fourfa

(Inspired by Azimech's posts above) I've been working on and off for a couple years on a stock tech tree rebalance where the starting techs are these: https://kerbalx.com/fourfa/Kerbal-Flyer-MkII Which Breaking Ground will enable with no mods at all. Surprisingly entertaining to fly!

^^^^ I wish I could like KerrMü’s post more than once. I agree completely; after years and 3000+ hours playing this game I’ve done everything I can think of many times over. I’ve hung out in the challenges forum just to get ideas that others have thought of. Completed more careers in more modded solar systems than I can easily count. All of it suddenly feels small and highly limited compared to the glorious new complexity in front of me since Breaking Ground. Personally I love having a ton of active controls for flight. It should be hard, even for experienced players. If it’s too complex for new players - guess what, here’s a wonderful opportunity to write simple, easy to follow guides for them. How about go write those guides instead of complaining about the lack of them? Write a mod to auto-manage prop pitch. Share and discuss craft with example control schemes. Heck, create and share a whole line of plug-and-play engine nacelles with detailed instructions. If you see problems, there are lots of ways to make a positive impact.

Here's the setup that seems most logical to me: Motor RPM limit(s) on 'Main Throttle' group (you won't use this often, just for trimming speed for landing basically) Toggle Motor Power, and Toggle Deploy on all props on 'Stage' group Prop Authority Limit on Translate F/B, and manually set Authority Limiter on all props to 0 in SPH. Launch, set throttle to max, space bar to stage. Engines spin to max RPM but props have no bite - they're feathered. Use Translate (H/N by default) to engage props and speed up for takeoff. Optimum blade pitch is variable with speed. Pin out your prop part action window. Taking off from 0m/s, set authority limit to ~100. Once you're flying, try reducing the limit. I've found max speed between ~70-95 depending on the craft (F12 for aero force visualizer, and try to get the longest forward lines). Greater than 100 usually seems slower. One nice aspect of this setup - just hit space again to feather the prop and shut down the motor for minimum drag. Based on how thirsty the new LF motors seem to be, you'll need this feature a lot New props with old electric motors & fuel cells is much less thirsty, and seems just as fast as the Mk1 LF motors (easy 200m/s+ for a Mk1 plane with twin 0.625m electric props). Physics timewarp with new props is just as bad as elevons so far. EDIT: tossed up an example on kerbalx https://kerbalx.com/fourfa/Kessna-Twin-MkII

"blade pitch. via authority limiter.Which is there today, but doesn't work correctly using elevons as blades" I am assuming this refers to how control surfaces often 'flip' deployed state (ie up vs down) when they cross the center of mass centerline. If so this will be a big improvement. Currently at high speed they spend a lot of cycle time slowly moving from state to state. Try rapidly pausing rotating props and you often see it.

You can do exactly what you want in stock. Load your craft in VAB, go to the Actions tab, click on 'Stage.' Then click on your hydraulic piston and select 'Extend Piston.' Now, every time you hit the Stage button (usually Space Bar) it will trigger that Extend Piston action. No matter, it works the first time, and every other time you might stage after that it'll already be extended so no matter.

Something interesting for SSTOs... looks like drag calculations only get updated when you open and close cargo bays (and service bays and fairings etc); they don't get updated when you move things around with robotics. This opens up some avenues for cheaty interesting designs that fold out from a cargo bay on the pad/runway, and NEVER experience drag as long as you never open the cargo bay in atmo. I was only looking to have retractable service equipment like RCS, but there could be lots more possibilities. https://kerbalx.com/fourfa/BG-drag-test for some rudimentary examples

On a planetary surface, 10% is good and 14% is outstanding. Asteroids are more like 80-90%, though their resource is finite while planets are infinite. Don’t obsess about ore percentage though - it mainly comes down to whether you stay in timewarp while drilling for a very long time, or a very very long time.

Here's how to find out for sure - press Alt-F12, then select Physics -> Aero -> Show Aero Data in Right-Click Menu. Then you'll see the extra details like @FleshJeb's photo in comment #1 when you launch to the flight scene. Launch and gain some speed, and see if the drag is zero or more than zero. Sometimes it's a bit iterative back and forth between SPH/VAB and flight to get it just right. But so far I've found it pretty consistent, that if the centroid is inside the bay or fairing, it'll be shielded. I haven't started testing Breaking Ground mechanisms that move in and out of closed cargo bays. It's a good question.

