Flashblade

I would like to thank everybody who participated in this idea with a vote. Sadly this sample of the userbase is much to small to claim that this really is something the community majorly voted for. So sadly I declare this a failure. I expected this to happen when the thread was moved from the mod release forum. Thank you again all who voted and have a happy new year! @Val

The HX series does not contain such parts. It is mostly fuselage parts, engines, rcs and a special reactor.

I actually wanted to create this post earlier, but bugfixing for B9 Aerospace took priority and then I was away for Christmas. This thing has been sitting in my hangar for quite a while: The APOTHEOSIS MK 2A TAV Flying 20 meters over Laythe's water surface. Breaking through the cloud cover on Eve More pictures in the gallery! I rebuild this craft with regular J and K fuselage parts and got rid of the legacy Avatar fuselage. The rebuild doesn't quite look as sleek as the Avatar based version looked but I am okay with the change. I do understand K.Yeon's decision to rework the fuselage as well. The connecting part of the Avatar only had one functionality and that was to connect that cockpit to it and nothing else. There was no versitility in this so the move away from Avatar was as I said very logical. Other changes are the OPT-J-60s have been replaced with Nukes from MK2 Stockalike Expansion, more usage of B9 Aerospace larger air-brakes and secondary control surfaces for low speed performance on take-off and landing are par for the course now. The new version now has tail elevators which add improved stability and easier take-off capabilities. I used a B9 part to smooth out the transition toward the cockpit section. With all tanks full the craft can reach orbit with the OPT-J 92s and the Nukes. This one also requires fuel management, the first tank after the cockpit needs to be full of Oxidizer or the mass will shift behind the COL. Stats: Parts: 108 Wet Mass: 177 tons Dry Mass: 65 tons Height: 9.5 m Width: 28.7 m Length: 34 m Designed with FAR in mind, it has great flight characteristics in this awesome aerodynamics simulation. Will be released on KerbalX as soon as FAR is available again as well. Mods used: OPT, B9-Aerospace, B9 Procedural Parts, Aviation Lights, MK2 Stockalike Expansion, Realchute Parachute System

Yes KJR is highly recommended when you build big planes like these .

@blowfishI have checked them all now and it is basically split down the middle. About half work right and the other half doesn't. I put the list of my findings on github. This mystifies me because there doesn't seem to be anything in the configs that acts as an override. The engines are fixed now, new release coming soon.

I retract this statement mate, i have narrowed it down to our engines. disabling crossfeed works with stock engines but for some reason that doesn't become obvious from our cfg's our engines ignore this and we are not the only ones. It happens with OPT as well.

@blowfish I don't think this is a B9 problem. I just replaced the CDP with a normal clamp-o-tron and although crossfeed was disabled fuel was still available to an engine that was seperated from the tank through the docking port. Update no need to look my friend. B9 is not the cause for this. There must be another mod causing this.

I doubt that this is something of substance as well. There are three parts in this folder, not one of them is without a texture. This looks like a old leftover warning that never got properly adressed. @blowfish I also had a look at the crossfeed issue. The crossfeed happens even when the funtion is not enabled. Thank you for reporting the issue @_Astra_

ERM by the way @blowfish I only see source code downloads in that release. Something seems to be missing there!!!

Enjoy folks, our release time is always my favorite time of the year! BTW @blowfish you forgot to mention the color adjustment of the S2 parts in the update notes.

Yes there was a reason and that reason was that we did not want to have modded profiles that require FilterExtensions, because we are generally in the process of eliminating as many dependencies as is feasable. Therefor we instead selected profiles that are close to the right size and function.

It is basically just a matter of packaging RPM into the pre-release and the few changes that were made after that and we are good to go. I guess as soon as @blowfish finds the time to do it!

