[1.0.4] Maritime Pack - 0.1.4

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

So, I was messing with the game and was wondering, do you have nuclear power on the books? The nuclear propulsion parts do not have to be military at all, quite to the contrary it would be nice if they looked like the N.S. Savannah or other such civilian nuclear powered ships.

The reactors in KSP interstellar would be more than effective for nuke power. Just add some 'lectric propulsion systems.

[NuclearNut]

But those reactors don't feel... boat-y enough.

In all seriousness, electric engines are enough for nuclear propulsion.

[Fengist]

So, I was messing with the game and was wondering, do you have nuclear power on the books? The nuclear propulsion parts do not have to be military at all, quite to the contrary it would be nice if they looked like the N.S. Savannah or other such civilian nuclear powered ships.

Good question. Here's my opinion:

When I chose to circumnavigate Eve by rover, I had a number of options for propulsion. I finally settled on some screw drives from Kerbal Foundries which are electric powered. Then I had to decide on how to get electricity to those screws. I chose two methods, the primary being Karbonite with a generator that converted Karbonite to electricity and the secondary being solar. I could have put a nuke on the rover from Interstellar and not have to worry about it, but I chose not to.

Now, why am I mentioning that?

In my challenge to others to circumnavigate planets by ground, I disallow 'infinite' fuel sources. The reason is, I stress over and over and over again on that thread, that the challenge is not about the destination, it's about the journey.

One thing you learn about KSP if you play it long enough, is that you eventually run out of things to do. Until such time as I can 'create' something that gives you unlimited things to do, giving you more things to do while on your present journey delays the inevitable fact that you will run out of things to do.

Therefore, I shall never, ever create a part, vessel or power plant that runs without some user interaction. If you choose to use such power supplies from other mods, that's up to you. My mods will never have that.

My solution is:

I mentioned before and I'll re-mention it here. The sub I'm working on will have electric engines. And there will be a large battery pack that I'm anticipating will give about an hour to an hour and a half submerged time before the battery runs flat (at full speed). Also on the sub will be a liquid fueled engine that is primarily a generator (uses the alternator in it's config and produces almost 0 thrust.) to create electricity. The caveat here is that all air intakes on the sub will close upon submerging (thus shutting down the generator) and reopen upon surfacing. Therefore, you'll have to surface to run the generator and recharge your batteries. Is that a pain? Yes. But, I'd rather you have to plan and think about how you're going to use my parts rather than just blindly setting the throttle to full and not having to worry about when and where you have to stop.

tl;dr - Nope.

[Lord_Potato]

Don't know if this has been asked before, but does anyone know if this will be made to work with Better Buoyancy? My boats keep flipping every time they hit the water. Also, is it possible for you to make the radar you are planning compatible with BD armory radar as well? Great mod, though.

[smjjames]

Don't know if this has been asked before, but does anyone know if this will be made to work with Better Buoyancy? My boats keep flipping every time they hit the water. Also, is it possible for you to make the radar you are planning compatible with BD armory radar as well? Great mod, though.

Could you post a screenshot of the ship? It works fine in Better Buoyancy for me.

[Lord_Potato]

Can't right now, but It's a warship I made with this mod and BD armory. It has the regular boat hulls, a command pod from another mod on top, propellers on the bottom and some plates surrounding the pod on my testing craft, as well as intakes. It always seems to tilt as soon as I release it into the water with any kind of force (such as the orange things that come with this mod.)

I tried it with and without better buoyancy, if that helps.

Edited September 22, 2015 by Lord_Potato
clarification.

[Fengist]

Can't right now, but It's a warship I made with this mod and BD armory. It has the regular boat hulls, a command pod from another mod on top, propellers on the bottom and some plates surrounding the pod on my testing craft, as well as intakes. It always seems to tilt as soon as I release it into the water with any kind of force (such as the orange things that come with this mod.)

I tried it with and without better buoyancy, if that helps.

Do you have bitts and blisters on it?

- - - Updated - - -

Don't know if this has been asked before, but does anyone know if this will be made to work with Better Buoyancy? My boats keep flipping every time they hit the water. Also, is it possible for you to make the radar you are planning compatible with BD armory radar as well? Great mod, though.

Thanks. ATM, I have a lot of irons in the fire. Eventually, I'll dig into Module Manager, write a .cfg, and start including things like this. But for now, if I make it work with one (BD) than I'll have to make it work with others (ScanSat, RemoteTech, etc.).

[SGT_RIZZO300]

But for now, if I make it work with one (BD) than I'll have to make it work with others (ScanSat, RemoteTech, etc.).

