KerrMü

That is a rather complicated topic. In short, rocket nozzles are often optimized for best performance in intended environment. Lower in the atmosphere the air pressure confines the exhaust gasses kind of like a nozzle, so you don´t need to put a big and heavy metal one on the bottom of your rocket. The lower the surrounding atmospheric pressure, the less it pushes against the exhaust gasses. You can observe that when you watch videos of rocket launches. At launch the exhaust gasses look like a column of fire, but higher up they spread much wider at the bottom of the nozzles. This lowers the efficiency of the motor, so you need bigger nozzles to force the gasses to go out to the back and not so much to the sides. In KSP this is just simulated with different engine specs. There are just some engines that are really good at launch, some are good higher up in the atmosphere, and some are best used in vacuum. The aerospike rocket engine that we have in KSP but not quite in real life is an attempt to deal with this problem, but has draw backs on its own. This is a crude simplification and there are other factors like the actual design of the motor and so on. I suggest you read further into this topic. It´s quite fascinating and understandable without a physics degree.

Updated an old design to new technology today. Took it out for a testflight, left it alone for an hour, came back and found it near the southern ice caps. Ok, it doesn´t fly straight. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

@Shadowmage Hi, 400 RPM seems to be the sweetspot. Thank you very much for that info. This was very helpful for my little project. From earlier Duna planes I kinda knew that surface is key, but for testing this craft started out with 2 motors with 4 blades each... I could have just left them at home. Now I ended up with 4 motors and 48 blades and it flies really nicely.

It´s been a long time since I thought "hmmm, could I fly this over to the island airfield?" Turns out I could. Phew! Just before the sun went down. I barely made it. Fuel was running out and the landing involved extreme amounts of luck and very little skill. I´d say this heli is a step into the right direction, but it definitely isn´t good. It is controllable with my old flightstick, but with keyboard... not really. Maybe I´ll be able to improve it with more experience. Oh, and the fenestron isn´t there just for good looks. I cheated a little bit. Six of the 12 blades are for steering, the other six for yaw trim.

@Noir Thanks for the clarification. You´ve put a lot of effort in it and I think I now understand much better what is bothering you. And I agree with you on many points. I´m pretty sure and hopeful there are some improvements on the way. And like you said, in a game the devs have to make do with some compromises, like somewhat simplified equasions on the side of physics for examle. Maybe some values could be tweaked to improve the behavior of the turboshafts. And yes, the fuel consumption feels a little bit awkward at the moment. Kind of unintuitive. So, for me it´s time to go to bed now. Can´t think straight anymore and it took far too long to find the word "unintuitive" in my brain. Whatever you do, have a nice time.

@Noir Hey, thx for the polite answer. It is very much appreciated. Of course your criticism is welcome. You´re constructive and you´ve got valid points. Part count for example. And I didn´t want to attack anyone in no shape or form. I just wanted to give my opinion why I think the advantages of a flexible system outweigh the disantvantages. I´m sorry that we disagree on this, but I´m really having fun building with it right now. On the technical side I can´t argue with you. Torque effects, prop wash aso. My flying experience is limited to building a few balsawood gliders as a kid, crashing far too often in IL-2 Sturmovic back then, and now KSP. Tbh I thought the motors are ok with fuel and air going in and something round comes out of the box and spins -> rest of the aircraft counter rotating (thanks to Newton, always making things difficult). Genuine question: How should torque affect the characteristics of ,let´s say, a single engine aircraft? I mean, what feels so wrong about it now? Anyways, have fun playing. And is it really seven years already? Holy .... we´ve come a long way.

