Taverius

That's not a totally solvable issue, see the middle link in my sig, but it should help

Every modder agrees with you. Its nonsensical and needlessly complicated. Nobody knows. P.S. They even went to the trouble of making KSP print a warning in log when a part will be negative in cost when tweaked empty. Surely it would have been easier, and less work on them when doing part costs, to add unitCost*volume to the part cost. They could have even added tankCost to the resource, and only needed to do pure structural costs for all parts ... but Squad are not know for doing the sensible thing.

Yes, it does. No, KSP does not automatically add the cost of resources to the part. It only removed them if the tank is not full. Why? Because Squad. If you don't add the cost of the resouces to the part, you can make a part that will cost negative credits when empty. Therefore, the cost of the part must be = base_cost * volume + tank_cost * volume + unit_cost * volume. Tanks cost more than structural parts, and mass more. Looking at the FTT numbers, it looks like some of them might be a little off, but not by very much. base cost is ~1.1561/unit in the stock parts. a tank of LF or Oxi costs ~0.289/unit. Monopropellant tanks are ~0.0867/unit. ECharge is between 1.1 and 3 kerbucks/unit (echarge itself has no value).

You should rename the back rack to 'Rollkage'

Looks like plenty of wing to me, you just need to come in more shallow and slow down by doing tight alternating turns.

That's why we have steering on the landing gear, although it would be easier if there was a taxiway connecting the parking lot next to the SPH to the end of the runway.

Yeah, I got confused with the Karbonite propfans, I've been knee deep in engine guts all week. Anyway, I don't know about you but they look like fixed pitch props to me. Never heard of an inflight-variable-pitch ducted fan outside of RC models, but if you can find me any that got made and were successful, I'll drop the response speed more. Its never instant though - even on the best systems the best you can get is <1 sec from setting to setting, buts its still there. Anyway, best not to ask for too much realism here, or we'll be tempted to drop the thrust on them to realistic values and none of you will ever get off the ground again

Biotronic is MIA, so I doubt there will be any progress in that regard until he's back, although depending on what NathanKell manages to do, you might be able to bypass it by using ModularFuelTanks.

The D30-F7s are behaving as intended, pretty much. You get more speed but you pay for it in lots of ways, because speed from a turbine is anything but for free - higher speed -> higher HP turbine temps -> heavier HP turbine stage -> slower spin ups, heavier engine, and its an exponential thing. That's why even high-bypass turbofans still do ~10% thrust from the turbine - diminishing returns means extracting that last bit of thrust as axle power for the fan costs you more in mass than you gain in thrust. Its also why modern fighters use engines like the F119, with top speeds in the mach 2.2-2.5 range. Upping the top end costs you so much in loiter time, engine response and mass its just not worth it. Also, supercruise ability eats into the efficiency of the afterburner.

Propfans do have variable-pitch blades, but the prop itself is still driven (through a planetary reduction gear) by the turbine like the fan in a turbofan - they respond more like a GTF, instead of like a turboprop. They're a weird inbetween, and I have accounted for this in the values in git right now.

That would be awesome, although most KSP electric motors seem to behave like very simple DC motors like the ones found on RC cars. I don't know why this is so ...

@RoverDude: Executive decision time! Man the desk! This is the torque curve on the PackRat wheel right now. Its taken from the stock one, which is awful and broken: This is what it should look like if its a simple electric engine with no controlling electronics: This is what it looks like if its got some kind of overcurrent protection and traction control for low speeds: Tesla's motors have curves like this. The advantage (in KSP) is they're less likely to wheelie you when you're starting from a full stop, especially with a light rover like a PackRat on an incline. The disadvantage is you have less torque at 0m/s, so you need more wheels to get a very heavy vehicle started on an incline. Starting torque is still 250 here, like the rover wheel 1, so I suggest the second, but its up to you.

Stock vCurve: velocityCurve { key = 0 0.5 0 0 key = 1000 1 0 0 key = 2000 0.5 0 0 key = 2400 0 0 0 } That's the stock curve. At about mach 6 (at 20-ish k alt) you still have 50% power. 6.5 is trivial, since the tangents are flat. FAR's vCurve: velocityCurve { key = 0 0.5 0 0 key = 1000 1 0 0 key = 2000 0.5 0 0 key = 2400 0 0 0 } Its the right shape, but its too lenient on the overspeed protection side. Ours: velocityCurve { key = 0 0.56 0 -0.0005 key = 200 0.52 0 0 key = 600 0.7 0.0013 0.0013 key = 950 1 0 0 key = 1090 0 -0.017765 0 } If you're hoping to argue us into changing it, give up, its not happening. What you get out of the stock turbojets with our curve is still something 100m/s more than the SR-71's airspeed record. Its staying as it is.

They didn't service the shuttle ... they pulled the damn thing apart into single components and rebuilt it every time. I find it hard to believe that's the only way to operate. Anyway, that's hardly cogent. You can have a craft in flight in KSP for game-years, in lots of different ways - hell just bring it back to LKO and refuel it by docking, and use it nonstop apart from that. Why should I have to recover my SSTOs? That only makes sense if I also play with limited engine ignitions that cannot be reset in-flight and a host of other things.

That's because NASA, not any real technical limitation. Government agencies, US ones particularly, are not a model to take about how to manage your budget.

Yeah you can, just have to make yourself a loading gantry with IR and a refueling station with Karbonite/Kethane.

The panels come with the primary nodes a size bigger, and that's as far as I'm going to go with them. Bug Squad to fix their awful node system.

