mystik

Meh. I didn't fancy historical parts that much. I guess it's good for those that are into it. I would like some new parts to help with spaceplanes. And to fix the drag on some parts. Still, it's something. Just not something I am interested in buying.

The thing is that if I can get away with a simple radiator on top then I will do that, because adding any more weight and especially the inefficient adapters (MK2 short and NCS) will surely raise the RF m/s by a few tens and drop the LF m/s by a few hundreds. A radiator will only cause a few tens of m/s to drop. The whole design is very tricky to balance and once I figure the heating I will switch to improving the landing.

Work continued on the Arrow SSTA (now model X). Currently fine tuning. I also fixed sliding while sitting on runway. Optimized parts layout. It takes off nicely now, but it requires the use of the Vector often, because it is underpowered on Rapiers until 500m/s to save fuel during interplanetary travel. It can land on the Mun using only nukes. It has 4800m/s left in orbit. The screenshot is for showing the max dv stored in space 1500m/s on rockets and 6300 m/s on nukes. It isn't ready yet as reentry causes the crew pod to explode and it is hard to control during descent. I will add a radiator and figure out how to keep it stable while landing. For those wondering why such an odd shape it is because the MK1 fuel tanks are the most efficient at carrying fuel for their weight. Mk2 parts used only for crew, science and mining cargo bay and adapter parts.

Work in progress Arrow V (LF Proto) Cannot yet reach circular orbit due to having too much lf and to little ox. Needs adjustments, but it has OVER 9000 m/s. I need to switch some to rocket fuel to get about 5000m/s out of nukes and the rest 2500 m/s to rockets. So, the hybrid is coming along nicely, I have too much m/s and will need to adjust the distribution. It flies like a brick, but it flies. Unfortunately it needs more rocket fuel to get to orbit (reached 60 km) and some extra air intakes as the engines start cutting out at 25000 one by one. I will tune it until I get something more stable and with about 2500m/s on rockets (the screenshot below is for display purposes only, it was teleported to space via cheats, to see how much dv it has stored).

@Rune I did some maths and I don't see how MK3 is that much better than MK2. I'm poor at math but I got the numbers below for liquid fuselages only: Tank Full (t) Empty (t) Fuel (t) Units Empty weight / fuel units MK1 2.25 0.25 2 400 0.000625 MK2 long 4.57 0.57 4 800 0.000713 MK3 long 28.57 3.57 25 5000 0.000714 MK3 huge 57.14 7.14 50 10000 0.000714 MK3 short 14.29 1.79 12.5 2500 0.000716 MK2 short 2.29 0.29 2 400 0.000725 MK1 is a winner because it weights so little when empty and provides so much fuel. MK2 long comes in second. While no where near the values of MK1. We are not discussing drag here, just efficiency in space, once the tank is empty, how much weight do you have to pull with you. MK3 is almost the same as MK2 long, while MK2 short is the worst of the crowd. I am not seeing the "MK2 is so bad". It actually is almost the same with MK3 with the exception of the small parts. Is this not true or is this my math being bad? Additional numbers for some other parts (rocket fuel) FLT400 2.25 0.25 2 400 0.000625 FLT800 4.5 0.5 4 800 0.000625 MK2 Adapter long 4.57 0.57 4 800 0.000713 MK3 Adapter 14.29 1.79 12.5 2500 0.000716 MK2 Adapter short 2.29 0.29 2 400 0.000725 MK2 Bicoupler 2.29 0.29 2 400 0.000725 As you can see, the same values remain. MK2 is not by far worse than MK3. Again, MK1 (aka FLT) are still kings at the ratio between plain tank weight vs fuel units. So, I'm thinking, looking at these numbers. The best solution is a hybrid MK1/MK2 ship made out of: MK1 liquid tank MK2 long MK2 Adapter long Mk2 Bicoupler (yes, it has bad ratio but it is the only way to properly attach MK1 tanks to the ship in double amounts so that you don't end up with a spaghetti ship. FLT800 Adding the MK1 crew capsule and the MK1 control pod, with these tanks, I think I can gain about 15% more dv for the same ratio of fuel I have in my 6000 m/s model, so essentially, giving me almost 6900m/s. If I downgrade the extra surfaces and landing gear that should also shave some weight. The only dilemma remains the large drill, which I would not give up. Because I want to be able to land anywhere and refuel. With the small drill, you're in trouble if you don't land somewhere where you have high ore concentration. Maybe I can get to 7500 m/s that way. I certainly don't mind having an extra light ship, in fact I want it to be as light as possible because it makes flying it very easy.

