swjr-swis

Other than craft, you mean? KerbalX is like the home of weird... that's what we use it for.

Definitely a No for me. So far my 'problem' is lacking time (very common) or motivation (a cyclic thing, every few months) to do all the things on my KSP ToDo list. And that list just keeps growing, because I seem to run into new ideas of things to try at a slightly higher pace than I get done -or bored- with them. Playing some other game is what I do when I notice I don't 'feel like' firing up KSP. Plenty of other stuff to tide me over until I inevitably get drawn in again.

I was wondering this same thing just a few days ago. I honestly think 'beta' does not fit the site properly anymore: it has been doing its job for a good while now, all the main functionality has been working, it deserves to be 'release'. Congrats on the milestone!

Possible, there's a lot of technical thinking involved.

Es un error común en el KSP. Bájate lo siguiente: Uno de los módulos que añade es un botón "Force Undock" que aparece cuando algún puerto de acoplamiento se ha atascado en el estado erroneo. Mucho más facil que tener que editar ls cosas a mano.

For what my vote is worth: I agree with not going out of your way to support a mod that is clearly doing things wrong. Mod parts do not belong in the Squad folder, period. So even that first option is not really a solution, they need to repackage the mod correctly in their own folder and keep it out of the stock Squad one.

Thus began the Age of the Oreospace Engineer....

In Eve's atmosphere, drag is almost all-overwhelming, and the 10m heatshield is the unchallenged king (queen?) of drag. The 10m heatshield really should be renamed to '10m airbrake', because in it's intended deployment environment, Eve's atmosphere, that is what it really does above anything else: it's a huge source of drag that is meant to slow down your heavy fully-fueled lander - and on the side, it also affords a little extra protection against the entry heat. So what I see in your pic is a craft composed of a very aerodynamic top, with very little drag, and a ginormous airbrake at the bottom, with the CoM pretty much halfway between them. Not surprising it flips on the way down. Reaction wheels are not likely to prevent that, a considerably portion of your craft would need to be reaction wheels to compete against the aerodynamic forces. You need to either push the CoM practically inside the heatshield (does not seem likely with that design), or add a plethora of fins/chutes/airbrakes to the top, or a combination of both.

Inactive as in not posting, sure... I think that could be likely. My guess is many who register on this forum are basically just looking for the mod release threads and the download links. But why register at all if you're not even going to browse or read the forum at all? Not even the official announcements? Participating in a quiz like that is not like posting: no one other than the organizer is going to see you even submitted an answer. I don't know. Even accounting for the usual active/inactive guesstimates, it just seems very low.

Member Statistics 165865 Total Members So uhm... am I going to have to be the one that asks about the rather underwhelming participation...?

It's not limited to large/heavy craft; tiny craft can show this too. Here's an example of an almost minimally small craft that will violently shake itself apart as soon as physics kick in. Nothing particular about it, other than some radial symmetry and clipping to create one wing out of multiple basic fins. craft file: https://www.dropbox.com/s/2w111xmhrt682ks/TIE-wing-shaker1.craft?dl=0 video: https://www.dropbox.com/s/q9i85rhkax43wt7/KSP113-TIE-wing-shaker1.mp4?dl=0 (And yes, there is something weird about the symmetry. The original tiny TIE fighter I made has it correct, but using just the wing as a subassembly will cause an incorrect mirroring. Probably the editor getting confused about applying mirror symmetry on a radial symmetry subassembly, but like I said, the original uses the same wing assembly and even the same Oscar B as a root, and it mirrors fine there.)

In stock, the Junos are a surprisingly flexible choice for small and even medium VTOLs. They are light and small enough to spam and to clip away, which allows a lot of flexibility in finding a good balance between thrust and looks. Disadvantage is the slow spool up/down speed, which means you have to anticipate a lot. For the somewhat heavier craft, the Panther afterburner jet is the prime choice, as you can design around the dry mode thrust for hovering, and the almost immediate wet mode kick can be used as a toggle/pulse for ascending or for arresting too fast descends. The high thrust-vectoring gimbal can be put to good use for controlling horizontal speeds, without needing RCS.

