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

[tater]

I was unaware of the limitations, but that makes sense.

[JoseEduardo]

just to let you all know, Cormorant payload stuff works with Mage's Shuttle, and @MrMeeb's payloads should too

now I need to test if Mage's shuttle will blow up during re-entry on my 10x kerbin or if my shuttle quest is almost over (I still need a launcher that doesn't flip and that kinda needs gimbal trimming...)

1 hour ago, tater said:

Is it possible to have a part that is like the small central torus part, but no torus, and instead maybe 3-4 radial nodes for attaching stuff?

Edited August 2, 2016 by JoseEduardo

[tater]

That's cool. I think I had followed that, but I'm sort of meh on the new forum controls, frankly, I might have screwed it up.

[Shadowmage]

18 hours ago, StickyScissors said:

@Shadowmage So, i have found an issue between SSTU and FAR. Specifically your engines and FAR.

To reproduce:

1. Install SSTU

2. Install FAR

3. Make some sort of craft in the editor

4. select engine (or any other part with an integrated engine)

5. NullRef. NullRef. NullRef. NullRef. NullRef. NullRef. 

Note: Service modules such as the Orion, Apollo, and Soyuz spit out s*** loads of NRE's at once, while engines only spam out 2 when you select them. Also, im not on the latest version, i don't have the internet speeds or data to support downloading this mod every few days, so i'm on the previous patch.

Output_log: https://www.dropbox.com/s/u0g01j1imuyvdn9/output_log.txt?dl=0

I'm actually looking into this now, as I'm in a bit of a weird mood, and it looks like it might be a simple fix from examining the FAR code (something is obviously null that shouldn't be, and it appears to be directly related to the fairings).

But.. no guarantee I'll be able to get it fixed right now.. but at least I'll know what the problem is.

1 hour ago, Domfluff said:

I don't know if it's possible to animate a node like that, but it would be cool.

One thing re:inflatables - in Roverdude's in-progress UKS stuff, he has some code to make all radially attached parts drop off when the module inflates. It's a nice solution to the clipping problem.

Indeed; I'm considering making a special 'inflatable' PartModule to manage all of the inflatables functions such as that and volume/crew considerations.  Right now they are just using the standard VolumeContainer / ModularStationCore / AnimationControl setup as the other station parts.

Detaching surface attached parts would be very doable with a custom inflatables module.  Could even still allow specific meshes to have surface attachment enabled (e.g. the end-caps).

Mostly it'll come down to how intrusive it will be to enable the resource-volume-compression bit, and if dynamic crew capacity manipulation will work or not (didn't last I tried, but didn't investigate too much).  Will probably start digging into this stuff when I get back from my trip; sounds like I've got a fair bit of coding work/cleanup that needs to get taken care of before I move on too much farther with the parts themselves.

55 minutes ago, JoseEduardo said:

just to let you all know, Cormorant payload stuff works with Mage's Shuttle, and @MrMeeb's payloads should too

now I need to test if Mage's shuttle will blow up during re-entry on my 10x kerbin or if my shuttle quest is almost over (I still need a launcher that doesn't flip and that kinda needs gimbal trimming...)

Let me know if the heat-shield is not enough / doesn't work properly.  The fuselage should be easy to patch to work in 6.4x or 10x (or even RSS)... very easy; the wing parts/elevons/tail though use some stock thermal fields that might take a bit more consideration/toying with.

Edited August 2, 2016 by Shadowmage

[Shadowmage]

Okay, so the FAR error appears to be directly related to these lines of code in FAR:

https://github.com/ferram4/Ferram-Aerospace-Research/blob/master/FerramAerospaceResearch/FARPartGeometry/GeometryPartModule.cs#L666-L668

I've cloned it and compiled it locally with additional debugging added and it is definitely null-ref'ing out at those lines; where if there is not a ModuleProceduralFairings on a part, the code attempts to grab the model transform of the same name from the prefab part and operates on it without null-checks; which in the case of many of my parts, some transforms don't exist on the prefab (mostly fairings).

[LOG 18:43:46.326] mesh filter: FairingPanel-0 (UnityEngine.MeshFilter)
[LOG 18:43:46.327] shared mesh: Procedural Mesh Instance (UnityEngine.Mesh)
[LOG 18:43:46.327] transform from prefab:: 
(blank represents null...)