I can get away with 5000m/s ish to get to Moho, but I cannot land on it even with almost 6000m/s. To have perfect conditions met to visit this one planet just seems to be too much of a hassle. Just pump up your dv and be done with it. I have been experimenting with my design and adding more tanks did not add more dv, like you said. So I guess it's a matter of optimizing what I've got rather than just add more. I will have to mess about with it to see how I can better optimize it. Maybe drop a few engines to save weight, I currently run with 4 nukes, which for a 200t model may be too much at this point. I don't mind long burn times. I will have to see what needs to be scrapped that is not needed. Aero isn't a problem at this point, since I can get to orbit with high dv left to make it to refuel. I don't care for that part so much. I care for range. At worst, I can just go with a separate tug ship just for Moho missions and that's that. I already have a SSTO planned for Eve, but that will have to come in the form of a rocket that transfers the crew in orbit and refuels on Gilly.

@Rune 5000m/s to land on Moho? HERESY! In all my tries I come up with a need of 7500m/s. And I've tried using the many methods described in threads around here. Nope. 7500/ms is a must, out of which 3000m/s need to come from Rapiers or you will turn your ship into a pancake on Tylo landing.

I don't see them as bugged at all. In fact, they reduce the need for extra wings since MK2 acts like a wing. I have no problem. My ship is way smaller and has lots of DV more than any MK3 things I've seen. I will push on with this model, optimizing the loadout to reach 7500m/s and thus creating a decent spaceplane that can go most places. I am struggling with Moho, but I don't need that much at this point and I fee like I am quite close to successfully landing on Moho. MK3 seems to be too heavy for anything. Landing anything big enough to reach Moho would probably be a nightmare when your ship snaps under the weight of landing 500t on any surface. My ship is well under 200t at this point and will not go above 250t before I scrap it. That's the point. I want to keep it light. And sub 250parts to avoid crappy framerates and crashes. I does not even have RCS because it is meant to work fully independent of anything and does not need to dock to anything. Bare essentials, does not carry scanners, only science instruments that can collect it. One small ISRU, one big drill, just enough RTGs to power it up no matter where you go. I went with RTG vs fuel cells because you will most likely run out of oxidizer after a while. Plus, being able to have unlimited power is always sweet. You can't cram in the big fuel cell in the hull. It's not elegant. I have no issues getting this up in LKO with 4000m/s left, so I experience none of this "horrible drag" you speak of. I keep it extremely streamlined and I use some tricks like vertical fuel tanks to reduce the standard drag that may come with wide surfaces. A side turned MK2 is less draggy than a MK3side by side. Plus, it acts like a rover without being all clumsy and slow, it just works.

Still working on the ship (Arrow), it got me to Moho but was short on fuel, I need about 2000m/s more. Currently it can pull almost 6000m/s out of a full tank. It has seen a few revisions, now Arrow IV model M61242 (6 crew, 12 rapiers, 4 nukes, 2 spikes). I need to balance the load of 1/3 oxidizer and 2/3 fuel. I am thinking it can take more fuel tanks. I need about 7500 m/s in total to land on Moho. I can add a new set of fuel tanks easily, as the whole thing is balanced around the COM and adding more stuff does not upset it. Refueling takes a long time, but since transfer windows are far, it does ok.

Play the tutorials. They teach you how to dock very well. I learned how to dock without RCS but I can only do it with small ships and advanced flight systems. It's easy once you get used to orbital mechanics. Practice often with small craft. Circularize your orbit. Then wait for a good time to plan a maneuver. It's easier to do if you're on a higher orbit and coming lower to dock. But that may be a preference. If you can, set your targe to "ANTITARGET" and your ship to "TARGET". Slow down to 0. Once the ships are alligned and very close, give them a 0.1 push, just in case you miss so that you don't break something. Each docking port will track the other and it should connect easily and no RCS was needed. With RCS is even easier, but you need to play the tutorial to understand what to look for in your targeting, to understand what to look for.

Fun is subjective. Fun for me is to optimize my ships to be as light as possible and visit other planets. Putting a big hunk of metal in space that costs a fortune and does very little is not that fun. I play career mode. No freebies. With the money I spent on my station (1 mil) I could have launched another Dres-Eeloo Sat, which can mine the crap out of biomes. Fully autonomous and ridiculously expensive. 15000 dv and RTG powered. That seems more fun to me. Plus, they carry the huge relay antenna so it builds Kerbnet for my upcoming Grand Tour. See? That's fun.

I have a small space station, holding 3 orange tanks and one giant tank. I have 2 escape pods on with 3 crew capacity each. It has claws and docking ports and is currently holding the first asteroid I found, a purple one. One research lab. I have no real use for it. I look a it and I sometimes use it as a refueling station (I have a giant asteroid miner that I keep landed in Minmus which holds ridiculous amounts of fuel) and I bring it and refuel the station every how and then. But I have to wonder if there is any real purpose of having a space station? I rather use small comm sats that can do some science and send them to other planets. It barely serves any other purpose. Maybe they need a gameplay rework?

