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

[Pappystein]

1 minute ago, CobaltWolf said:

Oops, didn't finish. My girlfriend passed on a stomach bug or flu or something, so that post was written over the course of like 4 hours with me alternately passing out and running to the bathroom.

Been there, done that got the wardrobe my friend.   Get well and keep flyin

[MaverickSawyer]

2 hours ago, CobaltWolf said:

I'm sure we could find something or other to replace it.

Looks like Syncom would be easy enough to kitbash together with existing parts, but the relay antenna is a bit of a problem. Telstar, on the other hand, is the other way 'round... We've got the antenna, which is already a relay, but the spaceframe isn't there.

I guess I need to see just how fugly a kitbash of the two designs would be. 

EDIT: Not bad. Looks much more like Syncom, but... 1600+ m/s dV with the Star 10 motor.  Good lord. I may need to look into throwing some of the ion RCS and a little bit of xenon aboard for orbital trimming and precision maneuvers.

Edited February 6, 2019 by MaverickSawyer

[Barzon]

A cool suggestion would be some radially attaching parts to recreate the 'first' communication satellite that used an Atlas missile. Scott Manley did a video on it once, and I thought it would be cool to play with and would be a very early game relay satellite.

[MaverickSawyer]

That wasn't a relay in the sense of how KSP uses it. It was a "store and replay" system.

[Barzon]

I know, but surely it could be made into a proper relay?

[MaverickSawyer]

 Y'know... there might actually be a use for such a system. Backside of the Mun is a hard spot to reliably get data from a lander on the surface back to the KSC. A "store and forward" system would be perfect for such a situation. Beam it up to the passing satellite, and it the forwards the data upon restoring communications with the KSC as either a single burst transmission, or as the same discrete experiments. Not sure which would be better...

[Anders Kerman]

So is the J-2 EMR shift / PU valve going to be a thing? I was not quite sure after reading your posts.

PS: get well soon

[Jso]

33 minutes ago, Anders Kerman said:

So is the J-2 EMR shift / PU valve going to be a thing? I was not quite sure after reading your posts.

PS: get well soon

It's a bit of a niche feature.

Here's a config for that mod I linked you to if you want to play with it. In order for this to be of any use you will need to under fill Oxidizer.

Spoiler

@PART[bluedog_J2]
{
	MODULE
    {
        name = EMRController

        MIXTURE
        {
            //configName = Normal
            ratio = 4.704775347 // The normal Ox/Fuel mass ratio for 15 parts LqdHydrogen, 1 part Oxidizer.
            maxThrust = 388
            minThrust = 0

            atmosphereCurve
            {
                key = 0 421
                key = 1 260
                key = 6 0.001
            }
        }
        MIXTURE
        {
            //configName = Reduced
            ratio = 4
            maxThrust = 301
            minThrust = 0

            atmosphereCurve
            {
                key = 0 427
                key = 1 260
                key = 6 0.001
            }
        }
    }
}

 

 

[Deltac]

I did a thing with the Scoot rocket:

 

[MikeO89]

Was nervous about updating this new version in KSP 1.6.1 because of the stated "might break saves". Figured I would give it a try to see for myself so copied game to a different location and updated BDB. The game loaded up fine with no load errors so I thought I was home free. Turns out I was not. Loaded an Apollo craft (that I had built from various parts including some from BDB) and had been flying since 1.4.3. It always worked fine until the last BDB update. Now same craft at time of pedal opening ejected craft before pedal opened sending it tumbling and then the 3rd stage with LEM attached could not be controlled saying no SAS installed when it clearly was. So now that craft is pretty much not flyable. Figure I'd have to build the craft all over again from scratch to get it to work like it did before. I reverted back to previous BDB version and all is well again with that same craft. Guess I will have to skip this update cause I have too many craft with BDB parts in them to have to build them all over again. At least I gave it a try to see how things would go.

