[1.0.4] Maritime Pack - 0.1.4

[Fengist]

I discovered that even the most top heavy craft can be stable if you put a large steel plate radially on the bottom, like a keel, and then put a bunch of bitts on it. It will pull the boat upright, even if it's tipped over. It works better than putting the bitts on the deck, since that makes it want to flip. The bitts and keel don't explode, since they're below the water line.

That would work with one problem. Drag on parts under water is magnified exponentially based on their mass. The more mass you put under the surface, the slower the boat will go. Now, that being said, there is a fix I have tested using Firespitter's flotation options and I will look into adding a mostly dragless keel that may use compressed water. The problem with making the mass adjustable with the compressed water though is being able to click on it to move the mass around. Being under the surface that may be a bit difficult since the camera won't go there.

Honestly, the easiest solution is mounting the blisters in the proper locations on the sides of the hulls and keeping the COM low on the hull.

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

That would work with one problem. Drag on parts under water is magnified exponentially based on their mass. The more mass you put under the surface, the slower the boat will go. Now, that being said, there is a fix I have tested using Firespitter's flotation options and I will look into adding a mostly dragless keel that may use compressed water. The problem with making the mass adjustable with the compressed water though is being able to click on it to move the mass around. Being under the surface that may be a bit difficult since the camera won't go there.

Honestly, the easiest solution is mounting the blisters in the proper locations on the sides of the hulls and keeping the COM low on the hull.

Ah, I haven't tested it much.

[Fengist]

Pre-release P011

For those of you loyal and confused fans of this pack, I offer you a gift, the only gift I can afford. For those of you who help keep this pack in the top pages of the forum, who answer posts when I can't get to them, and to those of you kind enough to donate and follow the development of this pack, I present you with a pre-release of V0.1.1. It's not on Kerbalstuff, it's not on the OP. Only those reading this post will know where to find it.

WARNING: DELETE THE ENTIRE MARITIME PACK DIRECTORY IN GAMEDATA BEFORE INSTALLING.

I'm introducing an entirely new directory structure to the pack so I can more easily maintain sub-packs. Not deleting the previous version could lead to... strange results.

Lots of new changes and parts have gone into this pack. Those of you reading this and grabbing this prerelease will also find a new part I haven't announced, the Gangway. This is a fully animated part that I simply could not exclude from paddlewheelers, they all had them. Surface mount them to the bow or side of your ship, drive up to the beach, lower the gangway and your Kerbals have a safe and easy way to walk ashore.

Another new part is the Clipper Deck Adapter. This part is designed so that you can add a second layer of Paddlewheel Quarters to your ship and have it look correct. Attach this part to the top of any Paddlewheel Quarters and then you can mount another Paddlewheel Quarters to the top of it and have it look like it belongs there. (the bottom of Paddlewheel Quarters are designed to inset on the top of the clipper deck, like the CVE parts. This part gives them a square bottom instead of the angled inset one).

Powered sterns are gone. In their place under 'Engines' is a new clipper surface mount engine. You'll also find the new paddlewheels and stacks under engines.

The rudder has moved to utilities.

Gobs of new stuff including sounds, flags and lots more has been added. There are now 43 parts in the pack. AND, all of the textures have been converted to dds for MUCH faster load times.

For those of you who read this and download this pack... feedback please! I'll put it out to the public in the next week and though I've tested these parts, I've probably forgotten something or goofed something up. You are my guinea pigs. Please make the squeal noise if I screwed up.

Download the pack here: KSP Maritime Pack P014

Nextly. I've intentionally left out instructions on using this pack to see if I created an intuitive set of parts. It seems I've only partially succeeded. In the future, now that I have Win 10 64 bit, I'll attempt to create some videos of building ships and how the parts are intended to work. Once you know the intent, you can do any crazy thing you want. Since I've seen some mount cradles on top of their boat, I have to assume I've failed.