 

I'm going to investigate a bit more, but I'm fairly certain that there is nothing I can do on my end to fix this (for example the fairings simply don't exist on the prefab, period...).  If that is the case, I'll put in a issue ticket and/or PR to add some null-checks to the FAR code at that point; will be a simple fix on that end, but would need to wait for the PR to be merged and a new FAR release issued.

I definitely won't get time to do that until I return from my trip; so if someone else with a bit of coding savvy feels like putting in the PR in the meantime, it would be much appreciated

[JoseEduardo]

people say "if you can't beat them join them", but I've never been sympathetic to this idea, I have always been the kind of "if you can't beat them, destroy them, even if that means cheating" guy...

why am I saying that? well, I got one part done, the launcher isn't flipping anymore, thanks to extremely overpowered reaction wheels in the tanks 

now, about the re-entry part... I need to test this in a clean install, but for some weird reason anything inside a closed bay (it doesn't matter if it is from a mod or stock) gets overheated and blows up, I've seen re-entry effects being applied to parts inside the bay, so I'm guessing they are not being shielded... and I don't remember seeing that behavior in 1.0.4/5.... other than that the shuttle survived, so I guess I got a new shuttle  (that can't bring anything back inside the bay though)

so no need to tweak the shuttle

[ComatoseJedi]

45 minutes ago, JoseEduardo said:

thanks to extremely overpowered reaction wheels in the tanks

Yeah, this is a *recommended* way to have a stable shuttle launch. It's actually not to much of a secret. But, all the same, a lot of people don't know about it. I always put 2 sets of these wrap around reaction wheels, compliments of KW Rocketry. I actually tried to put the reaction wheel into the sstu radial decoupler, but it misbehaved rather oddly. But, putting them in the tank is a better way to do that. 

With the re-introduction of the shuttle parts, which I think haven't been touched since 1.0.5 (with the exception of removing the landing gear and a re-compile to operate in 1.1.x). There may be some thermal conduction problems causing the internals to heat up and explode during re-entry.

[JoseEduardo]

I was one of those who didn't know, I found out now that you said

I know what part you're talking about, but since I found SSTU I dropped KW, so I don't use them anymore 

also, instead of adding a part with a reaction wheel, I made this:

@PART[ABL_LFO_A|ABL_5tank9|ABL_5tank18|ABL_5tank_nose|ABL_adapter_5_3|ABL_5tank4|ABL_adapter_5_2|ABL_LFO_C|ABL_LFO_B]:FINAL
{
	MODULE
	{ 
		name = ModuleReactionWheel	
		PitchTorque = 500
		YawTorque = 500
		RollTorque = 500
		RESOURCE
		{
			name = ElectricCharge
			rate = 0.0001
		}
	}
}

I basically added reaction wheels to every tank in the AB Launcher pack so they could carry the freaking Buran  (and made them cost virtually nothing because that's what the game gets for not giving me gimbal trimming, and because I don't know if I can remove that cost....)

[StickyScissors]

3 hours ago, Shadowmage said:

I'm actually looking into this now, as I'm in a bit of a weird mood, and it looks like it might be a simple fix from examining the FAR code (something is obviously null that shouldn't be, and it appears to be directly related to the fairings).

But.. no guarantee I'll be able to get it fixed right now.. but at least I'll know what the problem is.

 

meh, take your time, i can't play now anyways. As of today, my new GPU came in, and what does that mean? Lots and lots of screen tearing on my POS monitors, which means that KSP (or any game for that matter) is unplayable. yay me :/

 

Edited August 3, 2016 by StickyScissors

[tater]

Regarding the MST-ISS part, I realize it is unfinished, will it have a passageway, since it has a crew capacity? 

In addition, from a design standpoint, I think that the adaptors on the station parts should include at least 1 option for the next size larger part. For example from a station part to the Orion capsule orbital module version. I was messing with interplanetary craft, and I ended up using a tank to create what I was looking for, but had there been a 2.5m to 3.75m adaptor, I'd have just used that.

