Bonus Eventus

@nli2work Just out of curiosity, what was your suspensionOffset, targetPosition, and groundHeightOffset during these tests?

Yes, in fact I mentioned this a few pages back on what may or may not make it into 1.1 But now I'm wondering if making a decent vehicle is right for this parts pack. Taurus HCV is a really good mod for that purpose and the Hermes mod has a cool looking MAV in the works. As to RPM & ASET Avionics would create dependencies for K+, which is something I really want to avoid doing, because it makes my job harder. Things that still need to be finished before 1.1: T202 docking ports 7.5 round (s6) to 3.75 adapter large xenon tanks cooled fast sodium reactor After 1.1 I want to add the following: large radial ore tanks NRAX ISRU Unnamed ISRU that converts ore to xenon 3.75m ISS Hab Modules T202 data server 3.75 monoprop tanks T202 service bays 3.75m ISS Science Lab 3.75m round to T202 radial docking port (might work like the claw) T404 extensions that make larger spaces and different shapes possible T404 (claw) arm (think of this like an airplane umbilical) Fusion reactor High power engine Expanded orange superstructure parts Folding radiators Remodel/animate solar wing (needs optimizing badly) A smaller (but still big) landing strut Lately I'm thinking a lot about parts for making "ISV Venture star" class ships (in terms of size and complexity. Interstellar distances don't currently make sense in KSP). I'm interested in making heat shields that will shield from intense reactor heat. I'm wondering if I can make an ISRU that will convert ore to ablative material, so you can regenerate your heat shield. I think at some point I'll remake the CM1 to be either a 3.75 hab module or a true 7.5 round (s6) command pod. However, a 7.5m command pod seems unrealistic. If you need more crew wouldn't you just attach many crew modules. If its to lower part counts, wouldn't a crew module that looked like a bunch of smaller modules make sense? Also, doesn't it make more sense to have an automated piloting system rather than human piloted, especially for large IP spacecraft?

as far as I could tell this only seems to be applied when legs are set to start extended state.

haha, sorry was looking at the wrong part of your screen grabs

Isn't this just a unity override? However, as I pointed out before, I think groundHeightOffset is this measurement.

Just that I'll be putting out an early dev version for beta testers to use before the normal dev build is out. I put out a call last week for anyone who wants to be a beta tester to pm me. I'm looking for people who can: dedicate 2-4 hours a week to test dev builds. Capable of light cfg editing no ksp well enough to tell the difference between features and bugs as well as put parts through advanced gameplay.

Here's the updated version. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/133876-new-mpd-engine-design-for-kerbodyne-plus-11/ Can't show you in game version yet, not done texturing/optimizing, but I will soon, beta testers will get it early.

Well some people do call it ELF

Probably some time next week.

Thank you to everyone who gave feedback, especially @FreeThinker who pointed out many aspects of MPD design! The clear winner, according to the poll is #7 with #8 about 9 points behind. However, after doing some more research I concluded that multiple nozzles were not going to get you much and with certain types of MPDs be impossible. In the end I chose to make an ELFT (Electrodeless Lorentz Force Thruster) because they have achieved some of the highest thrust densities as well as having really awesome nozzles I tried to take from #8 and #7 as much as possible to come up with something everyone would like. This design is still subject to change, however I feel it's time for some feedback.

Typically Xenon or Argon, but even water and oxygen have been tried. Lithium is the most performant.

It's not a VASIMR, but you're close. It is a form of magnetoplasmadynamic thruster called an Electrodeless Lorentz Force Accelerator. https://www.aa.washington.edu/research/plasmaDynamics/research/elf Glad you like it. I'm still in the design phase though, so expect changes. The difficult part about designing this part is making sure it looks good when combined with k+ parts and stock.

Trying out different options ATM. This one was an experiment with radiators. It's OK, but I realized it's probably not a great design because 1) detail level is way to high - 2) radiators would endup radiating into each other too much. I say that, but it's not like I couldn't alter the design of the radiators, and retopo the model to reduce the geo. @AJTheMighty I think that pulling from those other designs is a good idea, I'll try that out next. Was trying to pull inspiration from the winning #7 but the design is kind of fighting itself. EDIT: I dunno, some things are working, others not so much. I think the amount of radial capacitors is too high, I might try something more like a rounded box.

I've used notepad++ when I had a windows machine, and Atom is very similar, except that Atom is a lot prettier IMHO. And the text search / manipulation is super powerful. However there very well may be a similar plugin for notepad++ that previews rm.

I'm happy with the nozzle but the capacitor bay needs love. I need to find some good ref for them. I just roughed it in for now

Yeah, it turns out that I made an error when I exported the model. The new update addresses this. The solar wings are now twice as long as they were in 1.0

I like that idea. I'm not sure how to do multiple shrouds, I'll look into it. Great suggestion! I think William blacks illustration here, would work. http://william-black.deviantart.com/art/Lighter-and-Tanker-490769760

My experience pointed to it being the height from ground to attach node when extended, but this could be do to orientation. For instance, in my case 5m seemed to work and the height from ground to attach node is 4.685 m. But, my leg is oriented such that the attach node lines up to the origin so it could be the measurement from the ground to attach node (likely) or ground to origin. I agree, I set this very low after many km distance launches, haha. After seeing your transparent rover wheels and module linked mesh test rig, I was thinking of doing the same thing here, but you beat me to thanks for the test logs I love Sarbian's tool!

@nli2work thanks man you were totally right, and in fact I was able to understand another error I kept getting because of it. The error was the result of baseModuleIndex=0 but ModuleWheelBase positioned at index 1. As a result I now believe that ModuleWheelBase wasn't loading at all before but still played the animation. It was if All wheel modules just became a ModuleAnimateGeneric, and since I have other colliders in the model, the legs still worked. On another note I discovered that groundHeightOffset = (whatever height is added to the part its attached to once extended), so if your legs keep spawning partially in the ground, setting this correctly will most likely solve that, otherwise you'll get launched 100 meters into the air from the collision of the ground against the feet of your landing leg, haha

I dub the an official Beta Tester, no backsies. PM me and I'll give you the deets. Thanks to you I found a ton of bugs along the way. Apparently I had set prices lower than the cost of fuel in several rockets. The large quad tanks base cost is in the 100s of thousands

I've been trying out different settings, but I can't seem to get ModuleLight working with the landing legs even though the landing gear use the same modules. Really wanted to get this working, didn't have my hopes up. Still relying on animateGeneric in the meantime. On the spring/dampening issue, I did some test with the stock legs. I attached 6 of the t2 struts to a s3 large tank and on physics load they exploded. It makes me think that some of this "voodoo" is caused because of the way physx 3.0 handles transferring forces through joints.

Just thought I'd share this tip with any Mod authors using GitHub. There's a great open source text editor I use, called Atom. With Atom, you can install different code linters and cool extensions from within the editor. Anyways, today I discovered that Atom has a RM previewer. After the package is installed all one has to do is press "cntrl - shift - M" and a second tab opens showing you a GitHub preview of your markdown like so: Here's the link to the package if you're interested. Link Just thought I'd share this incase anyone didn't know, I know it made my life easier

@Table new release is out!

Hehehe, if you want to thank me posts some pics

Ohhhhh, nice catch man! I'll fix it and put out an update shortly.