To help you transition to some of the new parts in this pack, I've uploaded an example paddlewheeler to sketchfab and annotated a few parts. I can only annotate 5 with the free account. This should help explain how some of the more odd parts work and where they belong. Be sure to look at the annotations (the numbers) and read them if you're not sure how parts work (like the cradle which is completely redesigned)

Finally, last month, the Maritime pack was recognized by Sketchfab, where all the cool rotating 3D images come from. There was a blog post by the Sketchfab Community Manager entitled: 10 Craft you don't expect to see in Kerbal Space Program. Considering how many really, really nice models are uploaded to Sketchfab, I was pretty shocked that they even considered mine. Well, if he thot this pack was strange last month, that's only going to get magnified with this release.

Enjoy guys and thanks for the support and donations!

Oh, and if you guys think you use the Maritime Pack in strange ways... Jatwaa has you beat, hands down.

Edited August 20, 2015 by Fengist

[Drew Kerman]

this is impressive. Most impressive! Hopefully I can put it to use this weekend as I'll need a boat to hopefully recover a rocket payload from the ocean. Oh, and this was from last week:

[Fengist]

Discovered issues:

The Clipper Stern was lengthened in this version but the CVE Stern wasn't. Working on fixing it.

Reverse thrust not working as intended on the new engine. Working on a fix.

Edited August 19, 2015 by Fengist

[Jatwaa]

Oh man...that paddle boat. That PADDLE BOAT. It's beautiful. I had to see the update while at work!

[Fengist]

Oh man...that paddle boat. That PADDLE BOAT. It's beautiful. I had to see the update while at work!

Glad you like it my friend. Something new for you to create your... interesting... videos with .

Uploading a new pre-release P0.1.2 with some fixes.

Fixed the CVE stern - Had to lengthen it by 1m to fit the new, longer rounded clipper stern.

Fixed the engine not reversing - This had more to do with the location of the thrusttransform than anything else. In the old stern engine the thrust was actually located somewhere around the rear of the stern rather than at the propeller. When I first built the pack, one of the issues I had with the thrust being locate at the prop was that the boats would eventually lift the bow out of the water and begin flying due to the trust/COM angle and the fuel being located in the stern. I kept that location with the new engines. But, that meant when you tried to reverse the thrust, it was trying to thrust against a hull piece. So, the thrust is now closer to the engine but, this may lead to the bow lifting again. The solution is one of two things.

1. Make sure you have a Clipper Hull LF with fuel somewhere around the middle to bow of the boat. This moves the mass forward and helps to keep it from lifting up.

2. Bitts. If you have too much thrust and the bow lifts out of the water, transfer mass to bitts located on the bow of the boat to help hold it down.

I just tested one ship with 2 engines and 2 Clipper Hull LF in the middle up to 110 m/s with no compressed water on board and it didn't have a problem staying waterborne. If you're Jatwaa inclined, flying boats may be your intent *cough*.

Fixed the CVE deck crash tolerances - something I intended to do and forgot (a suggestion by a user some time back). The old crash tolerance was at 50. If you tried to land at a speed > 50 m/s on the CVE, the deck would splode. It's now set to 120.

Tweakscale - I'm going ahead and putting this out with P0.1.2. I've added tweakscale to the parts I think should have it. A few caveats. No part with a door or hatch will be tweakable (with one exception, the CVE Bridge). Tweaking anything with a door leads to HUGE doors and tiny Kerbals. This means most of the new paddlewheel lower cabins and Texas are un-tweakable. Most all other parts, including the hulls, are now tweakable up to 4X. WARNING... the Clipper Hull LF has normally 750 LF. Tweaking it up to 2X increases that to 6,000 LF. Two of these on a hull at 2X tweak means you have 12,000 LF fuel! The ships mass increases along with this. A basic ship at 2X tweak with 12,000 LF is well over 70 tons. Make sure you add extra blisters to handle this weight! You can tweak up to 4X but... get this... the LF in the Clipper Hull increases from 750 to 48,000!!! You have been warned.

Edited August 19, 2015 by Fengist

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

60%, 70%, I CAN'T STAND IT! Thanks so much for the awesome gift!

The textures are miles ahead of your old ones, but the white is a bit to white, you might want to consider a faint bit of grey in it next time.

