ZodiusInfuser

Note that free moving parts are unbounded. For rotatrons this is fine, but for a rail or gantry it means the connection point could move off in one direction and never stop. You have been warned

Porkjet, maybe that could be resolved if I ever get around to releasing this robotics part (-22.5° to +22.5°): It has the added advantage that once your main fuel tank is decoupled you can realign the angle to the centre of mass.

Just to clarify matters, here's 3 other ways to build a similar craft, with either less or no part clipping. Telescopic Pistons + Truss Segment Standard Piston Foldatrons (quite wobbly) Edit: I plan to look back at the Foldatron solution, as I think I could add a bit more usefullness to the currently planned line-up of parts. This won't reduce the total amount, merely change the roles of some of the parts.

Kipard, if you look back a page you'll see that there's also a normal piston that doesn't clip inside other objects. If there's a demand I could make a half length telescopic piston, but I'm not sure how useful that would be. I should say, this is one of the reasons for the foldatron parts, as some people have pointed out that they want translation, but don't have space in there craft for a telescopic piston.

They're the new version of the telescopic piston, so surface attach to reside within the fuel tank itself. Just ignore all the non "allow clipping in editor" clipping that's going on to make it work

Did a bit of testing today. A few things to iron out, but so far the parts are working great! This makes me really want to do custom IR wheels!

Indeed. Some of the stuff marce has come up with thus far is pretty awesome!

I probably should comment on this, as I got in touch with JDP (the author) a few weeks ago (pre-spaceport shutdown) about adapting Docking Struts for use with Infernal Robotics, and raised this hosting issue with him. Here's his response: Now whether this is permission just for myself or for everyone I don't know.

I prefer having separate modeled parts for free and un-free parts, especially considering that making them free removes any angle/distance constraints. Also, I imagine that most of these parts make use of some sort of worm gear mechanism (since no power is consumed), meaning it wouldn't be physically possible to back-drive them anyway.

Yep . Seemed silly not to make that possible. Making robotics parts does have it's advantages . Whether the final colours will match this is something to be decided later, but I'm definitely keen on having a clean look to all the parts.

It's what I do

So um, I should have been working as mentioned above ... but look, Extendatrons! Unlike past previews I've done, I'm a lot happier with this design. It fits in better with the unified feel I'm going for, whilst still allowing the stackable-ness. Believe me, this is ridiculously hard to model for, especially with a cubed root scaling (×0.7937005) between each telescopic piston size!

I understand that, but why does this new tweakable have to tie into the cfg rotateLimits flag? Couldn't you just have a separate internal variables that stores the tweakable's state? bool rotateLimits = //read from cfg bool limitTweakable = //read current tweakable state if((rotateLimits == True) || (limitTweakable == True)) { //Movement range is limited } else { //Movement range is not limited }

I'd say if rotateLimits = True is set in the CFG then you prevent the limits from being toggleable, since this is the one parameter that distinguishes Pivotrons from Rotatrons. In fact, can't you make it so the tweakable is hidden in that scenario, or is that beyond the power of KSP?

Woot! This seems like the best option IMO. I presume that "Rotate Limits" will only be present for parts that do not have rotation limits set by default? If not for those parts that do have limits designed in the cfg, would the tweakable just define whether they are overwritten or not? I don't want people turning off the limits on all of my carefully designed Pivotrons

I'm impressed! How did you manage to keep the gait in sync when turning on the spot?

I can confirm what sirkut is saying. All my robotics parts have a root GameObject, then meshes Base and Joint directly below. Both have their own collision mesh.

Slowly and No . Unfortunately, I'm going to have to cut back on my Kerbal activities for the next few weeks due to work commitments (writing academic papers etc). I'll try to do bits and pieces when I can, but don't know when they'll be done. A Question: After the foldatron set, what would people like to see me work on next? I know a number of people asked for an expanded structural set, but there's also phoenix trusses, translational parts, and even 2.5m/1.25m pivotron parts (like these below). Of course I reserve the right to go with whatever I have inspiration for first In the meantime though, if people could show off the current set of parts in action that would be great! Maybe it will help me identify gaps in the current lineup of parts.

The existing Right-Angled Rotatrons would work perfectly for that I think

Its a rotatron part that you mount onto a hub part that has 3 attachment points. I did this image a long while ago to show Sirkut the concept: You put the core inline with your craft, and mount the ring onto it.

This would be entirely possible. What kind of purpose would you want the parts for? I'm just thinking that the same effect can be achieved with 2 of the current rotatrons and a truss.

Note that I modelled this before the whole Rework thing, so will eventually look to redo such a part to fit in with the unified styling I've got going on. Until then though, there's no reason for people not to play around with the concept using these "old" parts

A suggest I put forward a while ago (maybe on github?) was that you'd have this tweakable only be present for rotatrons, so that all other parts cannot have their limits disabled. I'd also suggest rotatron max limits should be -360 to +360.

Well if you could at least look through and see if it's possible to separate the launcher and target code into separate modules, then that would be extremely useful. -------------------------------------------------- I'm definitely open to suggestions for new parts. Whether I do it is another matter , but I have listened to peoples ideas in the past (Off-axis rotatron being a good example) I have no plans to add specific parts to fit in with said mod. If things can't be done with the current parts then that suggests a new generic part is needed.

I've already got sirkut and toadicus willing to help make this happen, so the more the merrier . There are a few specific changes I'm after for IR though, mainly separate modules for "launcher" and "target", as well as making the connection joint stronger.