebles as you want to add. A nice idea is to actually put some nonessential stuff on decouplers so you can get rid of it when you are done using it, like my corridors: they can upright themselves on legs and have powerful reaction wheels and probe cores so I can control them (and thus are like 11 parts each on deploy), but when you have them in position you can drop everything non-essential and turn them into 3-part static pieces that you still can move around using other modules. In your specific case, a skycrane thingy to lower the modules and position them that you can ditch afterwards, I think, would be perfect. Also, consider figuring out how to make some kind of an assembly rover that can pick up modules and reposition them, could be driving under modules like I do, could use airplane landing gear to make a forklift, that is up to your engineering skills. I'm not the one that came up with it, but I am another one of the guys that proved it is the most convenient way. ;)

Also, don't expect miracles from 1.1: a 50% performance increase would be awesome (and unlikely), but it would only mean 50~100 parts more on the screen before the slideshow sets in. Bottom line, if you want to play with it with reasonable lag, keep an eye on part count.

 

Rune. First step: consolidate those solar panels! Each part is a generator and runs code every cycle, with raycasts included... that can't be computationally cheap.

Edited by Rune
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7 hours ago, Majorjim said:

Time for you guys to upgrade! :D

 

Again, I would get a marginal improvement at best. I have a 3.1Mhz processor (picked with KSP in mind), a fast SSD, and 8Gb of double-threaded 200Mhz RAM because last summer I thought we were getting 64bits to be stable. I know there are badasserer machines out there (my graphics card, in particular, is old as boop), but what can they get over me, 50% faster performance? A hundred? That would still mean lag at >200 parts (not slideshow, but the clock firmly in the yellow), and if you add a 50% performance increase on top, on account of an awesome 1.1 effect you shouldn't really count on, you would still get the lag at 300. If you are building 50 part ships, that's six ships on screen before stuff start being uncomfortable to play (IMO). So right now I try to have, at most, three things onscreen.

 

Rune. Sorry for the derailing! I hate to bring up such a negative point, and wish it wasn't so. :(

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4 hours ago, Rune said:

Again, I would get a marginal improvement at best. I have a 3.1Mhz processor (picked with KSP in mind), a fast SSD, and 8Gb of double-threaded 200Mhz RAM because last summer I thought we were getting 64bits to be stable. I know there are badasserer machines out there (my graphics card, in particular, is old as boop), but what can they get over me, 50% faster performance? A hundred? That would still mean lag at >200 parts (not slideshow, but the clock firmly in the yellow), and if you add a 50% performance increase on top, on account of an awesome 1.1 effect you shouldn't really count on, you would still get the lag at 300. If you are building 50 part ships, that's six ships on screen before stuff start being uncomfortable to play (IMO). So right now I try to have, at most, three things onscreen.

 

Rune. Sorry for the derailing! I hate to bring up such a negative point, and wish it wasn't so. :(

Odd..

 I have just over 300 parts on Mun right now and it is butter smooth in the green. One craft.

 1.1 is just the start of performance increases too, so there will be further gains down the road. Given that the biggest gain will be for multiple craft close together I imaging a base with around 500 parts will be smooth after and beyond 1.1.

   It is a very exciting time for KSP!!

Now, back to those amazing craft Raptor9!

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6 hours ago, Rune said:

Rune. Sorry for the derailing! I hate to bring up such a negative point, and wish it wasn't so. :(

Nah, part count is always a legit concern.  I'll look at ways to shave part count this weekend.  I wasnt aware that all those individual solar panels had that much performance impact (ie "raycasting").  I really wanted to have enough power generation to run research operations throughout the entire Mun night cycle, but maybe I can lean more on the fuel cell side of things.  Might be a better option in the part count area.

My metric is 300 when I start seeing a slightly less smooth framerate. 500 is when it becomes significantly laggy for me, but I have a gaming laptop that is only three years old.  Which is why I haven't used my own EV-3 that much. Fully-assembled with an LV-4 docked it's ~550 parts.  The initial Kerbin departure burn is painful, but once out of the Kerbin SOI and the Kerbin departure stage is jettisoned, its not too bad.

