Camaron

Preview of Titan Thirteen. I'll be polishing it off once the new computer is built and I can get more than 1FPS on this thing. At 2,200+ tons and carrying over 170,000 units of fuel, it more than meets my goal.

That line has been sliced, then.

Yes, from my understanding, that is exactly correct, Red. You could probably clip the decouplers together a bit, too, but that might (probably will) provoke the Kraken. Also, remember that radial decouplers also count. Docks could be used instead of decouplers in some places to avoid excessive decouplers, since they don't count.

My last post was just now edited to address most of that. If you want a three levels of Xenon cells on the radial wings to drain before the axial ones, you will simply need some extra decouplers to boost their priority. A little muddy, but from my testing it should work perfectly. Priority literally equals the number of decouplers between the Xenon tank and the ship's root part.

Based on Kasuha's tip, I've decoded the basics. As he had said, decouplers trigger Xenon priorities. A Cluster which is behind a decoupler is expended first. A Cluster which was decoupled, and redocked, Does not continue to maintain a priority. A cluster which cleverly contains a decoupler solely as a trigger for the priorites, does exhibit the routing behavior, which resumes as intended even if the cluster is undocked and then redocked. Verdict: Spare Xenon Cells will expend their gas in the correct sequence, so long as each cluster has a decoupler in front of the actual Xenon parts within that component. I feel safe to assume that you could daisy-chain numerous Xenon clusters as long as they contain a decoupler, and get the desired behavior. I have not tested chains, so I cannot confirm right now. I have not tested whether separators also have this behavior. It wouldn't matter to me personally, given that they are heavier. Edit: I've just tested multiple layers of decoupler-inclusive Xenon clusters. They behave as expected, and priority seems to be granted through a very straightforward countup of how many decouplers are in front of them. The xenon groups with the highest number of decouplers in front of them are first. if you have more than one cluster with the same number of decouplers ahead of them (like a right wing - left wing formation) they share that priority space and expend simultaneously.

Yes, but when you're managing over a hundred tiny Xenon tanks, this can be a huge PITA. I will experiment with the decoupler-based tip. Maybe Xenon tanks that were once behind a decoupler but no longer are, retain this priority. IIRC about the built that I caused the priority with originally, this is a huge possibility. Even if the tanks lose their priority after decoupling, maybe I can force them to retain it by designing a decoupler right into each cluster as necessary.

Solved (TL-DR) - Exactly as stated by Kasuha: So.... somewhere along the line in my adventures I once realized that an Ion ship of mine had actually bled out the Xenon cell of one docked part before another. I desperately want to repeat this occurrence and be able to guide Xenon use in some way. I have been experimenting tons, but cannot get that situation to repeat. Everything I do, Xenon expends evenly across the entire craft. Does anyone know any way to affect the evenly distributed use of Xenon? I could swear I had one ship exhibit the behavior of sapping one docked-on cell without using any of its own fuel without disabling the onboard tanks the traditional way (to my great surprise). If I had known it would be impossible to replicate, I would have kept it around.

Congrats. You built the Triforce.

There are no squares or stars or displayed title anywhere that I can find. A format problem maybe? Here's what I see:

Only just today I saw the first ever mention of rep I've ever seen. And now this. What's this rep system? I can't see anything related to rep.

Here's an experimental thing I've made along the lines of "Heavy" Ion Crafts, the Keranos II It's actually really useful, and made astonishingly easy work of a Class A asteroid grab earlier. It has plenty about it that can improve, however, (like the fact that its battery capacity is dramatically higher than it ever needs to be) so there will be newer better versions in the future.

I frequently ditch manned labs into deep space to save weight.

That's literally what I just said.

This reminds me I need to build a new big interplanetary for 0.23.5. I've been so distracted playing with my awesome new Ion crafts. My usual approach is to build Gigantic, degenerative, but empty ships, then fuel them in space with my insanely oversize Fuel ships.

Ah, the notorious nuclear-engine-fairings thing. I've had my share of beautiful ships just die from that.

You broke it. It's dead.