Okay, bugs:

The paddlewheeler smokestack has it's node reversed, if you try to attach it directly to the deck node of the LF hull, it doesn't work, it does work if it's rotated 180, so it's pointing straight down.

The promenade has no stack node on the bottom, don't know whether that's a problem or not.

Paddlewheeler quarters-crew's lights don't work.

I can't quite understand where I should put the side wheelers, on the deck and rotated down, or on the side.

I'll launch it and see what else I can find.

[Fengist]

60%, 70%, I CAN'T STAND IT! Thanks so much for the awesome gift!

The textures are miles ahead of your old ones, but the white is a bit to white, you might want to consider a faint bit of grey in it next time.

Okay, bugs:

The paddlewheeler smokestack has it's node reversed, if you try to attach it directly to the deck node of the LF hull, it doesn't work, it does work if it's rotated 180, so it's pointing straight down.

The promenade has no stack node on the bottom, don't know whether that's a problem or not.

Paddlewheeler quarters-crew's lights don't work.

I can't quite understand where I should put the side wheelers, on the deck and rotated down, or on the side.

I'll launch it and see what else I can find.

Stack - Fixed. A few days ago I decided to completely rework the stack. When I did, I forgot to check the node. Since I usually surface mount it, I didn't see that. Thanks.

Crew Quarters Lights - Fixed. For some reason I've yet to fathom, I apparently changed the shading from Emissive Diffuse to Diffuse. It meant, all the point lights that illuminate the walkway were working but it couldn't find a texture to light up the windows.

Promenade - As intended. Here's why. The hull is the part of the boat that needs to remain intact. It makes contact with the water. Adding in nodes along the y axis of the Paddlewheel Quarters could lead to the quarters connecting along the y axis instead of the z axis. Meaning, you could put one hull part down, put a PW quarters on top of it, connect more quarters lengthwise and then put a hull underneath. So, adding nodes along the y axis would risk a rather flimsy ship. While I could put a node on the promenade along the Z axis, I chose not to because... There's two places where it's intended to be used, on the PW Quarters when they're attached to the clipper hull... AND on the PW Quarters when the PW Quarters are part of an upper deck. When PW Quarters are on an upper deck, the Deck Adapter will, or should, be used under the PW Quarters to make the bottom look square. This also adds a small fraction of height. Ok, I'm getting complicated so I'll summarize. There's no node because the Promenade could conceivably be connected at two Z locations. In order to make sure you get a nice, seamless fit, the best solution is a surface mount. It's a bit of a pain to get it right, but, trust me, the alternative of adding nodes only a fraction of a meter apart would be even more difficult.

Paddlewheel - Anywhere you like. The thrust comes out the bottom rear of each one. You can mount them on the sides or on the top and rotate down. What I typically do is mount them on the sides. I then go to a top-down view and use the offset to center them on each side of the hull. Then, I use the offset again to move them closer to the hull so that the bottom inside of the paddlewheel cover lines up with the red waterline. If you take a look at the sketchfab model of the paddlewheeler, you'll see what I mean. Those are actually attached to the sides of the boiler rather than the hull.

White - I know it's hard to see on some settings and gamma but, every new part and hull part has at least an overlaid 'smudge' texture to add a bit of dirt. The hulls have another texture under that that somewhat resembles paint that has been chipped and painted over. You may have to look close, but it's there.

New prerelease uploaded. P0.1.3

MAKE SURE IF YOU DOWNLOAD A NEW PRERELEASE THAT YOU DELETE THE OLD ONE FIRST.

Once I get past this prerelease patch stage, no more deletions should be necessesary.

Edited August 19, 2015 by Fengist

[The Error]

Was wondering why my ships were going so slow... they sit rather low in the water, it seems.

...and somehow, my first CVE manages speeds equivalent to the minimum flight speed of most of my aircraft. I guess I really shouldn't expect differently of Kerbals.

[Fengist]

Was wondering why my ships were going so slow... they sit rather low in the water, it seems.

