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[1.12.5] Bluedog Design Bureau - Stockalike Saturn, Apollo, and more! (v1.14.0 "металл" 30/Sep/2024)


CobaltWolf

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@cxg2827, @MrMeeb, @VenomousRequiem, @CobaltWolf

Is joke. The thread'll be active all weekend, then go into hibernation diring the week. It gets lonley in here :)

@MrMeeb, a little birdie told me you an @Angel-125 are doing some stuff with the MOLE plugin. Maybe talk to @CobaltWolf about it? He's said he'd love to use it in the MOS/Skylab (pending)/Spacelab (pending).

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Hey guys,

first of all let me say that all that new Apollo stuff looks awesome! Can't wait to play with it, once I install 1.2 (pending possibility to resize 2x and availability of MJ)!

I am currently playing science mode, but my issues below applies to career mode as well I guess.

  1. I like it how you get early rockets and then move up on capabilities, working your way through the Titans up to the Saturns. However, there is one misfit in there and that is IMHO the Atlas V. This very powerful (for its size) and advanced rocket should come later in the tech tree (I am playing CTT), in my humble opinion.
  2. When building a Mercury-Redstone (no addons, strictly as per manual), I get a TWR of 1.01, meaning the rocket just baaaaarely lifts off the pad. I have to reduce the fuel load by 10-15% to get to a TWR of 1.1-1.15. Is this intentional? I mean, it can't obtain orbital speeds anyway, but this way I sometimes I don't even leave the atmosphere, depending on the ascent profile (on a 2x scaled Kerbin).
  3. Building Mercury-Atlas with the short upper tank, no second stage, just the capsule on top, I also have not enough dV to reach orbit. IIRC correctly, Mercury-Atlas was w/o second stage, so is this due to my poor (MJ-assisted) flying or should the Atlas rocket be beefed up a bit?)

Again, these are just my observations. Keep up the good work!

Thanks,

Sebastian


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5 hours ago, StarStreak2109 said:

Hey guys,

first of all let me say that all that new Apollo stuff looks awesome! Can't wait to play with it, once I install 1.2 (pending possibility to resize 2x and availability of MJ)!

I am currently playing science mode, but my issues below applies to career mode as well I guess.

  1. I like it how you get early rockets and then move up on capabilities, working your way through the Titans up to the Saturns. However, there is one misfit in there and that is IMHO the Atlas V. This very powerful (for its size) and advanced rocket should come later in the tech tree (I am playing CTT), in my humble opinion.
  2. When building a Mercury-Redstone (no addons, strictly as per manual), I get a TWR of 1.01, meaning the rocket just baaaaarely lifts off the pad. I have to reduce the fuel load by 10-15% to get to a TWR of 1.1-1.15. Is this intentional? I mean, it can't obtain orbital speeds anyway, but this way I sometimes I don't even leave the atmosphere, depending on the ascent profile (on a 2x scaled Kerbin).
  3. Building Mercury-Atlas with the short upper tank, no second stage, just the capsule on top, I also have not enough dV to reach orbit. IIRC correctly, Mercury-Atlas was w/o second stage, so is this due to my poor (MJ-assisted) flying or should the Atlas rocket be beefed up a bit?)

Again, these are just my observations. Keep up the good work!

Thanks,

Sebastian


1. I think Atlas V is fairly well balanced, but I get your point.

2. I really don't know. I haven't used that lately, but it does seem like that is wrong.

3. Are you remembering to drop the boosters at around 30km up?

Also, a note for 2 & 3 - iirc the early rockets are balanced to stock-scale, for gameplay reasons, but later rockets are balanced to 3.2x scale for accuracy.

Edited by minepagan
corrections 'cause I'm dumb
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5 hours ago, StarStreak2109 said:

Hey guys,

first of all let me say that all that new Apollo stuff looks awesome! Can't wait to play with it, once I install 1.2 (pending possibility to resize 2x and availability of MJ)!

I am currently playing science mode, but my issues below applies to career mode as well I guess.

  1. I like it how you get early rockets and then move up on capabilities, working your way through the Titans up to the Saturns. However, there is one misfit in there and that is IMHO the Atlas V. This very powerful (for its size) and advanced rocket should come later in the tech tree (I am playing CTT), in my humble opinion.
  2. When building a Mercury-Redstone (no addons, strictly as per manual), I get a TWR of 1.01, meaning the rocket just baaaaarely lifts off the pad. I have to reduce the fuel load by 10-15% to get to a TWR of 1.1-1.15. Is this intentional? I mean, it can't obtain orbital speeds anyway, but this way I sometimes I don't even leave the atmosphere, depending on the ascent profile (on a 2x scaled Kerbin).
  3. Building Mercury-Atlas with the short upper tank, no second stage, just the capsule on top, I also have not enough dV to reach orbit. IIRC correctly, Mercury-Atlas was w/o second stage, so is this due to my poor (MJ-assisted) flying or should the Atlas rocket be beefed up a bit?)

Again, these are just my observations. Keep up the good work!

Thanks,

Sebastian


  1. The RD-180 from the Atlas V is actually not that powerful - it's weaker than the F1 that you get at the same tech level, iirc. You're also playing CTT - I didn't make those configs. It was also placed there prior to the newer rockets being added.
  2. Empty the fuel of the upper tank. In the real Redstone it wasn't full of fuel but avionics; but I knew I couldn't do that to y'all.
    mercury6_m.gif
  3. Like the manual? Hrmm, I'm not sure then. Sounds like it might need to get looked at. I know I've definitely made orbit in that configuration. What about with the longer tank?
6 minutes ago, minepagan said:

Also, a note for 2 & 3 - iirc the early rockets are balanced to stock-scale, for gameplay reasons, but later rockets are balanced to 3.2x scale for accuracy.

They are all at the same scale. They're all balanced the same as stock parts. You need a 3.2x rescale for stock parts to make sense, and so its the same for ours.

30 minutes ago, pheenix99 said:

What's that part right below the docking port?

The adapter? It's new for the AARDV parts.

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12 minutes ago, CobaltWolf said:
  1. The RD-180 from the Atlas V is actually not that powerful - it's weaker than the F1 that you get at the same tech level, iirc. You're also playing CTT - I didn't make those configs. It was also placed there prior to the newer rockets being added.
  2. Empty the fuel of the upper tank. In the real Redstone it wasn't full of fuel but avionics; but I knew I couldn't do that to y'all.
    mercury6_m.gif
  3. Like the manual? Hrmm, I'm not sure then. Sounds like it might need to get looked at. I know I've definitely made orbit in that configuration. What about with the longer tank?

They are all at the same scale. They're all balanced the same as stock parts. You need a 3.2x rescale for stock parts to make sense, and so its the same for ours.

The adapter? It's new for the AARDV parts.

Oh. Looks like I need to change the MRLV on the repo xD

Also, my bad on the scaling.

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5 hours ago, StarStreak2109 said:

When building a Mercury-Redstone (no addons, strictly as per manual), I get a TWR of 1.01, meaning the rocket just baaaaarely lifts off the pad. I have to reduce the fuel load by 10-15% to get to a TWR of 1.1-1.15. Is this intentional? I mean, it can't obtain orbital speeds anyway, but this way I sometimes I don't even leave the atmosphere, depending on the ascent profile (on a 2x scaled Kerbin).

As @CobaltWolf said, leave the striped tank empty. The Redstone engine is already OP relative to the other engines. Giving it enough thrust to lift all that fuel would make it way OP.

It's easy to not make it to space with Redstone. Try this, fly straight up to around 80 m/s, slowly pitch over reaching 45 degrees around 15-20,000 meters. Hold 45 degrees the rest of the way.

6 hours ago, StarStreak2109 said:

Building Mercury-Atlas with the short upper tank, no second stage, just the capsule on top, I also have not enough dV to reach orbit. IIRC correctly, Mercury-Atlas was w/o second stage, so is this due to my poor (MJ-assisted) flying or should the Atlas rocket be beefed up a bit?)

Do we have a working 2x for 1.2 yet? Most of the launchers should be ok in 2x without adjustments, but Atlas has those balloon tanks that make it very very light compared to stock tanks. Me and @komodo have been working out the details for some configs for the rescales but the 1.2 thing kind of stalled that process.

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1 hour ago, CobaltWolf said:
  1. The RD-180 from the Atlas V is actually not that powerful - it's weaker than the F1 that you get at the same tech level, iirc. You're also playing CTT - I didn't make those configs. It was also placed there prior to the newer rockets being added.
  2. Empty the fuel of the upper tank. In the real Redstone it wasn't full of fuel but avionics; but I knew I couldn't do that to y'all.
    <snip>
  3. Like the manual? Hrmm, I'm not sure then. Sounds like it might need to get looked at. I know I've definitely made orbit in that configuration. What about with the longer tank?

They are all at the same scale. They're all balanced the same as stock parts. You need a 3.2x rescale for stock parts to make sense, and so its the same for ours.

The adapter? It's new for the AARDV parts.

Ad. 1 - Yeah, I was thinking in terms of time, as in the F1 was before the RD180, but I guess, performance-wise, they are indeed closer together... I guess I'll see how it plays, when I transition to the 1.2 version...

Ad. 2 - Thanks for the info. I wasn't aware of this.

Ad. 3 - I'll try with the longer tank, it just didn't look right, when compared with RL Mercury-Atlas. IIRC then the TWR gets really low as well.

1 hour ago, Jso said:

As @CobaltWolf said, leave the striped tank empty. The Redstone engine is already OP relative to the other engines. Giving it enough thrust to lift all that fuel would make it way OP.

It's easy to not make it to space with Redstone. Try this, fly straight up to around 80 m/s, slowly pitch over reaching 45 degrees around 15-20,000 meters. Hold 45 degrees the rest of the way.

Do we have a working 2x for 1.2 yet? Most of the launchers should be ok in 2x without adjustments, but Atlas has those balloon tanks that make it very very light compared to stock tanks. Me and @komodo have been working out the details for some configs for the rescales but the 1.2 thing kind of stalled that process.

Thanks for the input.

We have no working 2x scale mod for 1.2 yet. That is why I am still on 1.1.3... :( Can't wait to play BDB on 1.2! :D

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3 hours ago, Jso said:

As @CobaltWolf said, leave the striped tank empty. The Redstone engine is already OP relative to the other engines. Giving it enough thrust to lift all that fuel would make it way OP.

It's easy to not make it to space with Redstone. Try this, fly straight up to around 80 m/s, slowly pitch over reaching 45 degrees around 15-20,000 meters. Hold 45 degrees the rest of the way.

Do we have a working 2x for 1.2 yet? Most of the launchers should be ok in 2x without adjustments, but Atlas has those balloon tanks that make it very very light compared to stock tanks. Me and @komodo have been working out the details for some configs for the rescales but the 1.2 thing kind of stalled that process.

I have rescale working enough for flight testing, but not gameplay. The patches won't fire the bubble tanks unless it's seeing kscale64 (I think, I'd have to check), which wouldn't be the case here. They are on b9partswitch still anyway, which we still need to resolve vs wbi going forward. 

If this is still on the 1.1.3 release, then it is the bubble tanks only out of the above list. In the comparability/rescale folder, there is atlas.cfg, it should have the tank config(s). You may need to tweak the needs: line in the patch for your setup.

@Jso, I have had an idea on a better way to handle this, but I need a longer think on it.

edit, on atlas/Mercury: I have found it is by far the most difficult to fly beast in the lineup. There should be patches for 1.1.3 to alter the fuel flow to match the "new" 1.2 behavior, which helps. There are the bubble tanks as mentioned, and I have found a set of Thor fins, as non canon as they are, makes the stage separation more... Viable. (Srsy, that escape tower does more work than most others I've used >< )

The trick I've found is to stage it as close to having ~1 TWR on the sustainer as possible, to ditch the weight. Even then, it takes a tight flight profile to make orbit. As for TWR off the pad, I have no idea why it's so low for some of you; I normally have to turn the boosters down to 60-70 % to keep from overdoing it.

Edited by komodo
Atlas-y things
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@CobaltWolf, a note on the Mercury-Redstone; I left the striped tank less than half full of fuel and shut down the fuel flow to simulate the weight of the ballast and avionics instrumentation (approx 225 kg) and flew a suborbital hop, just to see how she'd perform. I also froze the gimbal on the engine, and tuned three Zoot motors for a one-second burst (0.2 units of fuel per motor) at booster sep to keep those factors in line. Apogee was 125km, landing was roughly 320km downrange. Total flight time was 8 minutes 49 seconds. Overall, it performed just a hair better than MR-4 when scaled to 64%. And it didn't even sink. :cool:

Kudos to you and your team for getting everything dialled in so nicely!

I would definitely recommend this configuration to anyone wanting to recreate the first two Mercury flights.

Edited by Jack Wolfe
Added some more precise values
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2 hours ago, Jack Wolfe said:

@CobaltWolf, a note on the Mercury-Redstone; I left the striped tank half full of fuel and shut down the fuel flow to simulate the weight of the avionics package and flew a suborbital hop, just to see how she'd perform. I also froze the gimbal on the engine, and tuned three Zoot motors for a one-second burst at booster sep to keep those factors in line. Apogee was 125km, landing was roughly 320km downrange. Total flight time was 8 minutes 49 seconds. Overall, it performed just a hair better than MR-4 when scaled to 64%. And it didn't even sink. :cool:

Kudos to you and your team for getting everything dialed in so nicely!

I would definitely recommend this configuration to anyone wanting to recreate the first two Mercury flights.

Noted, I will do that on the MRLV on the repo.

EDIT: I will, of course, give you credit for the idea.

Edited by minepagan
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36 minutes ago, minepagan said:

Noted, I will do that on the MRLV on the repo.

EDIT: I will, of course, give you credit for the idea.

 

I accept cash, too. Just sayin'. :lol:

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