Wing assembly preferences: lego? procedural? other?

[paranoidsystems]

I like the lego feel of KSP....but wings are an issue......I like perhaps limited procedural parts. So for example wing parts can be stretched with in limits.....

perhaps another way is some sort of a wing builder element? so you have a set of parts. wing root. leading edge, tip, trailing edge. and you can build a wing on a craft then once you "complete" the wing it becomes it's own part single part. so you overcome the lack of the perfect wing for your needs but still maintain the lego like feel?

so 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 they 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? ect.......

I understand this might be on the side of complex but maybe it's a way to address both sides of it.... I dont know just throwing an idea out there....wouldnt want to over complicate it either......

[Pax Kerbana]

Procedural is not Kerbal.

Kerbals design in a vacuum, test, and market completed products. It is a distinct method of construction and fundamental to Kerbals apparently.

If you do procedural wings, why not procedural tanks? Why not procedural engines? Procedural rockets??

What KSP needs is a more refined wing selection. The new "Big-S" wings are awesome! Now just add some more like the wing selection we had in 0.90. Then if we are allowed to mention things we're not supposed to mention, it would be great for items like wings to be *cough* weldable *cough* (for part count considerations).

[DuoDex]

Punted to SD&D as it belongs there.

Personally I like procedural wings. It's nice to be able to get exactly the shape you want, although paranoid system' idea is interesting as well.

[Red Iron Crown]

Procedural is not Kerbal.

Better stop using fuel lines and struts, they're not Kerbal apparently.

[Pax Kerbana]

I actually don't think fairings should be procedural either... imagine what you could do with a bunch of spare fairing sections!!!

[Starwhip]

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

My problem as well. Pick one or the other, not have neither.

[micr0wave]

One of the nice things around KSP, is that you have this open system which makes it probably easier to make mods.

You can add all the things, be it the little helpers (KER, Mechjeb, Trajectories .. you name it), parts or alter gameplay to such a huge factor that it should cover most of the demands a ksp player might have after he played the stock version and found the bits and pieces he might want for his individual entertainment.

Having too many options right from the start might reduce the variety you can configure yourself, or learning the basic mechanics.

For example: having only access to the thermal data through the cheat menu might give people bad ideas concerning proper fueling of rockets.

Having autopilot or too powerful parts might take away some of that learning process which will lead to problems and frustration later on because you were relying too much on things which softened your impact on the learning curve (i spelled wall wrong) and will make bigger missions a lot harder because there might be missing some basic knowledge.

Having said all that, i really love all the procedural parts and wings and those are the first mods i get now and i know why i want them. Learning that 'why' is the important bit you have to know when the thing between you and KSP shall become a longer relationship.

[pincushionman]

….If you do procedural wings, why not procedural tanks? Why not procedural engines? Procedural rockets??…

Because the Lego system works well for these things, except for edge and corner cases? Wings are already an edge case, as they often need building in two different dimensions simultaneously, and the connection system draws a blank on that.

Plus, we already have a large number of wing parts, in a mish-mash of styles - yet there are still some notable gaps. The number of required Lego pieces to be effective could easily exceed the rest of the parts combined, which would be a damn shame, given that planes are only a small part of the whole Kerbal experience. Wing parts should not dominate the player's (and devs', and testers') attention so.

Edited May 1, 2015 by pincushionman

[Nemrav]

for the op, another argument I've seen for not having proc wings is that they break in one big piece...

But I think what I'd have is a compromise, say either have your own "prebuild a wing part", basically add custom parts to the list. Or a fully fledged procedural wing that gets divided into sections (for destruction) similar to the fairing system...

[regex]

If you do procedural wings, why not procedural tanks? Why not procedural engines? Procedural rockets??

Why not? That sounds awesome, practically unlimited possibilities with a reduced part count, I can't see anything wrong with that scenario.

[arq]

The whole point of 'lego wings' is that you can make whatever shape you want. The same goes for procedural wings, but they save on parts which reduces memory and computation.

Again, as long as I have a pWings mod I really don't care if they're in stock. But the argument that pWings are not 'Kerbal' is pretty weak. The reason we don't need procedural tanks near as much is that you can make most any fuel tank you could want with 5 pieces or less, so the procedural gains would be small. But some wings can easily require 20 parts, plus the struts to support them, and this many segments makes them difficult to adjust (you can move an entire tank stack at once, but wings move in slices). 3.5m parts were added to cut down on partcount in launchers. pWings would do the same for planes.

[lincourtl]

Procedural is not Kerbal.

Like I said above, you can have the best of both worlds. For ordinary/career usage there can be a variety of predefined part shapes and sizes, which can even show up as discrete parts on the parts menu. The parts are still procedurally generated, but the game ships with a selection of standard configs.

At a certain tech level you can unlock full procedural ability (call it the "aerospace mastery" node or something), which allows one to make whatever shape and size you want for extra Funds cost. That way you get both the Lego-esque quality of discrete components and the freedom of procedural components.

You could also add the option to save your new procedural part as a standard to the parts menu, which would result in lower costs the next time you use it.

[allmhuran]

for the op, another argument I've seen for not having proc wings is that they break in one big piece...

But I think what I'd have is a compromise, say either have your own "prebuild a wing part", basically add custom parts to the list. Or a fully fledged procedural wing that gets divided into sections (for destruction) similar to the fairing system...

Added to OP, cheers.

[paranoidsystems]

Excuse the childlike drawings I only had my iPad and my finger.

Visual representation of my idea from earlier post about a wing builder as something that's meets the custom wing needs procedural provides but keeps the Lego build things to experiment vibe that I see is now in OP's first post Thanks allmhuran

Parts list for wing builder with the skeleton list of parts

Root part should be size tweak able

Wing construction, use wing edges like you would the I beams we have now. Stacking them (maybe tweak ale to bend curves into them) to get wing shape. And spar to influence over strength of wing and eventual weight.

Then when the wing is "built" you get a pop up "complete your part" box. Let's you pick options, for example does it hold exploding juice? Is it covered in kerbal heat paint/wing skin type is skinned in metal or Jebs trousers? Does it have flaps or control surfaces built in? What's the spar made out of, tin cans, chair legs, kerbaltanium? Maybe the option to adds bends or curves to the spar in places.

Perhaps you could have very basic airfoil type options, high altitude wing, acrobatic wing etc to give different modifiers to the wing properties.

Once setup this wing is now one part (except if it fails maybe it could half break or something...as I hate the idea of building a huge wing and when it fails the whole wing vanishes like single parts now do...the great part about a compound part wing is when if fails its a lot closer to a real wing failure analogue then an entire massive procedural wing vanishing

Edited May 3, 2015 by paranoidsystems
inability to spell

[Aanker]

I like the lego style of building wings, but at the same time procedural wings may be the way forward with respect to ease of drag calculation and at thesame time enabling substantial shape creativity.

I'd actually like entirely procedural and stretchable craft, but I think the biggest thing overall is that you can't really do any of the approaches halfway. For the lego process, we simply need more varied, more flexible and plain and simple more parts. For procedural, we would need procedural wings, radial cockpits, procedural fuselages, procedural landing gear etc etc.

Wing part welding, to build a larger part out of smaller ones, is another solution to the lego process problem of accumulating drag and part count.

[Frozen_Heart]

My complaint with the procedural tanks / wings/ anything else is the they will break in a single piece, rather than having a destruction system. No more losing a wingtip and limping home, just 'poof' half the aircraft has vanished.

If procedural tanks and wings could be divided into sections that could fail as individual parts do in KSP then I'd be all for them.