Just a few friendly words to all the voices in this thread who want the new propellers made easyer. Let´s be honest here. We don´t need all the new stuff, robotics, props, programming, to play in career mode. I´ve played career since it came out and got everything done I needed/wanted to without those new toys. But that´s the thing, you see? They are NEW TOYS! Yippie! Pre Breaking ground and 1.7.3 I had run out of ideas what to build next or what mission to fly next. Now we´ve reached a new level of what we can build in this game. New functions, new machines, new ideas. And the old crafts that worked perfectly fine before BG? They still work perfectly fine, but now we can - if we want to - rebuild them to do their jobs more elegantly, more efficiently, sometimes less efficient but funnier or cleverer. That satisfying feeling when the machine that you built meets or exceeds your expectations. The base game hasn´t changed. But now, on top of it, there is a completely new level of complexity. New stuff to learn. (And I like learning new stuff) Regarding the implementation: In my book the devs have already found clever workarounds for limitations of the game engine. Are they perfect and foolproof? Of course not. Just like in real life. If you overstress mechanical systems, there is a chance they will break/ go boom. If the programmers find a few tweaks here and there in the future, that would be cool. But for now I´m more than ok with the implementation. Is building custom propellers/rotors more complicated as it absolutely has to be? Yes. Overly complicated? I don´t think so. Now we have a system in which we can tweak our propulsion system to pretty much exactly what we need in different circumstances... COOL Now, I´m pretty stupid, but it only took me a few hours to go from my first crude 1.7.3 prop plane (posted on the first page of this thread) to a transport plane that could deliver 10 tons to the poles. I just had to slowly (remember, I´m stupid) understand how the new engines work. Helicopters on the other hand are something completely different. Man, they are complicated. I tried to build one with tailrotor yesterday and failed spectacularly. After pulling my hair in frustration (long hair, will take for ever to grow back) I closed the game and opened up a few webpages and books and realized how little I knew about helicopters. I´ve made some real progress today. So where are we... Hmmm, a game that confronts me with some really complicated problems, but only if I choose to be confronted, and that encourages me to learn how a helicopter works, or how bipedal robots walk, or just how to build a crane that doesn´t fall over... I don´t know about you all, but I am as happy as a pig in the mud. There is ONE little thing that I HATE about this update. I don´t have nearly enough time to play with my new toys these days.

I´m getting windspeed effects with my very first 1.7.3 prop plane... Not having much time today, but the weekend is going to be crazy exciting. A big thank you to all the folks at SQUAD for the new toys. Feel firmly hugged.

Don´t worry, I didn´t use indestructible parts. And believe me I destroyed fortunes yesterday. I made 6 testruns before recording. On two runs the runway stayed intact, on 4 it blew up. It just would have been a pain to record it in that circumstances. I took the little rant out for a more casual walk today. From 40 to 70% thrust it behaves really well. The crazy thing is: The 3 pairs of legs are independant. How quick they go into resonace is remarkable. Could watch that all day. And hey, I´m fine with every category you throw me in. Running this thing in the articulated legs competition just would not be fair, me thinks. Have a great evening.

I LOVE this! Thank you very much

Hi Earlier today I´ve been fooling around with a walker idea I had last night, and as my "Rockroach" surprisingly reached 12m/s I thought "wait a minute, I think I´ve seen a challenge for this sort of stuff". After reading this thread I obviously thought I must go faster. So I scrapped Rockroach and a few hours later the "Rant" was born. If this falls under the rotor-with-some-legs-sticking-out rule, I´m fine with that. Oh, and I hope that it´s ok that I had to enable indestructible buildings. The runway tended to blow up at speeds over 20m/s. ¯\(ツ)/¯ Dammit, I wanted to tidy up the garage today. I blame you @Kergarin To the rest of you folks, lot´s of awesome (and sometimes hilarious) walkers around here. Have fun, Mü Edit: Just found a typo in the vid. Sorry, got late. And I have absolutely no clue why my recording software cropped of the edges. Will investigate tomorrow. Edit2: https://kerbalx.com/herrmue/Rant

Hi folks My day in one picture: What?! That´s it. Half a baby step, from standstill to (maybe) start walking. I´m still learning how to use KAL1000 adequately. This sequence used maybe 55-60% of all the robotics on this thing. The walking loop - if possible - will probably make my brain go . But that is for another day. Have fun. @Brikoleur Hey man, sorry for not answering your suspension question. I´m not having much time for forum browsing or playing at the moment. Your submarine program looks amazingly fun. I´ll have to dive into that soon. But man, submarines are tricky. Kudos to you, Sir. Edit: Maybe I´ll have to redesign Mr Robotos feet. More traction would be good. Any ideas how to give the soles more grip guys?

