Tweeker

How can I duplicate this on kerbin? More to the point why don't I already have this?

I recently recovered a vessel, and I noticed in the science tab of the recovery menu that it gave me "vessel returned from a flight over duna" This is the first time I've seen this, I don't have this for any other planet or moon.. So my question is what parameter must be met to generate this situation? On tis mission I aero braked into orbit, around Duna to complete a contract, and then went sub-obital on Ike for science. then returned home.

I've been goofing around with 1.1, and in the campaign game I'm playing right now my craft requires a lot of fuel transferring. I noticed that fuel transfer has changed a bit from 1.05. The change I noticed right away way that fuel keeps transferring when you switch to map mode. This I didn't mind so much, infact I like that addition. Where it gets strange is when the tank you are filling gets full. Before it would kick off all the tanks that where draining. Now, if you are burning an engine, it keep filling, but only from the last 2 tanks that you selected. Even then it doesn't drain evenly, the last tank drains faster than the second to last. This can lead to an un-balanced condition and an un-controllable craft. Which can be fatal when trying to land...... Of course you can work around this by selecting tanks from alternating sides of the craft, or turning off fuel transfer when the main tank is full. And I don't think It quite rises to the level of "bug", but It's something that can jump up and bite you in the butt.

I don't biome hop for science, I land on the surface, and get 1 set of science from where ever I land, and call it a day. Otherwise it makes the game too grindy, and you really don't need to grind science anyway.

Follow up question, how would I go about re-coloring an existing exhaust effect?

Thanks, I'm assuming this is in Unity, is that right? I'll give it a try when I get home tonight.

I want to create a new plume, or re-color an existing one for my mod, I read the tutorial, but unfortunately it is going over my head, If someone could walk me through the process I would be very greatful. Starting at the beginning, step 1 of the tutorial: 1) Game objects Create an empty game object at the origin that you will use for exporting. This will have a partTools component on it that you will use to write the .Mu file to your FX folder. Create an empty object as a child of the exporter object. This object will have the KSPParticle Emitter script on it. I call mine 'emit'. This allows you to easily tweak the position of the effect within the actual exported object. I also make an additional object and name it smokePoint, to correct the orientation of the stock smoke particles. I move it to -1 on Y, and rotate it -90 on X. This object won't be needed if you aren't using one of the stock prefab particles. It's named smokePoint to match the name of the rapier config. How (and where) do I create the game object?

This is the thing that gets me, calling it a "tank butt" is disingenuous. It makes it sound like it is part of the tank. It's not, it is a fairing covering the powerhead and other important pars of the engine. Without it all you have is an exhaust nozzle. On the mammoth, it can be seen that this machinery is inside the bulges above each engine. On the space shuttle it is recessed inside the rearend I really don't understand the need for such a change to the game.

I pushed some more numbers around today, with the intention of re-scaling the fuel tank and SRBs to more visually accurate sizes. Starting with the shuttle as a baseline, because it has the most parts, and is therefore the least desireable to resize. I found that the fuselage is ~ 5.2m wide. If we are using 3.75m parts the tells us it is 72% scale, maybe smaller because the shuttle parts aren't round. But in the ballpark anyway. From the I find the SRBS are 71% of the shuttle's width, 3.71m/5.2m. The fuel tank is 1.61 times the diameter of the shuttle, 8.4m/5.2m. Going from here the SRBs should be 2.7m, 3.75m for the stock shuttle time 72% . I think I can call 2.5m close enough. The main fuel tank should be 6.03m, 3.75 times 1.61. I think I'l try 5m. This will make it 20% under size vs the shuttle, but only 12% vs the 2.5m SRBS When I get back home, and I can spend some time at my computer I'll give it a try and see how it looks.

I am told there is a mod got that: https://github.com/Crzyrndm/VariableThrustLimiter I haven't had a chance to try it yet, as work had flared up again. Maybe next week I'll get a chance to give it a go.

I spent some time the past 2 days rebalancing the Kickback and Vector to be closer to real life in terms of how much of the total thrust each contributes to the shuttle's total. One thing I found that the rocket tended roll over as the SRB neared the end of it's burn, it would be useful to be able to have a more realistic thrust profile on the SRBs, where the thrust would be greatest at sea level, and taper off as it burns, rather than increasing as it does now. Is there a way to do this by editing the .cfg? Or would it require more intensive modding?

Sad, but true. When are rocket going to get some love?

I spent some time messing with the .cfg files for the Vector and Kickback, as a result of some discussion in the General forum. I was trying to re-balance the Vector closer to the other 1.25m engines, I thought about 300 Kn would be about right. but I needed to increase the Kickback to a more real-world ratio with respect to the Vector, as the shuttle gets about 70-80% of it's thrust from it's SRBs so I changed the Kickback to have 1750 Kn of thrust, and 7500 soild fuel. On the first launch attempt the shuttle nose over backwards, The SRBs where pushing off straight up on an off center load, and the Vectors didn't have enough thrust to compensate. It seemed my efforts were in vain. After some digging I found that the SLS booster gimbal 5 degrees, So I added a 5 degree gimbal, and tried again. The launch was a success, but it turned out the SRBs burned out too soon, and the top stage didn't have enough thrust, it slowed down after the SRB burned out at about 10 Km. I kept adjusting the numbers, it was a bit of a fine balance, more sold fuel meant the SRB lost thrust, more SRB thrust meant that the Shuttle would flip over, and adding more thrust to the Vector would make it unbalanced vs the exsiting 1.25m engines. I ended up with the SRBs at 2400 Kn, and 15000 soild fuel, and a 5 degree gimbal. and The vector with 400 Kn of thrust. Here it is is in action: The booster are re-sized to 1.875M Lift-Off !!! It flies fairly easy, if it's properly strutted. Almost hands-off Fly straight up to 10 Km in stability assist. switch to prograde. At about 15Km switch from surface to orbital, Booster burns out at about 25 Km. From there just keep following prograde. you will stay about 1 min, 20 sec from apoapsis. Eventually you will start pushing apoapsis out, when you are comfortable circularize, You end up in a decent LKO orbit, with about 700-800 m/s DV left, Probably less depending on payload. But not enough to go to GEO I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, rebalancing of the Kickback and Vector.

