Torminator

I do not get unusual lag with fustek. That is strange. It sounds like it may be a KSP-on-OSX issue, as certain things are squirrely.

I recently tried to migrate a large station from 500km above Kerbin to the Mun. While I had the thrust reasonably balanced with some bolt-on nukes, the very long solar arrays flexed terribly, and the lag made things almost unplayable. Reloaded quicksave, detached and deorbited the booster modules, and am planning a second station in munar orbit.

You could have a cryogenically-cooled supercomputer, and you'd still get massive lag. KSP/Unity does not really have multicore support, can't use more than 4GB (more like 3.4 it seems) of RAM, and is rather poorly optimized to boot. Also, save files are very simple. You'd probably require billions of objects before you got a save file that large.

I don't know that 3 parts -> 1 part is that big a difference, unless you're using a lot of these, in which case, dang. This may be what you mean by huge solar panels, but the KOSMOS pack's Balka Solar Wing Arrays turn on their long axis and also rotate around the central hub. Similarly, Lack Luster Labs has a large, animated rotating habitation module. It's a bit of a pain to work around, because it does things like intercepting struts, but it looks cool.

Does this effect MJ even when KCA isn't active (I.E. none of the GUI buttons are depressed) or even not on the craft at all? Mostly I use MJ's autopilot for making sure I don't deviate from a maneuver node, or for keeping my docking port pointed at the target during docking, which is helpful when I have to, say, move to the other side of a station. I may try the LAZOR autopilot, see if that's any better at dealing with things. I can also report a stream of NRE's in the VAB/SPH whenever I place any sort of RCS thruster, stock or otherwise, into the scene. The EVER so helpful debug log doesn't give any more details, but it's likely the same thing Skyhook was getting, compounded with the Extraplanetary Launchpads spam bug.

I've had that "skip" issue with and without FAR. I think it's just a KSP thing. Drives me insane. How detailed does FAR's model get? For instance, if I have a secondary wing above a large delta, will the delta affect the characteristics of the secondary wing above it?

That's what I'm saying, though. I'm using Sarbian's .dll, which seemed to eliminate the overuse of RCS, but it returned concurrent with re-installing KCA. I'm not complaining; I'm just trying to bring any and all potential glitches to ZRM's attention, especially if stability is a priority. FWIW, I did -not- install the mechjeb config folder. I did use the stock one, however. I'm pretty sure it only changes the AR202 part, but hey.

My first successful SSTO: Whitebird. (You'll never guess where that name came from.) Landed!* Its successor, Whitebird 2, was incredibly efficient. So much so that I made it into a stable munar orbit on my first test flight. And my super-heavy lift SSTO, ATLAS. (A Totally Legit and Awesome Spaceplane) Trying to build a space station without using rockets is... interesting.

Yes, now try launching a large rocket with an awkward payload. It makes simple rockets easier, and big rockets a nightmare (for me). I've actually taken to shuttling station modules with my heavy SSTO spaceplane. Ferram, while I'm here, I notice several of my planes , past a certain angle of attack, will pitch up violently, like if a gust of wind catches a sheet of plywood (probably exactly like). My best guess is a combination of factors: 1) I use delta wings. All the time. This presents a huge surface area to the air, and that drag intensifies the upwards pitch 2) I also frequently use large canard surfaces to move my CoL forward. While I'm assuming that rear horizontal fins naturally bring the plane back to 0 AoA, forward surfaces want to intensify any deviation. Same thing with having a vertical stabilizer on your nose. This is because, if a rear stabilizer moves out of the velocity vector, the drag force naturally pushes it back, whereas if it's in the front of the CoM (CoL?), the drag force wants to make it continue around until it is in back. Like a caster wheel? Maybe? I'm rambling. Is this an accurate (or at least passable) assessment? On a lark, I made a plane shaped similarly to an MD-80, incredibly long fuselage, long, narrow wings (compared to deltas, at least), and engines way in the back near the tail. It ended up being the easiest to fly plane I've ever made, even though my sense of aesthetics was furious.

I seem to be spectacularly talented at breaking things. I've also noticed that, after installing Kerbcom, any maneuvers done by Mechjeb seem to spaz out, firing RCS in every direction. It points the right way... eventually, but it uses an incredible amount of monopropellant. I just docked two identical modules to my station, both using mechjeb autopilot rendevous. The first missed, had to make another rendevous attempt. The second got lucky, and didn't have to do nearly as much maneuvering. When I got to the vicinity of my station, the second, which I ran after re-installing KCA, had used about 40% of its monopropellant, while the first had used maybe 10%. I'll try to get some video to demonstrate what I mean. The only thing that changed between attempt 1 and attempt 2 was installing KCA, RBI tracks, and the newest MSI update. I've had this behavior before, and just assumed it was Mechjeb being inefficient.

