[1.0.4] Maritime Pack - 0.1.4

[Gargamel]

I ay never use these, but hey look awesome! Keep up the good work!

[Fengist]

They're called "scuppers" .

I've already thrown bitts, davits, gedunk and gunwales (that's pronounced gun'el) at these space jockey's, I didn't wanna hit them with too many nautical terms all at once

Keep the blisters below or above the water. I'm sure you already knew that but many first time mariners don't. The instant a part's connection point breaches the surface or goes below it, it's potential to break is calculated. I will look at making the blisters a tad tougher though.

I'm surprised you held together at 86 but I will make a note. With these being 'general purpose' hulls I've set their crash tolerance at 70. I normally find the stern snaps off at that point if you're making a lot of wake. If you can get one to smooth out and create no wake... speed is no longer an issue.

Here's one of my first tests of the hull hitting 100m/s with a VERY early version of the bitts and compressor on deck.

And here's another pic with a new nautical term: Bathysphere.

Edited June 13, 2015 by Fengist

[Fengist]

I ay never use these, but hey look awesome! Keep up the good work!

Thank you. Comments like these, from someone who took the time to comment even though they don't plan to use the parts, are part of the motivation that keeps the drafting table ink flowing.

[smjjames]

How did you get the camera to not be stuck pointing straight down for the bathysphere?

[Fengist]

How did you get the camera to not be stuck pointing straight down for the bathysphere?

KerbalCam

It's an old mod that hasn't been updated in ages but fortunately, still works in 1.0.2. There's also Camera tools which will let you mount cameras on anything and get external views. It's pretty cool. I've made a VTOL camera drone to get some really good images for videos. There is one other external camera mod that I can't remember atm, but it's not nearly as easy to use as KerbalCam

[Geschosskopf]

I've already thrown bitts, davits, gedunk and gunwales (that's pronounced gun'el) at these space jockey's, I didn't wanna hit them with too many nautical terms all at once

First we got an Aldis light and it was very bright

Then we got a wireless set and signalled day and night

And now we talk to satellites but what's a semaphore?

A bunting-tosser doesn't toss the bunting anymore

Keep the blisters below or above the water. I'm sure you already knew that but many first time mariners don't. The instant a part's connection point breaches the surface or goes below it, it's potential to break is calculated. I will look at making the blisters a tad tougher though.

I'm surprised you held together at 86 but I will make a note. With these being 'general purpose' hulls I've set their crash tolerance at 70. I normally find the stern snaps off at that point if you're making a lot of wake. If you can get one to smooth out and create no wake... speed is no longer an issue.

This particular boat trimmed out fine so I didn't add any ballast. Maybe I should have a little just to keep the blisters submerged.

Wakes are a strange thing with this mod. When maneuvering at speed, I was getting a random scatter of "shell splashes" all around the boat, sometimes even isolated ones hundreds of meters away. It looked like I was under attack and I was thinking maybe parts were coming off .

A few other things I noted:

* After the boat capsized, the engine kept running just fine even though the ventilators had gone by the boards.

* When I built the boat, it didn't automatically load the crew it needed so I got the warning message and had to add crew manually.

* The old "seasick Kerbals" issue is still with us in 1.x. That is, Kerbals don't do well on floating objects. If you EVA a Kerbal while the boat is moving, he just collapses in a heap if you're at slow speed, and slides off the stern at high speed. Back in the mythic Dreamtime when I 1st started playing KSP , there was a mod to fix this. Might be worth looking into and incorporating something similar as standard equipment. Perhaps add the necessary modules to something like the blisters, which you can't make a boat without. The original mod used a small part that had very weak attachment so often blew off the vessel when you moved at any speed.

And of course I have a number of requests

* Side thrusters in the bows and sterns to improve maneuvering.

* Reverse thrust for actually stopping (boats at present seem to coast along at 0.1-0.2m/s forever)

* RO-RO bows and sterns, plus hollow cargo hull sections, so I can make LSTs for rovers.

* A "tri-coupler" square stern with a row of 3 big, rear-facing attachment nodes, the better to stick a boat atop a rocket to send it to Laythe.

* A hull section with portholes and a small deckhouse entry hatch that can house a company of Marines.

* Multiple flavors of intermodal shipping containers that stack and can connect on the ends. Flavors to include KIS storage, tankage for all resources, housing units, and just hollow boxes that small rovers could be stored in.

* Square-rigged masts of several sizes. Poweved by "witchcraft" (some system to fake the direction and strength of "wind" based on lat/lon and heavy randomness). Kerbals would have to go aloft frequently to trim the sails to make the boat move in approximately the desired direction based on changes in the fake wind.

And here's another pic with a new nautical term: Bathysphere.

