Agathorn

They might not yet be compatible. I think I remember Nathan saying they would be in the future.

Did you put an active antenna on it? I did the same thing when I first started down this road. While attached to the launch clamps you have a hardwire to mission control, but once you launch if you have no active antenna, then you will lose control of the craft (RemoteTech) and the engines will shut down.

Still playing around with this but wanted to impart some information I've come by. First off, ScriptO, THANKS for pointing out that RCS Build Aid mod. That thing is AMAZING! Using it I found that if I placed all 8 outboard engines so that they lined up with the socket, then my roll control was perfect on 6 out of the 8 engines. A couple tweaks on the last 2 and now I have a cluster assembly with near perfect roll control. I say near perfect because there is the slightest, like 0.001% drift but I couldn't get it any better.

Aren't the real ones symmetrical? I was under the impression that it was. An evenly spaced ring of 8 around the outside, and a center engine. Am I misunderstanding the real design? EDIT: Ah right I see what you are saying now. I wonder why they did it that way? I'd rather keep it real.

Thanks for this. With the new part, I actually have to tweak all 9 engines And yeah unfortunately I can't drop the outboard ring of 8 with symmetry for some reason.

Scripto23 has been working on it. Look a few pages back. I can't search for it right now, but if you don't find it i'll follow up later.

Laz, I only had a few moments for a quick test of the first stage but I noticed a huge improvement in both initial craft stability and control authority. Once I got pitched over past about 15 degrees I started having control problems, but I think that's because of my gimbals so that is something I need to work on. Anyway, I only tested the first stage (so no second or capsule on the craft) but looks like a nice improvement!

Hey HoneyFox any tips? I'm having trouble with the 8 engines around the outside because they don't mount along the centerline. What I mean by that is if you point the camera directly at the front of the craft, such that yaw on the center engine is directly left and right, the next two outboard engines left and right of that are slightly fore and aft, not next to it. so when I then put those engines in, the yaw isn't directly left and right but at a small angle. How do I tweak the gimbal stuff to make them straight? Is this just a painstaking process of finding the right h and v values for each engine to make it straight?

You know I have to agree with this suggestion. I find I pretty much NEVER use the manual fill buttons, only the auto fills, so I always have to scroll down past the manuals. It isn't a huge deal, but if the auto fill buttons were up top it would save me from scrolling the windows every single time. Though if it is this way due to the way the code works, I can understand. At a guess it might be that the manual fill buttons are all hard coded and don't change, and then the auto fill buttons which are dynamic simply get added after.

Laz very awesome updates! Not sure when next i'll get a chance to do some more testing but I will let you know how it goes. Thanks for all your work on this awesome mod!

I really think the problem is still with the engine cluster, and hope that single engines with gimbals will fix it. In RO I just built a rocket using no SpaceX except for the engines, and it was all over the place. The fact that six of the engines have no gimbal, and that the 3 with gimbal have a very limited range, means the whole thing just isn't very controllable without the reaction wheels.

Oh you mean the attachment nodes themselves, not the items, are causing is? Interesting.

What nodes?

Ahh gotcha. Thanks guys. That's cool, I didn't know the VAB was in vacuum. Nifty trick those Kerbals did.

But why would MJ show one TWR value in the VAB and then immediately after show another, much lower value, on the launch pad? I pretty much have to remember to build my rockets to have about .15 or .2 TWR higher than I want because that is about what they all lose according to the MJ display when I move to the launch pad. MJ is showing a value in both cases, but they are different.

You should not be using Modular Fuel Tanks. Only Real Fuels. If you have MFT installed, delete it.

Do you mean the dV information in the read outs, like when building? Those work fine for me. In fact its the only part of Mechjeb I use mostly. Though I have noticed the TWR display is often wrong in the VAB and gets smaller on the launchpad, which is odd.

The roll issue is most apparent in Realism Overhaul. Not as much so in stock. I haven't narrowed it down yet to the cause exactly, but I do know that some parts of the craft don't play well with FAR. The solar panel covers for example. If it is possible to get the 9 engines individually, then I should be able to use HoneyFox's gimbal plugin to manage roll properly. So if that is a switch you can do, even optionally, that would be great. Maybe release the bottom fairing as a new piece with no engines, but mount points for all 9. Then people could choose which way to set it up? Right now I think a lot of my issues are coming from the fact that there are 6 non gimbaled engines pushing in there, and the 3 that do gimbal don't do so enough to really have much control. It works fine in stock probably because of the reaction wheels which are nerfed bad in RO since they are not realistic.

While it is possible he has some numbers wrong, Nathan did a crap load of research and a lot of fine crawling over numbers.

They are rounded. Rounded doesn't mean an integer. It just means it is rounded to an accuracy less than what its maximum accuracy is. 3.14 is the commonly known value of PI, which is not an integer, but is of course rounded off, since the actual number is.. well we don't know the full accuracy, but its much more than 3.14

Yeah the "main" engine, is the MErlin 1D, of which there are 9 in the first stage. 6 come as one in the cluster, and you manually place 3; center and two outboards. I checked on the engine cluster and the thrustTransform is what is used for, well the thrust transform, and that is the same transform Scripto references for the Gimbal.

Wait they plan on landing EVERYTHING? I didn't know that. I thought the plan was only for the first stage to land. Amazing. I can't even express how amazing Elon Musk is to me for really wanting to continue to push human advancements in space, now that the government has stopped caring. Scripto is it possible the the stuff in KSP right now is off on fuel amounts? I've yet to be able to get the first stage back down without running out of fuel long before I hit the ground.

So apparently I was getting a little confused on which engine was which. So to be clear, original SpaceX: engine cluster, no ModuleGimbal main engine, ModuleGimbal vacuum engin, ModeulGimbal Scripto's changes: engine cluster, ADD ModuleGimbal main engine, no change vacuum engine, no change I'm guessing that is why the main cluster has no gimbal because despite Scripto adding the module for it, the base engine cluster just doesn't have it. Wasn't built with it. I have a post in Laz's thread though so waiting to hear back on that for sure. In either case though I think the ModuleGimbal is just the stock KSP gimbal system right? So _should_ work with your Gimbal system HoneyFox. I suspect the 6 engine without gimbal, combined with the very limited gimbal range of the 3 that do have it, just isn't enough to do anything. I still find it odd though that on a smaller lighter craft, using roll gimbal (when enabled on the two outboard engines) causes yaw instead.

Glad you got it working. I find the best thing when having problems other's are not, is just nuke your GameData (except Squad of course) and just reinstall all the latest versions of all the mods. Almost every time someone is having weird problems its because they have old or outdated versions mixing with newer ones, or even old mods that aren't even supported anymore (like MFT vs RF).

As far as I can tell Laz's original uses no gimballing, no plugins at all. Scripto does add this: MODULE { name = ModuleGimbal gimbalTransformName = thrustTransform gimbalRange = 0.8 } But I don't know if that is something special or just stock.