Don't worry about it. I learned many things from your designs. In fact, I learned so much that I have been working on something new. I have not seen the design before, I think this may be a first. I made a Mk2 proto with small ISRU and one giant drill (yeah, crazy) and am currently testing it. 6 crew capacity, 20.000 dv at start, 3.5km/s in orbit, 165t, fully autonomous. It is currently landed on the mun, refueling. Does not require solar panels or fuel cells, all science that it can carry, has the 88 communitron stashed inside, can land as a plane or rocket, thanks to a new type of landing setup that is perfectly safe and adjustable for any gravity. It can fly on it's own and can science alone. Easy to reach orbit. Have not landed on empty yet and I will once the refuel is ready. I have landed and it is capable of landing at speeds as low as 50m/s thanks to it's wide wings. It remains stable even when empty. When oxidizer is left it helps to pump the 4 top tanks to the rear tank to stabilize reentry. It can be easily recovered if control is lost. I will post pics and links soon. I will look into your design. As always, I am thankful for any new design you put out. I test most of them. Like you said, perhaps a redesign is needed. Go for light. It makes landing easier. I think you should keep 3000dv in rocket mode and the rest as nukes (2000-3000dv should be enough on nukes). I am talking as per landed on Minmus. 3000dv should be enough for Tylo landings or take offs. I will wait for your new design and mess with this invention while you work on it so that I have something to do. I know you'll probably design something that will outperform my toy by a whole 10.AU. (nerdy astro joke)

@Korsakovski I tested it a bit. Unfortunately it seems worse than D14 in overall handling of landings. The VTOL is hard to control, I have to disable the forward engines and use RCS like crazy. Also, reentry is very bad. It does not want to stay upright. It gets very bottom heavy once it is empty and it cannot be controlled on descent. KER is also reading the dv wrong and all over the place. The side engines run out of fuel before all others even if there still is fuel left in the middle tank. I think it is too heavy. The large ISRU can be replaced with the small one and the 4 drills can be switched to just 1 or two. Which means less radiators, less power needs, less weight, less engines, less lenght, less RCS needed, less control needed. I know, I am rambling, but the thing is so heavy you can't put it down safely without it overstressing the wheels and blowing up at 5m/s impact. It's a clumsy monster. I spent 2 hours trying to land it on the mun, with and without VTOL. I'm sorry if I sound anrgy. I'm frustrated with the difficulty of landing such a big ship in the game weird gravity. I will try to cut it down to size tomorrow. At this point longer mining times are not an issue. Getting there is more important. Any chance you'd be interested in obtaining the same of dv in a much lighter version?

Downloaded and designed new rover for it. It does have less dv than the D14 but not by much. I have to test it on a trip to recover a ship part from the surface of the mun that's sitting there since the beginning of the game.

My apologies, I must have missed the fact that Bahamut was not intended for Tylo. Thank you for the explanation regarding the names. I'm not a FF fan but I certainly have heard about it. Thanks for taking the time to explain. And thanks for your great work.

Awesome news as always. The design is surely good. Improvements are always welcome and the design has potential. Are you talking about the Fafnir D14? I think it's better than the Mammuth (sorry if I misspell the names, I know they are nordic names). The problem with Mammuth is that I doubt it can ever land on Tylo because it has little Oxidizer. It will require a stop to one of the moons first, but that's not the problem. The problem comes from actually taking off. To take off from the Mun I had to use about half of the Oxidizer in the Fafnir D14. The nukes were not enough and I tried to use them as much as possible. I was not gaining speed fast enough to stay in orbit. This was in low gravity, so I imagine Tylo means you lack the TWR once your Oxidizer runs out to ever leave the planet. The Fafnir has enough DV and TWR to take you there and I see how this will work. Just running on pure rocket engines I managed to reach 7500m vertical on Kerbin. I guess that would mean somewhere 12000-15000m on Tylo since there is no atmosphere and the gravity is somewhat lower but not by much. From there you can go with nukes and attempt a landing on another moon to refuel since I could actually use the nukes to slow down and float at 75% power and could actually take off vertically (slowly) from the surface. I did manage to land on the Mun but I also managed to do some contracts with my rover. It was easy to get out, drive, then return. Reattaching the rover back in the hull was very difficult. I think I need to drop my landing gear trick that I use to attach to the ship and switch to some basic rocket engines that can lift it up in the hull. That's another story. I also think the ship can do well with less engines. It accelerates very fast and it seems to be overkill because by the time I reach 1450m/s the atmosphere runs out and the engines seem that can take me further if there was room, so I think that's a bit too much power. Since rapiers are the most useful, I think dropping the 4 outer whips from the tail will save some weight. Or you could go with dropping extra rapiers. The thing is that it may save some weight and improve maneuverability as well. I suck at design, so I may be off with this, but I felt like the ship has too much power (I know, sounds crazy) for it's own sake. Saving weight is something I always go for when I customize a ship because it makes it easier to control. Oh, one important thing, I must mention. I don't know if you are aware of this, but the reaction wheels have a better response if you spread them around. Having all of them focused in one part of the ship makes the ship pivot in that area. Turn the Fafnir in space and see that it rotates around the passenger cabin, not the entire body. Essentially, if you turn, the front moves at a slower speed than the back, essentially like a baseball bat, where the handle is where the cabin is. It makes for some unpredictable responses when trying to land. You want the heavier part (tail) to rotate slower, and the lighter part to move faster (nose) because that allows for better flight control in and outside the atmosphere. It may actually mean that you need less control surfaces. Control surfaces are useless on all but 4 planets and you can only visit 3 of those. So essentially, the minimum control surface you can get and still fly it safely, is the target. But this would require the control wheels to be near the center of mass or the rear. This may mess up your COM but it does bring big improvements to overall handling with less parts. Last night I was returning from the Mun and I could not land it back on Kerbin. If I save and try to resume from the atmosphere, when I reload the ship blows up in the wings area, where the inner nukes are located. I think there is a problem there, something is colliding badly, the main body remains, but the wings fly off even if I have used autostruts to make the structure more rigid (it used to wobble terribly when rapiers are engaged). I get an explosion every time when I reload. I have to load an older save and do the landing in one try.

