TiktaalikDreaming

It's very unlikely to end up in a modern spam-assassin filter based on a spamminess score. It's far more likely something is (edit, was) wrong in spf, dkim, dmarc, etc or it inadvertently got added to an RBL list. The pre-filtering done by your ISP is very likely just RBL filtering from known bad IPs. I do the same for clients on "unfiltered" MX. Cuts out about 70+% of mail volume and you know it's all gonna be garbage. And if everyone does it, anyone who gets false positived knows about it very quickly and poodlees at the RBL sources. Considering what Vitas has mentioned, I'm guessing something in dkim was a bit out and it's going to be good until the next time. There's always a next time.

and some second stage

Hetzner Online AG (AS24940), 5.9.16.64, with a 60 second TTL. Do they put everything behind GLBs or just configure zones expecting it?

I had some time today and got a basic Interstage modeled up. Needs colliders, a bit of grunge and so on, but progressing for the first time in ages.

Will it update: Yes. When will that happen: No idea I've just moved house, and have basically no spare time at the moment to look at mods. At the moment, the A2-A5 are pretty much ready to roll, but there's no cockpit version updated, no ramjet, and none of the proposed silly stages (A-10, A-11, A-12). There's also no A-9 swept wing. As a rule of thumb, parts mods (like this) should be fine to use older version in newer games. The A-10 RCS that is a vent on the trailing edge of the fin is pre-RCSFX and points the wrong way, but everything else is good to go in the new version of the game. But, I'm part way through rescaling as well, so the parts mentioned (basically the historical parts) are what I'd stick to.

Yes, but I have a somewhat limited amount of time to work on mods, and I'm currently working on redoing the old Nexus mod. While ModPods isn't be any means complete, it's not so old that it's horribly embarrassing so it will get looked at again after a few other mods get updated.

I've been moving house, so pretty much zilch modding time for a while. Just thought I should package the revamp bits if anyone wanted to take a peek. https://github.com/TiktaalikDreaming/Nexus/releases v1.9s will be pre-release revamp, using v2.0 when I get a usable craft revamped. Note; because I'm rescaling, the revamp removes all the non-revamped parts. This means all you can really do now is look at a half finished first stage and say "that's really big, pity I can't attach anything to the top without it looking stupid.". I'd like to complete this revamp before heading on to fixing some other mods (Orion, cough cough).

You can also volunteer to help @vitas. He's pretty much doing the whole thing alone, and money doesn't necessarily help as much as having even a second set of eyes. (although enough money could rent extra eyes of course, but I doubt the patron thing is bringing him quite enough for that)

I have plans. But the original extends part, not part module, and that's not supported anymore. I started looking at that when the links to change masses changed, and for me there a lot of work converting.

There's no provision for it, and the minimum setup would be quite a thing to build off world. The mod also hasn't been compatible since 1.3

I for one think a new thread (for both versions) is warranted though. This topic is already very confused. It's up to 106 pages of mostly people asking if there's a version for their version of the game.

Is almost like there's more QA on this mod than the main game. Which is crazy, so clearly not the case

