Snark

Here's a pure-electric Duna flyer. When empty of fuel, it can fly indefinitely on solar power, and can do a vertical lift-off. More photos in spoiler. Haven't yet tried landing it with a full fuel load to see if it can get back to orbit. I know it handles high-speed aero transit well without going kablooie.

Since this question was asked and answered a few years ago and everyone involved has presumably long since moved on, there's not really anything further to add. Accordingly, locking thread to prevent further confusion. If anyone has further questions or issues around this topic, feel free to spin up a new thread.

If I'm understanding correctly, this is not a KSP mod that runs in-game, but actually an external tool? In that case, it's not an add-on, but it is a tool. Moving to Tools & Applications.

Moving to Gameplay Questions.

Moved to Add-on Releases. Congratulations!

Moving to Spacecraft Exchange.

What platform do you play on? PC, Mac, Linux, console?

Hi folks, Some content has been removed, due to going off-topic and derailing the thread into arguing about what people should or shouldn't be posting. Please try to stay on topic, folks, and remember that unless you're a moderator, it's not your place to tell anyone what to do or what not to do. If you see someone doing something that you believe is so inappropriate that it's actually breaking forum rules, then please just report the post and do not otherwise respond or attempt to enforce the rules yourself. If you see someone doing something that you believe is objectionable for some reason but not actually against the rules... then you can ignore them if you like, but please don't attempt to lecture or criticize. It never ends well, regardless of the merits of the case. To summarize the discussion on IVAs in this mod thus far: @CobaltWolf has indicated that he's not interested in spending significant time or effort on IVAs. That's entirely his prerogative, since of course "because I'm the author and I don't wanna" is the only reason that any modder needs. And we all understand this (right?). So, it would be inappropriate to pester him to do things he doesn't want to do. So please don't do that. He has also indicated a potential willingness to make fixes to IVAs, particularly if someone can hand a fix to him. So it's appropriate for people to do that, as long as it's within what the author has indicated a willingness to consider. Helpful advice (e.g. "here's a way to make it easier") is perfectly reasonable... as long as it doesn't include pressuring (e.g. "you should do this because it's easy"). Please don't attempt to carry the argument further, and thank you for your understanding.

It's also six years ago. Anyone trying to solve problems back then has presumably long since solved them, so any further discussion in this thread is likely just to generate more confusion than anything else. Therefore, locking the thread to prevent further confusion. Anyone who still has questions around this topic is welcome to spin up a new thread about it.

Hello, and welcome to the forums! Just to be clear: Are you saying that this is a new behavior with 1.7.3 (i.e. "I've used fuel cells successfully before, and they used to work before 1.7.3, and now they've stopped working")? Or is this the first time you've tried to use fuel cells and are having trouble making them work? Not sure if this is relevant to your situation or not, but: be aware that fuel cells only generate power if your vessel's stored electric charge goes below some threshold (like 90% or 95% or something, I forget the exact number). So if you have a craft that's fully charged at 100% or close to it, then the fuel cells won't do anything, even if turned on, until the charge drops below that threshold. (And when they do come on, they will only charge it up to that threshold and stop.) So if you're over the threshold, then the fact that the fuel cells aren't doing anything is normal and expected behavior. (The reason they're designed that way is that it's very common to have a vessel with fuel cells and solar panels, and as long as the solar panels are able to keep up, it's better not to waste fuel. So they're designed in a way that only spends fuel as absolutely needed when solar panels aren't sufficient.) This doesn't actually matter, by the way-- fuel cells can be anywhere on a vessel and still work.

Moving to Breaking Ground Discussion.

Yes, otherwise the robotic part wouldn't be able to move because the autostrut would jam it in place. In general, yes. But if you lock the robotic part, it allows autostruts to pass through.

Considered it, but rotational stability can be tricky. In particular, it's not gonna spin unless I turn off SAS, and then it has to be dynamically stable while spinning, which is tricky. So I just have the blades flat-on against the airflow, no spinning. At some point I may try an autorotating lander, but haven't had the gumption yet to tinker enough to make one work.