Nifty .

[Mekan1k]

Found an effective delivery system:

... Whatcha think?

[randomness5555]

Found a way of delivering my ship by land-while I love the airship(see post above), the Elsie May II is a little on the heavy side for that. I love your mod man, despite the fact it's in early stages it's great fun, and i'll be keeping an eye out for updates, you can be sure of that!

[Ace_Of_Spades]

So far so good but I can't seem to land my 747 on it. I guess I need to go bigger!

[Fengist]

Alot of great stuff here Gesch, I'll respond to them individually.

First we got an Aldis light and it was very bright

Then we got a wireless set and signalled day and night

And now we talk to satellites but what's a semaphore?

A bunting-tosser doesn't toss the bunting anymore

On the other side of the pond, we refer to them as Skivvy Wavers (Skivvies being underwear)

Wakes are a strange thing with this mod. When maneuvering at speed, I was getting a random scatter of "shell splashes" all around the boat, sometimes even isolated ones hundreds of meters away. It looked like I was under attack and I was thinking maybe parts were coming off .

I can't say it's intentional but I've noticed it too. The isolated ones are somehow a result of the engine. The ones amidship are somehow related to the fact that I intentionally raised the connection node above the centerline.

A few other things I noted:

* After the boat capsized, the engine kept running just fine even though the ventilators had gone by the boards.

I've had this happen at least once as well and don't have a solid answer. There are no intakes on any of the parts other than the ventilators.

* When I built the boat, it didn't automatically load the crew it needed so I got the warning message and had to add crew manually.

Yep, aware of that and I'll fix that with the next release I hope.

* The old "seasick Kerbals" issue is still with us in 1.x. That is, Kerbals don't do well on floating objects.

I actually found an old copy of this mod on one of the Russian fan sites. It does have a 'free to do whatever with license' so it's adaptable. But apparently it attempted to fix the problem by changing the status of the entire ship from splashed to landed. And, if a Kerbal fell down, it attempted to push them along with the ship. I loaded it up and tinkered with it and I can say this:

It doesn't play nice with hyperedit and it doesn't appear to work any more. It does appear to briefly change the status but it gets changed right back. Kerbals are still considered landed but the ship is splashed. The code is pretty short and I can somewhat follow it (I'm not a C# programmer by any stretch). If someone more familiar with C# would take a look at it and see if it can be fixed, I'd be more than happy to add it to the pack. I've archived a copy here: SeaSicknessCure_0.21.rar

And of course I have a number of requests

* Side thrusters in the bows and sterns to improve maneuvering.

While I've already considered this, there are issues I haven't resolved yet.

Here's the choices:

1. Thrusters use RCS/Monopropellant

2. Thrusters are bolt on engines

3. Thrusters are built-in engines

Problems:

1: Pretty unrealistic and bolt-on radials already exist in-game. Adds weight with monopropellant.

2: Any bolt on engine is subject to getting ripped off and, if added below the water line, adds some flotation. Requires a fuel that has weight. Creates drag. If it has mass and below the water line, lots of drag.

3: As soon as the user 'stages' the part with thrusters, the engines turn on. If a user isn't paying attention they'll be thrusting forward and from the sides burning fuel. They'd have to know to assign them to a hotkey and turn them off and on individually.

* Reverse thrust for actually stopping (boats at present seem to coast along at 0.1-0.2m/s forever)

Thought of this too when trying to stop one of my ships. I'll have to look at how other mods, like Firespitter handle this. I'm pretty sure this is custom DLL stuff. AFAIK, the only way to do this stock is to create a second engine pointed in the opposite direction and toggle it on and off. You'd have 2 engine icons for one part. I'm also pretty sure Firespitter is going to be a strongly recommended mod sooner or later.

For now, here's a trick to try. Add ONE bitt to the bottom of your ship. When you need to stop fast, turn the compressor on. You'll be astounded at the results.

* RO-RO bows and sterns, plus hollow cargo hull sections, so I can make LSTs for rovers.

Already considered this. For a RoRo, It'll take some time for me to learn Blender and animations. Blender is NOT user friendly. For the cargo hulls, I've already created a hollow hull and it promptly sunk. Plus, water isn't displaced in KSP, it intrudes into the spaces. If I create a hollow hull, you'll see the water inside the hull.

* A "tri-coupler" square stern with a row of 3 big, rear-facing attachment nodes, the better to stick a boat atop a rocket to send it to Laythe.

I'll consider this. Getting a ship to Laythe and Eve via rocket is part of the plan, I just haven't figured out a good 'realistic' way to do this.

* A hull section with portholes and a small deckhouse entry hatch that can house a company of Marines.

Already planned. I'll probably add berthing to the Focsle.

