[WIP][1.8.x] SSTULabs - Low Part Count Solutions (Orbiters, Landers, Lifters) - Dev Thread [11-18-18]

[saabstory88]

EDIT: I now see you've moved to open licensing, so I suppose I can just fork it. Thanks though!

2 hours ago, Shadowmage said:

Use RealFuels if you really want all that.

For stock, the ratio of LF to O does not matter; they are the same density.  Really, you could just call it 'rocket fuel' and have a single resource, it would amount to the same thing.  So no, I will not be changing the stock fuel ratios.  And no I do not intend on adding NTO4/UDMH/Aerozine - Monopropellant is a suitable substitute for hypergolics.

Sorry, to clarify, I was talking about the models/textures only, not the contents. The models you currently include only depict a Hydrolox tankage split, so that tanks with engines like the F1/F1B look really, really weird.

Kerlox Tank Split

 

Hydrolox Tank Split (the ratio your models show now)

Edited January 3, 2016 by saabstory88
Images + Other

[Shadowmage]

46 minutes ago, saabstory88 said:

EDIT: I now see you've moved to open licensing, so I suppose I can just fork it. Thanks though!

Sorry, to clarify, I was talking about the models/textures only, not the contents. The models you currently include only depict a Hydrolox tankage split, so that tanks with engines like the F1/F1B look really, really weird.

Kerlox Tank Split

 

Hydrolox Tank Split (the ratio your models show now)

Ahh, okay, fair enough.

Might be able to put something together as a separate series of tanks (e.g. MFT-B.... wondered why the first one was an -A series, ehh?).  Could potentially re-use the existing textures and base model geometry... would need to play around with it a bit to see how doable it is.   Will perhaps do some investigation later today/this week and see about putting them together for the 0.3.26 releases.

[Jimbodiah]

Both capsules have it, and just re-entry from a 300km space station with a splash down 90° from my suicide burn. The bar goes to about 75-80% sometimes; it will not explode, but I always pucker up when I see that bar rising.

No biggy on the ports, they just seem to compress into each other and not take until you ease off and let the "magnets" do their work.

 

Will try the LH2 now, didnt have time yesterday as I replaced nearly all my tourist ships and complete Kerbin station to get part count down as it was laggy as ...   (hint, hint!).

[Shadowmage]

 

4 hours ago, Jimbodiah said:

Both capsules have it, and just re-entry from a 300km space station with a splash down 90° from my suicide burn. The bar goes to about 75-80% sometimes; it will not explode, but I always pucker up when I see that bar rising.

No biggy on the ports, they just seem to compress into each other and not take until you ease off and let the "magnets" do their work.

 

Will try the LH2 now, didnt have time yesterday as I replaced nearly all my tourist ships and complete Kerbin station to get part count down as it was laggy as ...   (hint, hint!).

You might have something conflicting then, as this is what I see at nearly the hottest point during a 3400m/s re-entry (skinTemp hit 1400; which is perfectly acceptable), I certainly did not see any gauges anywhere.

Do you use DRE or anything else that might mess with the max temps, skin masses, etc on the CM (is there anything else applying patches to it)?  They should have a maxTemp of 3400k, and the gauge shouldn't show up until well after 2000k.  And the heat-shield module is tuned to keep the heat < 1500k.

What is the max-temp that you see it hit during entry, and how do the use/flux/temp stats compare to those in the image above?

 

Ports -- will play around with them when I get a chance, I might have just made the collider too short, and MJ relies on the collision to know when to stop.

 

[Shadowmage]

9 hours ago, saabstory88 said:

EDIT: I now see you've moved to open licensing, so I suppose I can just fork it. Thanks though!

Sorry, to clarify, I was talking about the models/textures only, not the contents. The models you currently include only depict a Hydrolox tankage split, so that tanks with engines like the F1/F1B look really, really weird.