...and somehow, my first CVE manages speeds equivalent to the minimum flight speed of most of my aircraft. I guess I really shouldn't expect differently of Kerbals.

Yep. Add blisters. Even I'm amazed at how well they work. If you're tweaking, you'll need even more blisters. The mass scales exponentially on those LF tanks when tweaking. I did a lot of testing. That red waterline actually serves a purpose. If you can keep that red line at or above the surface, your speeds should be ok. If not, moar blisters. Think of it this way, using the Bitts, it's easy to lower your waterline by adding compressed water (mass). Once you launch, you can only raise your waterline by shedding mass.

With the new surface mount engines, achieving maximum water speeds of 125m/s is VERY doable. How much fuel you burn through is a different story.

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

Thanks!

[smjjames]

Also, can I put in a request for a 'filter by company' filter for the Fengist Shipyards?

Edit: The node for the smokestacks are still reversed in P0.1.3

Edit2: The rudder is over in structural, not utilities.

Edited August 19, 2015 by smjjames

[mike9606]

I've noticed that attempting to use the CVE deck parts on top of the paddlewheeler quarters with adapters on top doesn't quite work. If you have it all the normal deck peice it fits together fine, but the stern ends up with a little gap between it and the deck section in front of it, and the bow clips into the deck section behind it a bit too.

Edited August 19, 2015 by mike9606

[Fengist]

Also, can I put in a request for a 'filter by company' filter for the Fengist Shipyards?

Edit: The node for the smokestacks are still reversed in P0.1.3

Edit2: The rudder is over in structural, not utilities.

Filter request - DONE! Excellent idea. Will be in the next pack. Rather than filter by MFG you'll be able to go into 'Advanced' mode with the part list and at the bottom will be all the parts from the Maritime Pack under it's own tab.

Yep, rudder got moved back when I used an old .cfg. It WILL be in utilities, one way or another.

What are you trying to mount the stack to? Looks good on my end.

- - - Updated - - -

I've noticed that attempting to use the CVE deck parts on top of the paddlewheeler quarters with adapters on top doesn't quite work. If you have it all the normal deck peice it fits together fine, but the stern ends up with a little gap between it and the deck section in front of it, and the bow clips into the deck section behind it a bit too.

And that's why I put this pack out to those who read this thread. THAT was a usage I didn't anticipate. Ohhh kay. That'll take a bit of work as nodes are going to have to change for both the bow, stern and both the cve bow and cve stern. And I'll have to double check and see what else that's going to throw out of alignment, nothing I think atm. I'll work on it.

For now though, I did anticipate something like this. All of the CVE parts are also surface mountable. The nodes may not match up but you can still get them on the deck in a pretty close proximity of where they should be.

Edited August 19, 2015 by Fengist

[Fengist]

Prerelease P014 uploaded. Check back to the release post for the link to the zip. I'll just keep updating that post till these hotfixes are done.

Clipper CVE Bow and Stern node locations - Fixed. The Clipper Bow, Stern, CVE Bow and CVE Stern were some of the first parts I ever made. The ones in the pack now are updates to those original models. When I created them, I didn't have a clue about getting the coordinates in the right places in my 3D editor. Therefore, all of the nodes are in really goofy (mathematically bad) locations. The bow and stern were never intended to have anything connect to them other than the CVE bow and stern so it made little difference where the nodes were, as long as they matched. Little did I know that someone would eventually try to build a REAL CVE with all the accompanying beams and such under the flight deck by using the PW Cabins. Well, now the nodes are in the proper location for most any Maritime Pack part to align to them. Meaning, you can now attach CVE bow and stern parts to the deck adapter via nodes.

Keep in mind, the bow and stern were never intended to match up with any PW part so if it looks odd having parts overhang the bow, it's nothing I planned for or intend to plan for.

Also, while working on these nodes I noticed some abberant mipmapping going on with the bow. In non-technical terms, colors are bleeding over where they shouldn't. I took a quick look at it and it's not going to be immediately fixable. In technical terms, as a noob, I ran my UV map to the edge of the image and now KSP is trying to mipmap a color that's outside the bounds of the image. Hence, an ugly white line on the edge of the bow. Since this will take a complete UV remapping, I'll save it for later.