I took a bit of a hiatus from KSP right after 1.0.5 came out, I played it a couple of times before work started sucking up all of my free time. My impression was that the vector was OP and unbalanced. Rather than comment on it, I let it slide, and as I said work started taking all of my free time. Now I have a bit more free time, and I was able to start back up with KSP again. I posted some of my thoughts on the Vector in this thread: The Vector: Your thoughts . I noticed a lot of talk about tank butts in this thread, Here is this new engine that doesn't fit the established paradigm, and as an explanation it is said that the engine has had it's "tank butt" This was something new to me, I don't remember much talk about tank butts before now, I don't see any one calling for the Skipper, Mainsail, Reliant, ETC to have their "tank butt" removed.. To me it seems like a bunch of mental gymnastics to justify the Vector. Are they really going to re-work all the engines in the game to justify the presence of one engine? But I am curious what do the rest of you think about this line of thought? I can see the merit of having a butt plate on the engine that contains all the internal of the engine, the gimbal, the pumps, and so on. I don't see the what purpose it serves to split each engine into 2 parts.

I agree whole heartedly I remember there was a parts pack that had a.625 SRB in it, I really enjoyed that part, fun and it added a lot of functionality

I am OK with the 1.25m engines being lower on the TWR than the later engines for me the thing is the lack of any progression in the 1.25m range. The swivel and reliant are still basically snowclones, and there is no late career, higher tech 1.25m engine. As far as the Nasa engines go it seems that all the liquid engines are overpowered thrust wise (that is not to say they are OP, they still seem balanced game wise), and that the SRB, the "Kickback", is under powered.

I think If you re-balanced the SRBs this gap would end up being filled. Moving the kickback up to a more shuttle equivalent range would open a big gap in the SRB range, In turn the rest of the range would need to rise to balance to the Kickback.

I had time to mess around today, and I found that if the game had a SRB of about 2500 Kn thrust the vector would only need to be about 400 Kn of thrust. I used the dynawing for testing, and after a bit of tweeking the only real sticking points are the fact that the SRB thrust doesn't taper, and the fuel tank proportions are off, visually.

The Mammoth is infact, unbalanced being based on the SLS it should have about 25% of the thrust of 2 kickbacks, {7,400Kn for the mammoth vs. 32,000 for 2 Kickbacks. Instead it has 300% more thrust, {3,746 for the Mammoth vs. 1186 for the 2 kickbacks} This isn't really a problem with the Mammoth which is a forced cluster instead of an adapter and a single engine, for a couple of reasons, Because it is a forced cluster it is locked into it's role, as a 3.75m engine. so it doesn't beg to be compared to other engines the way the Vector does.. The Vector on the other hand can be installed outside it's intended role of SSME. So it is more obvious how out if line with the rest of the engines it is. .

If it was a truly SSME it would have far less thrust, and function as a sustainer, instead it is the primary source of thrust, the lifter. If it's function is to be the primary lifer then it's form should reflect that, not appear to be a sustainer. So you have a fundamental mis-match, you said yourself the Vector functions as a 2.5m engine. But instead of having this form, it is given the appearance of a SSME, so you can have a shuttle that looks realistic. As a result you get an engine that is unbalanced. You are band-aiding the fact that the SRBs are undersized in both function and form by increasing the SSME's function, but not it's form. That is not a balanced equation.

That is the root of the issue there, it is balanced with 2.5m engines , not with 1.25m engines. It needs to be a 2.5m engine. It is over powered as both, a KSP engine and a SSME, because it form is dictated by the desire t make it appear right with the shuttle, instead of making it fit in the existing range of engines. If you go by stats alone, NOT desired function it should be a 2.5m engine. As the old adage say form follows function, not the other way around.

Everyone that insist on building a space shuttle clone in KSP is doing this, by insisting that they need the Vector to make their clone work, and that it *MUST* be 1.25m so it looks like it's real world counterpart, but it *MUST* have so much thrust to work with their space shuttle clone. What I'm saying is that by introducing this engine that fits in a certain space to be visually similar to a real world shuttle, but giving it enough thrust to work with in game SRBs you create an engine that isn't balanced with the in game engines.

If that was the case you wouldn't see so many people complaining about the 2.5 engine butts sticking out of the shuttle. A few pages back Red Crown said the following: The Vector is OP having about 2.5x more thrust than it is "supposed" to have because the in game SRBs that are supposed to be analogous to Shuttle derived SLS SRBs are undersized and underpowered.

The notion is based in the way the game acts. If you put 1.25 m engine in a 2.5m stack you get a wasp-waist in the rocket. It's why a lot of people use the poodle over the terrier. Because the vector stack natural beneath 1.25m fuel tanks it begs to be compared to 1.25m engines. Making the shuttle longer still leaves the same problem, the engines that can mount behind it are generally 1.25m engines. so again you naturally compare among the engines that fit on those mounting pads. The real problem is that SRBs are mis-sized to the role of lifting a 3m shuttle so the SSME ends up being OP to compensate.