@RoverDude: I noticed some of the tanks in here use FSfuelSwitch. Some of the B9 users reported MKS/OKS really doesn't like FSfuelSwitch, did you get that resolved on your end? If so, I'll edit the relevant B9 wiki page. Similar issues were reported with MFT tanks in symmetry, which is why I've held off on making the KA tanks becomes MFTs when MFT/RF is present. Also, I can't tell from the radial tanks ... Is Karbondurum like KSPi antimatter in that it should not be selectable as an MFT? If its ok for that to be possible, I'm going to need some numbers from you - it can be set so it can't be filled in VAB/SPH, but I do need the relative numbers on volume compared to basic propellants so I can set utilization correctly

I'll check it out.

Let me know anything that you think needs a different tech node, I haven't really played career since 0.22

I'm planning to look into a Karbonite patch for the URC, but right now I'm already busy getting R5.2.2 ready, getting TVPP 1.7 ready, balancing the Karbonite jets for RoverDude, making a DRE patch for Karbonite ... I'll take a look at it eventually As far as balance, the only important thing - if you feel like taking a stab at it - is that the mass and energy output of the part don't change.

Nah, they don't. I've submitted a few patches to the FAR MM patch, and of course I do TVPP, so I made sure the proprer checks and exclusions are present. So am I, but KSPi is a massive plugin that's currently being heavily reworked, and in any case we try not to add plugins for a single part unless its absolutely necessary. When its stabilized, I'll probably submit a patch that turns the URC into a KSPi reactor if you're running both, but for now the patch I sent in for .12.3 is where I'm stopping. Nah, the SABRE curves are ... as close as I can make them to what the pdfs by reaction engines say they would be. I'm not changing them, and if we do make a SCIMITAR I will probably just copy the air mode from the sabre to it. My main problem with making the SCIMITAR is justifying it - it would essentially be just like running a sabre and never switching mode, only with slightly better TWR, and slightly lower cost. With 211 parts already in the pack we like there to be a damn good reason for any other part we add, and the SCIMITAR doesn't feel distinct enough.

Lots of fluff text, but its just there to lump you with the extra mass so that the second mode on the HPD is (worse than) a properly scaled up LV-N. HPD Mode 1 is just the average of a mainsail and a skipper (well, the KW 3.75m versions thereof, anyway), scaled up with the same exponents, and then given a 10% penalty to thrust, and a 5% isp bonus. HPD Mode 2 is just an LV-N, scaled up with the same exponents, given a 10% penalty to thrust, and given a further penalty in TWR on top (see below) - the URC is the extra mass a fully scaled-up LV-N needs to be "balanced" with the rocket engines from stock/kw, where, unlike jets, squad takes the time to be roughly balanced. It produces ECharge at exactly the same mass/cost/rate ratio as the stock RTG, so is in every way equivalent to sticking a ton of them to your craft - the only difference is you don't take the FPS hit from having a bazillion parts. The 'further penalty' comes from the fact that the URC is the mass needed to make the HPD have the right TWR for a scale-up LV-N ... but it only supplies power for 66% thrust, and that only in a vacuum. We then give it a small (5%) bonus to ISP, same as the conventional closed-cycle mode. The HPD looks cool and we use fancy words, but its nothing special, in terms of game balance - two absolutely ordinary rocket engines (with stats based on apollo-era tech) with some severe penalties on top, squeezed into a single engine and an electrical generator we needed anyway, all in the name of keeping our ballooning part count in check. No idea tbh, but to start with, try deleting all the stock FX outright. Change all the MODEL_MULTI_PARTICLE stock stuff in the FX Groups that are receiving MODEL_MULTI_PARTICLE_PERSIST, the stuff like this I see up top: @MODEL_MULTI_PARTICLE { @emission,0 = 0.0 0.0 @emission,1 = 0.5 0.0 @emission,2 = 0.7 0.0 @emission,2 = 1.0 0.0 } Into: !MODEL_MULTI_PARTICLE {} (note the space, that's important) Stock particle FX are best avoided outright, except where we have no alternatives - nobody's made a decent flame out spark single-shot FX for SmokeScreen yet. I've been thinking about the SCIMITAR. It would still be a 25% nerf in top speed to the stock turbojet engine - the SABRE velocity/thrust curve reaches 0 thrust @ 1850m/s - Mach (Sea Level) 5.34, translating to an effective top speed at switch-over altitude of Mach 5.5-5.6 The stock turbojet reaches 0 thrust at 2500m/s. That's Mach (Sea Level) 7.35! Subsonic combustion without precooling has theoretical limit of Mach 5.0-5.5 - in a ramjet, turbines stand to chance of reaching this speed. Reaction Engines had to invent the fancy precooler just to stand a chance of actually getting there from the 4.5-ish max anyone has been able to get out of an actual ramjet. Its a turbine, its a ramjet, its a scramjet, its everything at once, its SuperJet! There it goes to save the day ...

Everybody who mods a game (for free! in our free time!) mods because they see something they want to change. We do this to make it the game we want to play. The game we want to play has FAR/NEAR built-in, DRE, life support, and no magical unicorn-pixiedust-and-friendship powered engines that go twice as fast as the fastest turbine engines ever made by man. If you don't think this is how the game should be, this is the wrong mod for you, because every single part is built around that concept.

Yes. Lots of model and .cfg rework, an extremely restrictive license, a modder who is known for throwing tantrums and disappearing, and lack of the landing-gear specific firespitter stuff. Just don't scale anything with the FSfuelSwitch module on it - that's most B9 parts. If it has a fuel tank, or its an HX hangar, don't scale it. Biotronic is MIA so that's unlikely to change in the foreseeable future.