Interplanetary liquid fuel tanks

[Wjolcz]

This would be my solution of choice. We have enough variety in tank sizes and shapes, just let us adjust what they hold.

I agree with this.

[Higgs]

I agree some large liquid only tanks are needed, but, altering files myself is a huge risk. I get nervous enough fixing the states of bill jeb an bob from dead to alive. I hope squad adds them

[Capt Snuggler]

as well as having a tweakable for the tank contents id also like to see a tweakable for hard or soft shell tanks.

Allow me to elaborate. Currently almost all tanks are "hard shell". The round8 is what I would describe as "Soft shell".

the stiff cylindrical shell makes them aerodynamic and stand up to earth G and atmospheric affects.

Interplanetary stages do not need this hard shell as they operate in vacuum so I think it would be good to have a tweakable option to remove it and save some mass for that cool interplanetary Mylar look

like this:

yes, that means extra art work, but art work looks great and if porkjet doesn't want the task, I'm sure there are many talented artists lining up for a chance to make more stock parts.

very few additional textures would be needed also 1.1 being x64 means the cap on the number of game assets now nice and high.

Also hi everyone! I've not been around for a while.

[Darnok]

as well as having a tweakable for the tank contents id also like to see a tweakable for hard or soft shell tanks.

Allow me to elaborate. Currently almost all tanks are "hard shell". The round8 is what I would describe as "Soft shell".

the stiff cylindrical shell makes them aerodynamic and stand up to earth G and atmospheric affects.

Interplanetary stages do not need this hard shell as they operate in vacuum so I think it would be good to have a tweakable option to remove it and save some mass for that cool interplanetary Mylar look

like this:

http://i.imgur.com/8iMfmmS.png

yes, that means extra art work, but art work looks great and if porkjet doesn't want the task, I'm sure there are many talented artists lining up for a chance to make more stock parts.

very few additional textures would be needed also 1.1 being x64 means the cap on the number of game assets now nice and high.

Also hi everyone! I've not been around for a while.

I like those spherical tanks.

[Capt Snuggler]

Looks like Nertia's work. From NFT mod pack.

Yes it is. Thanks for spotting. Apologies for not crediting in the first place.

To be clear, I'm calling for a LF/LFO tweakable AND a low drag/low mass (or aero shell yes/no) tweakable.

[Zombie_Striker]

Instead of creating your own part, why not use this:

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/121321-Stock-Fuel-Switch

[RidingTheFlow]

Yes, there are multitude of mods but this something that stock should have, since this is one of very important learning point of *interplanetary* craft design (and how they differ from atmospheric rockets), and players will benefit from learning it without digging for extra mods.

Yes, you can remove oxidizer from normal tanks, but mass fraction will be terrible.

And spaceplane tanks have same issue - they utilize extra shielding to achieve high impact tolerance and heat resistance. Which completely useless for ships which stay in low gravity and vacuum.

Interplanetary tank should be just a "eggshell bubble", with very low impact tolerance and heat resistance - but it's mass fraction should be very high. It should both look and work different.

[Pthigrivi]

Ive been think about this, and its a tricky one. I mean you could just make fuel-type tweakable and eliminate a ton of parts, but something wants me to keep them separate. I actually liked the NFP H2 tanks so much I installed it and deleted all the other parts just to have them.

[magnemoe]

Other option is to introduce "Liquid Hydrogen" as LV-N-only fuel.

Ah. It evaporates like hell ... how do we supposed to use LV-Ns then?

You can refrigerate it, yest this takes power and require more heat fins, however this would be relevant for huge interplanetary ships where some ton extra tons is no big deal.

[More Boosters]

I'm not sure what the problem is. By all means, add some, but if I were squad I wouldn't want to clutter tank lineup with this. Mk1 since its buff is working like a FL-400 with free reinforcement and the only available LF-only engine, the NERV, is a 1.25m engine to begin with. There really is no good case for this to happen, what exactly do you hope to achieve with more fuel tanks that would only be used by one engine? Because planes seem to fare well with the Mk1.

[Pthigrivi]

I'd been using the existing LF tanks. One issue is dry-weight--you're essentially carting around crash-tolerance weight for an engine thats best in a transfer stage. The other issue is form-factor. With no 2.5m or 3.75m LF tanks you end up with a lot of awkward MK3 designs that don't work with interstage fairings.

[More Boosters]

I'd been using the existing LF tanks. One issue is dry-weight--you're essentially carting around crash-tolerance weight for an engine thats best in a transfer stage. The other issue is form-factor. With no 2.5m or 3.75m LF tanks you end up with a lot of awkward MK3 designs that don't work with interstage fairings.

I think the Mk1 LF Fuselage has been buffed*** that it does not have more dead weight despite having more resistance. And I did use them on nuclear probes to decent effect.

If you're using nukes with 2.5m parts (how would you even go with 3.75m? is there an adapter for 1.25m x whatever?) then you're using quad couplers, so why not just use the Mk1 Fuselage with that? The weight and capacity scales similarly with the 2.5m parts so just add more to cover the same volume. Would look nicer too!

But I don't mean to dismiss your claims of problems, I just never had any myself. Trying to understand where Mk1

Fuselage may fail, and it's not extra dead weight.

Edit:

*** http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/FL-T400_Fuel_Tank

*** http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Mk1_Liquid_Fuel_Fuselage

The wiki shows the same dry mass for the two tanks just as I recalled.

[Pthigrivi]

Oh thats fine if you're just moving small probes around (although engine mass fraction wise I don't even know if that makes sense, just use ions, right?). If you're trying though to move asteroids or mounting big Jool missions its not always ideal to have 20 MK1s with fuel-lines going everywhere. Im not using quad couplers, most often it only takes one or two LV-Ns. Its putting together enough dV to do anything interesting and trying to pack it for launch and aerobreaking that makes using bigger tanks necessary.

Edited November 8, 2015 by Pthigrivi