[Pappystein]

11 hours ago, MikeO89 said:

Was nervous about updating this new version in KSP 1.6.1 because of the stated "might break saves". Figured I would give it a try to see for myself so copied game to a different location and updated BDB. The game loaded up fine with no load errors so I thought I was home free. Turns out I was not. Loaded an Apollo craft (that I had built from various parts including some from BDB) and had been flying since 1.4.3. It always worked fine until the last BDB update. Now same craft at time of pedal opening ejected craft before pedal opened sending it tumbling and then the 3rd stage with LEM attached could not be controlled saying no SAS installed when it clearly was. So now that craft is pretty much not flyable. Figure I'd have to build the craft all over again from scratch to get it to work like it did before. I reverted back to previous BDB version and all is well again with that same craft. Guess I will have to skip this update cause I have too many craft with BDB parts in them to have to build them all over again. At least I gave it a try to see how things would go.

Given what you said it sounds like just your staging is out of whack.   I would go through and re-verify things like the Petal Adapter are set correctly and that your staging is correct.   A LOT less work than building a new aircraft and you get access to the newer parts and better paint/models!

Further there are a lot of craft flies available for the new release (including Saturn V if I don't miss my guess.)

 

[MaverickSawyer]

@MikeO89 you must have the "Decouple payload by staying" option enabled. Check the context menu of the petals adapter in the VAB to ensure it's off, then try again. Should work like you're expecting.

[MikeO89]

Well the same exact craft works fine using the previous version of BDB. When going back to the older 1.4.2 version of BDB, the same craft then works fine again. Very worrisome for me as this happened on the first craft I tried after installing newest BDB  version. I have LOTS more crafts I haven't even got to yet. If this is an indication of more to come when I try to fly other things I've built, I'm in big trouble. One of those things, get some cool new stuff but if it breaks everything else, what are you going to choose.

Edited February 7, 2019 by MikeO89

[Pappystein]

34 minutes ago, MikeO89 said:

Well the same exact craft works fine using the previous version of BDB. When going back to the older 1.4.2 version of BDB, the same craft then works fine again. Very worrisome for me as this happened on the first craft I tried after installing newest BDB  version. I have LOTS more crafts I haven't even got to yet. If this is an indication of more to come when I try to fly other things I've built, I'm in big trouble. One of those things, get some cool new stuff but if it breaks everything else, what are you going to choose.

But it didn't break any of your crafts.  They are all there and able to fly.   Rather the settings are back to default / default settings were altered for a reason that you may not be experiencing yet. 

it is always the case when ever you upgrade (game version, mod version etc) that you should carefully check over each and every part before you launch a ship.   Do you think NASA is igniting RS-25 (SSME) engines for the fun of it right now?  No they made changes to some of the software of the engine for it's new use and are starting from scratch in the testing of them.    Be Thankful KSP does not have a mechanic built in that you have to re-qualify every part every time you make a new rocket like NASA does.

That being said... Ultimately it is your choice, upgrade or stay stagnant.   I prefer to upgrade and evolve my game play so I don't understand your viewpoint.   

[Barzon]

Is there a texture pack for Procedural Parts that matches BDB?

[Deltac]

5 minutes ago, Pappystein said:

Do you think NASA is igniting RS-25 (SSME) engines for the fun of it right now?

I mean, it is pretty fun...

 

(sarcasm test complete)

[Barzon]

Interesting Idea I had, don't know how good it would be in practise.

All the tanks for each booster could be merged into a single part, that can change into each different tank required for the launcher. It would certainly reduce part list clutter a huge amount. E.g The Titan tanks could all be a single part, then change for each iteration, stage, and tank length.

[Deltac]

58 minutes ago, Barzon Kerman said:

Interesting Idea I had, don't know how good it would be in practise.

All the tanks for each booster could be merged into a single part, that can change into each different tank required for the launcher. It would certainly reduce part list clutter a huge amount. E.g The Titan tanks could all be a single part, then change for each iteration, stage, and tank length.

 

[Barzon]

So could this be done with BDB (Theoretically)?