[ComatoseJedi]

5 hours ago, JoseEduardo said:

I know what part you're talking about, but since I found SSTU I dropped KW, so I don't use them anymore 

Oh, I don't have all the parts in the mod, just a handful. the wrap arounds is one of like 10 parts I have from there. The reason why I still use those is that you can put a sets on the top and bottom of the tank, smooth sailing. Your idea is a very good one, at best. But, I don't use any other mods for tanks to modify other than the SSTU ones. And I don't even tempt the Kraken mucking around with those. 

[Jimbodiah]

8 hours ago, StickyScissors said:

meh, take your time, i can't play now anyways. As of today, my new GPU came in, and what does that mean? Lots and lots of screen tearing on my POS monitors, which means that KSP (or any game for that matter) is unplayable. yay me :

Looks like an overclock gone wrong.

[JoseEduardo]

6 hours ago, ComatoseJedi said:

Oh, I don't have all the parts in the mod, just a handful. the wrap arounds is one of like 10 parts I have from there. The reason why I still use those is that you can put a sets on the top and bottom of the tank, smooth sailing. Your idea is a very good one, at best. But, I don't use any other mods for tanks to modify other than the SSTU ones. And I don't even tempt the Kraken mucking around with those. 

so far no kraken and I'm considering increasing these values by +50%, as the core is still weak (even with 3 tanks, with 500 torque each, 1500 total) and needs gimbaling....

I got ABlaunchers because I wanted a dedicated Energia launchers, and because at the time I didn't patch the soviet engines to use SSTU cluster plugin

[Shadowmage]

11 hours ago, StickyScissors said:

meh, take your time, i can't play now anyways. As of today, my new GPU came in, and what does that mean? Lots and lots of screen tearing on my POS monitors, which means that KSP (or any game for that matter) is unplayable. yay me :/

 

 

Ouch, that is some pretty messed up gfx.  I was expecting to see some normal non-V-synch screen tearing (which drives me nuts personally)... but what you have there is a completely different animal.

As Jimbodiah said, issues like those are usually related to overclocking and heat, alternatively bad drivers (less likely), or bad hardware (seems possible in this case).

11 hours ago, tater said:

Regarding the MST-ISS part, I realize it is unfinished, will it have a passageway, since it has a crew capacity? 

In addition, from a design standpoint, I think that the adaptors on the station parts should include at least 1 option for the next size larger part. For example from a station part to the Orion capsule orbital module version. I was messing with interplanetary craft, and I ended up using a tank to create what I was looking for, but had there been a 2.5m to 3.75m adaptor, I'd have just used that.

Hmmm.. it -shouldn't- have crew capacity; it is intended as a structural part.  I likely left the crew on there when I was copied a config to set that part up.

Adapters -- yep; I intend on adding at least 3.125, 3.75, and 1.875m truss adapters.  Really wish I could do some sort of procedural/dynamic adapter as I don't want to make all those strange sizes... but there needs to be more than one size (and 5m/1.25m just look weird for those adapters).

18 hours ago, tater said:

Yeah, that makes sense regarding the honor system. The trick of course is in estimating what should be reasonable. Is the current max volume the actual volume of the inflated part? I wonder what a "realistic" guideline would be for a part that is to be used as habitation as a function of total volume? 

Perhaps the default state of the part assumes use as a hab with the stated crew, then has EC, mono, LS, etc. judged to be reasonable for that number of crew.

Is the large torus 5860 m³ (a 5m cross sectional diameter)?  That would not count wall thickness, obviously. I could imagine coaxial tori, where the space between the interior torus (the living space) and the outer skin is filled with propellant/LS/etc (water, basically, it's good radiation shielding). 

Even with no IVA I like to try and visualize the interior  .

 

17 hours ago, tater said:

Spitballing:

A 0.5m wall thickness (including tankage) means that ~64% of the large torus would be tankage (slop it down for the actual shell). That leaves 36% of the interior volume for crew. That still leaves over 170 hitchhiker volumes to play with .

From a LS standpoint (I'm thinking USILS right now) I would perhaps give it... all the capabilities. I might even be inclined to treat the tori all as labs, or certainly the large ones. there is enough volume for 30 crew to all have large volumes for habitation, AND have multiple labs of the stock volume.

Anyway, those kind of back of the envelope calls can inform decision making in terms of how players use them. I think the tori should be  expensive in career mode, and perhaps off the end of the existing tree.