Not yet. I´ll make one quick. (might take a bit till it´s online. my upload speed is terrible) I´ll post the link here when I´m done. Thx for the quick reply. Edit: @nestor Ok, vid should be up now. Sry, took some time. I had to re download all the recording and editing stuff. Not making vids very often. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Hi guys. I´ve been tinkering with a swashplate rotorhead design today and with low speeds it looked promising. But at higher revolutions hefty oscillations started to occur. I tried to figure out where those were coming from for a few hours. Then I reverse engineered the whole thing bit by bit to find out that the EM-64 was the wobbly part. I´ve build quite a few test stands. Here is a pic of one of them. (to the right the rotorhead so far) Test stand: Everything is built with symmetry mode and attached to nodes. If the I-beams are surface attached to the rotor the effect gets worse. The Girder Segment to the front left in the pic is rocking and weaving quite hard in this experiment. Maybe there is a slight symmetry issue with the EM-64? I know, this isn´t exactly in the scope of the game, but nontheless I wanted to ask if there is anything you could do about that. Seems quite a lot of players are building choppers at the moment . Should I write a bug support, and if yes, could you send me a link to the Breaking Ground bug tracker? Apart from that I´m having a blast with the DLC and haven´t found any major issues yet. Thanks, Mü

Thanks for the reply mate. You´re probably right, I just haven´t observed any effect yet. I haven´t tried helicopters today. Just wanted to say helicopters are rockhard. It will take some time till we learn how to build and control them sufficently. Don´t worry, you´ll get there Currently I´m slowly figuring out how to use KAL 1000 with very simple tasks. Not easy, but it´s robotics, it´s not supposed to be.

@Frank_G That´s a very nice looking lander you got there. I´ve got a payload for you: Curiosity Rover with fully functional rocker-bogie suspension. And it can climb stuff . Suspension also works with normal wheels now. Aaaawesome! Has anybody figured out what damping on the rotation servos does?

First flight with breaking ground. Me and Jeb are enjoying this. I´m beginning to think planning this baby was a little bit ambitious, but to be honest, I pretty much knew that frome the start. I´ll have to tinker with the new stuff way lot more. Maybe we´ll come up with new awesome motor ideas. something with pistons... maybe??? Sooo much to do and even more to learn.

I just let my mind idle for a bit and came up with at least 50 ideas for what I want to do with the robotic parts. This is beyond my wildest dreams! Thank you sooo very much Squad. I would buy this alone for the little camera arm to put on rovers.

Hi dr.phibes When I build a new plane, the most tweaking I do is to the angles of the wings, stabilizers, control surfaces and so on. When you put wings on your plane, they are by default (most of the times) parallel to the body of the plane, but if you increase the angle of attack of the wings, this can have a pretty substantial effect on the performance of the plane. This is always a compromise. The higher the angle of attack, the higher the lift factor, but also the drag. Simplified: high angle of attack for slow planes, low AoA for fast planes. Also making your wings dihedral or anhedral can have a huge impact on the flying characteristics/stability/maneuverability of your design. The same is also true for stabilizers. Enable the good old Center of Lift-indicator and watch it when you change the angle of your horizontal stabilizers for example. You simply have to play around with that a little. Soon you´ll have a pretty good idea what change will lead to the desired effect. sometimes you want more lift at the back of your plane, sometimes you might even want a little bit of downforce. With this little technique I can build my planes so that they can fly on SAS set to prograde and hold (mostly) course and altitude. Yeah, I´m a very lazy pilot. Other factors to play around with: Center of Mass, where to put the engines, control surface authority limiters and fuel distribution. I hope this helps a little. Have fun building lots of different plane designs. (quick pic of a plane, since pic of ... something else was expressly not permitted)

OMG! that looks amazing. Mine looks like trash compared to that. craftfile gimmegimme! Hmmm, that´s what I´ve done today. I built a trashy lookin helicopter. Now I´m very tired and my brain hurts. Sweet bed I´m coming! Good night folks.