I see the Mark 3 doesn't garner any attention from you lot. That is fine, I think that it is a substantial upgrade to the design (P.S. I do admit to be a bit salty about this! )

I have been anticipating this moment a ton!!! I wanted to upgrade my baby for quite some time. But unfortunately the time had not come, but know with the test-release of the new official OPT MK2 engine in the main pack this has changed. So I proudly present to you now the: STARDANCER MK3 Looking like the Phoenix the cockpit is named after, engulfed in flames! Ready for take-off on the South Pole Station runway of Kerbinside. More pictures in the gallery! The part count has increased from 78 to over a 100 and a lot of that is cosmetics, but not all of it. This new version now removed the OPT J Linear Aerospike in favor of the OPT J engine mount, two OPT ARIs and 2 stock NERVA and of course the Legacy scramjets have been replaced with the brand spanking new experimental OPT HAE-02 Advanced Scramjets. The added weight of the atomic engines made it a necessity to place the wings farther in the back. I tried to get the empty COM in front of the COL but that was not meant to be, so she requires fuel management. The frontal OPT J Fuel Tank 4m needs to contain at least 1000 units of oxidizer to keep the COM on the COL while every other tank is empty else she will become unstable and will want to re-enter retrograde. The stock aero brakes have been replaced with the big ones from B9 Aerospace because of there more advantageous form factor which is less likely to hit the runway on take-off or landing. The really new feature of the Mark 3 is a full set of secondary control surfaces. The inner control surfaces next to the OPT HAE-02 Advanced Scramjet have been converted to flaps and the front of the wings has been equipped with a full set of slats. This helps her low-speed performance on take-off and landing. She always has been and she always will be nothing short of a smashing success. Her take-off speed is fairly low with about 90 m/s (no payload) and her landing speed is also great with about 80 m/s. She has been designed with FAR in mind and believe you me she flies like a dream with FAR (I am testing the dev build right now and help ferram4 getting the next release out). This is the final iteration. She will be rebuild when KSP patches make it a necessary but I don't think there is anything I can optimize on her. I also found out that there is a better way to equip her for a science mission than to remove the cargo bay and use the OPT science modul. Placing the stock science module in the cargo bay allows you to even fit instruments and experiments inside as well, so a special science variant is not required. She will be released on KerbalX together with other crafts I have created as soon as FAR is updated. Mods used: OPT, B9 Aerospace, B9 Procedural, Parts, Aviation Lights, RealChute Parachute System

As ferram4 puts it: "Please consider being awesome and post your issues on github", but he never said that it is restricted to there.

There is no update per se. You have to look elsewhere. Since nobody is suppossed to talk about where to go I feel I can't direct you any further than that and ferram4 specifically said he would like the people who already know where to get it to grab that. BTW @ferram4 happy to oblige. Can't give you anything on the shader thing since I only have a Windows system but I will look at the other stuff. Mayhaps it is time for me to build my first sea-plane Edit I will post a preliminary report in the relevant discussion on github.

Agreed and a lot on this bingo card should be placed on this list imho. But if I just create the list with the entries I think belong there, it is just my list. Putting this to a majority vote gives the list a legitimacy it would otherwise lack. Since this is a list of what the modding community thinks a new player should look at first when it comes to modding, this legitmacy is needed I think. *Update* The OP has been updated with the method on how to cast this vote. I would like to have the vote open for a week and then count the votes cast. I guess I would like to have at least 50 people participate and hopefully it will be more else I don't think this really has a leg to stand on. In that case I will drop it which would be a bit of a shame I think.

Should we do it like this then? Everybody suggests all the mods he think that apply here, I count the results and the ones which have the highest number of mentions get to be a part of it?

While I agree there are a ton of instant picks on this Bingo card, there are also quite a few that do not match the criteria. For example Realism overhaul, Real Solar System, Life Support (Any) expressly only are of interest to the groups who enjoy them.