* Multiple flavors of intermodal shipping containers that stack and can connect on the ends. Flavors to include KIS storage, tankage for all resources, housing units, and just hollow boxes that small rovers could be stored in.

Great idea! Other than Infernal robotics, how would you get them on and off the ship?'

BTW, there used to be a mod on the old spaceport with shipping containers. It apparently evaporated in the move to Curse.

* Square-rigged masts of several sizes. Poweved by "witchcraft" (some system to fake the direction and strength of "wind" based on lat/lon and heavy randomness). Kerbals would have to go aloft frequently to trim the sails to make the boat move in approximately the desired direction based on changes in the fake wind.

Nifty .

You mean something like the image below?

That's part of what inspired me to create this mod. Here's how that modder handled the problem. The sails are solar collectors and work on the solar panel principle. He created a new resource (solar thrust) and the sails collect and hold a small amount of it. Based on their facing toward the sun you collect varying amounts of solar thrust. As you throttle up, each sail generates forward thrust. The thrust can be turned on or off so that you can collect solar power from the sides. A later version I had jibs and a mizzen to collect when I was moving perpendicular to the sun.

The problems with this method:

1: The sails generate the thrust. Thus, your ship pitches forward the higher the sail is off the deck.

2: The sails collect solar energy from only one direction. This means sailing into the sun requires a backward facing sail to collect and an opposing sail to thrust. It also means that if you want to collect solar energy from all points of the compass you'll need a minimum of 4 sails.

3: If a sail gets blocked from the sun by another sail, it becomes drag.

Needless to say, I had gobs of hotkeys assigned to raise and lower sails depending on which way the sun faced and which way I wanted to go. They were also pretty low thrust (2-4) and I had to add pontoons to make it float. My best speed with great sun was 17m/s.

Without actual 'wind' there aren't many realistic choices.

So, have I thought about this? Oh yes, and I have a few ideas I'm going to test but this is well down the road. Rest assured, hoisting the jolly roger is on my to-do list.

- - - Updated - - -

Found an effective delivery system:

http://i.imgur.com/izRaZ5p.jpg

... Whatcha think?

I actually made a huge blimp with procedural airships some while back and considered that as a delivery option. But, that mod is busted in 1.0.2.

- - - Updated - - -

http://i.imgur.com/9VpMPz3.png

Found a way of delivering my ship by land-while I love the airship(see post above), the Elsie May II is a little on the heavy side for that. I love your mod man, despite the fact it's in early stages it's great fun, and i'll be keeping an eye out for updates, you can be sure of that!

Mole tracks! Great idea. They're huge!

Thanks for the inspiration to keep modding!

- - - Updated - - -

So far so good but I can't seem to land my 747 on it. I guess I need to go bigger!

http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/FWv2f84NKg8/maxresdefault.jpg

I'm pretty sure I had nothing to do with this.

Edited June 14, 2015 by Fengist

[smjjames]

Do I have to do something in order for the blisters to work or work better? I'm trying to get this catamaran (which I called Jebbas Skiff, lol ) to float and while it is floating slightly better than it does without blisters, it's still not actually floating right.

This is with BB btw.

Edit: Are you SURE you tested with Better Buoyancy??? Because I've tried making the pontoons longer, added more of the blisters and it's still not working. In fact, adding even more blisters gets me nowhere. MechJeb says the weight of the whole thing is 33.6 (the last two numbers say 67, though they are flickering a bit for some reason) tons.

Edited June 14, 2015 by smjjames

[Tyren]

Doesnt work with Better Buoyancy for me

[smjjames]

Doesnt work with Better Buoyancy for me

Yeah :/

I did a quick test with this basic and lightweight setup....

...which barely floats using BB....

....yet floats perfectly without BB...

Anyways, I didn't give up on that catamaran thing and decided to slap the antigrav repulsors from Kerbal Foundries onto the bottom and used those to lower myself into the water and still float at the same time. Those have a huge crash resistance.

WOOHOO!

I also discovered a memoryleak from, uh, something, no idea where.

Edited June 14, 2015 by smjjames

[Fengist]

I shall resinstall BB and begin testing. Certainly explains why you had so many blisters on the first one.

- - - Updated - - -

I also discovered a memoryleak from, uh, something, no idea where.

And that I have nothing to do with.

Edit:

And yep, his changes to density screw up flotation.

Edited June 14, 2015 by Fengist

[smjjames]

And that I have nothing to do with.

Not blaming your mod for the memory leak, was just commenting on it since I ran into it while doing that speedboat thing. Turned out to be me making BB or maybe Unity cry.

[Fengist]

Not blaming your mod for the memory leak, was just commenting on it since I ran into it while doing that speedboat thing. Turned out to be me making BB or maybe Unity cry.

