Hodo

You can cut down on a lot of the extra parts. I understand you think you will need everything but if you were to built a bit more utility into the ship design you won't need as many parts. Do you really need 4 ion engines on on section? Do you need so many small solar panels when larger ones will do better for less? Do you need six wheeled Rovers, can you get away with smaller 4 wheeled rovers? Unfortunately I see a lot of "problems" with that design that are going to cause issues even without the frame rate lag. I am sorry to say that but I think that design is doomed.

Do you mean this one? http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/96766 I like that cockpit but it is a bit of a pain because it is long. I rarely use it now. But the other mods are listed in my thread in my forum post.

B9 air brakes are not OP right now. If I just place two of the larger ones on a decent sized craft, they barely slow it down. I have had 6 of them on one craft that weighed in at a hefty 60 tons on re-entry it wouldn't slowdown, it barely slowed down for landing at a 3deg glide slope.

Can you give us some insite on what will change on the wing code? How will it affect current designs? Will it require a complete redesign of existing craft? I mean I would be really upset at losing this gem of a craft, my Mirage 2000 knock off SSTO. I mean it handles like a dream, flies easier than anything I have ever made, and it was all accidental. On a more serious note, I have noticed another minor bug. Not sure what is causing it, tried removing FAR then reinstalling with the latest build on Github. But after each flight the CoL shifts way back, almost to where I imagine the CoL shifts to at hypersonic speeds. But as soon as I tap the procedural wing or take off a control surface and put it back it updates back to where it should be. But it has no affect to the craft in flight or in the FAR diagnostic graphs or charts. Oh one more request..... do you have any information for real aircraft like a F-16 or Mig-21 in the FAR diagnostic graphs and charts? I would love to see what a highly menuverable aircraft that is unstable naturally looks like compaired to a stable aircraft that doesnt need fly-by-wire controls to keep it in the air.

Its like using B9 without FAR. See what I did there?

SERIOUSLY! THIS THREAD IS TWO, READ 2, YEARS DEAD! Holy necro, of necros, this is like raising King Tut!

Looks like the issue, is your CoL is a hair in front of your CoM, this is only made worse as the craft drains fuel. This will shift your CoM further back towards your tail making your plane very nose light and unstable. Ideally you want your CoL just behind your CoM. While this is a bit further back than I would care for it is about where you would want it for a stable flight profile at subsonic speeds. The CoL shifts back towards the tail at supersonic speeds so that is something to be aware of when designing a craft, this affect is often called "Mach Tuck". There is a very simple way of getting around this, design your craft with one half full or empty tank near the rear of your craft, so when you reach supersonic speeds you can shift your fuel load shifting it back to keep it stable at supersonic speeds. To fix your craft would be pretty simple, lose the canards at the nose, they are just shifting your CoL forwards to much. If your CoL is to far to the back of the craft, then move your wings forward a bit, or widen the base of then a bit. You will also want to check your FAR information screen, all of the numbers in the second tab on the top should be in the green at .35 all the way up to mach 2. If you have something that is just slightly in the red you will be ok, but if something is showing more than +2 then you have an issue and should go back to fine tuning the design. Ultimately for a highly nimble craft you want your numebers pretty close to zero but still in the negatives. EDIT #2- One last thing, I would move the rear landing gear forward towards your CoM. The are the pivot point for when you are rotating your nose up to get off the ground. The further back they are the harder it is to lift the nose, because you will be pushing the gear into the ground. Most aircraft rotate around the CoL so if you place your gear almost directly under that you should be fine. But do it after you move your CoL to be just behind your CoM.

Pretty simple, download, install to gamedata folder. Then load game. Most of the stuff in game is pretty easy, you will need a weapon control module on a ship or craft to use a weapon. Other than that pretty simple.

I haven't had stock souposphere since the first hour of the game. I launched a rocket it went to space I achieved orbit first try, went to the mod forums and found FAR, and never looked back. And that was over a year ago.

FAR, been using FAR since day 1 of my KSP time, FAR+DRE. And your poll is a bit biased. I love FAR only because I love planes more than rockets and it is easier for me to test out aircraft builds and get a more realistic result in FAR then I would out of stock.

Unless you are running FAR or NEAR, you won't be able to set the controls for roll, pitch, and yaw. let alone flaps. But as Rocketeer said QE-Roll WS-Pitch AD-Yaw. But if you are messing with planes and are serrious about aircraft you will probably end up with FAR. In that case you will be able to right click on the control surface and set it to which action you need it to perform.

The big question is what exactly does the FAR graphs and diagnostic charts say in the SPH? Check the AOA numbers the Mach numbers, and the diagnostic tab. Post pictures of all three of those and I am sure we can help you with that problem also. Good luck and have fun.

I use DRE, and I can say it is a bit frustrating at times bringing a craft in and having to slow down half way around the world just to land at KSC.

The simple fix for this is to add the B9 invisible struts to the parts to connect them and make sure they don't shift around on you.