I did some tests on the Fafnir yesterday. I landed on the Mun without VTOL and it's too difficult to do this on planets with higher gravity. The problem comes from the lack of maneuverability. It turns too slow to be able to do flips just above the surface. The back wings scrape the ground and are easily broken. You can land but it is so difficult and you have to pray that the ship won't flip. I know, I removed the VTOL feature and may be my fault, but the giant beast is hard to control. Let it be known, the design is good, I should revert the VTOL change and try again. But I am thinking of doing a MK2 version, however, there are very few designs available to draw inspiration from. Or would it be better to just stick to a SSTO rocket shape instead and do vertical landings? I will probably go back to the design and keep it VTOL free and add landing struts and a set of spike engines (top and bottom) to assist with converting from vertical to horizontal mode once landed. I am not comfortable with VTOL because it fluctuates a lot depending on the weight remaining. I rather do vertical landings as they are more stable and predictable but after adding the mechanism to allow for the ship to gently switch orientation once landed.

I ditched the VTOL feature to save some weight. I am doing this the old way, via rapiers, slow down to the surface, then gentle push forward to land like a plane. I think it should be enough to work. I tested with rockets only and I got up to 7500 vertical. There is enough TWR in this to work on Tylo without the need of VTOL.

@Korsakovski It was my mod that was reading it like that. With KER I get 3200m/s on rockets and 4000m/s on nukes. I am flying the Fafnir D14 because it has enough force to make landing on Tylo possible, which I fear that the Bahamut may not, because it relies mostly on nukes. I am launching a few satelites ahead of me and then I start my grand tour. Wish me luck.

I use a mod called VOID, because it's very light and uses the same displays from KER but without the extra stuff I don't use. It could be the mod. I will try with KEER but it just seems weird. What values do you get when switching from one engine to another?

@Korsakovski I'd like your advice on something. With the Farnir (I hope I 'm not messing up the name) I get 3200m/s when on rapiers vs 2800m/s when on nukes afer reaching orbit. This seems odd. Shouldn't you get more m/s on high ISP engines? What is causing this? Are there too few nukes? Would it be worth going only on rapiers by switching the lf to lf+ox? I seem to get a 8:7 ratio from rapiers to nukes so it is less efficient to use them at that point. Do you get similar results?

5000. Insane. Told you this is top design.

This latest design is awesome, is so legendary. I removed some of the extras and I gained some dv. I did remove the VTOL feature because I have no real use for it. This allowed me to squeeze in a cargo bay for my rover. Moved all drills to the first bay that had the extra engines. I did not affect the center of weight too dramatically. Made it to orbit with 3200m/s left. Even for someone as noob as myself to be able to have this much left... Just wow. I'm ready for the Grand Tour now. I will upload my modified version once ready. All credits go to you, of course, definitely top builder.

Why not add two small tail fins to the tips of your wings? Triple tail as per the picture below only that you mount those to the edge of the wings to. That also helps with your center of mass since it does not push weight to the end of the plane but that depends on your build. Then add control surfaces to your wings and done. You don't need too many controls because that way you won't dismember the plane when pulling hard. I made one SSTO one that was crazy maneuverable, going for 15G at turns and therefore breaking to pieces in the process.