I think it would be a nice addition to have the radar work with other mods but content for this mod should definitely take priority.

[Overlocker]

Is this released as some Github build or dev release? , because I don't mind the colision issues ...

[Overlocker]

Well actually I don't have any collision issues, I have landed a 1.25 reusable first stage like the one on Falcon 1 but with landing legs so it can land on a boat like Falcon 9.

You can see it here:

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[Fengist]

Is this released as some Github build or dev release? , because I don't mind the colision issues ...

http://www.datainterlock.com/Kerbal/Shipyard/PlatformTest.jpg

Well actually I don't have any collision issues, I have landed a 1.25 reusable first stage like the one on Falcon 1 but with landing legs so it can land on a boat like Falcon 9.

You can see it here:

http://imgur.com/a/xzZpA

ATM, the parts for this are in the junkyard. That doesn't mean I've tossed them out, it's just that I consider them too much of a pain to be usable. The problem is 2 fold. First, the collision mesh issue. I had landing legs getting constantly stuck making the rocket fall over or hang up when trying to launch. The other issue is the connection nodes. In order to reproduce the 'vessel' I pictured, you'd likely spend a LOT of time connecting struts around the edges just so that it doesn't fall apart.

The nice landing you made on the boat is because each hull is a single mesh and you managed to land on exactly one of them. Making an adaptable platform, would require multiple meshes and most likely, something with a much larger center section that I have there.

I'll revisit this, play around a bit more and see if I can't come up with something that works a bit better though.

[gomker]

Forgive me if I am being dumb, but is the rudder supposed to act like a control surface? It does not seem to move at all on my craft.

Great mod BTW.

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Forgive me if I am being dumb, but is the rudder supposed to act like a control surface? It does not seem to move at all on my craft.

Great mod BTW.

Never mind, I was thinking too much in aerodynamic terms, worked it out. Definitely a duh moment

[HighExplosives12]

Fengist, will the radar have some way of being a BDarmoury radar?

[EdusacconBR]

whats the ETA on dice carriers?

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

What?

[Overlocker]

What?

Nuclear Pulse and Steam Boat, very Kerbal-ish.

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

Nuclear Pulse and Steam Boat, very Kerbal-ish.

Thanks!

[killerkenny42]

Is it possible to have the buoyancy to have a balance machine when trying to level the ship or do the water compressors do that

[Fengist]

Fengist, will the radar have some way of being a BDarmoury radar?

Only if you make the change to the .cfg yourself. For the moment, adding in ModuleManager support for other mods isn't on the horizon, I still have too many other things to do. Eventually, possibly.

- - - Updated - - -

whats the ETA on dice carriers?

I talked to him the other day and here's the status. While I did go through all of his parts and I did get all the nodes lined up so the parts will connect, another painful issue arrived. Dice has a rather... ummm... unique perspective on how parts should be positioned (rotated) in the hangars. As a result, once all of the nodes lined up, it created a nightmare for parts may need to be mirrored. This pretty much means that Dice is going to have to go through every single part in Unity, figure out which way they need to be rotated to achieve proper symmetry in mirroring and then, rotate every part, export them back to KSP and then, double check them. Most painful and time consuming. As I learn more, I'll be sure to update you guys.

[crasher925]

sails? (10 char)

[Fengist]

sails? (10 char)

Funny you should mention that:

Before I got into the sail plans, here's an update on other stuff.

The tugboat/barge. Before I began, I knew attempting to dock a boat to another boat via a standard docking port wasn't going to work. Yes, it does dock but if you've ever tried to dock large land vehicles, you know the problem. I refer to it as cracking the whip. The instant they dock, the vessel gets lifted into the air, often 20-30 meters or more and then slams back down. So, the plan was to use the mechanics behind the claw. Well, that worked, I was able to dock. But then individual pieces of the barge began floating in the air. I mean the boat separated and parts began floating but the boat didn't break apart. Ohhh kay. So I've made adjustments and no matter what, I can get the claw to grab, but it simply doesn't want to release properly. I'm still working on that.

The submarine. That's been somewhat on hold waiting on Dice and his new float code. But, if you guys have been following this thread, you know I don't like to be dependent on other mods. It's getting to that point waiting on the float code. Here's what I do have working on it.

1. If you try to fly with the sub, the throttle shuts down. You'll still be able to punch out of the water but once you reach 2m above the surface, your throttle goes to 0.

