Doghead13

Awesome - was just thinking 'shame the rusty rockets mod's been dropped' only yesterday.

Low speed ruins rudder efficiency, and airship speeds are pretty low. Suspect you'd need a disproportionately huge rudder to do anything useful, even with light gondolas. I've never flown an airship WITHOUT SAS. My 'Krakenbait' had something like five of the little probe-sized reaction wheels, and The Beast has three ASAS units. The result is very controllable at any speed it's capable of - it's even semi-controllable at high physics warp.

What have you got in the way of reaction wheels? I've never got a ship to turn with a rudder, and in fact don't bother with rudders on most of my airships.

A range of sizes of the new gasbag style would be lovely - maybe something like tweakscale on it, allowing you to tune the gasbag size from 'suitable to take a probe core, RemoteTech antenna or two, fuel tank, anchor, reaction wheel, and single engine aloft' up to the current giant of the skies, all with the classical airship gasbag style. Maybe some specific airship gondola parts? Like a set of sections to make railed platforms for Kerbals to walk around on and cockpit/capsule parts visually based on the likes of the R100 complete with brass-dialled and ships-wheeled interior to satiate the not-so-latent inner steampunk of the sort of person most likely to be all over an airship mod? A 'crow's nest' for getting Kerbals onto the top of the gasbag and in-character navigating by the stars? Some sort of radially-attached propeller engine, where the engine itself is something like a heavy inline four-cylinder diesel fully exposed to sight, complete with a nice gnarly radiator, would compliment the classical airship look beautifully. Pie in the sky would be a custom map-mode icon, where instead of a little capsule or base or probe or whatever you get a little airship silhouette. Not sure if any of that is in the scope of this mod, but anyway.

Here's the 'safe' build: the Jolly Grey Giant-class long-range solar-electric airship The Beast. This is the class prototype, and still needs a little tweaking - basically, she could do with a little more weight astern as she's nose-heavy, though the adjustment to trim you guys have done since the version of the mod I have installed right now may help there. Gondola is constructed from Roverdude's Karibu rover parts - while power is courtesy of Firespitter electric propellers run off, again, modded solar panels. The glowing 'insect abdomen' part is from one of Roverdude's other mods and acts as crew accomodation when she's landed for the night. The two forwards ballast tanks (again from Firespitter) are empty, with the tanks between the two sets of props being full, in an attempt to keep her nose-up; even still she sits at about five degrees nose-down in flight - I don't have any in-flight screenies as I've been taking screenshots 'in character', keeping them strictly to where a conceptual Kerbal photographer could have been, aside from a couple of 'artist's impressions' of unmanned probes in flight. Service ceiling is well past twelve kilometers, and with full solar exposure she'll go past 90 metres per second at altitude. She could use a little better power generation - she's only able to run her engines at two-thirds throttle max - but given her reliance on sunlight, she performs exactly as per her design criteria. This build can be made unsafe by placing a strut between the rearmost two gasbags; this causes steadily increasing part wobble in the rear two bags, until they shake the back of the ship to bits. As is, it experiences small phantom forces - about 0.1 m/s per 20 secs or so forwards acceleration. I'll recreate one of the wildly unsafe builds and upload a pic if you like. Might this have something to do with the big grey connector parts? Here's her predecessor - used by my Kerbals to test the concept of a long-range solar-powered airship. Officially named 'Airship One', it received the not-so-fond title of Krakenbait courtesy of nearly killing the crew numerous times - it's NOT a safe build, even before we get to the random wheel explosions or the way it goes drunkenly tumbling across the sky if the engines unexpectedly lose thrust (read, run out of electricity) in flight, and goes up like freaking Vesuvius if you click the anchor button probably as there's thirty-odd parts clipped inside the gasbag part. It however made it right round Kerbin, westbound and back to KSC - despite leaving several parts behind along the way.

Oh man, I'm going to have to totally redesign my long-range crew-retreival airship (playing with a self-imposed 'no clicking recover on anything away from KSC' rule for Storyness) courtesy of that thing of splendour and magnificence. This... this is the airship we've all be waiting for. Thankyou! BTW - Seeing some phantom forces with the older large gasbag parts: they're particularly vicious about clipping (goes up like a bomb as soon as physics load) while if you have two chains of three gasbags, and tie the end pair (furthest from the root part) together with a strut, the Kraken descends with a vengeance, and I'm unable to place solar panels/engines/etc further out than the second gasbag in a chain without the resulting vehicle shaking itself to pieces. I'll upload pics of 'safe' and 'problem' builds once I'm in the same building as my gaming rig - am posting this on my lunch break at work.

Very happy to see this one updated again. Will be adding it to my game next time I've time for a play sesh, with thanks.

Can't you check altitude? Situation 'splashed' + altitude 0 = surface, then as the altitude goes into the negative you're submerged? (Guessing: couldn't program my way out of a wet paper bag, but pretty sure altitude is important to a lot of science stuff)

It is an on/off switch for the stock thing that doesn't involve going into the cheat menu. That's all.

Nah, early career save. That's just how many I've unlocked at this point. They all show in sandbox.

So, you're saying that tab doesn't appear in sandbox mode? Sorry - not familiar with the current layout of sandbox, I haven't used it since about 0.24. Am currently at around 11,000 metres westbound out of KSC in a rickety solar-powered lighter-than-air contraption, aimed for the desert biome with my not-so-bold duo of rookie aviatrixes aboard, it's about the tenth revision of this kite and FINALLY able to trim nicely in flight thanks to pumping spurious liquid fuel (the engines are all-electric) back and forth. I'll have a look-see in sandbox for the first time in, ye Gods, it must be over eighteen months now I think, once I've got her somewhere nice and safe to leave - probably after the big and slightly hair-raising ocean crossing she's just coming up on as I type. 42 minutes on the mission clock and she's just about to leave the land for her first big sea crossing. BTW JewelShisen - on that matter, the pumping liquid from back to front of an airship works beautifully to trim her pitch. No more permanent nose up/down for me unless I wants it to. Could not more enthusiastically advocate some sort of purpose-designed variety of the same for airships to avoid burning the pitch-adjustment ballast on liquid-fuel kites. Eek! That was a rather invigorating ride - design tip, do not mount your ballast tanks high in your airship's envelope or untoward aerobatics may ensue, especially during physics time warp. Once a top-heavy zeppelin begins to tumble, it tumbles for some time. Edit: And, having reached a place safe from Kraken attacks and rapid unplanned disassembly and parked my wobbly airship, I have now exited career mode, started a sandbox mode, and the exact same tab is there in the exact same place.

When it's not clickied, the little airship is white.

Wait, what... er, I'm seeing a custom tab for this mod in the aircraft hanger's parts list (haven't checked in the VAB, mind) and I haven't set up any homebrew categories on my current install. The tab contains all the Hooligan parts and even has a nice 'silhouette of a traditional airship' icon. I'll grab a screenshot to show what I mean once I get home from work (am typing this on my lunch break) and am thus in the same building as the comp I've got KSP installed on.

There is a custom tab. It's the 'Airship' one with a nice little outline of an airship in it.

This is both incredibly simple and of incredibly utility - you are an awesome person, and should feel awesome. Immediately downloaded within minutes of learning it exists.