Thunderbird

thats the first thing i tried,and i use KW struts :\'(

Hi, since i seem to be absolutely incapable of figuring out how to balance my rockets, i thought ill ask you guys to explain it to me real simple =P I thought i will redo my 'Farseer' design from scratch, seemed like a good idea since the first one performed almost flawlessly, i just wanted to make it again with better parts, hopefully increasing its range.... 'Farseer Beta' (nameless screenshot) seems absolutely impossible to balance, i guess i shot myself in the foot with the part weight differences or something, i just cant, for the love of the mighty Kerbalord, figure out just how to fix it... I tried all sorts of crazy stuff with wings and control surfaces, doesnt seem to help, the ship starts tilting to the side (usually to the right) pretty much the second it clears the launch tower, RCS doesnt help either. I had a much heavier fuel tank initially in place of the orange one, i thought maybe its top-heavy so i replaced the 4x heavier with this one, pretty much no effect. Im including screenshots of both ships, first one is the one that works. Thanks in advance for advice Farseer-Enigma.png: screenshot19.png:

i think its just unstable.... add ASAS and 4x symmetry control surfaces if that doesnt work,its probably unbalanced (top/bottom) and you should make it heavier somewhere

except it actually waves around the exhaust like crazy and makes your ship oscillate, then makes it even worse when trying to correct it.... be very careful when using gimballed engines and ASAS on large craft,it tends to destabilize them

i probably should have,i know,its just i wanted the goodies =P also,the latest craft probably has a bug,not sure if its a display bug or not, but it seems the 4 engines on 2nd stage drain fuel from the central tank first.... thats another problem i probably would avoid by actually learning the game first. i just never thought decouplers work as fuel conduits.... lame

[nitpick] nah,you just went in way too steep to have time for braking =P [/nitpick]

deleted everything and started over, decided to resurrect my thread again =P needs pretty much all the mods as the first one (except ions),including KW pack now, not sure if i used the triple parachute,SIDR,wobbly rockets,tuned SAS,Aerospike engine,solar panels,C-7,Firelark it still has some solar panels in the 3rd and 4th stage (4th acts as heavy lander) for fuel recharge, its, again, way too heavy and with too much redundancy for its own good,but i still like how it looks... its also much more compact and less FPS killing than the Stargazer if you decide to try it,it 'works',you just have to fix the slight spin once you separate the first stage and do a course correction, during first stage its pretty much unsteerable,just kick in SAS and hope for the best =P i dont know how to get around the issue, but atleast it doesnt go into nearly as bad of a spin as the Stargazer

Decided to make another Firelark ship to test it....it makes it spin counter-clockwise... BUT... its stable,provided you can fix the turning and do course corrections on separating first stage (SAS is your friend) i just love building 'unreasonable' ships... if a true rocket expert looked at it he would probably get a heart attack, but i just like these sorts of designs =P mods used: C7,SIDR,wobbly rockets,KW Challenger,Aerospike and Solar Panel from 'Assorted Hardware',escape tower,some weird parachutes (either triple chute or the one from KW),and ofcourse FIRELARK!!! - might have forgotten some but i dont think so oh,and it definitely should be Mun capable, it has way too much fuel i tried strutting the things like crazy but i do get weird behavior either way,i think the engines are just simply too powerful to be 'solid stable' which results in a spin/wobble/whatever depending on the particular design either way,thanks again ill try and take it to the Mun once i scrape up some time

not that i have the numbers at hand, but im quite sure the sheer force of them would crush your ship,turn it inside out and then chew it to metal shavings =P on that note,Killer,did you find out of the Firelarks are stable yet? not a priority tho, i solved my immediate issue by rebuilding it... cant test it without engine optimizations anyway...

i actually have no idea where i got them,but i do think it was a part of some pack edit: here it is! http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/index.php?topic=663.msg5693#msg5693

wow,ok Killer,ill wait for it, no sweat :-) and yeah,Homeworld is one of my favourite games,but my understanding of the Corvette 'class' comes from Wing Commander Prophecy (waaaaaay back) and few other games nobody ever heard about... (and corvettes in the current navies) Homeworld considers it a heavy,heavy fighter... i think it deserves to be slightly more than that... and i think that if this game implements 'space'ships (as in not even designed to land,but only to be in space,which i think is the future of space travel), i will probably have all the necessary tools at my disposal to make one either way,Blaze will allow me to do some really crazy stuff,with rockets and with... other stuff