*placeholder* The expression this mod should be stock or that mod should be stock is heard quite often in the KSP community. But there is no doubt that we have quality mods around that truly deserve to be recognized as such. If you are new to KSP and KSP modding the number of available mods is staggering and intimidating and many might ask themselves where should I even start. That is why I want to create this list that is easily accessible to anyone who enters this sub-forum. A mod needs to be a flatout improvement to the KSP experience to every part of the playerbase to be applicable for this list. For example Ferram Aerospace Research to me is probably the greatest mod since the discovery of sliced bread. But it only caters to the aerodynamics enthusiasts and therefor it does not qualify to be part of this list. Any mods which focus on the introduction of new parts will always be a matter of an individuals taste as well, so neither do these qualify. So this list will probably mostly consist of quality of live mods. We have some mods in our community that come with a huge amount of features some of which only cater to a certain part of the playerbase. These mods are applicable but when you make the suggestion you need to focus on the aspect which everybody profits from. I would want to limit the number of entries on this list to no more than 15 to 20 mods. So is becoming a part of this list a permanent thing once the mod is on it? If something great comes around and the community decides that a not so popular mod should be removed from it for this new great thing then it will be removed. Okay now that I have suitably explained what this is suppossed to be I'd like to suggest two mods that should imho be part of the list. The first is AtmosphereAutopilot by Boris-Baboris. An autopilot mod you say? Surely that only caters to a certain part of the playerbase doesn't it? That is indeed not the case. While the autopilot functionality is certainly there everybody in the playerbase will profit from the amazing fly-by-wire system. Press P and enjoy an unprecedented level of fine control and stability while flying in the atmosphere. While the SAS certainly has improved quite a bit it is still not where I'd like it to be. It still struggles way to much to keep an ascend angle. It still doesn't stop properly when the control input has stopped. With AtmosphereAutopilot all of this is a thing of the past. But surely only plane people have any need for this right? Not so, the fly-by-wire will also help you get your more wacky rockets into orbit. If you want to you can customize the system but you don't have to. The standard settings are good for almost anybody. My second candidate is Editor Extensions Redux by linuxgurugamer. This one is truly a no brainer. It gives everybody more and better assist tools for building in the VAB and the SPH some of which are even customizable. P.S. At the end of the day the community will decide whether a mod receives a spot on this list or not. It will be put to popular vote. And now please suggest your entries. Just shortly name the mods you think fit this criteria in a list and that will count as a vote for these mods overall.

I don't really get why people think that the landing approach speed will massively improve because of ground effect. I've read up on when that actually happens and at or below the height of the planes wingspan isn't a massive amount of time during a landing. To actually massively use this effect during a landing maneuver you would have to hug the ground for quite some time which isn't really what a landing maneuver is usually like. I can see it being useful for take-offs though.

That is really such a shame that this happened. I thought that Squad should at least implement something like your voxel based system themselves. Physics that act on an object as a whole compared to a collection of individual parts should be way easier on the cpu. Also that you don't need to declare cargo bays and fairings through entries in config files is just so much better, in fact that you could build bays and fairings out of individual parts yourself if you wished to do so. I only think stock aero has really one thing up on FAR and that is landing and take-off speed for planes or i guess low-speed performance in general. In stock you can generally take-off and land with a speed that is approximately the same as in reality. The same plane can't be landed with a speed of about 80-90 m/s in FAR compared to stock where this is possible. In FAR this plane has to have a speed of at least 140 m/s or I can't stay on the necessary 2-3 meters vertical speed. This is insanely fast by comparison. This has probably something to do with the much higher weight of Kerbal crafts in general. I have just now started experimenting with secondary control surfaces but on the test craft that I outfitted with flaps and slats I did not see any noticible improvement on take-off speed, but I am a novice at this stuff and I might be doing it wrong.

That is exactly the point YOU wouldn't even notice and neither would some of your friends I am sure, but let's say we went ahead with a release and our IVAs are in shambles. I guarantee you that at least 4 or 5 people and maybe even more would show up in this thread asking us why we had a release with none functional IVA or just reported that as a bug in general. I am sorry but you and the friends you know are not a reliable sample size of our userbase. But that isn't really an issue, as of now everything in B9 basically works. People who are playing the pre-release haven't reported any further bugs. We could have a release but @blowfish doesn't like the idea to put a dependency (RPM) in that hasn't come out of beta yet. We also kind of still need to figure out what to do about the VTOL engines and blowfish are you going to code a module for the turbofan engine turbines?

If you are using the 1.2 Update Branch (which I admit to doing) and it works for you please just enjoy it silently. Do not come here expecting support since it is CLEARLY not meant for public use.

That is also a neat idea, btw. I have taken care of our obvious problems with RPM aka color tags are working again. I have created a new pull request.