Wing assembly preferences: lego? procedural? other?

[allmhuran]

There have now been several discussions both here and on reddit regarding wing construction. The discussions have largely been sparked by the introductoin of the new Mk3 wings, and tend to revolve around whether stock KSP should go procedural, or whether we should try to retain the lego style construction as much as possible. I am somewhat on the fence here, so what I will do is provide what seem to be the main arguments on both sides.

I will add and remove summaries of arguments in this thread to the following two lists. I will also remove unsound arguments from the lists if anyone can demonstrate why a particular argument is unsound (of which I will be the arbiter).

1. There is currently an insufficient number of different wing parts to cater to the needs of all players, and the number of different shapes we would need to do so is too high to be feasible.
   
2. 1.0 adding new kinds of wings means there are now even more inconsistencies in the style and texture of the various wing parts, and inconsistencies in style and texture are bad.
   
3. The Mk3 wing parts show the problem of trying to keep things lego-like: these wings cannot really be used as lego pieces, they are "preconfigured" shapes that really have to be used in isolation, which limits players' design freedom
   
4. Relying on mods has drawbacks (stability/bugs, memory footprint, compatability with other mods, abandonment).
   

1. Procedural wings do not fit in with the rest of KSP's construction style. Procedural wings is the start of a slippery slope to procedural everything, which would change the character of construction in KSP to be a totally different game.
   
   • In response to this, pincushionman points out that wings are at least an edge case, or even categorically different from other parts, and so the slippery slope argument doesn't apply.
     
   • White Owl responds to this that "First the stock game implemented tweakables, and now we have procedural fairings too. The notion of a rigid part with only one possible configuration is already obsolete."
     

[*] Procedural wings removes one aspect of the challenge of construction. It becomes "too easy" to build craft with specific performance characteristics.

[*] While there are various good suggestions for ways we can attempt to balance procedural wings in career mode, they are still inherently more difficult to balance than individual wing parts

[*] There are mods that do procedural wings if you want them, so they do not need to be stock.

[*] Procedural wings have some issues when it comes to rapid unplanned disassembly, since they break as one big piece which doesn't fit with the way ships tend to come apart more generally. (but we acknowledge that this might be solvable programatically) - nemrav

Where do you stand? Do you think the Mk3 wings are the wrong direction to go with aero development and that procedural wings are a better long term solution? or do you think that procedural wings are too at odds with the character of stock KSP construction and are better left as a mods-only option?

ITT - Compromise Ideas:

• limited version of TweakScale implemented stock so you could scale wing and structural parts only, but not reshape them - Alshain, worir4
  
• Procedural except for winglets - regex
  
• Stock "template" pieces with a degree of adjustability, either via tweakable properties - arq, or which can be stretched slightly to snap to alignment with nearby parts - calculuswarrior
  
• Can't we have both? - various
  
• For stock, I would prefer it if they just automatically welded all adjacent wing sections out to a certain width - Crzyrndm
  
• Combine the two with a "wing builder" system. Eg, you stick down a wing root part (that is somewhat tweakable size wise).....then a wing spar (or 3) and then a leading edge gets welded to the root......and you make a tip....and then make a trailing edge.....then when the trailing edge piece meets the root part you get a menu to select options to complete the wing. say does this wing hold fuel? Is the spar made out of kerbaltanium? is it heat treated? etc - paranoidsystems (I find this idea intriguing - Ed)
  

Edited May 1, 2015 by allmhuran

[Alshain]

I like building the wings using the pieces. I just wish I could do that with Mk3 sized wings.

The only compromise I would be interested in would be a limited version of TweakScale implemented stock so you could scale wing and structural parts only, but not reshape them.

[Frozen_Heart]

I like the lego system for wings. Pity the new ones aren't that and aren't procedural.

[Fel]

Relying on stock has drawbacks (stability/bugs, memory footprint, compatability with other mods, abandonment).

Really, that's just a throw away statement; hence meaningless. Only real issue would be abandonment but that's just inviting people to fork a project into their own (often ignoring the provided license but yeah.)