Regarding any Nuclear powered SSTO engines, you're inhibited by the fact that their always going to be heavy. Without invoking super-science and fusion, you need large chunks if fissionable materials, plus even more mass in shielding, and then the only real advantage in atmospheric flight is longevity. For any sort of system using air as the propellant (fans, ramjets, scramjets, etc) you're going to be stuck in the atmosphere, and fairly low in it. So what you end up with is a radioactive craft that can stay aloft at speed for a long long time, but can't go higher without both losing thrust, and losing cooling, with resultant explosions. If you take your propellant with you, then you can get really good ISPs out of NTPropulsion, but you get crappy TWR, which leads to really huge gravity loses getting up into orbit. And that cancels out the usefulness. Again, the mass required for fission fuel and shielding is going to kill the plan. Lightbulbs are probably the closest to viable for ground launch, but they're not what I'd call based on proven engineering. Most of the concepts are sorted, but there's serious concerns for various parts of the fissionable gas containment. Similar concerns surround open cycle gas core as well, but seem a bit less insurmountable, but no-one in their right mind would start one of those up in an atmosphere (hell, they should be banned if they're even close to one, IMHO). And that leaves things like the pebble bed as the best of the bunch, and when you have TWRs that low, you burn through a lot more propellant getting out of the atmosphere and into orbit. In KSP an SSTO is a lot easier. There's so little delta V required for orbit compared to Earth. But NTRs will still have the same issues. Using something other than LH2 for a propellant in NTRs lowers their ISP and raises their TWR, and that's close to what we see in KSP's NTRs. But they only function for atmospheric flight because Kerbin is so small. NTRs will always be for orbital and deep space use in my opinion. They don't care what you feed them, but obviously there's limits. So, on to "why aren't there Oxidizer slurping NTRs?". Realistically, you add NTRs to get better ISP than chemical rockets. That comes at a price in TWR. And for maneuvering after you'd got out of your gravity well, that's just fine. A more extreme version of this trade off is the electrical drives, ion, plasma, etc. Stuff all thrust, but truly awesome ISP. Now, to maximize ISP in an NTR you use LH2. There's just nothing that comes close to the low molecular mass. And there's a chunk of your propellant that will dissociate at the high temperatures and result in some of your exhaust products being atomic hydrogen, half the mass again. Mysterious liquid fuel could be anything, but assuming it's analogous to RP-1 aka refined kerosene, then it's molecular mass is much higher (and variable). Again, some of it would break down and do strange chemical things during it's passing through a hot reactor core. But, the end result is lower exhaust velocity (a given temp is a fixed amount of energy per molecule, so larger molecules are moving slower for the same temp). This becomes a trade off, higher thrust (same energy, but now it's in higher mass, slower molecules, which results in higher momentum) but uses more mass, aka lower ISP. But, by choosing NTRs, we already decided ISP was what we wanted. So, anything other than LH2 is a secondary choice. Now, the other issue is the effects each propellant has. Carbon chains can cause coking. When something like kerosene is heated really hot, it starts to break down, and the result is a mixed bag, but some of it will be carbon-carbon bonding, resulting in solids. Considering graphite is a fairly common material in nuclear reactors, this is only likely to cause trouble if it starts blocking flows. S, you probably can run NTRs on RP-1. Even better would be methane, which doesn't tend to coke things, being just a single carbon with hydrogen. Being the lightest hydrocarbon, it's also the preferred one for NTRs. And here comes the problem with Oxidizers. They oxidize. At high temperatures, they oxidize a lot. If you run liquid oxygen through a high temperature reactor core, the metal, including the fissionable fuel, and the carbon moderators, will start burning. There are some metals that are immune (up to a point) for a while, but you'd need to make a lot of the systems out of this. If you read up on the Russian/Soviet full flow rocket cycles, and how the Americans didn't believe it for a long time, you get a hint of the sort of thing I'm talking about. But pushing oxidizer through an NTR would be worse. It wouldn't be one pre-burner, one turbine, and then on to a balanced combustion chamber. It would be everything. And it's not like you can use exotic stainless as a fission fuel. And, the whole thing needs to deal with neutron embrittlement, high temperatures, and retain it's strength. I doubt there's any material known that covers off all the requirements for some sections. But, it is KSP. If you're fine with super science, just make a MM patch to pass oxidizer through the stock NTR.

New plumes coming soon as well. After quite some struggles wrangling part tools and unity. I do need to reduce the control rocket plume length still. But I also want to start looking at doing the long awaited resizing to 62.5% or 64% scale soon, preferably before finalizing the plumes. EG: even now, those control rocket plumes could do with being thicker, but it's at 50% scale. If I match them now, it'll still not look right at 62.5%

The basic problem is fairings. You need to be able to custom fit them, but then you're stretching a texture around a shape generated in game. But not using procedural fairings is really not an option. The best you can do is aim for textures that work well with arbitrary shapes. And that match the other styles so as not to stick out and draw attention. Thus all the procedural texture packs to match various styles.

As a fellow modder who also freely admits nertea and co are easy ahead of me with texturing, I'll also point out there are limits on how good procedural textures can get. You can't match them to the mesh, because it's use generated, the texture pixel density can't be as consistent, etc etc. Getting it so it's not an eye sore is an achievement. IMHO. Making it fit in with restock is pretty darn good.

