[1.0.4] Maritime Pack - 0.1.4

[Fengist]

Ore? I don't know what it's burn rate is though.

edit: That emissive looks pretty good, although maybe a bit much? I mean, I know they spew steam and some smoke, but I don't think steamer ships did it at the steam locomotive level. The river ones at least, the seagoing ones might have been up to that level. I have no idea what I'm talking about anyway.

Again, this is just a crude test to check emissives/power/fuel consumption. In that screenshot it's not even using the compressed water yet. If you want to get right down to the bones of how some of the old ships worked, they had two stacks, one real, one fake. Even the Titanic had a fake stack. The one in the rear did nothing. The designers at the time favored 4 stack ships but Titanic only needed 3.

Here's another example:

The second boat from the left is the Port of Stockton. For the filming of this movie, they put two fake stacks on it to make it look 'realistic'. It only had one and if you look close between the two fake ones, you can see the smoke coming from it.

As for the volume of smoke, you can see in that pic, if the engineer/captain wanted, they could put out quite a bit. One of the advantages of that was that you could tell a steamboat was coming, even from several miles away. As for the sparks, it may be a bit much but it's still realistic. One of the reasons stacks were so tall was to make sure sparks landed behind the boat. Igniting a load of cotton was not terribly healthy.

But again, that's just me goofin off. I'll most likely tone it down a few notches

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I notice you literally made steam a resource, lol. I don't see a boiler anywhere, unless it's internal in the same way that the jet engines are actually only the nozzles, aka abstracted.

Yep, for now it's internal. One thing I'm hoping to do is to make a sidewheeler engine that essentially snaps on each side. For that I'll come up with an external boiler and ore bin. The theory with the sidewheelers is that it gives a few more choices as to how to power your ships.

One of the problems this is going to have is I have not been able to come up with a suitable way of animating the paddle the way I want, and I may not be able to. For now, expect it to start spinning when the engine comes on and keep spinning, no matter what your speed or direction, till you shut it off. Yea, not realistic but it seems that with the Firespitter plugin nobody has had a need to reverse the direction of their propeller or link it to throttle position yet.

Edited July 22, 2015 by Fengist

[TUKE]

Again, this is just a crude test to check emissives/power/fuel consumption. In that screenshot it's not even using the compressed water yet. If you want to get right down to the bones of how some of the old ships worked, they had two stacks, one real, one fake. Even the Titanic had a fake stack. The one in the rear did nothing. The designers at the time favored 4 stack ships but Titanic only needed 3.

Here's another example:

http://www.mtfca.com/discus/messages/411944/499771.jpg

The second boat from the left is the Port of Stockton. For the filming of this movie, they put two fake stacks on it to make it look 'realistic'. It only had one and if you look close between the two fake ones, you can see the smoke coming from it.

As for the volume of smoke, you can see in that pic, if the engineer/captain wanted, they could put out quite a bit. One of the advantages of that was that you could tell a steamboat was coming, even from several miles away. As for the sparks, it may be a bit much but it's still realistic. One of the reasons stacks were so tall was to make sure sparks landed behind the boat. Igniting a load of cotton was not terribly healthy.

But again, that's just me goofin off. I'll most likely tone it down a few notches

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Yep, for now it's internal. One thing I'm hoping to do is to make a sidewheeler engine that essentially snaps on each side. For that I'll come up with an external boiler and ore bin. The theory with the sidewheelers is that it gives a few more choices as to how to power your ships.

One of the problems this is going to have is I have not been able to come up with a suitable way of animating the paddle the way I want, and I may not be able to. For now, expect it to start spinning when the engine comes on and keep spinning, no matter what your speed or direction, till you shut it off. Yea, not realistic but it seems that with the Firespitter plugin nobody has had a need to reverse the direction of their propeller or link it to throttle position yet.

On the matter of the Titanic's "fake" stack, if my memory serves correct it actually served as a vent, allowing air back down into the engine room.

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Oh, btw are we getting an new cockpit for the steamer?