And about putting all the reliance on 1.1 optimizations, I hear you. When I typed that statement out a few posts ago, I could hear how foolish it sounded, but I admit it is something I'm hoping for.  Time will tell, and it's not like anyone can't modify the modules for themselves once downloaded.  I just hope the design architecture as a whole has given a solution to some players' base-building needs.

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1 hour ago, Majorjim said:

Odd..

 I have just over 300 parts on Mun right now and it is butter smooth in the green. One craft.

 1.1 is just the start of performance increases too, so there will be further gains down the road. Given that the biggest gain will be for multiple craft close together I imaging a base with around 500 parts will be smooth after and beyond 1.1.

   It is a very exciting time for KSP!!

Now, back to those amazing craft Raptor9!

'K, maaaybe I overstated things "a bit". And also, I run OpenGL, which runs a bit slower but almost never crashes due to memory. Call it a fudge factor of two (and you've got a fancy i/ with the best chipset and cache intel has, IIRC). And of course, "slo-mo" mode works quite nicely until the clock goes red. Still, I don't really think much over 500 parts will ever be playable for the average player, and besides, I have a tendency to do very complicated gameplay, and make my stations as big as the game allows me with all the docked stuff. So, the less parts, the more metric tons of crap I can have docked at any one time! :)

46 minutes ago, Raptor9 said:

Nah, part count is always a legit concern.  I'll look at ways to shave part count this weekend.  I wasnt aware that all those individual solar panels had that much performance impact (ie "raycasting").  I really wanted to have enough power generation to run research operations throughout the entire Mun night cycle, but maybe I can lean more on the fuel cell side of things.  Might be a better option in the part count area.

My metric is 300 when I start seeing a slightly less smooth framerate. 500 is when it becomes significantly laggy for me, but I have a gaming laptop that is only three years old.  Which is why I haven't used my own EV-3 that much. Fully-assembled with an LV-4 docked it's ~550 parts.  The initial Kerbin departure burn is painful, but once out of the Kerbin SOI and the Kerbin departure stage is jettisoned, its not too bad.

And about putting all the reliance on 1.1 optimizations, I hear you. When I typed that statement out a few posts ago, I could hear how foolish it sounded, but I admit it is something I'm hoping for.  Time will tell, and it's not like anyone can't modify the modules for themselves once downloaded.  I just hope the design architecture as a whole has given a solution to some players' base-building needs.

Don't take that as gospel, but yeah, running the generators in them, and the angle-to-sun calculation, should mean lots of computations per cycle, even if they are "physicsless" parts. Still, you don't have fuel cells as the only alternative, Gigantors and the big batteries work very nice too to have a robust power system (though note the Munar night is a crapton of time, 36h or six whole kerbin days!). On highly inclined bases (polar and the like), the Gigantors make awesome solar towers when placed vertically. And yeah, before you say it, I also miss some intermediate size of solar panel between the gigantor's >20e/s on kerbin's orbit, and the rest of the panels, which don't break two e/s. Something in the 5e/s range would be awesome, preferably as a big static panel you can build "solar roofs" with. Then again, asteroid day... ;).

 

Rune. The thing I really hope for in 1.1 is a stable game, so I can have my nice graphics back.

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Here's a screenshot of the LV-3B in testing.  Essentially an LV-3A with some fuel tanks removed from the descent stage, and a lower rover platform and deployable ramp added.  Holds an ER-1 'Rat', the same rover on the older LV-1B 'Frog', but the rover is still a viable means of conducting sensor surveys away from the landing site.  The LV-3B only has 68% the fuel capacity in the descent stage compared to the A-model, but it's still more than enough.  Enough to even do some biome hopping if planned and executed properly.  Other notable features include a Goo canister and fuel cell added to the lower cargo platform, making it more capable in some ways than the A-model LV-3.