The Mk3 wing parts show the problem of trying to keep things lego-like: these wings cannot really be used as lego pieces, they are "preconfigured" shapes that really have to be used in isolation, which limits players' design freedom

http://imgur.com/a/fV53M

I'm fairly certain those aren't "lego like wings" the guy used to make that, right?

There are people who want procedural, and people who don't. Can we leave it at that instead of having to point out all the faults in the arguments for and against?

[worir4]

I like the lego wings. I agree with Alshain and think that you should be able to ajust the wings between MK1 MK2 and MK3. This way we don't need individual sets of wings for each size.

[Superfluous J]

I think a procedural system exactly like the one for fairings should be available for wings, only you don't make conic cylinders you make a 2-d plane that the game turns into a wing.

In my mind I imagine you place a base that is a certain width. It goes radially onto the fusilage of the plane and is 1, 2, 3, 4, whatever meters wide, front to back of the plane. Then you move your mouse away and a triangle gets drawn. Moving the mouse around causes the vertex of the triangle to follow it, drawing the wing under it. You click, and it drops a verterx there but you can still move the mouse elsewhere and continue to draw he wing out. When you're satisfied with the wing, you right click or something and it's done.

[White Owl]

Once upon a time, the concept for Kerbal Space Program was a little 2D game about putting together fuel tanks and engines to see how high and fast you could launch a rocket. Over time, the game left that initial concept behind and became something much, much greater.

Once upon a time, the concept for Kerbal Space Program was all the parts would be like little discrete blocks, lego-like. Creativity in vehicle design meant arranging the lego-like blocks in different ways. Maybe it's time for the game to leave this initial concept behind as well, and become something much, much greater. First the stock game implemented tweakables, and now we have procedural fairings too. Clearly, the notion of a rigid part with only one possible configuration is already obsolete!

[allmhuran]

Really, that's just a throw away statement; hence meaningless.

The argument is the suggestion that more mods = higher memory footprint, plus more chance of instability since not every mod is tested for compatability with every other mod. The same cannot be said about the stock game. Are you claiming that this argument is unsound? If so please demonstrate why it is unsound.

http://imgur.com/a/fV53M

I'm fairly certain those aren't "lego like wings" the guy used to make that, right?

They're procedural wings, it says so at the top of the album. I'm not sure what you mean to say here.

There are people who want procedural, and people who don't. Can we leave it at that instead of having to point out all the faults in the arguments for and against?

Well, no. If we want to have a rational discussion then that implies that we properly and fairly consider the arguments for each side instead of resting on our dogmatic laurels.

[regex]

B9 procedural wings should be stock. The LEGO wing system is terrible.

E: EXCEPT FOR THE WINGLETS. Seriously, I love the winglets. But if you're trying to make a proper wing, the LEGO system is literally a terminal disease.

[Superfluous J]

B9 procedural wings should be stock. The LEGO wing system is terrible.

E: EXCEPT FOR THE WINGLETS. Seriously, I love the winglets. But if you're trying to make a proper wing, the LEGO system is literally a terminal disease.

In spite of the hyperbole expressed in this post, I looked at B9 for the first time in probably a year and I'm pretty impressed.

I am going to download that at literally light speed when I get home.

[r4pt0r]

I like lego wings, my problem is having to strut a big 5x5 wing panel together looks ugly. Proc wings would be fine too as long as they do it more intuatively than the actual procedural wings mod, which I used for most of my .90 playtime.

I found that not the easiest to get the hang of, personally.

[allmhuran]

Proc wings would be fine too as long as they do it more intuatively than the actual procedural wings mod,

I've never used any pwings mod, but I have read through the new B9 pwings stuff. Do you find that to be better?

[r4pt0r]

I used this: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/29862-0-90-Procedural-Dynamics-Procedural-Wing-0-9-3-Dec-24

I just didnt like the "mouseover+ press a key" stuff. there has got to be an easier way to do all that.

also I found making my own wings I could never make something I was happy with. being forced to work with the stock wings led to wings I was satisfied with and proud of. idk why.