If I throw cryogenic engines back in my mod mix, I bet I could make some cool long-duration ships with those spherical tanks and the large torus  . (that has a retro look that appeals to my design sense).

 

I think I had ~2300m^3 as the raw volume for that torus... but that could be incorrect (was merely what the Blender volume-calc tool told me... which has been very accurate so far).  The torus' are using 10% of that volume for 'storage' volume, the rest being hab and structure; but that is just a wild-guess percent that I threw in there when I saw how much volume those parts have.  In contrast the cylinder-inflatables and COS modules have 75% hab/structure, 25% storage, and the DOS modules use a closer to 50%-50% ratio (as they store a ton of propellant in addition to other supplies).

I've added some of your posted info to the feedback ticket so that it doesn't get lost in the forum shuffle;  should have time to start looking over the balance a bit closer when I return on Sun/Mon.

[tater]

Awesome. Have a great trip by the way, we did some "real" travel ("real" meaning overly expensive airline tickets, lol), but haven't done any overnight hiking trips this year (wife's been on call a lot), so the most we get is day trips into the backcountry lately. A few thousand feet of gained altitude improves my spirits immeasurably (not to mention the temp drop, it's hot down here, lol).

[StickyScissors]

5 hours ago, Shadowmage said:

Ouch, that is some pretty messed up gfx.  I was expecting to see some normal non-V-synch screen tearing (which drives me nuts personally)... but what you have there is a completely different animal.

As Jimbodiah said, issues like those are usually related to overclocking and heat, alternatively bad drivers (less likely), or bad hardware (seems possible in this case).

I'm gonna just assume it's a bad card and RMA it, seeing as how i've re-installed the drivers a couple of times, and i haven't overclocked any more than it already is out of the factory. I was so excited  However, even with all that graphical destruction, kerbal, witth all the GFX mods i have thrown at it, is still a silky smooth 60FPS, so that keeps my hopes up for when i RMA this thing  

[Shadowmage]

Has anyone been having any issues with the integrated/swappable docking ports in the Station Core parts?  (either the hubs or the other parts)

Mostly I'm curious if they have worked reliably on craft, are actually dockable, and are properly persistent their 'docked' state and such across save/load cycles.  During my limited/focused testing they were working in all cases that I tried; they were a bit touchy on the actual docking, but did work when things were aligned properly (meaning that some config/transform tweaks might be in order).  Sadly I know that I will never be able to think of and test every possible scenario, which is why I'm asking

^^ Trying to make sure the concept is working and stable before I start going any further on the development of the parts.  If I have to rework/rethink parts of it, that is fine, but I'd rather do it sooner than later.

No rush on the testing though; play around with them for a few days while I'm gone.  Break all the things that can be broken, and let me know what parts I need to glue back together when I return

 

[tater]

I'll pay special attention to those. I honestly haven't checked the small sized ports at all.

[tater]

So far my docking tests have all been successful.

The ST-Hab-G can have tanks, and include the entire crew volume of 16 COS-HAB-L units (96 crew). As a reality check, the CxAerospace hab units that are slightly smaller (the "6" series) are listed as 3 crew (they are slightly larger than your COS-***-M units that hold 4 crew). In terms of CxA crew density the -G torus would hold ~72 crew max (not saying it should be above the number you have, I'm using these numbers for a sense of size for people). This should give people a sense of what the IVA would be like.

Still, 20 people have a lot of room in that thing

BTW, for people trying to visualize the tori interiors, the smallest one at 10m is very close to the size of the centrifuge inside Discovery 1 in 2001 A Space Odyssey, rescaled to kerbals (Discovery_1 * 0.64) as far as I can tell. This is substantially less nasty to be in than I was imagining looking at it from the outside.

Hatch locations seem like they will be non-trivial for the inflatables, I'd be inclined not to have any... This presents a problem for rescue missions in career, as they pull any part with a crew... The solution (IMHO) is, if the default part always includes a docking port, then instead of an EVA for the stranded crew, you just dock with it.

 

 

That's the -G with superimposed CxA habs (for the nice cutaway images). 