Filter added - On the top left of your SPH/VAB, click the black arrow and change it to 'Enable advanced mode.' Below the icon for subassemblies you should see a new icon (it's an srb icon but it's the closest thing in the pack that looks like a boat.) Hover over it and voilia, a collection of nothing but Maritime Pack parts.

Enjoy and keep the feedback, I mean boo boos coming. I'll be checking in periodically.

By the way Mike, adding PW quarters under the CVE deck made it look AMAZINGLY like a WWII CVE conversion. I was impressed. Obviously I'm going to have to work on a much shorter set of stacks to generate steam so that it can truly be a paddle CV.

Edited August 20, 2015 by Fengist

[mike9606]

My idea for the stacks on the Paddle-CV I planing on creating was to simply angle them so that they don't get in the way of aircraft, though a setup similar to the USS Langley would be interesting.

[Fengist]

My idea for the stacks on the Paddle-CV I planing on creating was to simply angle them so that they don't get in the way of aircraft, though a setup similar to the USS Langley would be interesting.

Yep, I quickly realized what you were trying to create when I put the CV deck on the paddle quarters. Stacks like that should be no problem. Next major patch I'll have something with an angle to it. If you're going to tweak this though, I have flexed a bit on the tweakscale settings. In the next release the PW Quarters - Cargo and the Promenade will have tweakscale settings. IF you want to tweak the cabins, it's not something I'm going to put in the final release, but it's simple to do. Just add this to the .cfg for any part you want to tweak that doesn't already have it.

MODULE

{

name = TweakScale

type = surface

}

[smjjames]

Filter request - DONE! Excellent idea. Will be in the next pack. Rather than filter by MFG you'll be able to go into 'Advanced' mode with the part list and at the bottom will be all the parts from the Maritime Pack under it's own tab.

Yep, rudder got moved back when I used an old .cfg. It WILL be in utilities, one way or another.

What are you trying to mount the stack to? Looks good on my end.

Thanks.

As for the stack, I was screwing around with tweakscale by making a small as possible ship, and I was trying to mount it on the clipper hull deck. I'll look again this morning though to be sure it isn't some tweakscale screwyness.

Edited August 20, 2015 by smjjames

[ThatOneBritishGuy...]

Just barely short of traveling at 70% the speed of sound in the water. The most kerbal thing I've done since July!

My goal's to break the sound barrier, but I'm not entirely sure it's doable with how unstable that boat was. I'll edit this post with any updates.

Edited August 21, 2015 by ThatOneBritishGuy...

[Fengist]

Just barely short of traveling at 70% the speed of sound in the water. The most kerbal thing I've done since July!

http://i.imgur.com/HZ79h4q.png

My goal's to break the sound barrier, but I'm not entirely sure it's doable with how unstable that boat was. I'll edit this post with any updates.

That exceeds my expectations. I have read several times that 125m/s was pretty much the limit before disintegration. Nice to know, that limit doesn't exist. By the way, look back a couple pages on this thread and you'll find some new toys to perhaps make that speed of sound possible.

[Thatdude253]

So I'm a little confused, is the current download available an updated version, or is the update coming soon?

[Fengist]

So I'm a little confused, is the current download available an updated version, or is the update coming soon?

The download on the OP and the download on Kerbalstuff is the current version 0.0.13. The download on the link 2 pages back is a pre-release of the next version 0.1.4. I have not updated the OP or Kerbalstuff yet as I wanted to abuse, I mean reward, my forum readers with a copy of the new version before it went 'public.' It's also a chance to test the release with a limited audience, which paid off, before it starts getting 1,000's of downloads and I'm scrambling to patch bugs.

So, go a couple pages back, download P0.1.4, delete the Maritime Pack folder in your GameData and copy over the one in the .zip file. And then... you'll have paddlewheelers to play with.

[Thatdude253]

Cool cool. Does it also have the external mounted engines?

[Fengist]

Cool cool. Does it also have the external mounted engines?

Yup. It do.