Awesome! BTW, do you need a Huge Xenon Fuel Cell based on Sr Docks? I've got one that carries 44,800 with just under 100 parts. Has a generator, monoprop system, and Drone brain so it can manage itself. No clipping! Whole construction is legit.

https://www./?5gmewgk7qqpmr8c There it is! No name. Name it if you wish. 1 - Drop Kerbal Pods (and open chutes) 2 - Ditch the Jetfuel spare 3 - Toggle Jet engines 4 - Toggle Rocko Engines For optimal performance, it now includes a spare Jet fuel tank on the belly. It usually empties around 22,000 m when flown the way the instructions say. I get good results when flown this way: Take off - once lifted off the ground turn straight up, but not too fast. General rule - Don't turn more than about 60 degs from its current heading and it should stay stable. Start levelling off around 15km high. Try to get your plane heading at around a 10-20 degree slope by the time you're up to 20km. Be watching the spare tanks fuel, it will run out soon. Cruise at a 10-20 degree upward angle until around 29,000M. Hit 4 to fire the Rockos. Continue until you reach 36,000M. Hit 3 to shut off the Jet engines. Be quick. if you wait for 37, you will find yourself doing the sky dance. From there, there really isn't any guesswork. Pick any orbit under 500Km and put it there. Only downer is that some tanks are hard to get a sight on, for refueling. Here's a short set of pics showing successful re-entry, pod-drop, and landing from a max altitude of 500,000M, which was a circular orbit. Not really sure why there's all this "damage." It's not true.

On request to build a plane that can drop three pods at KSC and land safely after orbiting itself and retrieving the Kerbal Heroes, I've developed this thing here.

It's almost ready.

Actually, If you can wait a few days, I've already nearly finished what you would call Hexa - 2. All my new parts are here. I just have to backup my stuff and build the new system. It Is (Hexa 2) finished actually - I'd just add some mono tanks and Xenon and its good to go after the launcher is completed. This thing is absolutely spectacularly huge. And I just remembered its double-octagonal, not double-hexagonal. Already tested to be flyable. As for making a pod-dropping plane, its looking like rear-dropping is a must as for plopping three pods in style. Frontal dropping is dangerous, and the glider takes too long and the main craft unloads. Edit: Got the new plane into orbit. It has bad flight stability (Working on that) But acheieved orbit with LOTS more of the space-worthy rocket fuel, meaning it can get where it needs to go, and can probably meet you from fairly high orbits. Not to mention you can always just juice it back up from one of the big ships - has a front dock. Also landed well and made easy work of the pod drop after deorbiting from a circularized 500km Latest Version on a Docking test at 160km. Also, it is radically more stable in-flight.

Set this up with a few macros to auto-run that "pump" at various speeds and it would even be an easy thing to fly!

I like equatorial orbits, because from the ground, I can easily reference equatorial takeoffs with the Gimbal, So I was hoping there would be an easy way for carrier ships to be parked more accurately for the exit rendezvous. Problem is if you take off from somewhere away from the equator, that gets bent out of whack as well. Also, I pretty much never match orbit planes before jumping into planets' SOI's so I come in at all kinds of whacked out angles. Without a reference, leveling them out can be really geusswork-ish. As for the Quick/Advanced thing. Might I suggest that whoever runs this forum noted that in the error alert? Something like "If you're in Quick Reply mode, switch to Advanced". If they can, anyway. Just a note, I knew the Mun trick. My Kerbin looks like Saturn right now because all 7 million orbits are flawlessly equatorial. The challenge is equator-ing an orbit around something which doesn't have an even reference. (Pretty much everywhere else) Is there any simple mod I could try on? Not looking for mechjeb, really just something that can help me see orbit alignment.

What is the best and most accurate way to get a perfectly equatorial orbit around a celestial body without referencing another object besides what you're orbiting? I would like to place equatorial orbits around things like Dres but don't have a good point of reference. One other question - how do I enter a "Thread Prefix"? I would have loved to place this in the Questions forum where it belongs.

Nah I figured something out. I think you'll like it. The front (3 pods) detaches as a unit with its own wings and can guide itself where you want independently of the jet. Then when ready you break it apart and it all falls to earth. ...Except that the jet seems to unload and vanish if it goes too far.