Deadweasel

Guys, guys... This is KSP. EVERY design is assumed to be endangered (or at least a danger to the pilot(s) and everyone in the immediate vicinity). So how about "Dodo"?

*plays Fear of the Dark \m/

Heheheh. That, or it's a slot built specially for Rick Moranis.

Not true. The ugliest ship is one that fails in its purpose. Oops....

Oh. http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/CFG_File_Documentation#Valid_Part_Modules So it is a limitation of the game itself. Something that uses the "Winglet" module to offer aerodynamic control can't also bring in the "FuelTank" module to be a container for resources. That's.... lame.

Seems I'm not the first to have this idea, but... Seriously? Nobody's tried to do anything about this in a year? Is there really something in the game mechanic that prevents a part with lift properties from acting as a fuel tank too? :/ http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/16809-Lifting-bodies-and-fuel-in-wings

Yes, if you're only flying with jet engines. Put a rocket on there for a SSTO though, and it's going to be dry in no time flat, unless you have a lot more fuel. Even my favorite SSTO V/STOL (amphibious) ship needs lots of tanks just to get to orbit. Imagine if all the wings people are using for body structure could carry optional fuel as well! After going back to take a look at my Silverhawk design, which uses those big honking B9 wings, they indeed don't offer any fuel capacity, even though there seems to be an accommodation for it in their config: // --- standard part parameters --- mass = 1.95 dragModelType = override maximum_drag = 0.02 minimum_drag = 0.02 breakingForce = 600 breakingTorque = 600 angularDrag = 2 crashTolerance = 20 maxTemp = 3400 explosionPotential = 0.1 fuelCrossFeed = True // --- winglet parameters --- // dragCoeff will override the maximum_drag value dragCoeff = 0.21 deflectionLiftCoeff = 38.93 [B]{[/B] [B] name = LiquidFuel[/B] [B] amount = 400[/B] [B] maxAmount = 400[/B] [B]}[/B] So maybe with a little more tweaking somehow, they might be modded to actually offer up that capacity, but I still don't even get a context menu on them. Might be time to look at comparing some fuel tank configs to see what might be missing...

With all the mod parts I played with so far, though some of them can cross-feed, why do none of them act as fuel tanks? B9 Aerospace in particular has these massive things, but even though their real world counterparts do it, these carry no fuel at all. Is there a reason why? Without that potential capacity, we're forced into dealing with a fuselage design that's larger than it would need to be otherwise, just to bring enough fuel to make the design useful for more than buzzing the KSP tower. Is it not possible for a part to have aerodynamic properties and carry fuel as well? Is there a way to add the capability (and keep the values at least somewhat in-line with the rest of the game parts)? I know it's not really feasible to balance fuel evenly between tanks and this would likely cause a problem with planes, but I'm willing to bet somebody could come up with a creative means to make it work well on a craft anyway. EDIT: Umm... So I just went back to the B9 wing, and it looks like fuel is indeed part of its config... I don't know if that's a new thing since the .20 update or what, but I've never been able to actually access fuel from those wings before. Looks like it's time for some more experimentation. Pardon the interruption. >_>

The angled wings make it look a bit like a pelican...

I'd recommend against it, unless somebody at Squad gives you the all-clear

Okay, still disabling plugins and playing around to find anything that messes with it, and I did find something interesting: If I set the KSP.exe process to an affinity for just one core of my quad-core CPU, the rampant flashing actually slows down. Something in the way either the game or the AviationLights plugin is apparently affected by processing availability, which is confusing, because isn't the AV plugin attached to a timer in KSP? Why would having a core affinity affect the flash rate? Is there something else it hooks into that I can take a closer look at amongst other system processes?

Well nuts. :/ I'm running a few of the same mods as you, including: CrewManifest ModularMultiWheels Quantum Struts Protractor SubAssemblyLoader ActionsOnTheFly AviationLights (natch!) and, like you, a whole grip of parts like KW Rocketry and B9 Aerospace Digging around, I did discover a redundant, probably out-of-date quantumstruts.dll in the legacy Plugins folder, so I'm going to dive back into the game in a bit to see if that might have been the cause. EDIT: No joy. There's apparently another plugin somewhere that's messing with this, but there are no conflicts showing in the logs. This is going to take some time, looks like. :/

Nope, no joy. They seem to be permanently bugged now. Time to go rummaging and pull mods one by one until I find the culprit.

I'm seeing the return of the "old" bug where the flashing mode would go spastic instead, like a crack-riddled strobe light. They flash incredibly fast for a moment, seize up for a second or two, flash madly again, seize up, rinse and repeat. It didn't start happening until I got multiple flights going simultaneously. There are two vessels currently on orbit, composed of five individual ships that arrived and docked independently. I'm going to do some testing to see if the issue is related to multiple ships docking together using these lights, or if it's a matter of the number of parts deployed that's causing it.