Kerlox Tank Split

 

Hydrolox Tank Split (the ratio your models show now)

Here you go (Note the S-IC tank) - 60/40 tank split, with the larger portion on top:

Entire set of tanks will be available with the next update.  New set of models, but re-uses all existing textures/texture-sets.

Also planning on a set of spherical resizable fuel tanks, and perhaps a few other sizes / uses as well (modular storage container?).  Will look into putting these into the schedule proper as soon as I figure out exactly what I need / want to do.

Edited January 4, 2016 by Shadowmage

[Jimbodiah]

What am I missing with the tanks, I don't get it?

 

As for the heat thing.. I don't use any mods like FAR/DRE etc, only parts and some fuel switches.

Edited January 4, 2016 by Jimbodiah

[Shadowmage]

Ahh, SC-B-CM heatshield -- has not been balanced yet; it is using the default config values for everything.  Which 'worked' from the brief testing that I did, but that was just a very gentle re-entry from ~100k.

Will do some testing to see if I can duplicate your results, and work on tweaking things from there.

Edit:  A big part of this is probably that the maxTemp on the SC-B-CM is likely still at default 2000k or 2400k

Edited January 4, 2016 by Shadowmage

[Jimbodiah]

Yussss!!!  Delta IV finished... used Nert's RS68 engines though, but now with SSTU LH2 tanks to feed them. This thing is on steroids now it seems, lot higher efficieny.

btw, the ISPC and HUS only shows oxidizer,no LF or LH2. The modular uper stage only has LF/Ox, no LH2 setup.

 

Edited January 4, 2016 by Jimbodiah

[Shadowmage]

38 minutes ago, Jimbodiah said:

What am I missing with the tanks, I don't get it?

Its just the visible ratio of the tanks / the location of the intertank structure.  HLOX ~ 80/20, KLOX is ~ 60/40.  Really a quite minor detail.  But I've already done the work for the tanks, so you'll be getting them with the next update.  Didn't take too long after I did all the math; but was quite tedious exporting and setting up 16 models in a row =\.

[Shadowmage]

9 minutes ago, Jimbodiah said:

Yussss!!!  Delta IV finished... used Nert's RS68 engines though, but now with SSTU LH2 tanks to feed them. This thing is on steroids now it seems, lot higher efficieny.

 

Looking nice

Though apparently I broke the fairing texture again (for some reason converting that one to .dds destroys the alpha channel).
 

Will probably be sneaking in my version of the RS-68 before too long (read: next few weeks/updates); it mostly just needs UV unwrap and texturing.  Not sure about the mount/shroud yet (no way to make it resizable), but I'll give it some thought.

Also thought of an interesting mechanic that I might apply to the engine balancing, that would greatly help out how weak the smaller engines feel while not doing too much with the larger ones; still toying with the #'s a bit, but will likely post up some numbers for feedback in the next few days/week.

And... in general dev news:
I got the single-part resizable fairings worked out today, at least the plugin-based-resizing parts.  Still need to finish up the models and do texturing, but will likely release an untextured version for early feedback in a day or two, after I work on the interstage decoupler plugin a bit.

[ComatoseJedi]

I was just about to say something about the fuel not loading into the parts again, but then I realized that I forgot to remove the ".disabled" from the LH2 patch. New install on Linux gave me a DOH moment. I do have a request though for the orbital versions of the CM's: how hard would it be to remove the docking port or make them optional? Also if you are considering cargo, I request you bring back the C series (just kidding). But, that would be pretty cool to use that ship system with cargo containers you make. In all honesty, that cargo ship was the coolest thing ever. I hated to see it go, but I know there are reasons behind everything you do with your mod. 

[Jimbodiah]

Sounds good Mage, looking forward to seeing all your new stuff. Amazing how fast you turn this stuff around.

Here is some CMX love, although on an end-game NF basis (hi Nertea!).

Spoiler

NF Prop engine
NF Solar panels
WildBlue DSEV reactors (3x 1400Ec/s but I forgot the radiators on this build)
WildBlue DSEV LH2 rcs
Procedral Parts tanks for TAC and fuels
SSTU command pod

The landing legs are stock... yeah, I know right! tsss... no mods for legs.