[White Owl]

I actually prefer the original mod's system of mousing over while holding the proper key. It seemed much easier to fine tune the small details; easier than attempting to move the more recent mod's little sliders a single pixel at a time, anyway. But the rest of the B9 Wings' system is better.

[arq]

I used the Procedural Wings mod for most of my pre-1.0 playtime. It saves on buildtime and partcount and strutting (a single strut can do a pretty good job of making even a large pWing behave, while lego wings tend to bend on each segment so need many struts) and the pWings we equal in terms of mass and lift when compared to equally-sized stock wings. It's a win-win in my opinion.

That said, I don't have strong opinions about them becoming a stock feature. If the mod ever gets updated I'll probably go back to that and be perfectly happy.

If there were a stock version, I would suggest that wings have four tweakables. Root length, tip length, span, and sweep. Let each setting be adjustable in ticks the size of the Wing Connector C (or smaller, if you want). The root and tip lengths describe the front-back length of the wing at each end and span would determine the wingspan. Sweep would determine where the tip is placed relative to the root. With these you could create almost all of the stock wing primitives, or any triangle or parallelogram of most any size, with a single piece. These sliders would save the awkwardness of the hold-and-drag used in the pWings mod, and can align things more cleanly to a grid. It would save the user the trouble of adjusting wings with four roots and twenty parts in chunks and cut down on menu clutter by merging over a dozen parts into one (the aero tab is pretty busy). There could also be a Mk3 version that would have fuel tanks.

[CalculusWarrior]

I do like the 'lego' style of KSP's wings; an issue I often find myself having with the procedural wings is that all my planes start looking the same after a while. The limitations the of the stock wingset make more imaginative wing configurations possible.

That being said, the stock wings aren't great. I can't tell you how many times I've wished for a wing to have slightly less of an angle, or that this one part was a little longer.

Hence, my compromise is that we keep the stock wings, but make them 'stretchable', in which you can move the wing edges around (within reason) to better fit with the surrounding parts. To complete this, we would need a welding tool which can turn all the wing parts into one big wing, with a single texture and no bits which require extensive strutting.

[MGCJerry]

How about both? Sometimes I like building wings when i have a certain design in mind. Other times, I just need a quick wing and don't feel like building one. I wish we had MK3 sized wing parts AND a larger selection of MK3 wing shapes. Also, it would be nice if the wing pieces have tweakable fuel like the MK3.

[Crzyrndm]

I appreciate having access to both.

Stock wing system is nice up to a point, but the need to stitch strut larger wings to keep sections aligned is a pain. Pwings is much easier and less infuriating in particular for any delta wing style plane of reasonable size, becasue I can have a single piece for each section of wing => no uneven flexing along the length of the plane.

For stock, I would prefer it if they just automatically welded all adjacent wing sections out to a certain width (still get solid wing sections, still "lego" construction). Not having to watch individual sections of wings separating from each other all over the place would be a dramatic improvement.

@r4pt0r

B9 PWings

NOTE: you'll need the contents of the GameData folder here to use them in 1.0

Edited May 1, 2015 by Crzyrndm

[Othuyeg]

I went procedural, never looked back. I consider procedural wings one of the essential mods.

[Telemake]

I would like to have both options as stock, depending on the project I work on.

[Mipe]

Procedural parts minimize the part count AND memory usage (after deleting the obsolete stock parts). When pushing the frontiers of KSP modding (running 30+ mods including graphics and system overhauls), procedural parts can make a difference.

That said, I always keep returning to vanilla stock to shave off all that nostalgia.

Well, with proper part filtering and upcoming Unity 5 build, none of this matters. You can have both.

[Red Iron Crown]

I'm generally not a fan of procedural parts for the stock game, but wings are the major exception. I like the Lego-like construction of rockets and fuselages, but with wings Lego-style is just frustrating as you try to keep parts aligned and make them connect somewhat seamlessly. Plus we have about a dozen wing parts and many more if you include control surfaces; switching to procedurals could reduce that to two.

