Can you help me stabilize my interstellar station?

[Mapoko]

Hello community,

I have been playing the game for awhile, been to the Mun, Minmus ... all the way to Eve and Duna, having few orbiting, landed and ofcourse crashed stations around and on each.

Then I started thinking (yes, still not achieved, but there is time) of landing a base, that have 1 or 2 science planes attached, so I can do science jobs, return and refuel, but I did put this to the backburner.

But enough about me.

My new project is to make a huge space station, equipped with enough fuel (and mini vessels) to go around all the planetary bodies and moons around Kerbol with crew of ~20.

I started medium, but after building a 3 part "Station" with 4 of the largest fuel tanks worth of fuel in it and only medium and small docking ports. Needless to say it became wobbly fast, so there is no hope of it actually traveling.

I then went all in and did build a huge and heavy base for my future station,

then I launched another one with similar mass, but some things in reverse (Nuke Engines), so I can attach it the only way I managed to dock so far - head first,

but unlike my previous attempt not to have engines pointing in opposite directions => dead weight.

So far so good, but there is (un)expected problem I encountered that I need your help with and there it is :

Red zone is where the 2 parts are attached with Docking Port Sr (Took huge amount of time trying to dock them, but they were bugged, so I used the save file option from this forum, THANK YOU! )

Took 2 dock-undock procedures until I aligned em, but this is as close as it gets.

Here is where the problem lies when I fire the 32 Nuke engines + the 16 infront or if I simply try RCS maneuver, due to the lack of RCS (I forgot) on the first piece (the one with 32 nukes).

It simply goes apart. Not immediately, but in due time.

Green Zones Can I sacrifice 2 or even 4 pairs of those in order to link them with some fuel tank or fuselage, so the ship will have some structural integrity or I have to scrap it and think of other design ?

Those ports were planned for something else, but it is necessary to sacrifice them now for the greater good. The yellow ports will have to to for Lab(s) and the other stuff I had planned (Like orange tank size ship to be deattached for some unforseen exploration. After all I plan to stuff it and start my journey around the Kerbol system, hopefully explore it all, or at least only go back to Kerbin to refuel once.

Orange zones are small docking ports for the 8 mini ships that will do various jobs and transfers, so those must not be obstructed by the connecting module of the green ports.

Pink ports are designated for the 4 small ships coming (along with the crew) of the 3 part refueling station I mentioned before. It's parts will dock with the only 4 medium docking ports (not colored), dump their fuel and possibly reconnect to each other and remain as refuel station once I fill them up or simply land/destroy them.

The big Kerbodyne engines you see infront can and will be deattached before taking off on the journey. They were used to help lift all the weigth, because unlike the back part Nukes were just dead weight, facing backwards.

So, is it possible to stabilize my core with let's say combination of 2 fuel tanks or possibly 3 and fuselage parts to match length, that will deattach everything from itself, except the ports it will have and the body.

And use this 2 or 4 times.

I will need huge help, designing and docking it. Hopefully I will not encounter the Docking port Sr bug much.

Needless to say I am complete noob in docking, let alone docking with 2 ports simultaneously. I will need help on RCS Placement.

Also if possible it should include few fuel tanks, because no matter how heavy they are my small vessels run on monopropellant for landings/orbit and xenon for longer space distances. The 2 medium ones with the Klaw you will see on the second picture are liquid fuel powered, so will the 2 large ones that will be attached to yellow port and used for landings and re-orbiting on bodies with atmosphere.

It will be nice if the "patch" element could have the 2 large ports, but possibly 1 medium and 1-2 small ones on the outer side, just in case without destabilizing it even more.

I hope you can help me salvage my operation, because otherwise I would have to think smaller, due to lack of Clamp-o-Tron-Huge. Another option is to use cluster of 3 or 4, as I have seen in other builds, but that will mean starting over and leaving this one a drift and one real hell of aligning docking, not to mention fear of the docking bug.

Mapoko

Edited March 26, 2015 by Claw
fixed images

[Brainlord Mesomorph]

My new project is to make a huge space station, equipped with enough fuel (and mini vessels) to go around all the planetary bodies and moons around Kerbol with crew of ~20.

Um, if it travels its not a station, if it goes to the planets, its not interstellar.

Building a huge *interplanetary ship* for a "grand tour mission" is the single biggest challenge of the game. Build smaller things first. Work your way up.

I'm not even there yet, I'm building a fleet of smaller ships to send to Jool. (smaller than that thing, still 100+ tons each)

IMHO

(also 1 of your 2 pics isn't showing up)

Edited March 25, 2015 by Brainlord Mesomorph

[Technical Ben]

You could use one of the attachment mods to put struts in. That's what I'm planning for my interstellar craft (test to see if it's possible in KSP ).