Such as? (Not doubting you or questioning your position, just wondering what you specifically have in mind.) Not gonna disagree with you there, I think that would have been relatively low-effort and more re-use of existing code, and a lot of people would have liked it. But then, a lot of people also want to build things-that-move-with-physics. It's not obvious to me where the "right" answer would be, from a business perspective. Personally? A simple electric motor that looks like a propeller but in physics terms is just an electric-thrust engine that works in any atmosphere, would suit my own needs just fine. But I don't know what percentage of the KSP demographic I represent, in that regard. In other words... I think "which way is best" is a harder question to answer than "what's good". It's unclear to me, here. Need more time to play with it and "settle in" before I form strong opinions.

Agreed that "gosh, this sure feels complicated" is an impression I get when I use them. On the other hand... I'm not inclined to kvetch (at least not until I've had a lot more time to get used to them), mainly because it's not obvious to me what would be "better". First, I don't actually know that there's a simple one-size-fits-all-craft solution for how the props could be designed / attached. For example, optimum blade pitch appears to me (at least anecdotally based on the limited playing I've done thus far) to depend on both air density and airspeed... not sure how to make that work. I'd rather have software make no assumptions at all, than to make some default assumptions that turn out to be wrong in a lot of cases. Because the no-assumptions-at-all mode at least forces me to figure things out early and come to an understanding of the fundamental dynamics involved, which in the long run I think is better for me. Second, any "solution" would have to be not only one-size-fits-all-craft, but also one-size-fits-all-players, and I don't know if that's even vaguely possible. People use the game very differently, and a "solution" that makes things better for one group of players would make them worse for others. For example, I don't use the blades at all like you describe. For me, that's not what "deployment" is for. I use "deployment" simply as a form of "gear shift". I'll set all my prop blades to control authority 20 (much lower than the default 100), and I attach them to the craft in the editor not deployed, and I manually adjust the rotation of the blades to something "reasonable" for that craft (e.g. 15 degrees or whatever, it varies with craft). And I assign "toggle deploy" to some action group. That way, the craft "just works" straight off the runway when launched, and I can shift between "high gear" and "low gear" by pressing a button. That seems simple and logical to me, and I enjoy playing that way, and it's easy and quick for me to build craft. But I do it differently from how you do. Your suggestions to "improve" the way they work would actually make life more difficult and confusing for me. And my suggested "improvements" (i.e. to make my own playstyle simpler) would probably make things more confusing and less convenient for you-- i.e. my own list would be "reduce default deployment amount to 20, make the default attach position of the blades be parallel to the plane of rotation rather than parallel to the axis". So if I try to put myself into the shoes of the game designer... it's not clear to me that there exists a "sweet spot" of design to default to, nor is it clear to me how to address different players' design habits and styles. So I think it's a hard problem and I'm not inclined to point fingers until and unless I can think of a solution that makes more sense to me (for all craft, and all players) than the current one. Which I haven't, yet. Doesn't mean there isn't one, just that I don't have one myself. I agree that it seems complicated, and I wish it were less so. I just don't know that significant simplification is possible. Maybe it is-- but it's not obvious to me what that would be. It may simply be that this is a hard problem, and that they settled on this because they couldn't find a simpler way that worked well enough to be shippable.

Hi folks, This thread (including all the content above this post) was split off from the KSP 1.7.3 announcement thread, since it's about a technical problem for an individual user, and therefore seems to fit better here in Technical Support. In addition, some content has been edited and/or removed, due to argumentative bickering, finger-pointing, name-calling, etc. Folks, let's please remember to keep it friendly. We're all pals here, we all like KSP, and we would all like to be able to play the game we bought that we love so much. So we're all on the same side. Try to remember that, please? Thank you for your understanding.

Some content has been split off into a separate technical support thread: ...and, furthermore, more content has been removed due to argumentative bickering, finger-pointing, name-calling, etc. Folks, let's please remember to keep it friendly. We're all pals here, we all like KSP, and we would all like to be able to play the game we bought that we love so much. So we're all on the same side. Try to remember that, please? Thank you for your understanding.

