Mike`

- i should refresh the page before replying to an outdated post :s

It's a bug in the game. Use something like the following, put it into a cfg file into your GameData and it should work again, changes the cost of all 500 nodes. @TechTree:NEEDS[HPTechTree]:AFTER[HPTechTree] { @RDNode:HAS[#cost[500]] { @cost = 480 } }

I installed realplume aswell, and at least the SSTU-SRBs leave smoketrails in the atmo for me. Can you test these? If it doesn't work, something else is probably wrong. Do trails work on stock engines for you?

I actually scripted the ingame ant engine to be like that thing (the MR-80B, the largest thruster in the pdf), i tried to use your balance and came up with 1.54kN thrust - not much, but i calculated an ingame weight of 14kg, so it's also pretty lightweight and you can use multiple of them. What for? Indeed small, unmanned landers, like it is/was used for IRL. As i removed any stock engine from my game, i didn't have anything for that purpose - the LMAE came closest, but that thing is still comparably huge and heavy for a tiny unmanned mun-lander. The R-40B at 4kN irl thrust also looks very good. Tiny, light, and good Isp for that size.

In case like you feel like modeling an engine again, what about the MR-80B? A small, monopropellant lander engine used to land curiosity on mars. http://www.rocket.com/files/aerojet/documents/Capabilities/PDFs/Monopropellant Data Sheets.pdf some more data and 1-2 pictures

I already started to play around a bit with the current settings. First i adjusted the weights of the shields, based on the apollo heat shield which at 3.9m diameter apparently weighted about 850kg. Thus i set the mass of the 3.75m medium shield to 0.4 and its ablator to 450, yielding 850kg for that part. Also i changed the massMults of the different types to linear, so a light shield is half as heavy as a medium, while a heavy is double the weight of a medium. Next, i took a look at the heatCurve, and wondered about its many points. I plotted it, and noticed it's not interpolated very smoothly, i confirmed this in an in game curve editor, so i created a new curve out of 6 points which is smooth and easier to scale because you don't have to edit that many points. I can't attach images here, will post them on the github issue. After that i balanced the light and medium shield curves and the ablation efficiency, and i made quite some progress. Especially the medium curves i looked a bit closer at, and made 2 curves for now. One which has a bit more headroom (to overpower the ablation for the 1.25m shield from outer Kerbin SOI, you need 1,5t and a -40km periapsis or 2t and 0km periapsis), and one with a bit less (already exploded with 940kg, eg not much more than the pod, at a periapsis of 0km). I'll post screenshots and details of the curves at the github issue, i guess. Edit: Curves posted in https://github.com/shadowmage45/SSTULabs/issues/553 I've also updated that post with some experimental results. Now, does anybody have an idea what might be good test/balance conditions/targets for the heavy and extra heavy shields?

Hey @sarbian, could you be so kind and do another click in jenkins?

Thanks for pointing this out, i might give this a try. Ah, true, i missed that. I still think the current weights of the heatshields are a bit heavy even comparing with the old apollo, too bad if the weight helps the thermal simulation. Might play around with that aswell. I like that balance, sounds good. Ah, but the lander tank looks cool. I fiddled with it in the VAB a bit, it worked and i liked it.

Interesting, note, however, that i had to set periapsis to _negative_ 40km to successfully reentry, 0km and everything above was too shallow and the shield exploded. Yup, i think so, too. An mk-1 pod with a single parachute and the medium shield is ~ 1118kg, so quite a bit heavier but well within 1.5t. I think i would also like an increase in the maximum ablator you can put on the shields to reduce the mass difference between a shield with 100% ablator and the next stronger shield with only some ablator. If you want i can do some further testing using just the mk-1 pod or something. Also, i just noticed that the difference between the SC-V CM reentry module and the version without shield is 220kg, while the 2.5m medium shield is 711kg - those numbers should be balanced about the same, right? Considering apollo's heat shield seemed to weight about 850kg, something like 220kg-300 kg seems reasonable for the 2.5m medium shield. Once i included most of the stock parts SSTU has replacements for in the remove-stock-parts-patch, i'll post it.

Looks good, although i'm just now slowly getting far enough into the game to use solar panels. I just had some fun experiencing the SSTU heatshields after being used to the durable stock ones. I've read that a medium shield should be fine for a minmus return, but failed on my first try. I had a 830 kg (including shield), 1.25m diameter unmanned probe with some science experiments returning from minmus, periapsis set to ~25 km, hit the atmosphere with about 3050 m/s. The ablator usage was roughly -1.6, the ablator was fully used up and after that the shield exploded. My probe survived, because the service bay had no trouble with the heat after the shield exploded, but i redid the experiment at different PEs/steeper return angles to see the effect of those. On my second try, with a periapsis of slightly below 0, the shield still exploded. Third try, periapsis of -41km, the shield returned successfully with roughly 9.x ablator left. Is this the intended performance? I fear that using a little more mass, eg a manned mission which would already double the weight roughly, would need a little stronger shield. Still a good job though, because reentry certainly becomes more challenging than just slap on a heatshield now. Also i guess with those non-stock-like performances, i should update the remove-stock-elements-patch to also remove the comparatively overpowered stock heatshields. Edit: I just did some further tests using the 1.25m light heatshield, 2,2t vessel (pod + mk1 crew cabin), reentering from ~85km kerbin orbit: -43km periapsis, 2290 m/s reentry speed, ablator ran out at 39km -251km periapsis, 1930m/s reentry speed, ablator ran out at 27km -283km periapsis, 1900m/s reentry speed, ablator ran out at 23km The heatshield exploded every time.

No worries, take your time. I'm still amazed by the engine and tank layouts, really great idea, works and looks amazing.

I'm sorry to have found an issue in the new release, i think the length and burntime of SRBs somehow changed. In the new patch, the SRB's are alot longer and the burntime is inversely proportional to diameter, thus thinner SRBs burn longer but have very low TWR, to the point that 0.65m diameter SRBs can't push their own weight. I downgraded to the previous release and SRBs work fine again. Can open an issue for that aswell if you want.

Thanks, i will open a ticket. Yeah, sure, being too small isn't really an issue, but minimum and default sizes are too large for the engines i posted (in single-layout mode at least). And i found it very weird that suddenly the min mount was smaller when you use a dual-engine layout, i guess that info might help tracking down the problem.

Hey guys. I have to say really great job at all the code and models. Since i have seen mods like this one, i can't imagine playing stock again. I've just noticed some weirdness with engine mount sizes. The following engines allow a _smaller_ minimum mount size when in dual-layout than in single-layout: LMAE, both LR-81 variants. The following engines have a too large minimum size in single-layout and have the same size when you configure them to use dual-layout: LMDE, RD 0110 and the 3 NRV series. Are those sizes calculated by code, or can i adjust some config values to fix this?

I've seen that in the wiki, and i think their original value was indeed a bit too low for their size, but they got overbuffed quite a bit i think. I actually don't dislike some clipping of the ROUND-8 tanks, because in "reality" you also wouldn't just stack such a weird shape on top of each other but make a tank in a single piece without some of the volume loss by the round shape, if you know what i mean.

Compared to an FLT-100, both the Oscar-B and ROUND-8 contain far too much fuel for their size. The volume of an Oscar-B for example is roughly about 1/6 that of the FLT-100, yet it contains 2/5 of the fuel. The fuel and corresponding weight of both tanks should probably be adjusted to roughly half their current values, something like 1/5 - 1/6 of the FLT100 for the Oscar-B and 1/3 - 3/10 of an FLT100 for the ROUND-8.