2. Air intakes shut down. The main engine will be electric but it will have a LF fueled generator. The way stock physics works, you can be 600m under the water and air intakes work. Ummmm right. Well, if you put an air intake on the sub, the instant you dive, it closes. You'll still have the air stored inside the intake but, it won't bring in any more till you do surface... and that includes any attempt to add a stock intake, they all close.

3. Diving and surfacing. It does work using Firespitter's buoyancy but it could be better. For now, it works.

4. Underwater camera. I have that working. You can fully rotate the camera around the sub. The problem is, it'll pass right through the terrain. My attempts to fix that have been... strange.

5. The lack of a visible water surface when underwater. I have that working. Thanks to Dice, he's allowed me to use the code he created to solve that problem. And I've tweaked it a bit so that the deeper you dive, the darker it gets.

6. Animations. I've coded in an animation for the Sub Bridge so that when you do surface and you click the button to open the air intake, an animation plays. When you close the intake, the animation reverses... Yep, animated air intakes.

7. Throttle based animations. For now, I have a set of 'butterfly' shaped covers over the generator exhaust (which is currently also the deck of the sub) and they open and close based on throttle percentage. Set the throttle to half, the animation plays half way. It also adjusts the animation speed so that if you hit X and slam the throttle shut, the 'butterfly' covers don't slam, they close smoothly.

Problems: For some reason the cargo bay wants to explode when I open it. Hummm, mesh problems.

So, the sub is almost ready for some testing. I'm gonna go ahead and work on that and when Dice gets his code done, then I may switch the buoyancy over to his code.

For the past week though, I've been off on another adventure. I've been back on my 32 bit install of Windows where I have my Pascal programming language, Delphi, installed. Now that I'm both trying to notepad edit .cfg files AND search through the log for the ever present nullReference, I got fed up and created a solution. You'll note the new 'button' in my signature.

So, that's the status... now... for your question

Sails

I have very, very rudimentary sails working. I am able to apply a 'wind' and make them push a boat. In the image above, you're seeing some funky lines. Those are showing the thrust transform for the sail so that I can visually make sure I have them pointed in the right direction (I don't in that image). So... yes... sails will be eventually forthcoming.

Here's my ideas on how they should work and you're free to comment or give me other ideas.

Wind should not be a constant. The only other mod with 'sails' that I know of uses solar power. As long as they face the sun, they push the boat at a constant speed. Wind should not work that way.

Nextly, wind should not always be from the same direction. If you look at wind patters on the earth you'll see near the equator they flow east to west (generally) and in the upper and lower latitudes they flow from west to east. There's also some 'bending' of the wind direction near land masses.

What I envision is a table of various latitudes and longitudes on every planet that has water. I'm ballparking that at 100 locations. Each location will have a wind speed and direction assigned to it. When you drop a boat with a sail in the water, it'll look through the list of locations for the 3 closest ones. It'll then (based on some serious trig) guesstimate the wind speed and direction at the location of the boat. And, there should be also other random forces at play, like gusts and doldrums (break out the oars).

I also envision this table to be dynamic so that you'll never know exactly what to expect from the wind. It'll change based on other nearby wind conditions and will save those changes. Once you start sailing, your wind environment will be unique to you.

Finally, the sails should be linked to the throttle. As you increase the throttle, the sails lower and you get more 'thrust'. As you decrease the throttle, the sails raise and your speed slows.

What I have accomplished toward this goal.

I have wind... matter of fact (I'll show this in a video eventually) I've sailed off Kerbin and right past Jool. Lots of wind.

I have wind directions and speeds applied to the sails. Currently it calculates a bearing to the closest 3 known spots via an averaging. Here's a PHP version of the math I'm using.

I have a very small table of lats and longs and it's calculating local conditions (get this, it calculates the distance to the wind lats and longs via the great circle calculation... ooomf, more math.)

I have a thrustTransform so that anyone can make their own sails and, via the thrustTransform, show KSP where to apply wind.

So, that's the status of things. I bet this is the LAST time you ever ask me a one word question again.

TL;DR - Yes.

Edited October 8, 2015 by Fengist

[crasher925]

-the god of all snips-

YAY! now all we need is a wooden hull

[Fengist]

[TUKE]

http://www.datainterlock.com/Kerbal/Shipyard/SubSeaTrials.jpg

Love the texture style, gives a decidedly civilian look.

[tjsnh]

I hadn't seen this parts back before but it looks like it might have some great utility value. I use remotetech and had previously been deploying "ground relay stations" around Kerbin to provide dish relay when mission control was on the 'far side' from the active vessal - being able to make/use a relay ship would be a great addition.