well you can be fairly sure that at some point,in a distant,optimized and well-modded and developed future,i will create the only ship type i love more than gunships - a corvette, provided it will be possible ofcourse... specifically a heavy assault corvette class capital ship, with docking bays, spinal mounted torpedo racks,etc etc =P

me and my demand for specialized hardware thanks again man,i really do appreciate it (i love gunships, i really do =P)

stupid question... when returning from the Mun... how big of an issue is the velocity retained from the Mun and its gravity? my landers return stage burners are 4 miniboosters, that enough to get me home? (well,and a small LFE, but id rather keep that for fine maneuvers and braking as thats what im going to use for the actual Mun landing too)

absolutely insane =P imo wont have a use,but i saw the Blaze on youtube (didnt try myself yet) and its awesome, i hope ill be able to make the gunship with that because thrust vectoring/gimballing/whatever is utterly useless for this particular purpose it seems

ikr?

well unfortunately without something as heavy as that i wasnt able to get it airborne with enough payload capacity for carrying a sizeable missile armaments..... slapping on more fuel tanks seemed redundant for what i want it (and potentially unbalancing) so i wanted regenerative fuel.... i tried a heavy RCS version in a mini version of the craft, turns out the RCS fuel bug pretty much kills the idea outright... ill have to do something like this,except less herp derp =P Killerhurtz kindly agreed to slightly modify the Blaze Project for this use, but i guess its all going to be as stupid as this without thrust vectoring.... we`ll see

ok,i made a horrible abomination that was able to stay in the air for a minute,then i lost control and made a cute fireball take a look for yourself underside has 4 sets of liquid fuel collectors and TG-175 engines,mounted on lateral couplers, which are on a C7-TR Fuel Tank (yes,the weird flat one), and that contraption is on a C7 hardpoint mount the fuel collectors were obviously an attempt to keep it flying forever,ill worry about fine-tuning it if the concept proves feasible, just wanted to make sure it can actually carry the parts for now.... the fuel collectors are from the General Solutions Union pack,theres a Yawmaster unit (Sunday Punch), no idea where is the lateral coupler from,or the TG-175, sorry the whole thing is a bitch fun to fly and its way too agile for its own good,take-off takes some practice (wait till it tilts over by say 45 degrees and then fire engines),its still a concept,just thought you guys might want to know it can be done... sort of... meh,ill probably scrap it anyway, but yeah, it can work this way P.S.: HERP DERP!!!

yeah should work quite nicely... i just want the thing to hover,as for X/Z axis movement i was just planning to slap RCS units on,them tilting the craft to the sides should provide enough variability for movement if the engines will be slightly angled outwards,that would mean the gunship would 'stand' straight on the forward thrusters while the aft thrusters would be angled out enough to provide thrust.... essentially behaving like a helicopter as for symmetry... well... i was hoping for that, but worst case ill do it the Kerbal way and eye the engine mounts... =P thanks alot

CARBON STRUTS!!! cool stuff tho =P

ill toy around with it a bit when i get home,thanks for the tip

yeah i thought of that at 1AM in the morning when i was falling asleep... but the way they are named,i was not sure how will they behave... do they work the same as the stock RCS thrusters,or do they thrust in only one direction?

thanks alot,i actually had no idea what the bulkheads are for :-[ i thought theyre explosion buffers :-[

I have a request/suggestion... Im not really sure if youre already doing that (maybe,but im going to post it anyway to be sure.... ) Ive been trying to make a gunship, the movie type, sort of like Hunter-Killer from Terminator or the stuff from Avatar... unfortunately there are no engines available that point 'downwards' (plane perspective) aside from RCS, so, seeing as you seem to be the 'alternate propulsion expert' around here 8) and that thrust vectoring is not available yet (and probably wont vector as far as i need anyway), is there any way you can make any low-powered engines mountable on the ventral side of such a craft? Ideally i would want 4 engines in the 'corners' each pointing slightly outwards (which is supposed to help stabilize the thing), or on the tip/tail and wings,but i`d settle for anything similar, or if you know of anything similar already in existence, please tell me Thanks.

I wanted to make it big enough so it can carry a sizeable missile rack... unfortunately the stuff is very heavy... im revising the design completely now and looking into alternate flight control/design options and propulsion (might even end up building it to stand on engines in a weird way,not sure) KSP unfortunately has like absolutely no understanding for my sparks of insanity, but im confident ill find a way sooner or later... managed to get a infinite-fuel ultralight version to flight status yesterday but it would probably just instantly explode if it was supposed to perform any combat-like maneuvers or even carry a payload. Ill post an update as soon as i got anything worthwile...