I finally have a functional mechanism for the flap extension. Notes: Flaps aren't textured, ditto for the extension arms. Shell pieces are basically just block coloured plus AO Heat Shield is not revamped. Engine and control engines don't really function properly yet. But it's getting prettier. Glamour shot

SLOWLY revamping the first stage. I've started working on the ED Engine, aiming to use the same texture atlas as the plug engine. And I haven't worked out a way of re-using texture space from the side panels for the two variants, with and without flaps. But the 3d work is getting closer. I did recently try out the new shader for the main tank, seeing it's reasonably described as industrial acres of sheet titanium welded into a bubble. And it doesn't look too bad, although it needs tweaking some values to look right in game I think.

Shiney new docking ports now part of a 0.23 release. Tested. My issue with the function was a Unity-ism. I'd modeled both the male and female nodes in one blender file, and just deleted the meshes etc I didn't need for each part. That involved flipping one of the nodes, in this case the female node. Somehow, even though all the node positions and meshes were flipped, the part itself was basically upside down, with its stack/docking nodes flipped. I only worked it out when trying to dock (and failing) I noticed there was an "undock" option in the right click menu. And that resulted in the base of the docking node unhooking from the parent craft, and immediately docking with the other craft. Was a bit of an insight into "something's upside down". Anyway, Sorted. Flipped the model in blender, rebuilt the part in unity, re-exported and it all works as expected, even the "coarse alignment" of the probe and drogue. With the new shader.

Github now has a patched up set of docking nodes. But not as a release yet, as I still have a small gap showing between it and the top cap. But I'm out of time for now to fix that. I moved the project from Unity 5 to Unity 2017, upgraded the Part Tools and assigned the new shader to the bits that should be shiney. I can't ever seem to get a good non-gloss look out of the new shader, even with outright black in the specular map, so I'll just be using the new shader for small touches here and there. If Squad can get that a bit more generic though, it could be the shader to take over all other shaders. Needs a roughness and so on though. You can just see the small gap at the bottom of the docking node there, with some of the greenish top of the parachute frame showing through. I've also moved all the docking nodes, drogue and probe, into one folder, as they share the same textures. Seems silly to go to the trouble of texture atlasing and then make copies of the texture. So, if grabbing the nodes off non-release github files, you'd be best served by deleting all the existing MEM docking ports, then grabbing the docking ports folder from github. And the way they fail to function as docking nodes seems to be a downside too.

OK, I have a shrouded docking node in game, not fully textured, but I've at least removed the bits of texture that didn't match. Animation in blender; Part in-game; I have been thinking though, that of all the parts I could be using the new "reflective" shader for, an Apollo docking node probe would be where it's at. So, this mod may need to migrate to the new Unity with the new PartTools.

There was also some folder restructuring around that time. The part identifiers should stay the same, so saved craft should be ok, but it's harder to just switch parts between versions without being fairly careful. Re decoupler. That was definitely a what moment.

I've had a bit of a think, and well, this does annoy me a bit; I'd been working on the assumption the female port would go on the MEM, ala; And hadn't really looked at how the male port looked after changing around the top of the craft. I'm testing out a revised base for the Male Docking node, which basically just steals the base off the female, so the look doesn't change a lot based on which way around you prefer your docking nodes. This also gives a decent sized base to have an aerodynamic cover attached, so I'll probably redo the shrouded docking node using the base of this new male port. "probably" meaning "gotta add it in to unity and make sure the rigging is working, cos it's in blender already;

Update, I'm pushing out 0.22, mostly because I've completely lost track of where the published version of this mod is at. It's from April. I don't remember having weird nodes back then, but that's damned close to a year ago. There's mission module bits (unfinished) and so on, plus probably some tidy up. And that collider fixup for the interstage, which was probably worth the update on it's own.

Hmmm... I'm gonna need to check what's in my downloads. Nodes all look fine to me in 1.6.1. So,.... I'm wondering if there's a window of daftness where I had new models, but old stack node vectors or something. I'll do some checking between my system, github and spacedock. If you have the time, can you let me know which version you have and where it can from? Thanks