I've been playing with this, and it works great! Here I am using it on a Duna probe: This is a life support resupply vessel (I'm using TAC-LS), and it needed to get to Duna in a hurry, so it arrives going around 6 km/s relative to Duna when it hits atmosphere. See those two rows of 1.25m heat shields protruding from the aft end? Robotics. Each of those arms is a G-00 square hinge (i.e. the little one) with a long row of cubic octagonal struts attached to it. The heat shields are mounted on the side, and protect the hinge and the cubic struts. When I launch the craft, those arms are folded down flat against the sides of the ship, and create fairly minimal air resistance. (The big 2.5m heat shield in front has a disposable nose cone atop it at launch.) When it hits atmosphere, those arms sticking out to the sides are great for adding drag. :-) I aerobrake at 6 km/s down to an altitude of 17 km or so. Max deceleration hits around 30G! And with those things trailing out behind, it is rock-solid aerodynamically stable with the big flat heat shield in front. To stop the hinges from bending under those tremendous strains, I set the outermost of the small heat shields to "autostrut: root part". After extending those side arms, I turn on the hinges' "lock" function, which allows the autostrut to go from the radial heat shield to the probe core at the center of the ship, holding the arms firmly in place. Another use of robotics in this picture: note that the solar panels are mounted on extended pistons. I've put both "toggle solar panel" and "toggle piston" into the same action group, so it's one key press to both retract the panels themselves and pull them in snug against the body of the craft, so that they're protected by the heat shield. These make great airbrakes for rockets. I mount them so that they're folded down flat against the sides of the craft at launch (similar to what I've done with the heat shields in the above example), then I spread them as shown above for reentry. Works fantastic, generates tons of drag. (Though limited in temperature tolerance, compared with heat shields, of course-- so no 6 km/s reentries that way!) Again, though, need to use hinge locking to hold them stiff, otherwise the motors in the hinges aren't strong enough to keep them forced open against the incoming airflow. I've also had good luck using helicopter blades from 1.7.3. Here's a super compact and cheap LKO rescue vehicle: Does a powered landing on a Spark, no parachutes involved. Works great.

Yeah, been there, done that. Perhaps you were using RemoteTech? That has a completely different model for relaying and inter-ship communication, and requires that antennas be specifically aimed at a target (so if you want to talk to N different craft, you need N different antennas.) But anyway... stock CommNet doesn't work that way, it's a much simpler model.

Huh? What are you talking about? Why would it be uncontrollable? Relay antennas do everything that direct antennas do, plus they can also serve as relays. The only reason a craft with a relay-antenna-and-nothing-else would be uncontrollable would be if it's either out of range from a control source, or if there's something blocking LOS to a control source. Exactly the same as with a direct antenna. I'm a little fuzzy on what you're picturing, here. If you have a craft that's out of control, it means it's got no signal, right? (Either because the range is too big, or some planet or something is blocking line-of-sight.) And if it's got no signal, that means it also can't relay anything.

Yah, not needed. As long as you have a relay antenna on there that has a big enough power for the range, that's all you need. There's usually no reason to put a direct antenna on a craft that already has a relay one. Relay antennas also work as direct antennas. The reverse is not true. Not sure what you mean by that. A relay antenna provides a link between any other craft that are within LOS. If it's so far that it's out of range for control purposes, then it'll also be so far that it's out of range for relay purposes, too.

Sure. But that would only work if you have a pilot (not just crew, but a pilot) on the ship that has the probe-control-point feature, which doesn't sound like the OP's situation. From the OP's description, it sounds as though what they're trying to do is to form a link from the lander back to Kerbin, in which case "probe control point" isn't in play. That's not how it works. The relay craft talks to everything through the relay antenna. It talks to the probe via the relay antenna, and it talks back to Kerbin via the relay antenna. A direct antenna is only useful for controlling the currently piloted craft. So, this statement is correct: ...but the following statement is incorrect: ^ No. The relay craft only needs one antenna. And that antenna must be a relay antenna. And it must be powerful enough to reach Kerbin.

Moving to Kerbal Network, since this is about the forum rather than KSP itself.

Moving to Gameplay Questions.

@Ethanosaurio, can you please post a screenshot of your rocket? It sounds as though you likely have some design issues, but unless we can see it, it's really hard to offer advice.