I use TAC Fuel balancer, and if I get into a flat spin, I just dump all my fuel into the front-most tank. Doesn't work on ascents into orbit, but coming back down it makes the plane extremely stable. (So long as down is where you want to go.) Also works wonders for avoiding re-entering tail-first.

It seems like it would be simpler to make a User-Defined Language preset for Notepad++, but I'm not sure.

I personally love the hex pattern

My first Mun landing went off without a hitch. The second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth attempts resulted in sudden unanticipated lithobraking. Seventh Attempt resulted in a breakdancing Kupola. Eighth attempt used an 80 ton tracked fortress of a lander. It landed perfectly, rolled to a stop, and then the game crashed and I could never get that save running again.

"Far From Home"

Sirkut, I hate to pester, but do you have any input on my question about the "springiness" of IR parts? I'm a bit of a VTOL addict

These parts are incredible, ZZZ. You have an amazing sense of design. You may have edged out Bac9 in that regard (in my mind) Ugh, now I need to learn how to animate things in KSP. Those engine mounts are just begging for animated vents and vectoring slats.

Okay, I came across a really weird glitch/bug. Built a rocket using the NovaPunch 5m parts and B9 winglet control surfaces. When in flight, the roll controls are reversed. The ailerons on the winglets oppose the RCS thrusters, and SAS/MechJeb tries to correct any rolling, but the reversal means it just intensifies. Any ideas? I'm launching four smaller pieces that each have probe cores and mechjeb units, so that may be the cause, but I've experienced a similar "death spin" with other large rockets. Tried adding a mk1 pod with Bob in it, and making sure it was set as the "control from here" but to no avail. EDIT- Also, yaw controls don't seem to differentiate between control surfaces above and below the CoM. In other words, yaw acts more like "sideslip" with both surface moving the same way. EDIT2- The roll issue was a result of the key controls for roll and yaw being the same. Not sure how that happened, but fixing it eliminated the roll issue. Yaw issue persists, but that's more likely to be something I'm doing wrong.

Maybe I missed something... I've done several things that used 4 or 5 adjustible rails in series, to, for instance, telescope a docking port from being ~1 rail away to being ~5 rails away. Isn't that a similar thing? I've never had issues with that setup.

Hmm. I don't think I tried having the system running with the GUI hidden. I'll give that a shot. I don't know about a lot of parts... I've had it happen on simple spaceplanes with maybe 100 parts max (but nearly 16 small VTOL engines)

I actually found the balance was pretty easy. Putting the main rotator right at the center of mass and making sure the armatures were symmetric front to back means that, in any configuration, the thrust is balanced with respect to the CoM. Now, if the CoM moves... That's an awesome ship. I love how the wings fold out. @viperwolf: I got rid of the old DR folder (don't know why I had it in the first place) but still no speed control. I'll do some snooping, try to find any other places it might be hiding. The ungrabbable rotator problem is fixed, however.

Yes and yes. That's what the spam mostly consists of. Is there a moderately simple way to eliminate that? I don't have the first clue on compiling for KSP.

I hate to keep posting issues, but I get an immense slowdown with KCA. Especially on ships with a lot of engines (as to be expected). The lag goes away significantly if I hide the avionics panel, but exists whenever it's visible, even if the system isn't running. I'm not complaining about performance, I'm just curious if that's normal or there's a problem on my end somewhere. Just hiding the GUI takes me from ~8fps up to ~40fps I also apologize if this has been mentioned. The forum won't let me search the thread for "lag" and nothing else I could think of produced anything. EDIT- in case you were curious, I don't think KCA was causing the huge output log issue. I've got it uninstalled right now due to the performance hit, and I'm still getting massive output logs. Something is spamming up the log during vehicle editing. Now only to figure out what...

A few quick questions... For one, I don't seem to have the speed control available. I do have the new multi-sized rams and rails, so I know I installed at least part of the mod correctly. I'll try to make sure everything's sorted. It's probably some remnant of the last version. Secondly, the "high load" rotator cannot be interacted with once placed. It moves and functions just fine, but it can't be picked up again, edited in action groups, or right-clicked in game. Thirdly, I'm sure this has been mentioned, but on a scale from one to no, how hard would it be for me to edit the hinges/rails/rams etc... to eliminate the springiness? I don't know if that's just a hard limitation of the game engine or anything, but if it's possible to have more rigid hinges (for things like wings and engines) that'd be grand. Even the heavy duty hinge and rotator are still pretty wobbly for my uses. (for those curious, I'm trying to make a similar drive system as used on the Prometheus. An armature with engines on either end that can rotate so you can have level engines for VTOL operations, but they aren't cooking each other during forward flight. It works well enough, but the lack of rigidity causes uneven thrust) For one and Two, like I said, I'll try to make sure everything's installed correctly, and report back if the problems persist.

I saw the first post, and kind of lost interest in moved on. Randomly checked the thread again, looked at that last page, and... Wow. I didn't know how much I needed that shuttle until today! Amazing surface details.