This is probably the best answer for this question. But in most cases if it works in FAR or NEAR it will work in the Soupo'sphere.

This is why my ejection systems have a bit of control to them, and fire them up and away from the craft.... which is fine in the atmosphere, but sucks when in orbit.

That is about when it slows down for me, 250-350. But I am also running quite a few mods, including Kerbinside which REALLY slows down the frame rates with large vessels.

Unfortunately I would not be able to test it out for you, I run the mod FAR which turns the atmosphere of stock KSP from the soup'o'sphere to a realistic air atmosphere. So planes fly like planes, not like submersibles in a voyage to the bottom of the sea.

The poles were flat last time I was there, (.21). But honestly for FAR and NEAR, treat Duna like a world without an atmosphere. It is so thin it is actually easier to come in use the atmosphere to slow you down to Kerbin hypersonic speeds, mach 5+ and then use drag chutes to slow you down to near mach 1, then just switch to a VTOL mode and land as a VTOL. The amount of wing you would have to bring to Duna to land at a reasonable speed is HUGE! Duna is by far one of the hardest places to land a SSTO space plane because of its thin atmosphere. It is just enough to fool you into thinking your plane will fly normally, but it isn't enough to actually keep a plane in the air at a reasonable speed.

I am not at home so unfortunately I can't recreate your design and show you what I mean. But I can walk you through it. I would raise the engines to be inline with the CoM so the CoT drives through the CoM. Then for the wings, you really don't need bigger wings but they will help. The stock KSP atmosphere dynamics is like soup so it isn't going to fly like a real plane anyway. The last thing to move the control surfaces is I would add small elevator winglets to the tail of the craft, this would move your CoL back a bit but it will also give you some much needed pitch control. To counter the CoL moving back I when you move the engines up, you can shift them back just a hair this would move the CoM back to about where it is at now. Lastly the landing gear, it would be best if you went to a traditional tricycle gear setup, where you have a nose gear and then main gear set just behind your CoM, this will be your rotation point for when you rotate the craft on take off. If they are to far back you will be pushing them into the ground when you try and take off making it impossible for you to do it before the end of the runway, and if they are to far forward then the back of the plane will just tilt back and sit on the ground as soon as you load in.

Depends on my SSTO, I have several that I am now using and one in testing. The one in testing is the largest I have made to date, at 630tons able to haul 150tons into orbit and cost around 340k. Then there is the one that is my medium hauler and long haul cargo SSTO, which takes things up to geosync orbit in a single flight. It runs in at 150k. Then there is my light cargo SSTO, which is the cheapest at around 60-70k. Or any of my combat SSTOs. Which range from a 30-70k. Again it all depends on what I am needing it for.

Ok first thing I see without ever flying the craft is you don't have any real pitch authority with the craft, your control surfaces are to close to the CoM, this means they will do next to nothing in helping the aircraft point up or down. The other problem is the tail dragger design is never going to be that good for take off or landing expecially on a jet. Last problem I see is the Center of Thrust (CoT) is below your Center of Mass (CoM) this is going to cause the craft to pitch up, without any real pitch control this means the craft will just flip end over end without any way of stopping it when at full throttle.

Yep sounds like you have to much pressure at the front of your craft, or your CoL is in front of your CoM, either is bad.

The biggest problem with that idea is the difference in mass of the two engines. The RAPIER is a pretty heavy engine for what you get, the LV909 is not. This would shift your CoM towards the nose of the craft throwing off the handling and balance of the aircraft. On the otherhand you have Aerospikes available which are almost the same weight and wont change the CoM that much if at all and have better ISP then the 909s or the RAPIERs. The other downside is the loss of half of your air breathing engine power will have an affect of increased climbing time, longer runways for take off and a much slower acceleration to speed for orbital burn. Most cases I usually design a new craft for exclusively that reason just to take stuff to and from my space station at 100km orbit. The same SSTO also takes satelites and places them in Geosync orbit, pretty sad that it flew all the way to 2868.5km x 2868.5km orbit and managed to launch 2 satelites then return back to the KSC over shoot by 400km turn around then fly back to land.

Rakaydos, KCS123 is dead on again. His picture he shows in the above post is perfect for figuring out the FAR graphs. I often used to use trial and error to get my craft to work before, then I talked with NK and Ferram about those graphs and how to read them, now I get most of my craft to fly exactly the way I want them to before I even leave the SPH. Half of my early designs came from looking at other peoples designs and seeing how they worked, I even downloaded a few and tested them out. Once I figured out the basics I was able to start designing my own, the first ones were basic, then I started experimenting with new designs. I know one of my earliest designs I used for almost a year without changing the basics to it, it was the best SSTO cargo hauler I had made for a good while. I just kept streamlining the design, and cleaning it up. I think when I finally retired the Orca it was up to version J. And I have been tempted to bring it back because it was by far my most useful all around SSTO.