LV-3B%20Preview_zpseom3my18.png   nas.esas.21.l.jpg

As with the A- & C-model LV-3's, the LV-3B descent stage also has a small docking port for plugging into my SRD system, as well as solar panels for power generation to supplement the fuel cell.

(Altair LSAM Image for comparison)

Edited by Raptor9
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On ‎2‎/‎16‎/‎2016 at 0:03 PM, Rune said:

[snip] Something in the 5e/s range would be awesome, preferably as a big static panel you can build "solar roofs" with. Then again, asteroid day... ;).

@Rune, your ears must've been burning.  Just read this in the devnotes: "integrating a few parts from the Asteroid Day mod as a nice surprise for the community. The Probodobodyne HECS2, Communotron HG-55, and OX-STAT-XL Photovoltaic Panel have been rebalanced and integrated into 1.1 as stock parts."

I guess I know which craft files of mine will be getting that upgrade first. :sticktongue:

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5 minutes ago, Raptor9 said:

@Rune, your ears must've been burning.  Just read this in the devnotes: "integrating a few parts from the Asteroid Day mod as a nice surprise for the community. The Probodobodyne HECS2, Communotron HG-55, and OX-STAT-XL Photovoltaic Panel have been rebalanced and integrated into 1.1 as stock parts."

I guess I know which craft files of mine will be getting that upgrade first. :sticktongue:

Yay! My wish come true. :)

 

Rune. Sometimes I feel like the devs are secretly spying on me to know what I want them to do next.

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Just now, Rune said:

Yay! My wish come true. :)

 

Rune. Sometimes I feel like the devs are secretly spying on me to know what I want them to do next.

LOL!, You and everyone else who downloaded the mod!, it is awesome they finally decided to add them!

Edited by Majorjim
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20 hours ago, Raptor9 said:

Here's a screenshot of the LV-3B in testing.  Essentially an LV-3A with some fuel tanks removed from the descent stage, and a lower rover platform and deployable ramp added.  Holds an ER-1 'Rat', the same rover on the older LV-1B 'Frog', but the rover is still a viable means of conducting sensor surveys away from the landing site.  The LV-3B only has 68% the fuel capacity in the descent stage compared to the A-model, but it's still more than enough.  Enough to even do some biome hopping if planned and executed properly.  Other notable features include a Goo canister and fuel cell added to the lower cargo platform, making it more capable in some ways than the A-model LV-3.

  

As with the A- & C-model LV-3's, the LV-3B descent stage also has a small docking port for plugging into my SRD system, as well as solar panels for power generation to supplement the fuel cell.

(Altair LSAM Image for comparison)

What did you use for the lowering ramp dude?

Edited by Majorjim
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Hey, i was wondering could you upload a zip of all your craft files, i would like to download them without having to download them individually. and getting a Dropbox account isn't hard! and its free!

 

never mind.. i painstakingly downloaded them all, and to save peoples pain and time here is a link to a zip:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/cl5uazui3k1nlwz/Ships.zip?dl=0

 

 

 

Edited by legobryguy
fixed it myself
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[REDACTED]

On 2/17/2016 at 6:45 PM, Majorjim said:

What did you use for the lowering ramp dude?

Several LV-1R "Spider" small LFO engines.  Two pairs of LV-1R's are pinched together to form a "retaining hole" on either side of the ramp, and a third pair of LV-1R's are mounted on the ramp itself as "pegs" that go into the holes formed by the other LV-1R's.  The ramp itself is mounted to a small docking port embedded in the floor of the lower rover platform, and offset to place the ramp's pegs appropriately within the retaining holes. When the "decouple node" action group is selected with the docking port, gravity takes over and drops the ramp.  Downside is you can't raise it again.  Ensure your lander is where you want it before dropping the ramp.  Same technique is used on the LV-3BL research lander, just with a bigger ramp and a bigger rover.

Edited by Raptor9
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