I have a pure stock install, and I can see out of all the windows of the Mk1-2 pod, so you must have a local problem. Can you post a log file? http://imgur.com/a/ui7m9

No, the game does actually have classes or types of contracts, that are defined by certain sets of 'rules' specific for each class of contract (asks for such and such part, or asks for a kerbal, or asks for science experiments, or some specific action, etc). You can see the different classes and the defining rules by opening GameData\Squad\Contracts\Contracts.cfg: any main node past MODULE_DEFINITIONS is a type of contract. (asteroids, satellites, science, surveys, part tests, tourism, outpost/station constructions, flag planting, progression, grand tours, and yes, the discussed rescue and recovery type). You can also see this in the in-game debug screen (Alt-F12 on PC), on the Contracts tab, under the button 'Add'. Every line you see there is a different class/type of contracts, that correspond to the list mentioned above (in stock, cause mods can modify this).

Even if the plane has a drone core? The thing is, the Mk2 factor has very little options to 'terminate' the front other than the cockpit, that would not simply cause more drag (and more fuel usage). But a drone core can fly the plane independently and essentially promotes any cockpit crew to passengers. Not a point to drive home, just something to consider.

Mods, please rework this thread so it is @The White Guardian's OP. I have no need of TotM or really any other forum points, but it is obviously important to him, so I have zero objection to this becoming his thread, everyone happy.

Ahh.. the version with the definitive wheels patch...

But if you forked, you'd no longer be in the reality everyone else is affecting...

No, this is a very real thing, although my theory of the actual cause is different: I think the flex is directly caused by some parts colliding and 'pushing' others out of their alignment. Notoriously, Mammoth engines, landing gear -even retracted- and yes, Kerbals' heads/helmets (!) when in external command seats apparently have a very powerful and unfortunately very invisible collision effect on other parts and can push entire wings out of alignment.

A pitch for a site I really like: if you upload your craft to KerbalX.com, the site has code that automatically recognises mods used in the craft and lists them all (and the ones that it doesn't, you can help with to get them listed as well). As a second benefit, it's a very nice site by a good maintainer specifically for showcasing and sharing your craft files. The '0' position for the gear leaves a slight angle forwards for the gear. And many parts will actually cause the gear to not be in zero angle position, because the game editor always assigns the first anglerelative to the part you are attaching to. So it's good to remove any rotation by placing the gear first, selecting the rotate gizmo, and setting it to absolute mode (which is not the default), then it's usually just a tiny tick to zero out any angle it 'inherited' from its parent part. In my opinion, 'absolute' should be the default mode for the rotate gizmo, like it already is for the offset one, essentially because there's no real consistency in what the editor sometimes decides to assign angle-wise. Agreed on the rest of your explanation, but not on this particular point. In my experience, it appears to be a 90 (effectively more like 88) degree angle pointing straight 'down' from the perspective of the wheel. So as long as any point within 45 degrees forward/backwar is visibly touching the ground, it still works, but beyond that its like the wheel is not even there. In general, try to design your plane such that fuel is distributed -and subsequently used- equally from behind the CoM as from the front. Turn the CoM indicator on, and start playing with the fuel quantity sliders of your tanks; the less the CoM moves when you do that, the better. Easier said than done because engines tend to contribute way more mass than cockpits, but a small little trick that may serve you: if you attach a small fuel or ore tank as far front of the front of the plane as possible (the Oscar or the radial ore tanks work well, and they can usually be clipped entirely into most cockpits), you can lock their resources and then use them just as balancing 'ballast' to offset a less than optimal fuel mass (or engine mass) distribution. In general fuel ducts should be unnecessary for jet engines, and would only add a rather disproportionate amount of drag. There are times when the game decides an engine cannot draw from certain tanks, but this is rare and tends to be an indication that a rethinking of the design is necessary anyway. I've not been able to test your craft due to mods, and for some reason I'm not getting the images you posted, so can't give you any advice based on those yet. If I manage to make it work I'll revisit this.

Quote and ye shall receive:

Based on this comment in another thread by @The White Guardian Note: if this thread is considered for TotM, please credit it to @The White Guardian . Assuming Life turned out to be an all-encompassing simulation, and somehow we got our hands on the source code (and assuming we understand the programming language of Life): what, if anything, would you change? No need to explain why or in what way, unless you feel chatty or exceptionally enthusiastic about the idea. The first thing I thought of is bug hunting. Quite literally. Can we do without mosquitos? Do we really need them? (then I had a whole string of other ideas, but it was funny to me that that was my first thought).

Awesome work. I can confirm that this line of design is dangerously nimble even to a surprising slow speed. Limiting the authority significantly on the other hand gets a very nicely handling and stable craft. One of those designs that prove why RL craft dynamically adapt authority to the circumstances.

If this is a simulation, can we open source the code? I'd really not mind uhm... tweaking a few things... (and KSP wasn't even the first thing I thought about )

How's things back in 2012 these days?