Anybody notice how the Kerbals (at least Bill in this case) instantly freak out if you time warp? "WUT IS THIS VOODOO? IT MUST STOP NAO!!!"

Did you try running it without all the mods? Did you look at the log (alt-f2) to see if something is quietly freaking out in the background with one of the mods? Did you add the mods one by one, checking they worked properly as you added them, or did you just dump-n-run the whole lot at once?

Awesome write-up! I was struggling with a simple ship (basically an automated orange tank) that was going crazy with the RCS freakout dance. Found your article, followed the advice, (forgot all about hack gravity!) and got it sorted in minutes. THANK YOU!

Now we know why Jeb is crazy: he's from NASA!! He's seen it all, therefore, Badass flag=1

Actually, I just ran into this. A ship (basically an orange tank with ASAS and a Skipper slapped on, among a few small other things) that is perfectly able to settle out and stabilize well with RCS suddenly goes completely apesh*t when the station loads in (at 2.5km). Suddenly it can't balance out to save its hull, and since I've got those big KW RCS thrusters on, it just drinks down the monopropellant like its kool-aid.

Personally, I feel that's just a bit too "cheat-y" to be of any use anyway though. I mean, at that point, why not just edit the file to put a ship into orbit instead of flying it at all? Please bear in mind this isn't meant to be a criticism or hateful in any way, I'm just plopping down my two cents on file edits to bypass what could otherwise be looked at as another unexpected challenge in the game instead.

(after staging a lot of dead weight) "Why the HELL did everything just get lighter?! I can't work under these conditions! Screw this!!" *proceeds to flip out*

I don't get the whole thing about not "resurrecting old threads". I don't know how many times I've been looking for an answer to something specific in this game, and Google points me to a year-old post that's related. Anyway, in this case, it's kind of like post-ception. So a post about the history of KSP itself becomes part of history, and is subsequently brought back to the present by somebody digging through the back-posts...Awesome find, and thanks for bringing it back to the front so some of us who hadn't caught it before can see it now!

See 00:56 Rocket flips *could* happen all the time, were it not for the Range Safety Officer, who will detonate that sucker the moment its telemetry goes the slightest bit cuckoo. While we're not exactly concerned about it in the game at present, if rockets were allowed to flip out as frequently in real life, there'd be a heck of a lot of deaths from rockets veering badly off course and plowing into a nearby neighborhood.

Sadly, in your case, there's no (easy) way to edit a fuel line that's already in-place. See the following: PART { name = fuelLine uid = 2318642480 parent = 192 position = 2.58467650413513,1.75481104850769,0.34785333275795 rotation = -0.3755475,0.6030781,-0.6205596,0.3319139 mirror = 1,1,1 istg = 0 dstg = 0 sqor = -1 sidx = -1 attm = 1 cData = tgt: toroidalAerospike_210; pos: -0.1340396,-0.1392897,0.1654928; dir: -0.5268742,-0.5475052,0.6501089; rot: 0.1561866,-0.5270292,0.123186,-0.8262393 sym = 263 srfN = srfAttach, 192 mass = 0.05 temp = -200.5256 expt = 0 state = 0 connected = True attached = True flag = Squad/Flags/satellite EVENTS { } ACTIONS { } } You'd have to edit position, rotation, and the specs for cData as well. Fuel lines work (as you know) by placing them in a certain direction, from source to target, and that's how the specs are laid out in the persistence file too. The trouble comes in trying to determine what those numbers are supposed to be, and the likelihood of simply guessing and getting it right within 10 or even 100 attempts is going to be pretty slim. Unless, of course, you know a lot more about how the game generates and tracks these values than I do. >_> Easiest way would be as previously suggested: set your modified version out to launch (in exactly the same configuration as you have landed on remote right now), do a quicksave, then copy the ship from the quicksave file to the persistence file, making sure to modify the new ship's data points to match exactly what the original has in there already. Then delete the entire original ship from the file, and you should be golden. It goes without saying you should BACK UP YOUR FILE before editing it. Otherwise, take it on the chin like a champ, and send another mission to rescue your stranded crew. For lulz and great profit!

This is by far my favorite SSTO, and it's V/STOL too!! http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/24734-Amphibious-VTOLSSTO-%28Image-heavy%29?highlight=amphibious+ssto Has darn near perfect balance, but if you're slick with the trim, or at least ASAS, it'll keep a heading no problem. I've flown this bugger to orbit and back quite a few times. Sticking a landing on a specific point is a bit challenging with the stock jet engines, but I've embedded optional aerospikes in the vertical engines for drastic last-minute bursts of thrust if needed. <3