Oh I know. There's no way my mod could make a memory leak. It might expose one, but not create one.

[cy-one]

Looks promising, I certainly want to see more

[Geschosskopf]

On the other side of the pond, we refer to them as Skivvy Wavers (Skivvies being underwear)

Yeah, the point of that song is showing how things change. "Bunting-tosser" was an old RN expression dating from Nelson's time when signal flags were coming into vogue ("England expects..." and all that) and used at least through WW1, but has since disappeared.

[Fengist]

One of the things I hope to do with this mod is not make it too dependent on others or get into writing DLL's. I already know two programming languages pretty well. I loathe learning another just to make a mod.

The RoRo, I don't see that as being a problem, nor do I see containers to be a biggie. It'll just take some time.

As for sailing... here's some good news for you that makes it possible.

Once he gets it stable and once I get animations down I may make a separate 'companion' pack that uses his weather mod. That's a bit down the road tho. Let me get this one smoothed out first

Speaking of smoothed out, it would appear all the polishing I've been doing to the hulls is paying off.

Here's the reworked yacht bridge out for a test drive

Edited June 15, 2015 by Fengist

[greydragon70]

I love this Maritime Pack!!! I found out about it from Kattabos Gaming on youtube. This is what I built so far...

Not much really, 10 minute builds. A Small Cruiser and a Medium Missile Boat. Can't wait to spend more time with these parts.

I combined your mod with BDarmory. The dinghy davits make great missile racks.

Builder's tip: Use RCS ports or Vernier Engines to help with steering, Verniers are best with a few Oscar-B tanks added.

Link to picks on dropbox:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/2w19p2slmkuona8/AAACgMBOqMbjYeZeNgUF1smSa?dl=0

Edited June 15, 2015 by greydragon70

[Fengist]

I love this Maritime Pack!!! I found out about it from Kattabos Gaming on youtube. This is what I built so far...

Not much really, 10 minute builds. A Small Cruiser and a Medium Missile Boat. Can't wait to spend more time with these parts.

I combined your mod with BDarmory. The dinghy davits make great missile racks.

Builder's tip: Use RCS ports or Vernier Engines to help with steering, Verniers are best with a few Oscar-B tanks added.

Link to picks on dropbox:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/2w19p2slmkuona8/AAACgMBOqMbjYeZeNgUF1smSa?dl=0

Thanks for pointing this out. I would have never known of the review had you not mentioned it. I have to say, he gave a very fair review and every thing he pointed out as problems have already been identified. I actually enjoyed watching someone play with the parts.

And here's another trick for 'steering' your ship. Kerbals are little engines. If you place a blocky object on the bow of your ship and run your Kerbal into the side of it and keep running... your ship will turn. Cheaper than a bow thruster

[Fengist]

The Maritime Pack now enters Beta.

Download link updated. I've added a spoiler to the OP detailing some of the major changes to this update.

Enjoy.

I'll be updating the OP images to reflect the new models.

[mike9606]

I am quite interested with this pack, though I have yet to build a functional ship. Story of my first ship: I decide to make a simple fuel tanker for refueling my crafts that have either landed on water (including other ships) or crafts on the island runway. I have some issues with the launching system at first, eventually having to add bitts to the back of the launching rig so the brakes can get decent traction. Eventually I get it to the water, discover I have to fully fill the rear bitts for the craft not to dip the bow underwater, and throttle up to test the speed. After getting to around 5-6 or less M/s, the jumbo orange tank clipped into the deck explodes, and pretty much all of the bitts and stuff on deck fly off except for the superstructure and what it had glued onto it. The ship pings up to float much higher in the water with the reduced load, and I somehow have some oxidizer on board despite the "oil bins" (Oscar-Bs to fuel the vernors) flying off in the kraken attack to stop the ship and recover it. I promptly recover all remaining debris and find that beta 0.0.1 has been released. That design is being sent to the scrapyard and I am going to attempt to build a less explosion prone design.

[smjjames]

Did you do anything with Better Buoyancy support though? The changelog doesn't say anything on that.

Or is it not possible to do a MM config?

[mike9606]

Did you do anything with Better Buoyancy support though? The changelog doesn't say anything on that.

Or is it not possible to do a MM config?

I think a MM config would be possible, but I believe it would probably have to change the parts a fair bit, I'd expect it to come after this pack is in a more polished state.

On a different note here are some minor bugs I have noticed: The buoyancy blister and compressed water tanks lack the line that gives them the manufacturer name in the SPH and VAB and the compressed water tank has its description in the manufacturer spot. These are both easily fixed with some simple part.cfg editing, but it can be a bit tedious to redo it every update.

Edited June 15, 2015 by mike9606