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

Coal burns with much less sparks than wood, which is why early steam trains had different kind of smoke stacks. In the west, wood was very readily available, and so was used as the primary source of fuel, which generated more sparks, and needed a spark catcher on the top of the smokestack.

In the east, to opposite was true, and coal was a more efficient source of fuel.

It is very clearly seen in this photograph of the completing of the transcontinental railway, linking the east and the west:

[/TRAINFAN]

[JTpopcorn]

Alright, I'm no modder but I may have a potential solution to the ship loading underwater because the splashed status. A part that switches the ship status to landed. Yeh I know this is waaay easier said than done but a part (lets call it an anchor) could be used to toggle the ship between spalshed and landed.

Good luck modding, this pack is great!

[Fengist]

Coal burns with much less sparks than wood, which is why early steam trains had different kind of smoke stacks. In the west, wood was very readily available, and so was used as the primary source of fuel, which generated more sparks, and needed a spark catcher on the top of the smokestack.

In the east, to opposite was true, and coal was a more efficient source of fuel.

It is very clearly seen in this photograph of the completing of the transcontinental railway, linking the east and the west:

http://mediad.publicbroadcasting.net/p/kpcw/files/201405/promontory_big.jpg

[/TRAINFAN]

Fascinating. Makes perfect sense.

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Alright, I'm no modder but I may have a potential solution to the ship loading underwater because the splashed status. A part that switches the ship status to landed. Yeh I know this is waaay easier said than done but a part (lets call it an anchor) could be used to toggle the ship between spalshed and landed.

Good luck modding, this pack is great!

Actually, there's already a mod that does that and it's code is free to use. It was originally written to allow Kerbals to walk on decks but, it doesn't work.

[TUKE]

The modeling program you use, Wings3d, whats it like to use? Does it have much of a learning curve?

[Fengist]

The modeling program you use, Wings3d, whats it like to use? Does it have much of a learning curve?

Well, I guess the best way to describe it is that the basics are pretty easy. If you follow Beale's tutorial that I have in the OP that'll get you started. If you're a noob at moddeling like I am, learning the nomenclature and the 'tricks' takes a good bit longer. I'm still learning all of what Wings can and cannot do. So far though, other than animations, it does what it says it does, creates 3D models and for me, a LOT faster and a lot more intuitively than Blender.

Like any software, you become better over time and it depends on how comfortable you are with the interface. I chose Wings because it just made sense to me. When Blender wanted me to right click everything and learn gobs of hotkeys, I quickly gave up on it.

[TUKE]

I see what you mean, i was fine as soon as i turned down the camera rotation values.

[Jatwaa]

This mod is making its rounds with me as a replacement for B9 LOL! Have I mentioned how much I love this mod lately?

[Drew Kerman]

I'm finally getting to try out this pack, Fengist. Awesome job! I purposely read as little as possible of the Wall of Text and had this cruising along without a problem within 15 minutes:

Look forward to messing around with the rest of the pack and your future additions

[TUKE]

This mod is making its rounds with me as a replacement for B9 LOL! Have I mentioned how much I love this mod lately?

http://i.imgur.com/MgwuJi5.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/h6MX5Sa.png

When boats go to space.....Fengist will love this i'm sure.

[Fengist]

Oh, btw are we getting an new cockpit for the steamer?

I've been waiting to answer this until till I could come up with the proper answers. So here they are.

If you mean an IVA (*grumbles*)... if I have the patience.

If you mean a new command pod...

From the Shipyard's R&D Department

What you're looking at are a lot of new parts. When the release comes out I'll detail them but for a brief rundown: all the doors you see are working airlocks (EVA). There will be a passenger module with room for 4 Kerbals, a boiler room (1 Kerbal), and a cargo deck with is essentially just an open area (like the real paddleboats). There'll also be an adapter. These decks are meant to snap onto the Clipper hull just like the CVE. The adapter will 'simulate' the gunwales on the clipper deck to give these parts a flat, square bottom. Imagine this. You build a paddle wheeler with passenger modules attached to the clipper deck. On top of those decks, you add the adapters and then, snap the CVE deck on top of that. The adapters make a seamless transition for parts that are designed to fit the clipper. If you look close, the first and second deck are made up of only 3 different parts (5 total parts on each deck) with adapters between them.