Hi folks First: I haven´t built any turboprops for almost a year (Imgur says 11 months), so I don´t know if anything of this is new or even a little bit exiting. But I´d like to get back into stock propeller crafts, and helicopters are always fun and lot´s of hours to tinker with. So here is my first project and in general my first helicopter that is actually not quite bad. This is where I stopped yesterday evening: Fixed rotorhead heli. It could hover and land pretty accurately as you can see, and I liked the looks. But flying forward? Not so much. It was semi stable up to 25m/s, but very hard to control. past that point it rolled left and went out of control. So when I went to bed I knew, if I wanted to improve it, I´d need a new rotorhead to at least in part neutralize the loss of lift by the backward moving blades. (sorry, not a native english speaker, no plan what the special terms might be) So, a rotorhead that allows individual blade pitch, self regulating and not toooo hard on the bearings... ouch. Recently I watched luizopilotos exellent and amazing video with his Hue-64 Skycrane using advanced grabbing units as blade pivot points. I downloaded his craft but couldn´t fly it. (every time I tried, one of the blades didn´t connect) So I built my own version and changed the angles on the claws a little bit. Surprisingly it kinda works. Here is a pic of it in motion. The helicopter is descending at this point with very little thrust. The angles are usually not that extreme. So this design gets up to 50m/s in level flight with 10° nose pitch. Could it go faster? No idea. haven´t tried yet. How stable is it? Well, today I flew to the Island Airfield and back, and my longest testflight took 30 minutes until something collided with something. I´ll certainly play around with it some more, but for the next 2 days I´ll be out of town, and I wanted to post this tonight, because I´m already pretty happy with it. Again, if this is all old, boring stuff, I´m sorry. Here is the craftfile if you want to give it a try. Any suggestion on how to improve this craft are more than welcome. https://kerbalx.com/herrmue/Mus-HC-5-Mk-52 Standard helicopter controls. Hit space to attach the blades to the rotor head. Action group 2 for switching control over to probe core 1 for horizontal flight. SAS on radial out. AG 3 for 5° nose pitch, AG 4 for 10°s. Control course with Q and E and by adjusting the angle of the rudder. You know the deal About 70% of thrust is enough to take off. Funny thing: The higher you fly, the less thrust you need. To be honest, I was surprised how little thrust was needed at 4000 meters. It got to the point, where the Junos didn´t produce enough electricity to power the SAS modules. That´s why I put a fuelcell on the latest build, but I didn´t have time to test it yet. That´s it for now, have fun Cheers, Mü

Thanks man No mods on the "Doodadlus", but lots of MH parts and autostruts. I´ll upload it to kerbalX tomorrow. My hangar over there is too empty anyway. That´s a gorgeous - and functional - Excelsior btw. Let me know if you make any progress on those bearings. At the moment I´m using RCS-ball bearings and rings of 8 thermometers around stayputniks. If I find time this week I´ll try the ladders. Haven´t built stock propellers for a while now, but the Duna plane reminded me of how much fun it is to tinker around with those. Have read through the last pages of the turboprop thead today. I think I have to get back into Helicopters soon. Cheers

How cool is that??? And very handy, this old girl will need some place to refurbish when she get´s home. (Disclaimer: I used infinifuel for this one. Yeah, I´m a dirty cheater, but partcount is already high as it is, without putting a hundred xenon tanks on this thing.) In other notes: I´ve had a pretty constructive day today (the weather was just awful where I live). I´ve tested a new Duna plane by flying through the canyon, testing service ceiling, practicing landing, aso. . So far no issues, and thanks to the inflatable MH docking ports it is completely reusable. Hey @Azimech, how reliable is your ladder bearing? It could help getting the part count down on this little beauty. Next I set out to claim the Dessert Airfield by setting up a bit of infrastructure over there. I thought a fuel refinery, an aircraft refueling/tow-truck and a crew bus might be useful in the future.... .... because: Could it eventually be possible, just maybe, under certain circumstances,... that aerial refueling is friggin´ hard??? I´ve tried it serveral times this week. So far no cigar. I´m really thinking about buying a flight stick for this. (My old one died 2 years ago. Cables and office chair rollers don´t seem to get along nicely)

If you wonder why squad usually doesn´t provide release dates... this thread might be a good indicator. Hey dev´s, take the time you need. There are still lots of people out here who appreciate your work.

How cool is that? I watched a movie on sunday, on monday I just started to put some parts together, today I made a movie poster: