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

[Pappystein]

@tater  *Raises hand high and proud*  I have a LOT of Stock-alike parts and mods I use, so yeah I like the Stokalike texture look.    That does not mean I don't also use the RW type textures....

Actually the "Beige" color is closer to white than this forum's "White Space" that I am currently typing.    So I REALLY REALLY like it!  

RE panels, I agree, my Tinker toy station is going to use the SSTU mast/blanket style solar panels, I would love an option to ditch panels.  

My current LKO Station is planned at something like 65 parts (almost all SSTU.)   That is not counting the stowage tanks for fuels for my interplanetary craft.  

@Shadowmage et al,  Is there a GOOD way to store Hydrogen on a station for refuelling purpose?   Has someone made a plugin/mod that makes it easy to convert lots of water to H2 + O2?  I am trying to decided how to make my interplanetary craft which uses a @Kommitz Nuke (.23 updated to current via me) as the main engine. 

@Shadowmage Is it me or SSTU Fuel tanks easy to crush?   I ask because I have de-orbited many a tug (not relying on Staged recovery to save) in the testing you and I have talked about back channel.   If I make the same tug out of tanks from any other mod maker, I can do a 180 degree flip at 45km @ 1800m/s. SSTU tanks break up catastrophically fail explode at ~50KM @ 1300m/s  It seems that the larger tanks are failing quicker than the smaller tanks (AKA strenght does not scale with everything else.)   No solid testing behind this question yet.

5 minutes ago, RedParadize said:

Alterning/desactivating solar panel would be nice not a must have. Unless you introduce more of those two rotation axis panels. I love them. Thinking about it, it would be nice to be eable to scale down the ST-MST-ISS a bit. The structure is proportionaly too big for the rest of station part I think. You can put that at the bottom of the already long nice to have list if you wish.

While the 2.5m diameter is bigger than any other SSTU station part (you can PARK a DOS station in the same 2.5m diameter fully of kerbals after all) I actually like the size it is. 

@RedParadize  I think I understand that you are looking for the same size solar panels on a 1.25m Truss?

Edited September 5, 2016 by Pappystein
Punctuation issue

[RedParadize]

@Pappystein or 1.875. It would be nice to be eable to scale them like SSTU tanks. But If you have a custom part I am intrested yes.

[Pappystein]

8 minutes ago, RedParadize said:

@Pappystein or 1.875. It would be nice to be eable to scale them like SSTU tanks. But If you have a custom part I am intrested yes.

No I don't have a custom part.  I am a CFG guy more than a model or texture guy (and I am not much of that even.)  I was just trying to clarify you don't want a Tweak Scale or other Rescale.   You want the same size blankets with smaller trusses.

That way if someone DID want to remake the part, they had a clearer understanding.   When I read your original quote, it seemed to me that you just wanted the whole shebang smaller since you made no mention about liking the size of the blankets.

And yes, with the 1.25m Docking nodes on the stations only I too find it hard to deal with the 2.5m diameter of the truss.  My current career plan (I am JUST starting out right now so this is weeks away,) I have had to add 5 extra modules between the docking port for the HAB and Refueling stations to the Solar panels because of the diameter of the truss.

[RedParadize]

On 27/08/2016 at 8:38 PM, StickyScissors said:

@Shadowmage

Hmm, so a bug that i -thought- was related to FAR has resurfaced yet again, but there is no FAR involved this time (that bug-fixing PR you made still hasn't been merged).

Just went to separate the fairings, but instead of jettisoning the fairings only, the fairing base exploded, the fairings separated, and the 2 fairing pieces turned pink.

Output log: https://www.dropbox.com/s/91dp3a9rhk791d5/output_log.txt?dl=0

Note:

-IIRC, this has only happened when i had the fairings set to the "clam-shell" mode, not the regular "confetti" mode

-This doesn't always happen. This happens every time.

-No NRE -spam- in the Alt+F2 window when problem occurs. Most of the time there is a single NRE

-This Does not happen with the stock fairings

 

Spoiler

Ignore the GFX issues, that's just KSPRC going berserk. The launchpad explosion is also not the fairings fault

I don't know if that issue got investigated but I had the same error and found what seem to be its origin as well as how to fix it. It only happen when you have a two sided fairing with clamshell on. I would guess the two sided fairing just can't decouple properly and colide with the fairing mount. 

[RedParadize]

@Shadowmage I think I mentioned this before, but would it be possible to switch off SSTUAirstreamShield. It would be nice to have it linked to animation, a simple switch on/off could work too.

[Shadowmage]

Re: Swappable solar panels -- have implemented a WIP version of this... though it is far hackier than I would like it to be (just 'hides' the solar panel module rather than full disabling/module-switching setup).  In the end it is likely close enough though; you end up with two extra modules on the part that might not be used at all, and two extra FixedUpdate calls (which end up being essentially NOOP), and it is likely more 'robust' with this method (e.g. harder to break the config or part setup).

So you guys will likely see this functionality with the next release.  It won't be fully implemented on a few parts yet as I don't have solar panels ready for them (HAB).  I'm -debating- on whether I should include optional built-in panels on the COS modules (default=disabled).

 

Also, first pass on COS module texturing (and a silver texture for adapters) (will be at least one more texture set for these parts):

Should I add ladders/hand-grips on the COS modules?

 

 

 

Station Trusses, different sizes -- those present a bit of a problem.

First and foremost, I don't want to design a new truss form factor.  I like the Near-Future truss shape and size.  I have always intended to use those trusses with my station parts.  Second, I don't want to step on Nertea's toes or obsolete his parts.  This means that I really -shouldn't- make my own trusses unless they are vastly different than those already offered, which I'm not interested in doing as I actually like the NF trusses.  Third -- NF trusses don't include any capacity for rescaling; so it is simply not an option to have different sizes.  Fourth -- its difficult enough to make adapters for simple round tanks at different sizes/ratios; trying to do the same for multiple sizes of trusses and including cylinder-truss adapters for each ratio/size would be prohibitive from a time perspective.

Could I make my own trusses, let them rescale, and make a ton of different adapters for them? Sure.  Do I think it is a good idea or something I want to undertake?  Not really.

On that note, I've considered making the truss bits on the MST-ISS be part of the end-caps/adapters.  So the core part would be the central rotating cylinder and a short cylinder cap on each end; the adapters would be selectable and would include the trusses, straight cylinders, and potentially other existing adapters.

(as a side note; if someone were truly interested they could make MFT-style tanks out of the Near-Future trusses at which point they -could- include rescaling...however adapters still present a few problems)

 

 

 

5 minutes ago, RedParadize said:

@Shadowmage I think I mentioned this before, but would it be possible to switch off SSTUAirstreamShield. It would be nice to have it linked to animation, a simple switch on/off could work too.

In what scenario are you using it that it doesn't disable when it should?  As far as I know all of my parts that use it already properly handle the difference between enabled/disabled states where appropriate (currently only NodeFairings and petal adapters).

In short -- it already has that capability, but needs to be enabled/disabled through plugin code.

[RedParadize]

@Shadowmage Oh, does the SSTU-SC-E-FS work too? Last time I checked it was always on. I might be wrong there.

 

Edit: Should I add ladders/hand-grips on the COS modules?

Probably, but not too big. The one on stock part like the hitcher and science lab are too big.

About the truss. Nertea one are scalable but I understand your reasoning. Another option would be to have the two axis solar panel separately. That would do the trick.

Edited September 6, 2016 by RedParadize

[Shadowmage]

14 minutes ago, RedParadize said:

@Shadowmage Oh, does the SSTU-SC-E-FS work too? Last time I checked it was always on. I might be wrong there.

 

Edit: Should I add ladders/hand-grips on the COS modules?

Probably, but not too big. The one on stock part like the hitcher and science lab are too big.

About the truss. Nertea one are scalable but I understand your reasoning. Another option would be to have the two axis solar panel separately. That would do the trick.

 

Ahh, you are probably correct on the SC-E aero shielding (I've never tried using anything that was a payload; always just ejected the payload).  Will need to add animation hooks for the upcoming cargo bays (MCB-B, MCB-C, etc) anyway, so shouldn't be too hard to link it in using that method.

 

[JoseEduardo]

hand grips- YEAH, DEFINETIVELLY!!!! they look very cool

[RedParadize]

6 minutes ago, Shadowmage said:

Ahh, you are probably correct on the SC-E aero shielding (I've never tried using anything that was a payload; always just ejected the payload).  Will need to add animation hooks for the upcoming cargo bays (MCB-B, MCB-C, etc) anyway, so shouldn't be too hard to link it in using that method.

You realise that with that option, stock bay module will be obsolete. Your module is clearly superior in every aspect. I already replaced/added SSTUAirstreamShield on many modded part. It always work, unlike stock.

Hand grips: not too big, the have will look small if they are too big.

 

Edited September 6, 2016 by RedParadize

[tater]

I don't build shuttles, but if I did, I'd use this one

BTW, I have no idea if it is possible (or worth even 5 seconds trouble), but the shuttle cargo bay doors only opened one at a time in RL. Ie: one opened, then the other, so still one open doors button, just asymmetric animation in time.

Edited September 6, 2016 by tater

[tater]

Regarding handrails... does it represent a performance hit? 

[RedParadize]

5 minutes ago, tater said:

Regarding handrails... does it represent a performance hit? 

Funny story on the same topic. In the Imax movie "Journey to space" handrail poly count was multi millions quad, and thats the base mesh, no displacement there. It was a good 1/6 of the total poly count of the sep tug scene. That's what happen when you say to a junior " poly count don't matter in movie".... By the way, I am sure that KSP player noticed many bug on that movie!

[Shadowmage]

4 minutes ago, tater said:

Regarding handrails... does it represent a performance hit? 

 

At the most basic level, yes.  More polys to render = lower FPS.  Also more trigger-colliders for the ladder handling would impact performance.

Will any of those be noticeable in-game?  Probably not really;  a few hundred or even a few thousand triangles is nothing to modern GPUs.  The trigger-colliders I'm less sure on -- those are all dependent on how well optimized Unity's trigger-collider handling is -- they will be at least as expensive as regular colliders + whatever additional logic is used for the triggering.

I'll put together a test-case or two and see how many extra polys the hand-rails would add.  I think it is ~100 tris per hand-rail (though can probably get that down to ~60).  Would need quite a few for these parts, probably 20-60 depending on size of the part (so 1200-3600 tris @ 60/rail).

[RedParadize]

Overall, handrail will have much less poly than a 9 engines mount. It should be fine, overall SSTU is not poly heavy.

Edit: ~60? that will be a nice handrail then!

 

Edited September 6, 2016 by RedParadize

[Shadowmage]

On Monday, September 05, 2016 at 3:22 PM, Pappystein said:

 

@Shadowmage et al,  Is there a GOOD way to store Hydrogen on a station for refuelling purpose?   Has someone made a plugin/mod that makes it easy to convert lots of water to H2 + O2?  I am trying to decided how to make my interplanetary craft which uses a @Kommitz Nuke (.23 updated to current via me) as the main engine. 

@Shadowmage Is it me or SSTU Fuel tanks easy to crush?   I ask because I have de-orbited many a tug (not relying on Staged recovery to save) in the testing you and I have talked about back channel.   If I make the same tug out of tanks from any other mod maker, I can do a 180 degree flip at 45km @ 1800m/s. SSTU tanks break up catastrophically fail explode at ~50KM @ 1300m/s  It seems that the larger tanks are failing quicker than the smaller tanks (AKA strenght does not scale with everything else.)   No solid testing behind this question yet.

 

I'm not sure of the point on the first question?  Obviously, use some LH2 fuel tanks, set them for ZBO (zero-boil-off), and make sure you have EC generation on your station.

On the second -- easy to crush?  Huh?  Is this a crash-tolerance question, or a thermal-limits question?

[RedParadize]

@Pappystein  If you do a 180 degree flip at 45km @ 1800m/s. You should burn and explode, at least with a unprotected light weight aluminium tank. See it as a touch of realism. On SSTU, I believe Standard tank could survive that, but I am unsure. Light weight will certainly burn way before that. On my part I have a variety of SSTU shielded tank for stuff like that. They are expensive, collision sensitive and heavier.

[Pappystein]

3 hours ago, Shadowmage said:

I'm not sure of the point on the first question?  Obviously, use some LH2 fuel tanks, set them for ZBO (zero-boil-off), and make sure you have EC generation on your station.

On the second -- easy to crush?  Huh?  Is this a crash-tolerance question, or a thermal-limits question?

Ok so I have a fuel tank with ZBO set in orbit for 6 weeks.  At the end of 6 Weeks I need to top of H2 but LOX is still mostly their.   I am looking for a way to have ZERO LOSS.  That is why I asked if there was a way to have a WATER tank and a converter to convert the water into LOX and LH2.  Obviously not really part of this mod but I thought I should ask since your mod is one of the few that has boil off and ways to combat it.

 

RE "Easy to crush"    I will do some detailed testing before I comment further.   By your comments it seems this was not a design feature.
    I know a lot of modders "over engineer" their tanks (as are a lot of Stock tanks.)  so this will be more fun.  I will update after this weekend when I have time to test..

 

 

 

On 9/5/2016 at 7:34 PM, RedParadize said:

I don't know if that issue got investigated but I had the same error and found what seem to be its origin as well as how to fix it. It only happen when you have a two sided fairing with clamshell on. I would guess the two sided fairing just can't decouple properly and colide with the fairing mount. 

@StickyScissors, @RedParadize

I had this problem with the Stock 3.75m Fairing If I had the SSTU Heat shield with HEAVY set, directly under the part for the fairings.   The base would explode right when I decoupled.   When I used the stock 3.75m heat sheild, the Fairing was mounted higher up (there was a noticeable space between the heat shield and the fairing base.   No issue.

I have not done any real testing other than to swap the Heat shield.  I don't know if either of you had the same setup so I thought I would mention it.   I DO have KJR installed (do you both?) If either of you are willing to try a rocket without KJR and see what happens?   My work week is crazy this week and I can't test it further before Sunday likely.

 

[Duski]

Hey all,

Just a quick question. I'm making a shuttle with the Space shuttle parts in this mod. I chose the no engines version as I had to make adjustments to the engines. But I don't know what to use for OMS engines. I was using the AJ10 engine (which is the one that is on the engines variant) but I could get very little delta-v out of it and it had very little thrust. So out of the engines that come with this mod, what would be the best for OMS? Also, where's a good place on the shuttle to hide your fuel tanks while still having fuel actually go to the engine?

[RedParadize]

@Duski In real life OMS was just doing orbital insertion and manoeuvring. Loaded with maximum payload the shuttle didn't had much DV. Not i with a mass fraction that high. About the engine, I used a custom AJ10 variant indeed. Oh, quick tip to balance weight. If you change the engines high, the center of mass remain on top. Its a cheat but you can actually push your center of mass closer to the center lift doing this. About the extra fuel, you can do as in real life and place a fuel tank at the rear of the bay. I personally prefer to place it in the front, so I can use the remaining fuel to balance center of weight and lift, but thats before I also added a SSTU container to the SC-E-FSX.

