Redacted

I've an class H asteroid on an interception path with Kerbal. Five to seven Days before the SOI the “seperation” markers can be difficult to make appear. (or even after the SOI) Yet when they do show, they flicker constantly, making tweaking in the nodes extremely difficult. This is further compounded by the "Target" being randomly lost as the maneuver nodes are adjusted ( + /- ) to reduce the separation distance.

Here is a link to the MK3 SSTO without the jettisonable tanks. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1702794482 Two small things I've noticed... -The Saber intercoolers are gray while the in development craft they’re flat black. Would it be possible to offer flat black as an in game option? -The thrust effects between the Advent and President turno-jets each have their own colors. This looks strange especially when both are using the same kerosene RP-1 “liquid” fuel. Far as i know of, RP-1 should burn yellow / orange, depending on how rich / lean the fuels are mixed.

I'll try doing the next flight without tanks that jettison. Will keep the Tanks attached but inside the intercoolers. (lol, my spell check keeps trying to correct intercooler to intercourse)

Here's is today's improved flight to 300 km and back Dropped off 1500 units of Ore. Later landed safe and sound. I did however try to feather the air-brakes, losing one in the process during decent. Note: This version uses disposable landing gear and jettisonable tanks mounted through the Advent motors. In most cases the disposable LF tanks and the landing gear have been recovered after the fact.

@JadeOfMaar Been having much better success with the MK3 platform. I've stuck the shock-cone / intercooler up front as the "nose" of the craft, while the engine cowling naturally sits at the rear. The wings have been replaced with stubs, making the entire profile very sleek. With this i was able to drop 1500 unit of ore into an 300 km orbit and return without imploding. (mostly luck) Overall, the design is made to land using chutes, ditching it's landing gear shortly after take off. (Saves weight and allows for a efficient profile) The craft it's very skill dependent, relying totally on the pilots ability to manage a fine balance between generating O2, climbing and liquid fuel conservation. Furthermore, once the engines have been shut down, the atmospheric control authority is all but non-existent. Will post a pic or video later. Edit: IMO the key to making good use of the Mk4 is taking advantage of the lifting body while using minimal Wings. -Redacted

@JadeOfMaar Unfortunately with the controls, there isn't in any sense of the word, "fine control". A short press of the keyboard is the equivalent of full deflection until it's released. Often this can cause the change in heading / vector to overshoot or oscillate wildly. I suspect that the majority of Keyboard players deal with this problem in one sense or another. Now as for the breakage, this took place when power was reapplied. On other flights where i waited for the re-entry speed to slow below 500 ms, I was able to restart the turbo-jets without the craft coming apart. Odds are that the sudden injection of thrust during decent was enough to over stress the the Turbo-Jets (which came off first) then the Wings. Well anyways, i did find one serious error. While the Saber engines work great all on their own, any other forms of propulsion added, often doesn't show it's potential DV on the staging panel. Doesn't matter if the extra motors are within the intercooler or not, they just don't show properly 100% of the time. In may cases I have not idea how much ms I have left to be able to accurately gauge a burn. You can see this in the Developmental video i posted earlier.

Here is a short video showing the build for the modified engine. Be aware that this is not the complete vehicle just a walk through of what was done. Please notice that I am now attaching the intercooler directly to the chassis then sliding it away from the build and finally attaching wings to the chassis. This way the wings are not supporting the weight of the motors. Despite this build change, the wings still snap off. Hence I don't think that this is an issue of the intercooler but rather the Wings themselves. See the last few minutes (past 8 minute mark) of this video for details. Developmental Flight:

Responses... 1) A few years back i was a serious modder, creating models, textures and scripting. Unfortunately my community imploded from all the jerks that took balencing way too seriously. They’d rather have a stale game than see something new. To introduce a new variable(s) in their eyes could unset the balence of play as well as any perceived advantage of skill. 2) It could be worth it to add a custom Wing better match the Engine. This way at least you’d have more control over the strenght of the connections. Beyond that, weight / drag is a big issue and to be honnest i was a bit surprised to see how easily the engines came off. Hell at one point before I enabled struts, the entire wing assembly (both sides) fell to the floor before i could throttle up. Its possible that the stationary engine mass can’t cope with the sudden injection of the game world physics. Instead of too big to fail, it’s too big to fly. 3) If i get chance later I’ll post a few pics. 4) I’d suggest that you get more feedback before tweeking stats. Reason being is that being a new concept its shouldn’t be held to the same standards as other engines. Otherwise your just reinventing the wheel, tho be it with newer models. 5) I have figured out a way to add small nuke engines (Eel, 0.35 Tons) while keeping the Kite Liquid Fuel motors. all while within the same intercooler. Should allow me to do efficient / small orbital maneuvers while generating a few EC’s on the side.

Alright... Swapped out the Rocket-Bells for the "Kite" R1-D liquid Fuel engine. Altogether I have three, with one in each "Advent" inter-coolers / turbo-Jets (Mounted on each wing) and one in the Precedent Turbo-Jet / Engine Cowl (Mounted rear on MK4). This decreases the weight by about two tons while increasing the overall thrust by 600 KN. Kite Spec's" 3 Tons, 932KN & 303 ISP (ASL) / 1000KN & 325 (VAL) This thing gets to low orbit so quick I hardly have time to use Mill power to generate O2.

@JadeOfMaar Gave it a detailed look today and here's my initial thoughts... 1)Your models and texturing are most excellent and for a yet to be released mod this was a very pleasant surprise. Furthermore, the new objects (motors , cowlings ect.) fit very nicely with the rest of the KSP content. Only thing I would ask for here would be the option to integrate heavy landing gear into / onto the largest of the inter-coolers. Would be more streamlined and look allot less like an Albatross on the runway. 2) On my first flight I did have a issue where the motors (Precedent) would rip off the wings (BIG-S Delta's) during assent. Don't think I got past 6000 meters before losing both wings to sudden structural failure. What I ended up doing was mounting a single Precedent to the end of the MK4, while using Advents on the wings. This configuration worked out really well and could be even further improved upon by maybe swapping out the one of the closed-loop engine cores for a different liquid rocket. 3) On my third try I was able to reach orbit using a 153,000 Kg SSTO with less than 50 parts. (no cargo) While this may not sound significant, keep in mind that my prior SSTO had over 120 parts including 16 Scimitar engines. This weighed and cost just over twice as much too! IMO this is one of the biggest issues with SSTO's in general, the part counts climb to stupid levels for a craft that should be kept as simple as possible. 4) Speaking of Nukes, i previously inquired and said it would be a really nice option. Yet i do see that the way the Turbo-Jets / Rocket -Bells are separately parted, it should be possible to add nuclear using the Stock KSP content or some of the Near Future motors. (Love the parting BTW, far as i know of this is the only engine mod that does this.) 5) The PWB fuel-balancer (Linuxgurugamer's) mod is a must have with these motors and most SSTO's in general. I forgot to add one and had one hell of a time staying at the correct insertion angle during re-entry. Question: Have you considered using Toroidal Aerospikes vs the Motor Bells? Mechanically Aerospikes are simpler, lighter and provide for more consistent thrust / ISP regardless of atmosphere. While I realize that your trying to stay true to the original Saber concept, this would be really nice to have as a side option if it were later available. Edit: Just realized that the intercoolers make O2! HolyCow Batman Cheers! Redacted

Sorry didn't see it between the kids screaming and the time i have to quickly post.

Is this compatable with 1.6.1 ?

Will DL and try this Monday. Question, have you considered making a multi-modal nuclear version of the Saber?