 

BTW, some day I will bring up the question if the command pods can have TAC support

Edited January 4, 2016 by Jimbodiah

[ComatoseJedi]

5 minutes ago, Jimbodiah said:

BTW, some day I will bring up the question if the command pods can have TAC support

I thought when you install TAC-LS, it has a patch that automatically puts LS into every command pod that holds a kerbal?

[Jimbodiah]

not the sstu ones for some reason.

[ComatoseJedi]

It works for me. Except for when I add tanks to the lander cans, it cancels the ls out, but I tend to put external ls through universal storage mini life support tanks along with a little mm patch on a copy of a small stock battery to give carbon extraction and water purification. When was the last time you deleted your MM cache?

[Jimbodiah]

whut? delete cache?

[ComatoseJedi]

39 minutes ago, Jimbodiah said:

whut? delete cache?

Yeah, your Module Manager has a cache inside the game folder that generates every time you play your game. When I get a new mod, I always delete the Module Manager files that get generated when the game starts, so that it does a full read of patches. You can delete everything that has ModuleManager, but do not delete the DLL, the game will generate new tables. Names of the files include ModuleManager.ConfigCache .ConfigSHA .Physics .TechTree. 

But, as far as TAC, I have it in all my pods, including the SSTU ones (Though I do use the ASET version of the MK 1-2 pod). 

 

[JoseEduardo]

8 hours ago, lynwoodm said:

I was just about to say something about the fuel not loading into the parts again, but then I realized that I forgot to remove the ".disabled" from the LH2 patch. New install on Linux gave me a DOH moment. I do have a request though for the orbital versions of the CM's: how hard would it be to remove the docking port or make them optional? Also if you are considering cargo, I request you bring back the C series (just kidding). But, that would be pretty cool to use that ship system with cargo containers you make. In all honesty, that cargo ship was the coolest thing ever. I hated to see it go, but I know there are reasons behind everything you do with your mod. 

have been playing too much Space Truck Simulator Elite Dangerous the past few days, and now that you spoke of a cargo C series (even though as a jester) it made me think, how cool would it be to have a Elite-ish freighter ship in the game?

[Jimbodiah]

Deleted the files, but still no TAC in my pods. All the stock pods and other mods have them TAC supplies, just not SSTU parts. If I check the configcache, it lists the TAC supplies as resource in the sstu pods, but they do not show up in-game. Just did a reinstall of both TAC and SSTU, as well as wipe the MM files, but TCA shows up for everything except SSTU pods. I swear I had it on older versions. Has anything changed in the last release?

Re the C series... I think you guys are asking for those parts back. Maybe put them in a seperate mod (no active maintenance), along with the deprecated radial engines maybe?

Edited January 4, 2016 by Jimbodiah

[Shadowmage]

12 hours ago, lynwoodm said:

I was just about to say something about the fuel not loading into the parts again, but then I realized that I forgot to remove the ".disabled" from the LH2 patch. New install on Linux gave me a DOH moment. I do have a request though for the orbital versions of the CM's: how hard would it be to remove the docking port or make them optional? Also if you are considering cargo, I request you bring back the C series (just kidding). But, that would be pretty cool to use that ship system with cargo containers you make. In all honesty, that cargo ship was the coolest thing ever. I hated to see it go, but I know there are reasons behind everything you do with your mod. 

Orbital pods - Docking port is placed purely through config / MODEL nodes, so it should be very easy for you to remove it via patch/etc.  For my games / default setup, I will be leaving the docking port though -- I cannot imagine a use where I would not want a docking port on it for my purposes.

Series-C refresh (will actually be Series-Interplanetary-A(IA)):  I have some ideas for something similar; we'll see if they pan out     Really don't want to bring back those existing parts, as they had some.... problems.... regarding the modules/setup in a few of them, and none were up to my current standards of modularity/utility (and the models were... kind of bad... was the second set of parts that I ever did, and it kind of shows...).

