Romfarer

I'm making a graphical orbital calculator for lazor system. It is the most complicated thing i have made so far The red lines is your phase angle, and the red dotted line between those is the orbit required to do a successfull transfer burn. Another way to say it is: When the orbit you are at and the red orbit aligns perfectly, it indicates that your current orbit is co-planar with the orbit of your target body. This is the optimal starting orbit of the hohmann transfer. The blue lines is the phase angle at the point to start the transfer burn. And the blue elipse indicates what the hohmann transfer orbit will look like. Inspecting the end point of this orbit (the point where the blue elipse hits the orbit of the target body) you can see how far off from the target you will end up. So this is a reference that can be used to fine tune the elevation of your starting orbit. The display to the right has the phase and departure angles you have seen before in other plugins. ToF stands for Time of Flight and indicates how long it will take to reach your target body. And the delta v is the extra velocity you need to complete the transfer. I still have some work to do to finish this, more precisely i have to get the inerplanetary transfers working. I'd be happy for any suggestions you might have.

Turns out it is not so trivial to make guided missiles that work and hit reliably both in space and on the ground Especially with fast moving targets. Let me give you an example. Target moving at 2km/s, and the missile is moving at 2.5km/s. Now if the missile comes at the target from ahead of it, and the framerate is updated every 0.02 sec. How many meters is it between the updates? I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader, but i can reveal that in high speed interceptions you will find that the missile is usually only inside the blast radius in one or two of the frame updates. PhysX does assist a lot though, i.e. i have tested the scenario above and the hit was recorded even though my missile was never closer than 5 meters from the target.

The bombs will come back strong in the next version. I wrote a new guidance system for them, thats the 3rd time i start over from scratch on that system.

I finally managed to make the Celestial Bodies show up in the target cam Btw is there anything else that would be usefull for the numerical displays?

There are at least two ways to target stuff. 1. Press the hotkey 1 on your keyboard and just click on what you want to target. 2. Open the target tab and click on the vessel/object/celestialbody you wish to target, then press the target button. (The list has to be populated first, either by tracking station linkup, LIDAR or manual scan with the green lazor) Always nice to hear that someone like the mod

I have started another round of formatting the op in an attempt to make the system easier to understand. What exactly is it that makes it difficult?

I have tried to make the op more informative but i continuosly fail at it It's all about putting colored lazors on your vessels, different colors enable different subsystems. The subsystem section on the op has most of the system listed. And they pop up in the subsystems tab in-game.

I fixed the issue with the explosions on the lazor guided missile. It now seems to be 100% reliable and bits are flying EVERYWHERE I also added a proximity detonation function. Now i just have to increase the precision of the guidance system. Hopefully my vectoring pid controller idea will work.

It is no problem to have the missiles do proximity detonation. I could add even a button to the modules tab that toggles this functionality on and off. I could also add a text field where you can manually set the range. The problem may also be related to the type of explosion the missiles have. It doesn't actually make any explosion. All it does is add force to parts within its blast radius. The force at 0 range is 1000, at half range it is 500 and at max range it is 0. I have probably said this before: if the target is at say, half range and 500 force is not enough to send the part flying, either because it is too heavy or because the force applied is not enough to make it break off whatever it is attached to, nothing will happen. If you want to explode things its best to use the bombs. They have some thrust and they work just like a missile if you fire them in orbit. They are more inaccurate than the missiles though because im compensating for the gravity incorrectly. Also if you really just want to clean out debris you can use the S-D button on the target screen, it's available after you have linked up with the tracking station.

the problem is precision. as i described in my post earlier. I'm not sure what speciffic situation you are reffering to but for example at orbit, when the target vessel is traveling at 2km/s the end point i am using for reference is 2km beyond my vessel and rapidly fluctuating by, i dont know how much. This is why my missiles miss by said meters. i really don't know if it is possible bo hit targets traveling at this speed in the real world. All i know is the issues i listed up in my previous post. If i can overcome those im confident i can atleast make the missiles hit "sometimes".

the problem is precision. as i described in my post earlier. I'm not sure what speciffic situation you are reffering to but for example at orbit, when the target vessel is traveling at 2km/s the end point i am using for reference is 2km beyond my vessel and rapidly fluctuating by, i dont know how much. This is why my missiles miss by said meters. i really don't know if it is possible bo hit targets traveling at this speed in the real world. All i know is the issues i listed up in my previous post. If i can overcome those im confident i can atleast make the missiles hit "sometimes".

You can run as many systems as you want, at the same time too Basically you just put lazors on top of color crystals, then mount them on your vessel to enable different subsystems. To get started it's probably best that you read the op especially the parts about assembly and subsystems. It really makes my day to hear that you guys like this mod Btw: Have you created a new missile model or is it just a .cfg edit?

I have already fixed this bug and uploaded it. Just reload the file on the op. The bug had nothing to do with 0.17. Well only indirectly ;-) When 0.17 came out i rushed out all the planetary parameters, and with it, the bug that cause this. Let me know if you find any more issues. The bugfix also contain a tweaked guidance system for the lazor missiles. It should work a lot better in space now. It is still not able to hit moving targets though. The problems are: 1. Setting the direction of the missile, it needs more precision. 2. Compensating for drag, gravity, coriolis, centripetal, etc. forces.

Fixed that typo. It IS 0.17 compatible.

