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Camaron

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Posts posted by Camaron

    SSTOs! Post your pictures here~

    in KSP1 The Spacecraft Exchange

    Posted

    9 hours ago, Wanderfound said:

    Where's the ISRU converter stashed?

     I don't know if it's possible to be very efficient while maintaining the aesthetics of that design, but as first impressions:

    1) A ship of similar range and capability can be built with much fewer engines and much less complication in general. E.g.:

    2) Balancing dihedral against anhedral like that on your wings is very inefficient from a lift point of view (the dihedral of one wing neutralises the anhedral of the other, but both wings have reduced lift relative to a level surface). You'd be much better off with a single-plane wing without anhedral or dihedral.

    3) Large spaceplanes benefit hugely if you build in a bit of wing incidence. You want to be able to keep the nose pointed prograde while still climbing once you're up to speed. Lift with the wings, not the fuselage.

    incidence.gif

    4) Drag matters. Drag matters a lot. You want to minimise the number of stacks in the design (i.e. reduce frontal area) and put into a cargo bay anything that doesn't absolutely need to be exposed during ascent. And, as mentioned above, make use of wing incidence to minimise fuselage drag at speed.

    5) It's possible to build without clipping if you want. The design shown above has a very well-stuffed cargo bay, but the only clipping is incidental and marginal. The scanners are set up so they can open and operate without ever clipping through neighbouring parts.

    6) Your plane looks as if it may be difficult to land on rough fields. Bigger landing gear and a more conventional tricycle setup with a wide wheelbase would help. A bit of low-G VTOL is helpful (belly Vernors etc), and drag chutes are essential for post-touchdown braking if you're planning on a Duna or Laythe landing.

    7) Don't expect airbrakes to help much with reentry. They'll melt.

    8) Where's your centre of mass? Your vertical stabilisers and rudders appear to be quite a long way forwards, and their effectiveness is in part a function of their distance behind CoM. You may get yaw stability problems, especially during reentry.

    9) Do you have sufficient power generating capacity to run those drills and the ISRU?

    Thank you.

    1) ISRU is is chilling on the nose :P Also, the plane is as big as it is for maximum range AFTER a refuel at minumus, so a lot of the tank capacity is just empty cargo weight on the way up.I am well aware of the diminishing returns deal, but that's why these lessons on efficiency are so important to me. It's also why I use way too many wings to ramp up lift and reduce AOA - because they're also Liquid tanks so their mass isn't particularly wasted after leaving an atmosphere.

    2) I know but it should be minor loss at a shallow angle and sometimes looks get in the way of function :D 

    3) It will be tricky to line up rows of wings at a slight custom angle but I will give it a try sometime

    5) I got over clipping hangups a long time ago. My reasoning is basically that any sane aerospace engineer would have put things like the RTG internal to the ship, for example.

    6) (Empty), this plane lands so easily i probably could do it blindfolded. The newer landing gears are surprisingly rugged.

    7) I have found in several spaceplane designs now (Including this one) that the airbrakes survive fine and slow down the plane just enough to not blow to bits on the way down, in any case where the standard flat-belly approach isn't available.  

    8) Center of mass is roughly at the midline of the central liguid tank. With AeroGrav's help on the ingame drag simulation quirks, that may change significantly.

    9) Simultaneously? Maybe not. Are two giants and some roof panels enough for a drill and converter?

    SSTOs! Post your pictures here~

    in KSP1 The Spacecraft Exchange

    Posted

    13 hours ago, AeroGav said:

    If you can make it available for download I'll have a look at it.    My guess, from the pictures, is that it might be possible to reduce drag by having a look at the way the engines are attached to the rear fuselage.  This in turn allows  a  reduction in the number of engines etc.  Using aeodynamic instead of lightweight adapters and covering all open nodes is where the easy savings lie.

    Here it is, hopefully

    http://www.mediafire.com/file/zp38ytzxsdbh1yr/Diamondback+IV+cp18.craft

    SSTOs! Post your pictures here~

    in KSP1 The Spacecraft Exchange

    Posted · Edited by Camaron

    So, ages ago before my Kerbal playtime came to a near-standstill due to heavy college work and life in general, I found a craft built and presented by Rune that caught my attention for some reason, and I vowed to make a larger edition based on similar design concepts. Now, 14 months later (I know because of screenshot file dates), I came back to that idea and rebuilt a version that actually accomplishes all it was meant to do.

    This craft carries 12 Kerbals and a full set of drilling hardware as well as a polar scanning probe on board, to space in one stage with enough D/V to happily land on minmus to refuel. Theoretically it should reach anything in the solar system after that refuel.

    I wonder if anyone can point out significant improvements to the design? Also I will admit there are a few things clipped into the body, like some SAS and a single generator.

    Meet the Diamondback IV :)
    (Album in the tiny link below this image)
    rs1155r.jpg
    http://imgur.com/a/PTG6D
    http://imgur.com/a/QDGTQ

    What did you do in KSP1 today?

    in KSP1 Discussion

    Posted · Edited by Camaron

    I built my first thing in over a year since the last time I played Kerbal Space Program. I essentially picked up where I left off, attempting to design an SSTO which can reach orbit with a decent number of passengers, (12 in this design), with enough DV to carry itself and its resource mining capabilities and scanning drone to minmus to refuel to grant itself the ability to reach any location in the solar system.