2 new engines, a left and right sidewheeler. Unfortunately, KSP doesn't truly 'mirror' parts. It either copies them radially or laterally. Because of this, there was no way to mirror a single sidewheeler and have the paddle rotate in the proper direction and have both engines thrust forward. If you want to see an example, place an old air scoop on an aircraft with mirror turned on then look closely and look at the wording on it. You'll see it's not truly mirrored.

On the third deck in the pics, or the hurricane deck, you'll see the Texas. I'm certain in countries other than the US they had other names but, finding anything paddlewheel outside the US is a hit or miss. The Texas was so named because it was the officers quarters. And since they were bigger than the passenger or crew cabins, and since the biggest thing they could think of at the time was Texas, the name stuck. Two parts. A straight section with room for 2 crew and a rounded section (I may make it a 1 crew and add a door).

Up top is a new command module, the pilothouse. Most of these on real boats were pretty basic and were more or less designed to keep the pilot out of the weather. Don't expect much more from this one. While I took some liberties on the Texas, the idea for the pilothouse was a 'traditional' look.

And you'll note I have 4 stacks on this one. With 3 engines, it took all of them running to keep positive on steam. (I explained the theory a page or two back) Running 3, it would lose steam but I could still toggle the 4th on and off (that's at full throttle). And I'm pretty well satisfied with that rate of usage. It took 21 ore and about 15 minutes to run to the Island runway at 45m/s. While that sounds rather slow, there's lots of junk on this boat and a gob of ore slowing it down. An earlier test with 3 engines on a much lighter boat... I hit 100m/s with little or no problem.

There's still a lot to do but the basic parts, textures, functions are there. Don't hold your breath waiting. It's probably another couple weeks or more before I'm ready with the next update.

Oh and just in case you're curious, this boat is around 19 tons and 52ish parts.

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This mod is making its rounds with me as a replacement for B9 LOL! Have I mentioned how much I love this mod lately?

I know why you're always laughing now. If I could come up with half the crazy... stuff... you do, I'd be giggling my ass off. Wow, again, a... I never expected that.

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I'm finally getting to try out this pack, Fengist. Awesome job! I purposely read as little as possible of the Wall of Text and had this cruising along without a problem within 15 minutes:

http://i.imgur.com/TMC4i6Tm.png

Look forward to messing around with the rest of the pack and your future additions

Good to hear. I wanted to make parts that actually worked together and required user interaction. While some of the methods are rather unconventional for KSP I'm glad to hear it was intuitive enough that it didn't require reading my blathering.

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When boats go to space.....Fengist will love this i'm sure.

I was pretty sure it would happen sooner or later. A wise man who worked for Northrup-Grumman once told me that given enough thrust, anything can be made to fly (he was a rep for their ejection seats).

Edited July 27, 2015 by Fengist

[TUKE]

Yes i meant pod, not IVA.

[Fengist]

One last thing:

ADVANCE WARNING:

The next release may break saved ships. The parts directory structure will be modified to the point that you'll need to completely delete the old pack before installing the new one. In order to keep this pack truly modular and allow sub-packages (CVE Pack, Paddlewheel Pack, etc.) I'll be reorganizing the part locations to make this a bit easier to manage.

[Fengist]

And just so you guys (and gals) know that I do listen to requests but not all of them make it past the testing stage, here's one that's failed and is now relegated onto the back burner.

Waterborne launch platform:

So here was the theory: A 20x20 central platform. 5x5 smaller sections, a 5x5 rounded edge and a 5x5 corner section. Floats really well and in the screenshot below there's an 85+ ton rocket sitting on it. I've floated much smaller platforms with 300 tons. So, cargo-wise, it can handle some decent size rockets. The failure part. Landing gear do not play well with other parts. Apparently, their collision meshes don't like interacting with other collision meshes. I've had landing gear hang up inside the other meshes and I've had them pass completely through a mesh with the rocket falling over. I've had the gear break for no apparent reason just sitting on the platform and I've had the gear go nuts and shove the platform around in random directions with no engines active. Next problem, connection nodes. Building something this large while still remaining modular is a nightmare. Take a cube for example. If you place 4 nodes around the cube and connect 4 cubes to each node you end up with something that looks like a +. Next, turn that into a square by adding 4 more cubes on the corners. Here's the problem. When you connect the next 4, you really can't choose which of the 2 nodes you're going to connect to and you can only connect to one. In the picture below, I've got the 20x20 center section. There are 20 5x5 squares attached to the center, 24 side sections attached to those and 4 corner pieces. At one point I checked and every single square, side and corner piece was connected to ONE 5x5 block and it was the only one connected to the center section. The net result, when it hit the water it flexed like an accordion.

So, until I come up with some other idea on how to get around landing gear and collision mesh issues, the water landing platform is off the table.

But at least now you know I did a bit more than just consider the idea.

[mike9606]

The paddlewheeler parts look pretty cool so far, but I'm concerned about the stacks requiring compressed water as you said earlier. Considering how it's ridiculously heavy, it could end up requiring constant ballast changes, and since compressed water is used for the ballast system, that could make things complicated.

[Fengist]

The paddlewheeler parts look pretty cool so far, but I'm concerned about the stacks requiring compressed water as you said earlier. Considering how it's ridiculously heavy, it could end up requiring constant ballast changes, and since compressed water is used for the ballast system, that could make things complicated.

I'm still thinking on that. So far, I haven't added the compressed water to the engines yet so it's not written in stone. However, if not compressed water then I'll be adding in another resource (normal water most likely or some variant) and that means yet another fuel supply to pack around. Luckily, water seems to be pretty abundant in the Kerbol system. I mean hell, the parts are generating it out of thin air now... I'm still running these engines on intake air so I haven't quite decided how to handle that yet either.

[colmo]

I'll just leave this link about the RRS Discovery here:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/10425250/Setting-sail-on-a-voyage-of-Discovery-in-the-wake-of-Captain-Scott.html

This is the kind of boat I want to make in KSP. I had the good fortune to spend a day on the much smaller RV Callista, which gave me lots of ideas for KSP - winches, probes, onboard labs etc.

I also have in my head a series of stockalike crew cabins, one floor high. With hatches in the back and top, well placed ladders and a modular design, they could be stacked like layers of a cake in numerous configurations depending on how high, wide, tapering or offset you want.

By being stockalike, they'd also be suitable as the bridge on deep space vessels or planetary bases. They could have varying capacity and function. E.G. labs or command pods.

I know Fengist is not an experienced modeller and is focussed on the core of this pack, so I hope some of the very talented modellers here take a fancy to my idea

Edited July 30, 2015 by colmo

[Chris Hansen]

This mod goes great with KAX's helicopter blades

[danet88]

I'm loving the idea behind this pack, however I'm having a couple of small issues. I have this mod installed via CKAN so assumed everything would run smoothly. For some reason the "bitts" arent in game, and I can't access any right click menus on parts for condensing water etc in order to make the bitts and blisters work. Any idea's what could be causing this? From what I can see, I don't have any mods installed that could conflict with it, but I'm not 100%,

On another note, will this become tweakscale compatible as I'd love to be able to scale the part sizes to build bigger ships!

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

Wow, that paddlewheeler and barge both look great! Have you considered calling it "Instructions? What instructions?"

This mod goes great with KAX's helicopter blades

*Hides in bunker*

[Chris Hansen]

Is it possible to make submarines in this mod?

[General Rarity]

The slowest drive-by in history. 400 tons of pure FREEDOM!

I love this mod... it's easily moddable and easy to use. The hull parts here are 2x the normal size and work well for cruisers/battleships/carriers and possibly cargo ships too.

The only problem I have is that the BDArmory guns are too heavy for the ships and usually capsize them... but I solved that by placing many bitts on the bottom hull of the ships. Add a few blisters after that and the ships are A-OK.

Looking forward to future updates!

[sashan]

Is it compatible with better buyoancy?

[smjjames]

Is it compatible with better buyoancy?

Yep.

Haven't checked performance with the latest version, but it should work just fine.