LazorSystem is now 0.17 compatible. Let me know if you find any bugs, or i will put some in there on purpose The target tab now has a lot of parameters for the new planets....Enjoy

OMG i am laughing so hard right now..... public void ExecuteTasks() { foreach (KPSmapLocation task in tasks.Keys) tasks[task](task); foreach (KPSmapLocation task in taskstasks.Keys) taskstasks[task](task); taskstasks.Clear(); } Clearly some tasks is about to be executed on the kps system somewhere

It doesn't lag too much on my rig. But i wasn't able to take off with it. This is because the long claw on top moves the com of the craft too far up which results in it flipping over the moment you activate the tractor beam. It will take some serious stabilizing to keep the claw facing upwards in hover mode. I'm going to look into making a stabilizing system for the tractor beams though. In the mean time i'd suggest building the vessel in the VAB so you get better symmetry to it, get access to the retrograde rocket stabilizer and also put the claw under the vessel, on the z axis of com. As you probably have figured out already, KPS only requires the lazor system module with a lazor on top to work. Nice list of locations btw. If you don't mind i'll add this to the default list that comes with lazor system. The retrograde function is available for craft assambled in the VAB. Ok i did some testing and figured out what is happening. You are correct, there is a bug with hover mode, and probably tractor beams in general when placed on space planes that have the command pod facing towards the horizon. I suppose it has something to do with what is considered the "up" axis for the vessel.

I use some approximations to lighthen the load on the physics engine and help with stability but that is only for the hover mode. I'm not sure what you mean by "the lasers couldn't keep up with it. Please explain in more detail. This just might be a bug in the lazor system, again i have to ask for more information. If you could attatch the craft file and give me a more thorough explanation it would be most helpful.

I have tried this and it seems to delete the craft when i swap to another vessel. However if you for example use lazor guided flight and go on eva, the craft is not deleted, it continues to fly with lazor guided flight enabled and an active lazor system which you can control while on eva. This is a feature i have implemented. There was a bug with it in the version i uploaded first but i corrected the issue and uploaded that last night. By design, eva's will remember which lazor system vessel they belong to and as long as they are within 90km of that vessel, it's lazor system will be available. The longer travel time the missiles have the more accurately it will hit. All depending on angle. But if i take off in a plane and shoot at the SPH while facing in the other direction and SPH is like 2km away, the missiles will turn around and hit the target The DR stuff is great for making missile lunchers. I also use that in my spider ship lifter that operates with tractor beams. You can make all sorts of things with tractor beams. Here is a kerbal accelerator If you shoot tractor beams at your own vessel it is even possilbe to make parts spin around, to create sort of a drive wheel which in turn can create lift.

Lazor system is very configurable, and if you dont want a subsystem installed, dont install it. (this is done in-game btw and has nothing to do with plugins) If you only want the lazor system, just install the stuff in the Romfarer_LazorSystem folder. The other one is for the missiles and bombs. This is the Kerbal Positioning System and it comes with all configurations of lazor system. When you first install the system it comes with some pre-made locations. So all you have to do to see the example flags is hit the red lazor system button, and go to map view. To add locations go to Subsystems -> KPS. To edit and delete locations go to the Targets tab.

In order to make the missiles hit a moving/flying target it needs to be aiming at where the target is going to be. This can be acheived with the proportional navigation algorithm. The control system i have implemented is a gross approximation of that method. So i had to see for myself how the missiles were behaving in space, i have only tested this below 10km while making it. Good news, when i fired the first missile i instantly knew, "this will work". And i also have a pretty good idea about what the problem is: My implementation uses the velocity of the missile to approximate the proportional term in the navigation algorithm. On the ground this works fine cause i can use the surface velocity vector. In orbit however this vector is changed to the orbit velocity vector. The change happens at approx 40km. I really need to know how to set the correct velocity vector. And just hardcoding it to 40km will probably not work on the mun.

I wonder how irl missiles would do if shot from an orbiting space craft going 2000ms. Right now the targeting system can only reliably hit stationary targets while fired from crafts that fly at reasonable speeds. It will take some modifications to make the missiles hit moving targets, but it may still be extremely difficult to make them hit orbiting vessels. Lazor System increases the 2,5km viewing distance of ksp to 95km and all missiles fired should work normally within this range. The missiles have a kinetic warhead which will apply 1000 force at its center with linearly decreasing effect up to a range of 30 meter. It is entirely possible that the vessel you were aiming at actually held together, i.e. its mass was too great for the blast to propel and it's parts held together. That said i have experienced some unexpected results too.

camera tracking requires a target and doing this will currently make the missile try to target itself. I could change the control of the missile to lock on and follow the target at activation time. But it would be difficult to disengage the target after that =/ I created the missiles as an example. It should be relatively easy for other modders to create that. You just have to paste the code from the lazor missile on, change the mass and thrust and you are good to go. I never thested the lazor missile in space, the missile will fly but i have no idea how well it will hit, let me know how that works out for you ;-)

What exactly do you mean? The target tab won't update by itself. You have to either put some blue lazors on your vessel and connect to the tracking station or run the short range lidar system.

I just uploaded beta 8 It has missiles, bombs, better hovering control, nightvision on the whole screen, a LazorVision update that mimics the navball, and a few other things, check out the op for more info. The main feature in this update is the module system. With this you can connect your mods to lazor system and have it take care of the aiming for you. Keep in mind that this is the first version of the system and i plan to expand heavily on it. To illustrate how it works i added the lazor guided missiles and bombs. Feel free to use this code as a template for your own modules. And let me know if you need additional part modules to handle the aiming. And if you want to take off with the bomb, make sure your plane can handle taking off with it, or it will explode and disintegrate everything around ksc