@Pappystein The issue I had is caused by collision problem. I had narrow down the issue. A two sided clamshell fairing will not be be eable to decouple properly. It will turn pink and make the colliding part explode. In my setup only the SSTU fairing base would explode. I don't know if the same would happen to stock fairing trough. If you want to avoid this make a 4 sided fairing and everything should be fine. I would suggest to also raise the decoupling force as fairing sometimes fall into the rocket after decoupling if under acceleration.

About your boiling problem. H2 is almost impossible to contain in real life, it will always leak. This will not happen with the other fuel and thats why H2/Lox is limited to lunch. There is however the zero boil of tank, as its name say it won't boil off but require constant power to work properly. You could indeed make a water to gas H2/OX converter and then compress it to liquid H2/OX, in real life it would drain allot of energy and be relatively dangerous in space.

[Shadowmage]

12 hours ago, Pappystein said:

Ok so I have a fuel tank with ZBO set in orbit for 6 weeks.  At the end of 6 Weeks I need to top of H2 but LOX is still mostly their.   I am looking for a way to have ZERO LOSS.  That is why I asked if there was a way to have a WATER tank and a converter to convert the water into LOX and LH2.  Obviously not really part of this mod but I thought I should ask since your mod is one of the few that has boil off and ways to combat it.

 

RE "Easy to crush"    I will do some detailed testing before I comment further.   By your comments it seems this was not a design feature.
    I know a lot of modders "over engineer" their tanks (as are a lot of Stock tanks.)  so this will be more fun.  I will update after this weekend when I have time to test..

 

Hmm.. that may be a bug with the zero-boil-off tanks then;  there should be zero loss as long as you have sufficient EC generation.  Was the time spent during time-warp with the vessel focused, or at the space/another vessel?

 

Fuel tanks -- they should, by default, have the same impact tolerance and heat stats as stock fuel tanks.  Note that some of the tank modifiers reduce these values; such as the 'lightweight' tank which reduces both impact tolerance and max heat stats.

There might however be some bugs with either the thermal values for the part or with the drag cubes that are causing incorrect thermal calcs (will need to dig back in on how stock calculates thermal mass/skin mass)

[_Krieger_]

Will the ability to switch textures in the upper stage tanks be added in the future?

[Shadowmage]

2 minutes ago, _Krieger_ said:

Will the ability to switch textures in the upper stage tanks be added in the future?

It is already in-place/already exists, but you need to install the texture-sets download ( https://github.com/shadowmage45/SSTULabs/releases/download/0.5.32.124/SSTU-0.5.32.124-TextureSets.zip ).

[_Krieger_]

1 minute ago, Shadowmage said:

It is already in-place/already exists, but you need to install the texture-sets download ( https://github.com/shadowmage45/SSTULabs/releases/download/0.5.32.124/SSTU-0.5.32.124-TextureSets.zip ).

Oh okay, I'm sorry for bothering you, should have tried that in the first place.

[Shadowmage]

7 minutes ago, _Krieger_ said:

Oh okay, I'm sorry for bothering you, should have tried that in the first place.

No worries; not everyone is aware of the texture-sets download, especially if you downloaded the mod from Curse (where I don't even upload the textures).  Never hurts to ask (okay, it can sometimes... but usually not too bad).

 

 

In other news it has been all but officially confirmed that there will not be the 'rocket-parts-revamp' in 1.2, and with that, no support for PBR shader.  So... yeah...  apparently I get the fun task of writing up some custom shaders.  Not surprising, as they'de been extremely tight-lipped about it.  Still are... haven't even heard any confirmation that it is still being worked on for a future update... only vague statements that don't exclude the possibility of it being worked on in the future.

 

On the note of updates and updating -- I will be jumping on the 1.2 pre-releases as soon as they become available for testing.  I fully expect SSTU to be massively broken by this update, both in raw code and in actual function of the code.  Likely will be a few weeks to get it working and compatible.