    A few hours ago I succeeded in completing a design which appears to accomplish this very well. I have not thoroughly tested what it can do, or even attempted re-entry and landing yet, but here, you can check it out anyway!

    Of course during screenshots, I realized I've already made an obvious mistake with non-retractable solar on the probe that is supposed to re-mount the ship between planets. Lol.
    http://imgur.com/a/aQFPy

    The forum has changed how it does things. Wouldn't mind if someone shot me a PM with the basics on how to put up an image.

    How do you deal with all the shortcomings of the game ?

    in KSP1 Discussion

    Posted

    Before I go on, let me just say: I love this game. I've put in probably 5,000 hours of playtime altogether. I'm glad to see that you put together a coherent list of concerns rather than just flaming on about various easily solved issues like some have.

    However, some of your issues  come from trying to do something unrealistic, or getting upset that something that is exceptionally difficult is difficult. Taking a Rover back home with you. Pointing an engine and a heat shield in the same direction. You're trying to do a lot of things that simply shouldn't be done because they unnecessarily complicate things.

    As for your complaints on lousy parts, I'm with you 100%, and will even add a few complaints of my own.

    Most of the models are just plan bad and the textures are even worse. I have a considerable amount of experience in modeling and texturing for games, and it aggravates me how many models aren't even centered properly!!!

    Centering a model is modelling 101, guys. I know for a fact that whoever is making KSP's models has been doing so for 5 years now and the fact that he has only recently gotten to the point where I can call his work "mediocre" is disappointing to say the least. If I didn't have better things to do than remodel all of KSP for free, I would have done it a long time ago. I understand the problems that come from faulty floating-point rounding in modelling programs, but as a seasoned modeller, these issues should be figured out by now.

    Then we have the issue where a lot of the attachment points aren't quite right, leaving us to correct these novice modelling mistakes manually with the offset function. The assets from which we construct our ships are quite sub-par. Once upon a time I could excuse this, since the KSP team is a tiny Indie dev group and the people in it didn't have extensive experience. But.... it has now been around half a decade. The person building these assets should be an absolute pro by now.

    1.1 Performance: AMAZING, BEAUTIFUL

    in KSP1 Discussion

    Posted

    14 hours ago, DMagic said:

    Before getting too excited about how well it was running on a laptop, we should keep in mind that this was an extremely high end machine. 

    The thing had an i7 6700hq, which is about as good as you can get in a laptop, and better than a substantial amount of desktop CPUs.

    I cant wait to put KSP 1.1 up against a Xeon E5 2695 V3 (or higher). Oh, the monstrosities I shall build... 

    Given that I am a computer parts reseller, this will happen.

    My roommate will have KSP contend with his 3.3GHz 10-core. I traded him for his 4820K last year because it was an obscure ES processor with roughly the same value, but much harder to sell. He didn't object :D

    When / where to launch for Minmus straight-shot?

    in KSP1 Gameplay Questions and Tutorials

    Posted

    Of course you can, but its such a small target. It's far, far easier to just use the maneuver nodes like a normal person. Personally I don't match the inclination of slanted orbits, I shoot my apoapsis up straight along the dotted line that marks the angle of incline. Then I expand the peri to get the intercept on the following orbit pass like a time-wasting master of inefficiency. 

    Set target rescue mission. Bug?

    in KSP1 Discussion

    Posted · Edited by Camaron

    This is always tricky. The best you can really do is get solid bearings with nearby references like the planet's surface and the sun, and remember where your ship should be if you have to swap, because you will need to set your target again after switching. If you're on the dark side, this can be nearly impossible without lights. The dev team is talking about a full UI overhaul in  1.1 so there is a chance that this challenge has already been addressed. It's not a bug - its just a lack of foresight that can be very problematic at times.

    If you are just rescuing and not docking, it's a lot less difficult because you can simply light up your rescue craft, switch, EVA, and fly to the gleaming Kerbalese nearbly. Also, the round lights have enough range to illuminate another craft within the target icon's (sometimes) disappearance range of 500M. This doesn't seem to apply to docking targets. It's also worth considering that most cockpits and crew cabins have a "Lights on" mode that can definitely help keep things visible, and they don't require additional lights or additional power.

    I found this image to show some smart lighting. This craft was a breeze to dock, even on the darkside because the main portion illuminates both itself and the target.

    KUsZ8Av.png

    People who joined back in 2011: are any of you still here?

    in KSP1 Discussion

    Posted

    On 12/31/2015 at 3:51 PM, marza said:

    I still haven't worked out how to get 1.0.5 running as fast as previous versions.

    You don't. The game has some additional mechanics that require a bit more computation than previous versions. Without internally nerfing things, its just going to run a little heavier than older versions. The good news, however, id that 1.1 is supposed to bring with it superior multi core support which should improve computational drag immensely. Always looking forward!

    Putting MPL in LKO

    in KSP1 Discussion

    Posted

    Maybe you could have one pod right near the ground, but when you prepare to launch, transfer crew to the real pod up top, and just leave the lower one on the ground. I dunno, my science comes from the Jool system or something, like its supposed to :D

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