Edited December 19, 2017 by tater

[JoseEduardo]

the only thing I noticed is that some parts doesn't remove the docking port attach node once you remove the DP, leaving you with two nodes to attach stuff

[Jimbodiah]

On 8/2/2016 at 11:18 PM, tater said:

Is it possible to have a part that is like the small central torus part, but no torus, and instead maybe 3-4 radial nodes for attaching stuff?

Found this video in Angel's post:

 

[Jimbodiah]

Also posted this in Nertea's thread... Having fun making new ships with the station parts and Nertea's Far Future engines.

[tater]

Once I grokked that the smallest torus was basically the inside of Discovery from 2001, I started playing with that one for a spacecraft. I like the cryogenic tanks as well (the big spheres). What I really want is a linear docking "rib" (and welding version, actually). Put the female on the ship, then the male on the saddlebag stages.

[StickyScissors]

@Shadowmage As you have recognized, my brand new GPU has gone poo poo, and while i return it back to Amazon and wait for a refund to buy a replacement, i have been thinking a lot more than usual, and i have come up with some ideas that may or may not have been brought up before:

Proposal #1: An option to swap Soyuz's service module between the regular, LEO/LKO variant with the extended 7K-LOK version, which was to be used for Lunar excursions. And possibly make it a wee bit more powerful. Even around the Mun it's difficult to use.

To go along with the swapping of service modules, it would also be cool to have the have the option to swap the current black/dark gray color of the entire spacecraft with the green of older variants. I'd make the texture myself but...i don't know how. The files can't be modified in GIMP without a plugin (of which doesn't work anyways), and i don't have photoshop

Example, ASTP mission: 

Spoiler

Proposal #1.5: Swap between Apollo service module blocks 1 and 3. I have no idea what block 2 looks like, because google won't give me anything, but it must be very similar to block 1, so it can be ignored. Block 2 was used for the actual Moon missions, Block 1 was Apollo 1 and previous, so Block -1- can be ignored.

Example:

Spoiler

Note that BIII, III+, IV and V are shown, but the only one i request would be the standard BIII. Seeing as how BIII+ and V can most likely be made with the station parts, and BIV could be made with stock panels, they are extra unneeded work. For the engine, i assume just using the engine-swapping modue you have already created would work there, but i don't know what variant BIII and beyond uses. Probably just another variant that could faked with engines already made. the shuttle maneuvering engines, perhaps are a good option due to their size similarity with BIII

 

Proposal #2: Modular/procedural fairings, beyond the fiddly ones that stock implements (i'm having serious trouble closing them at the point sometimes ).

I'm thinking about a fairing base, with adjustable bottom/top diameters, height (via model swapping or just stretching), the middle piece with adjustable length, and the top/cone bit that could be swapped out for others. So as not to inflate the part count of the vessel, maybe just have the fairing as one big part that splits into 2 when staged (rather than having 2 separate halves built with individual pieces) to begin with? That's how stock fairings seems to do it, and that works ok most of the time.

Examples of fairings that could be made, Soyuz(can you tell i really like Souyz ❤️): 

Titan fairings. The only difference between these would be the base shape (configurable, ofc), while the panels would just be a different diameter due to the base top being scaled differently. I hope you catch my drift, i'm really sleepy: 

Proposal #3: A way to align ports to make multi-port docking easier. Maybe just a single long, skinny docking port that reaches from one end of the tank to the other (down the side) of some sort so i can dock tanks side-by-side. This would prevent the process of: align, dock, realize i screwed up, undock, repeat until i get it right. It would make docking things like Project Argosy type ships together a lot less tedious.

Example: 

Spoiler

 

Ideas i had that won't work, or that i suspect you wouldn't bother with

• Being able to swap the current lander can out with the LK lander.

Why it won't work: It would mean swapping IVA's which isn't possible, if i'm reading previous posts correctly.

• MAKS Spaceplane:

Why it won't happen: Waaay too many non-modular parts. IVA, carrier craft to launch from, fuel tank, wheels. 

• Modular command capsule.

Why it won't work: IVA swapping. Nope, NEEEXT!

• Lots of other non-modular stuff...ehh, you get the point. I'm tired, and i'm going to sleep.

Edited August 6, 2016 by StickyScissors
Corrections, more thinky thoughts

[Jimbodiah]

Mage, is it possible to make the center part of the large hab tori the same as the H (with two tunnels and two support beams)?