In my experience, the 'centroid' or center of mass point needs to be inside the fairing, cargo bay, or service bay. In the VAB/SPH, use the offset gizmo on the part in question. The base of the gizmo arrows is the centroid. At the moment in stock KSP, the old 1.25m structural fuselage and new procedural structural tubes do not shield drag. But there are Module Manager patches out there to make them shield drag

What are the speed and damper settings on your hinges and pivots? What I see on the high speed test on the runway is the sequencer trying to drive them faster than they can respond. I'm guessing that no matter what, there will be a delicate balance between driver power and speed, inertia of the driven parts, and aero drag of the driven parts in the flight scene. None of these will be visible when simulating in the SPH/VAB. Finding the right controller speed to max out these values will be highly iterative! At some point it'll be interesting to look at how a whole bunch of small, lightweight "hummingbird wings" compare to a smaller number of large, slow "condor wings"

Update. Here's what I've found so far regarding prop angle. I spent the evening playing with a big Mk3 twin-1.25m-nacelle cargo plane with servo-controlled prop blade pitch. So start with blades at 0 degrees, with no angle of attack relative to their rotation, and thus no lift. Anywhere from 30-45 will give a ton of bite and lots of acceleration at launch, but quickly hit a max speed in the air of ~50m/s. 60 degrees is good up to about 85m/s (this is what's on my little twin above). I could get to above 100m/s with a max pitch of 80 degrees - more than that starts to slow down. I changed the Kessna Twin from 60 to 75 on both sides, and top speed went from 85m/s to 110m/s with no other changes. Rollout is real slow, with a massive boost in thrust at ~20m/s on the runway. Variable pitch is the way to go if you can afford it - the little 0.625m stacks probably can't? I'm also testing the thesis that if you're not routinely at or close to the max RPM (460 for the M and L motors), you're experiencing more drag for equal thrust. Going to play with numBlades for a while looking for higher RPMs and more speed. So far, I've not had any luck with timewarp. Even with an ugly external strut to the front of my motor stacks, they wobble to death in 2x.

Is this mod alive? Seems like the natural place to put sounds for the new DLC robotics parts - servos, rotors, pistons etc. Seems like such a massive oversight not to have anything, but what else is new

I get about 85m/s from a twin-nacelle, quad-motor (only ~50m/s as a twin/twin). Prop circle diameter is larger than 1.25m if that’s the question... I will agree with everyone that this is a really ugly solution, but unless you build kerbally storks that sit meters above the runway I can't find haven't found a better way. https://kerbalx.com/fourfa/Kessna-Twin lack of appropriate aero surfaces is a serious limitation here. Has anyone played with panels for props yet? The problems with small diameter props are going to drive me toward tilt-rotor work, I think.

yer basic twin engine high wing https://kerbalx.com/fourfa/Kessna-Twin horrifically ugly prop blades because anything longer just breaks off on the pavement. Small, realistic-looking props will always be a challenge.

So far, in real use the rotors aren't pushing close to the 460rpm game max. Especially not if you're getting useful amounts of lift or thrust from them. I've found stacking two motors can help get a lot closer to that 460rpm max, without breaking the form factor and having to add nacelles. More than 2 - so far it turns into a wiggly stack of jello for me. I found one rudimentary way to stiffen it up here: https://kerbalx.com/fourfa/Kessna-Twin With external struts to secure the loose end.

No. I saw it being repeated on Twitch streams that it'll come in an update, but I can't quote a dev on that, just hearsay. For the meantime, assign motor torque or RPM to a translation axis, or rover wheel throttle. Or mount the prop blades on servos, run the motors at max, and use blade pitch from say 0-30 degrees as throttle (aka helicopter style)

Oops yeah, pitch and roll is cyclic. I'm doing collective with servos set to rotate between 0 and ~20 deg (it's important to limit this so you don't accidentally increase pitch into stall - then control gets real hairy!). The servos are also tricky - do not autostrut across them, and I haven't figured out why node-attaching things is sometimes weird.

No need... there is a very simple way. Make your rotor/s from control surfaces, then enable pitch and roll controls, disable yaw. KSP just figures it out. So far I've found one really simple way to make coaxial helos - surface attach one rotor above the CoM. Then rather than node-attach a second counter-rotating one, surface attach it as well and gizmo it coaxial with the first. Sorta cheaty, but it avoids the various problems of motor-on-motor.

A pair of counterrottating EM-32s. Not high performance, only about 50m/s cruise speed, and a lot of drag if the motors aren't at top speed. Using stage action group to activate motor and fuel cell, translation up/down to control RPM limit. Torque at max.

The medium rotors aren't super powerful, but I got a small twin in the air without much trouble. But serious aircraft will need the large 1.25m rotors

Looks a lot like the situation pre-DLC, where pure electric props (powered by reaction wheels) were fairly weak, but you can get some spindly contraptions in the air. But jet turbines (powered by jets blowing on rotating parts) can make serious cargo craft that can carry tons of cargo anywhere on Kerbin.

Really not trying to be the 'there's a mod for that' guy, but if you want to try it out and see how it suits you:

Challenge accepted

^^ yes, can Numpad 0-9 be bound separately from top row 0-9?