Farnsworth

Yeah, the grid rocks, and 7.3 completely eliminated stuttering for me.

Hmmm, have never had anything "stick" to the launchpad. One rocket went out of control because I only had fuel for 2 of the engines, but that was my fault. Haven't played in a bit, but I'll see if I can recreate this. Try hydraulic cylinders on your base's legs to lift and lower the launchpad.

So, when you build a craft, but don't launch it, exit scene, and return, the craft is gone? Are the resources gone as well? I will admit I have never tried leaving a craft on the launchpad. Does it work with other launchpads? "GNE" Industries lol

This is so impressive. Nice work Raz. (mind reels with possibilities)

Holy S%$t man. Love this mod.

No worries, I appreciate the feedback and am glad you enjoy it. Please re-download from the link in the first post. This will make the ramp open automatically when the sphere is opened, which will fix the bizarre resetting when exiting the scene. I will look at changing the ramp animation as an altered version, as I enjoy the floating placement.

Yeah, I am not sure why the sphere reverts back to it's closed animation. I will probably release one where the ramp comes down automatically, which should fix it for now. Workaround for now is to close the sphere and ramp before exiting scene. I do not have the plugin skills to make a configurable height ramp, but you could use some of the new infernal robotics parts to adjust your base height.

A "Clear Launchpad" option would be up to Skykooler, as he wrote the plugin. One thing you can do is select them manually with "[" and "]" and then select "end flight". I have never had a ship get stuck to the launchpad though. I believe it is always damaged by exhaust, but have yet to blow one up through this damage. If it does get destroyed, there are values in the cfg that can be changed to strengthen it.

Which size are you using (not that it should matter), and do you have all of the required materials to build the ship available? I have never had an issue with ships spawning, unless my materials were too low. To answer your question, I have not tried surface attaching a radial port directly to the sphere, I usually just stick them on the base girders or fuel tanks. Your base is very, very small, maybe as small as possible. Check my image below (apologies, only shot of a base I have up right now), and take note of how my base is more of a platform for the sphere to sit on. Due to to the fuel constraint of the mod, I usually attach 4 fuel tanks to the girders as well, but this was just for making rovers. I attach the sphere to a rockomax hub, then girders out in all 4 directions with ground supports, docking ports, etc. Your design could vary wildly however, this was just a quick test that happens to hold up pretty well. Try to build a bigger base for it, and you should have an easier time attaching everything. Let me know if you have any other questions.

Yeah, the texturing is not final on this and there is no bump map applied yet. This was just a placeholder I made in the beginning. It is my first part so I am still learning the ins and outs. An iris animation would be sweet, although would have to be a new model. Thanks for the feedback. I will look at texturing the sphere to have an indicator. I also need to figure out how to get the sphere to save it's state when you switch ships. As for the wobble, you may need to surface attach some girders and connect them to your base. They will clip when the sphere opens, but it is much more stable. If it is the same base as your pic, I would go for something a little more stable. Also, do you guys like the animations for the ramp, or would it be better if it just folded out more "realistically"?

It doesn't look like you have a probe core on your base. You need a controller (probe or pod) for the sphere to operate. The second pic, I believe I just edited some hexcans for rocket parts full and added them to the base (rovers only need parts and electric charge), the third pic, the two landers are connected through KAS, and they hold 850 rocket parts each. There is no need for the Vanguard plugin, the animations are built into the part.

You can use KAS (I attach them to the base the sphere is on), or docking ports should work as well. See the thread for the launchpad for some pics.

No worries, you don't have to zero out every part, just your root part (ie for my launchpad I only zero the sphere, platform and all else retains offset from sphere). If your empty game object is off-center, you can re-center it before importing your object by zeroing the values in Unity. If your object is not zero coming from Blender, it may be offset, but showing "0" in the translation, rotate, and scale info boxes. Also I saw an older post from a few days ago in another thread, if you haven't figured it out yet, the way I do colliders is to export the collider from 3d program as a separate object, then set as child of main object in unity. Add a mesh collider, tick convex, and turn off mesh rendering to hide it from view. You can also remove the animation component from the collider if it is not animated itself.

It's also a good idea to zero out your root geometry in Blender before exporting. (0 in the X, Y, and Z transform, rotation, and scale) I don't use Blender but I think there are options to set the scale and axis conversion on export. Also, here is a vid that may be too comprehensive, but seems to cover every aspect from Blender to Unity. http://cgcookie.com/unity/2011/12/05/exporting-characters-from-blender/

Thanks, and yeah. The issue with box or cylinder colliders was: 1) the edges would connect with the ground while opening causing the entire pad to jump. 2) when attaching stuff in the vab, it would connect to thin air due to whichever collider was there. In the future I will probably animate the sphere collider so when it falls, it will roll. I also have a lift built for rovers, but need to figure out how to set the root frame of a clip to something other than it's first frame.

Update: New ramps for the launchpad. See first post.

Coming soon for testing from GNE, new Rover Lifts for our Spherical Launchpads!

Just started playing with v7 last night, and wow, impressive. The overlay scanning is hypnotic. My two cents: I prefer not seeing the cells yet to be scanned, as in the look on the dark side. I think it is cool to have only scanned cells filled while the rest is normal terrain. I won't complain either way, as I love kethane. Really great work!

WIP of sample analysis oven (fully animated, no textures). Suggestions, comments, and crits welcome.

1. See my second pic in the original post for an example of a base for the sphere to sit on. It has docking ports and a KAS winch system to connect ore, metal, kethane parts, etc. 4. There is a top attachment node, but be sure to detach anything from there as it will collide with launching ships if not. 2 and 3 were answered by Sephlington (thanks). Please let me know if you have any other questions.

Thanks, I did not know that about colliders on the same part. My concern is when it opens, if the sphere has a base attached as in my original posts pics, will the sphere collider not collide with the solar array, girder, etc?

Open the Launchpad's part.cfg with notepad and add these lines: MODULE { name = KethaneExtractor PowerConsumption = 24 Resource { Name = Ore Rate = 5 } } MODULE { name = KethaneExtractorAnimatorLanded } MODULE { name = KethaneConverter SourceResource = Ore TargetResource = Metal ConversionEfficiency = 1 SourceConsumption = 3 PowerConsumption = 10 } MODULE { name = KethaneDetector DetectingPeriod = 1.5 DetectingHeight = 250000 PowerConsumption = 0.8 Resource { Name = Ore } } MODULE { name = KethaneConverter SourceResource = Metal TargetResource = RocketParts ConversionEfficiency = 1 SourceConsumption = 3 PowerConsumption = 10 } after these lines: MODULE { name = ExLaunchPad debug = false } This will give the sphere launchpad the ability to scan, and mine ore, then refine into metal and rocket parts. Hope it helps.

If you want to add the functionality to the launchpad (ie scanning, mining, refining), you can add the modules from the runway's part.cfg to this launchpad's part.cfg. Alternatively, you can copy the module from the part that you want the functionality from to any other part, including the launchpad. I hadn't even considered building a runway inside the sphere, could be done I suppose, but I am looking at a new smelter and miner first.

Lol, awesome.

Thanks, glad you like it. Thanks, I was using your launchpad initially, which worked perfect. When you mention something on the bottom, are you referring to a collider, or a structure, like legs? Because the collider is something I fought with a lot while making this. Due to the pivot of the sphere, they will clip unless you build the base on a tower-like structure. I am open to any suggestions or advice you may have though. Airships are sweet by the way, but you already know that Thanks a lot.