[MKI]

There have now been several discussions both here and on reddit regarding wing construction. The discussions have largely been sparked by the introductoin of the new Mk3 wings, and tend to revolve around whether stock KSP should go procedural, or whether we should try to retain the lego style construction as much as possible. I am somewhat on the fence here, so what I will do is provide what seem to be the main arguments on both sides.

I will add and remove summaries of arguments in this thread to the following two lists. I will also remove unsound arguments from the lists if anyone can demonstrate why a particular argument is unsound (of which I will be the arbiter).

1. There is currently an insufficient number of different wing parts to cater to the needs of all players, and the number of different shapes we would need to do so is too high to be feasible.
   
2. 1.0 adding new kinds of wings means there are now even more inconsistencies in the style and texture of the various wing parts, and inconsistencies in style and texture are bad.
   
3. The Mk3 wing parts show the problem of trying to keep things lego-like: these wings cannot really be used as lego pieces, they are "preconfigured" shapes that really have to be used in isolation, which limits players' design freedom
   
4. Relying on mods has drawbacks (stability/bugs, memory footprint, compatability with other mods, abandonment).
   
5. (In opposition to argument 1 of the next list) First the stock game implemented tweakables, and now we have procedural fairings too. The notion of a rigid part with only one possible configuration is already obsolete. White Owl
   

1. Procedural wings do not fit in with the rest of KSP's construction style. Procedural wings is the start of a slippery slope to procedural everything, which would change the character of construction in KSP to be a totally different game.
   
2. Procedural wings removes one aspect of the challenge of construction. It becomes "too easy" to build craft with specific performance characteristics.
   
3. While there are various good suggestions for ways we can attempt to balance procedural wings in career mode, they are still inherently more difficult to balance than individual wing parts
   
4. There are mods that do procedural wings if you want them, so they do not need to be stock.
   

Where do you stand? Do you think the Mk3 wings are the wrong direction to go with aero development and that procedural wings are a better long term solution? or do you think that procedural wings are too at odds with the character of stock KSP construction and are better left as a mods-only option?

ITT - Compromise Ideas:

• limited version of TweakScale implemented stock so you could scale wing and structural parts only, but not reshape them - Alshain, worir4
  
• Procedural except for winglets - regex
  
• Stock "template" pieces with a degree of adjustability, either via tweakable properties - arq, or which can be stretched slightly to snap to alignment with nearby parts - calculuswarrior
  
• Can't we have both? - various
  
• For stock, I would prefer it if they just automatically welded all adjacent wing sections out to a certain width - Crzyrndm
  

The whole game should stay Lego.

The procedural farings are there to allow players to build the important stuff without having to worry about gameplay restrictions of farings JUST to get there creations out into space.

Procedual wings means you can make ANY WING for ANYTHING. Without really any effort what so ever. Thats against the DEFINED LEGO STYLE of the game. Procedural wings aren't for stock.

[pincushionman]

I could go either way on this one, probably leaning toward procedural. Lego-style fits in with the rest of the build system better, but there needs to be more consistency. Porkjet made some great MK3 models, but they're all complete "well, here's your wing" type stuff.

Proc wings are obviously a paradigm shift, but wings are such a specialized part I don't see that as a real problem. We'd need many more pieces to Lego up the shapes some people need to make - and a better way to connect them together.

I for one feel rather limited with the current Legos, particularly in the tails department.

[lincourtl]

I tend to be in the "Go Procedural!" camp, but I also think it's possible to have the best of both worlds.

In career mode, pParts can have a base set of tweakable shapes/sizes which serve as the "standard." Heck, you can even have them appear in the parts menu as separate parts. But then you can allow the player to fully procedurally vary the size and shape in exchange for extra Funds.

In sandbox we don't care about Funds so the pParts are fully procedural from the start.