[smart013]

First - in my experience the challenge of great stations (ships, bases, whatever) is coming from KSP itself and its limitations. In a KSP thats free from limitations, runs always in realtime with lots of frames regardless of the partcount and included parts a great multiuse starship would be rather easy to build. But here we are with the KSP of mortals, while the gods are playing their perfect KSP (called "the universe")

So, first things first: keep it simple. Whatever your systemspecs are, a small partcount has its merits. Especially if you are using different mods, where the ideas of different developers about connectivity, torgue and so on may also greatly differ.

If you need to turn your spaceship with all its complexity it can pay off to resist the urge of using RCS. Relying more on reaction wheels (ureallistic or not) for moving / turning huge conctructs can help a lot. But sure as hell its slow Give the SAS time to balance everything out if youre using the autoalignment tools of experienced pilots (or Smart A.S.S. from mechjeb). Check the little panel on the bottom left to see if there is still manoevering going on (yaw, pitch, etc). Make sure that the center of thrust aligns through the center of mass, or at least that you have enough reactions wheels on board to counter small deviations.

If youre expecting wobbling, than try to lock gimbal on your engine. Lets the reactionwheels do the compensating, not the engine.

Use Kerbal Joint Reinforcement. Really, just do it.

If everything is fine then start your thrusts slowly, always checking possible oscillations of your vessel or parts of it. Building a huge and complex ship where you can simply go for full thrust is always better, but the need to assemble such ships in orbit by using (small) dockingports is often costing stability.

You can try using KAS too, where you are able to place struts in orbit between freely assembled parts.

My 2cents: if you do it, do it slowly and carefully - just like the hedgehog

Edited March 25, 2015 by smart013
Wording

[Mapoko]

(also 1 of your 2 pics isn't showing up)

Can you please say which one? The top one is the most important.

Sorry for my wrong sentencing, hope you got what I meant.

Also I would like to add : Sorry for the crude design, but compared to most of you I probably have 0.1% experience yet. Also I use no mods, so I guess stuff that I have seen (like cargo bays) will not be accessible for me for now.

If I fail to stabilize this thing or FPS becomes too low I might have to actually scrap it and salvage what I can and start over.

Due to stubbornness I try to play as realistic as possible, meaning I have some stuff drifting around Kerbol, because I did not pack enough fuel or did my slingshots wrong, but the upside is that I have not lost kerbonaut yet. All rescued.

Another question is : What range of total parts should I be confined into, so I do not end up playing with 2fps ? I am using nVIDIA GeForce GTX760M, Intel Core i7, 16GB RAM DDR3, SSD.

Because as you can see the small pods are like christmass trees with all the science stuff I may avoid when I start over or simply replace them with less complex ones before I go.

I had just small FPS drop, due to large amount of boosters, but I started noticing it when the 2 parts merged.

If I leave this one as core for a station and get rid of the engines it works, but the goal is to make the thing move and not fall apart, so can somebody help me design the "stabilizer" components ? Putting them up there and docking will be the trick I will figure out later.

Also Today I will send one fuel tank to test if the force from the engines will be too strong and rip off medium sized Dock port Sr linked component from the yellow port.

P.S.: Again, I am sorry for my crude designs, but although I may seem like a caveman now in a month or so I may have something worthy of showing off

[Brainlord Mesomorph]

Can you please say which one? The top one is the most important.

top.

Don't worry. Welcome to the forums!

[Melkor X]

If you can't get it to work with a slow and steady control of thrust, consider a puller design. They tend to be a bit more stable. For the lower thrust approach, keep in mind that you can do your interplanetary transfer in multiple burns. For example, if a burn is going to take 15 minutes at 50% thrust (or whatever level works so that your craft doesn't wobble), you can do three five-minute burns, starting each two and a half minutes before the ejection angle point in your orbit. As long as your burns keep you in the sphere of influence of the body you are leaving from, you can do this. Note though, that if you raise your apoapsis really high, it can take so long for an orbit that your ejection angle will change.

[Mapoko]

I will try to figure out the exact length between the 2 ports and try to stabilize it enough with 4 parts. Will disable gimbal on all 49 engines, probably it will be the time to decouple the 2 in front, so 48 nukes + 1 kerbodyne.

I will try how much thrust % will it take, while staying on target with reaction wheels only when I attach (hopefully) 2 of them and if the wobbly effect is not diminished I might try to keep the general idea, scrap and reuse w/e I can from this one and the refueling one and start over.

Speaking of starting over : I saw people using mods with many pretty cool parts (Like cargo bay for example). Can you please point me out to some of the core ones that give additional parts or anything that is within the realism.