Will do some concept dev stuff today while at work to see if I can fill out my current idea a bit more.  Aiming for a 3.75m cylindrical, rocket-launchable system that re-uses the SC-B-CMX as its command module;  will likely consist of some landing modules (legs/engines), open-frame and closed-frame cargo bays (modular/expandable), and -maybe- a set of fuel-segments (though, the existing tanks would work fine I think... need to play around with the concept a bit).  But yah, an orbital / VTOL freighter is needed.

12 hours ago, Jimbodiah said:

BTW, some day I will bring up the question if the command pods can have TAC support

TAC - Nope, sorry, you are on your own for that one.  -If- I play with life-support, it will be USI-LS (less buggy, more streamlined).  And if I add support for any built-in supplies, it will be those from USI-LS (probably through patch/etc).

TAC is a good concept, but far too filled with kerbal-killing bugs last I played (e.g. unfocused ships would kill kerbals if it detected it ran out of EC, even though it -should- have had plenty of solar power), and the resource simulation was quite numerically unstable (a 'closed' loop would slowly leak resources of one type or another; floating-point rounding errors)..

[ComatoseJedi]

@Shadowmage Whenever I make an Interplanetary Ship, I normally stick the docking port on some sort of tube extension or I just put the docking port somewhere else and put a forward airlock there(I know the CM has a hatch, but a forward airlock... A FORWARD AIRLOCK). This is probably the first Orion CM that holds 6 that I can use for orbital operations with a reasonable IVA, so yeah, I'm going to be using this for my big interplanetary ships from now on so that's why I asked about the docking port. 

 

[Jimbodiah]

Closed loop LS is for noobs    Half the fun is sending up resupply ships. What else am I going to launch with my new LH2 version of the Delta IV  mwuuuhahahahaha

I've tried USI, both MKS-Lite and the full version, It just looks too cartoonesque for my taste, don't know why it doesnt atract me even though I use about all his other mods. Even made my own chain once with C/N/H/O and all sort of convertors/scrubber/containers based on Rover's Karbonite parts. Making it more plausible to mine water to get H+O and CO2 scoops to get C+O, Ore to get C etc, and make fuels (C12H35 for LF, H gas compress to LH2, etc) even the water+oxygen you need for LS, with it being more credible than mining Ore/Karbonite and getting everything out of that one magic mineral. 

But either way, no issues with TAC so far though, no deaths due to warps etc, only LS running out and kerbals dying on their way down because TAC supplies are no longer on SSTU parts since 1-2 updates ago, despite the patch adding them. I just installed OPT Space Plane parts, and they have the supplies added straight away with the TAC patch. Really weird. José can you check with the latest SSTU if you do have TAC supplies on new modules (the old ones will retain what they had when you launched them).

Edited January 4, 2016 by Jimbodiah

[Jimbodiah]

Bug on the interstage fairing. When I select it all I get is a stick that can not be selected again or altered.

I have some strange stuff going on with SSTU at the moment. The HUS now does have LF (still no LH/Ox options), and some craft I made that are missing parts etc. Also a craft I made with the B-CM-X and when loaded it turned into the regular one with heatshield again... Only happens on SSTU parts. Starting to think it's related to me not getting the TAC resources added as well.

Edited January 4, 2016 by Jimbodiah

[Shadowmage]

30 minutes ago, Jimbodiah said:

Bug on the interstage fairing. When I select it all I get is a stick that can not be selected again or altered.

On what part?  I do not have any interstage fairings yet (those are actually coming this week).

Are you perhaps referring to the interstage petal adapter?  (which worked fine last night, did -many- tests with it).

Any logs?  Sounds like something I'm going to need the KSP.log file in order to track down (likely an unrelated exception, though could be something in the plugin itself).

Edited January 4, 2016 by Shadowmage

[Shadowmage]

Edit: Deleted for double post.  These new forums are.... garbage.

Edited January 4, 2016 by Shadowmage