My issue with liquid fueled SSTO engines is that their all too similar. Increase the motors tonage / tech level yet its TWR, ISP and assent profiles remain almost identical. (safely scaled up with the tonnage) What is needed are motors with better profiles / stats, that perform better on larger ships as the tech level increase. Currently my MK4 transport uses 16 - 20 Broadsword engines which is an ridiculous amount. The higher part counts tends to make the MK4’s rather unstable and prone to sudden aerodynamic/ structural failure. Anything that can directly increase the motor performance, will indirectly reduce the part count. The T1 Dart Aerospike really isn’t much better or worse than the Rapier / Broadsword. Sure each has their own nitch but Aerospike motors are too few and far between to be worth using on anything beyond MK2. Yet those that do exist (mods) don’t properly scale the motors relative the the nozzles physical surface area. Case in point, Linear vs Toroidal: Linear has a much greater nozzle surface area and should produce a much greater thrust but at the cost of a lower ISP. However, all the Aerospikes I’ve tied use a similar if not the exact same profile and stats, just repackaged / rescaled for the weight of the motor. (Just like the other SSTO motors) The “Air-Breathing” Nuclear (ABN) engines have really horrible assent profiles which makes them unable to lift their own weight off the runway. Even at their ideal mach / altitudes the performance is very poor for the tech level / costs involved. This is further compounded by the fact that the ABN’s are not dual modal, thus becoming useless in a vacuum. IMO, even with the crap assent profiles, they’d be worth using ‘if’ they were capable of switching modes. (switch from air-breathing to liquid or LH2 fuels) For the life of me, I can’t recall ever reading of anyone even using ABN’s. That in itself says something and the mod developers should take note of this.

So far It works... (does a little dance!)

There is a serrious problem with adding RTG decay... Once you leave a ship to do something else, that RTG would still lose potency based on the amount of time elapsed. Now while this sounds trivial, its not. Comsider that RTG’s can not be shut down and that game time spent else where will impact ALL units with RTG’s regardless of what they’re doing. From a developers standpoint I can see why this wasn't implemented and why this was left to modders.

I see this all the time with PN. Basically anytime i try to fine tune the ships angle relative to its destination. @linuxgurugamer The marker showing the nearest "distance" two objects pass, often stutters badly if the the marker is intersecting another point. Its often so bad that I cant click on it to display the information.

Awesome m8! Will DL and try this on the save that has the stuck ports. Kevin

So is this a known bug?

Check the video as you can see that verbos mode is active. Far as i know of i never removed the debug.ddl in the hopes that I’d catch a failure. Can recheck tomorrow... Btw, it looks to me that this takes place when two craft merge.

Ok, i reset the file privileges.

Captured the error after i re-joined the Harvester to the station. You don't see this in the video but I'm pressing the action groups for the engines to get them to rotate and nothing is happening. However you can clearly see that the CC and CCW buttons are not shown. LOG https://drive.google.com/file/d/1c7IojrAZbDvHI-u1tajgCv-hzCYZv0qh/view?usp=sharing Video

Output_Log: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GFPkMmVEY9l7uv62ECyQ620bmnhMzx40/view?usp=sharing Note: During the test i was unable to force another failure. Now as recommended, I toggled back and forth several times and even used the ports under physics-warp conditions. It's possible that the failure take place during the transition between various units or where multiple units are docked and un-docked. I'll keep the Verbose mode active and dump the log should I see another failure.

I’ll give this a spin tomorrow and post the results for you. (screen shots most likely) If i can find the saved log I’ll post this as well. However that being said, last time i looked for a log, the one i found was HUGE and thus not possible to share without a 3rd party site. I’ll just reuse that save file i sent you earlier as it loads right into the error. Should make it easy, i hope. Side note: Would it be possible to have the Docking Ports use manually saved set-points? Or to put it another way, have the port remember a saved position (s) and toggle to this using the action groups. (think chained animation) Something like this would allow multiple docking ports to move in unison and possibly allow for a unit to walk if the toggles are setup correctly. Currently i can use action groups toggles but only rotate to a preset number of degrees per the toggle activation. While this works well, its rather limited and can’t be safely triggered while the craft is under acceleration. Case-in-point, the video i posted, that crafts motors are mounted to allow dual flight configurations. However this can’t be changed while the engines are active due to massive shifts in CG and thrust. Being able to use preset positions could allow a craft to “transform” while accelerating.

Anyone else keep losing the "Target" when editing a node?