It has been pointed out to me that there is mod for attaching struts while in space, but there also is mod for transferring fuel from afar.

Unless that for the strut one I have to EVA and use my kerbonaut to do it and not just like in build mode I do not think it suits my realism needs. Though, this will solve my problem with 4 simple struts, BUT I will feel like I cheated. Using larger variety of parts on the other hand is something natural that is OK.

Also not sure, but I think my current station have 1200-1500 parts and fps is 12-15, so I guess 1500 should be my limit when planning grand ?

[Starchaser]

If I fail to stabilize this thing or FPS becomes too low I might have to actually scrap it and salvage what I can and start over.

Due to stubbornness I try to play as realistic as possible, meaning I have some stuff drifting around Kerbol, because I did not pack enough fuel or did my slingshots wrong, but the upside is that I have not lost kerbonaut yet. All rescued.

If you don't mind thoughts from another newb, you mentioned playing with realism. In reality, there is ground control, and onboard computer control. Using something like KER is giving you access to info in the game that would be available to the pilots in real life. Also, when it comes to horrific disasters, in reality the astronauts practice their missions over and over and over in simulators and training pools, so I have no problems resetting a disaster and calling it a 'computer simulation.

[Claw]

Can you please say which one? The top one is the most important.

Fixed, and good luck on your mission...

Welcome to the forums!

Cheers,

~Claw

[Mapoko]

Fixed, and good luck on your mission...

Welcome to the forums!

Cheers,

~Claw

Now I do not see the picture, but hopefully it is visible in general, because without it visualization of my problem and possible solution becomes hard to comprehend.

If you don't mind thoughts from another newb, you mentioned playing with realism. In reality, there is ground control, and onboard computer control. Using something like KER is giving you access to info in the game that would be available to the pilots in real life. Also, when it comes to horrific disasters, in reality the astronauts practice their missions over and over and over in simulators and training pools, so I have no problems resetting a disaster and calling it a 'computer simulation.

OK, you got me. Let's call it game realism. Kerbals are courageous and stupid things. You know, like goblins in some other universe ... they make contraptions and do not mind if they go boom. Or they are not really aware of it.

Anyway, I am OK with mods that add new static and moving parts, especially those cargo bay ones, but I'd like to keep my mods in the 5-10 range. I did read of people with tons of mods installed. As long as they are not magical ones like forementioned magic fuel transfer.

[Harry Rhodan]

Speaking of starting over : I saw people using mods with many pretty cool parts (Like cargo bay for example). Can you please point me out to some of the core ones that give additional parts or anything that is within the realism.

It has been pointed out to me that there is mod for attaching struts while in space, but there also is mod for transferring fuel from afar.

Unless that for the strut one I have to EVA and use my kerbonaut to do it and not just like in build mode I do not think it suits my realism needs. Though, this will solve my problem with 4 simple struts, BUT I will feel like I cheated. Using larger variety of parts on the other hand is something natural that is OK.

There's a nice big list of the available mods in the mod forum.

You can add on EVA struts with Kerbal Attachment System. That mod adds some surface attachable strut end points that can be connected with a strut.

And you might want to take a look at the nuklear engine of Modular Rocket Systems (you can simply delete everything else in there if you don't want the other parts) if you want to rebuild your ship. It has the same weight as four LV-Ns and the same thrust as four LV-Ns but on a 2.5m basis. With that you could reduce the amount of engine pods from 48 to 12 without straying too far from the stock feeling.

[Mapoko]

Thank you very much. I was actually looking into the list, but there are 100s of mods and it will take huge amount of time to pick the right ones for me.

Looking at KAS mod I will definitely get that one! It adds so much life to KSP! Just watched the video and I am amazed how did it fit into my vision. I guess that can even mean that it is possible to save my derelict by adding some struts and if moving the nukes around is not possible I may try some controlled collisions, removing them and replacing with the Nukex4 version ones , attaching them with magnetic connection. Just to reduce part count.

The KAS alone opens up a whole new universe of possibilities for me. Namely - EVA finally have purpose !

The MRS actually have one of the parts I was most facinated with - Cargo Doors module. Judging by screenshots that is.

And from what I see larger ION Propulsion ? That will definitely help redesigning my small pods.

Thank you everyone for the help! If some other mod names that will suit me pop in your head, please do share. Hopefully I will have enough time in the weekend to work on my creation. I will post pictures of it when I think it is travel ready.

Now back to browsing that huge mod list and thank you again !

EDIT : I saw some mods for compressing textures and reducing fps drop, allowing me to use more parts. Can you please suggest me which one does the best job ?

Speaking of Realism I guess I will also get "Dang It!" one for critical fails. This will add more complexity in my mission.

Edited March 26, 2015 by Mapoko