[Saltshaker]

 

3 hours ago, Barzon Kerman said:

*snip*

All the tanks for each booster could be merged into a single part, that can change into each different tank required for the launcher. It would certainly reduce part list clutter a huge amount. E.g The Titan tanks could all be a single part, then change for each iteration, stage, and tank length.

Yes, I believe someone by the name of Gotmachine was working on B9 part switch configs to do exactly that but he seems to have stopped working on it.

[Jso]

BDB-ProceduralFairings_v0.1.5

• Rewritten to eliminate the need for the extraNodeShift adjustment.
• More complete removal of stock fairing modules.
• All fairings should be working now.

Note: PF does not like top nodes below the fairing base so the Atlas 5xx fairing has the inner node removed. Use the translate tool to adjust.

 

Thanks @komodo and @Cheesecake for helping sort this out.

[mr. engino]

On 2/6/2019 at 5:16 AM, MonanMuller said:

I was fascinated by your work, hope you can keep on with that. However, I want to say that when I use mechjeb to launch the Hokulani Skylab after it reached to target altitude and the autopilot went off and I try to activate the SAS, then message "has no operational sas module" appeared what happened to the skylab since I assemble it according to the manual.

I appeared to have that trouble myself, but I think I know the solution! In my science mode save, I noticed that all or most of the probe cores in BDB have their sas functionality added via part upgrades. Therefore, under the assumption your skylab is in a sandbox save, all you have to do is go to the difficulty options and enable the 'part upgrade' option.

[Jso]

15 minutes ago, mr. engino said:

I appeared to have that trouble myself, but I think I know the solution! In my science mode save, I noticed that all or most of the probe cores in BDB have their sas functionality added via part upgrades. Therefore, under the assumption your skylab is in a sandbox save, all you have to do is go to the difficulty options and enable the 'part upgrade' option.

I thought that as well, but when I tried to duplicate it in a sandbox game with upgrades off the SAS worked. I may just go and remove those first level upgrades anyway.

Edited February 8, 2019 by Jso
grammer

[CobaltWolf]

Well, I'm not feeling all that better, but I crawled back to the office today... Might as well try and respond to some stuff between meetings.

 

19 hours ago, MikeO89 said:

Well the same exact craft works fine using the previous version of BDB. When going back to the older 1.4.2 version of BDB, the same craft then works fine again. Very worrisome for me as this happened on the first craft I tried after installing newest BDB  version. I have LOTS more crafts I haven't even got to yet. If this is an indication of more to come when I try to fly other things I've built, I'm in big trouble. One of those things, get some cool new stuff but if it breaks everything else, what are you going to choose.

BDB is a living mod, so there's really no way I can promise that there won't be ongoing craft-breaking changes. We try to avoid them when we can, and hopefully the new stuff moving forward won't need to have any short of some fundamental change we are required to make to maintain compatibility or some such. However, I will chime in to say that, similar to how many people defer updating KSP to prevent their mods from breaking, there is nothing wrong with sticking with an old version of BDB until you are ready to update your crafts.

I was curious, because I don't remember making changes to the Saturn parts this update, but I checked the Github history of the part and found the commit in question. I'm still a little out of it so I'm having a bit of trouble understanding what exactly the change was just by looking. Incidentally, we are getting a bit better at using Github and the v1.5.1 release was a nice little test run of how we will manage things moving forward. One side effect is we basically got a set of patch notes for free when I merged the dev branch into the main branch, so it'll be easier to prepare real change logs. They probably won't include every single change, but save breaking changes in particular will be easier to find and thus highlight in the change log.

 

18 hours ago, Barzon Kerman said:

Is there a texture pack for Procedural Parts that matches BDB?

I know @Jso used to have one but I don't think they actually matched that well. Procedural Parts, while I understand its place, doesn't really lend itself to looking nice in the first place.

 

17 hours ago, Barzon Kerman said:

Interesting Idea I had, don't know how good it would be in practise.

All the tanks for each booster could be merged into a single part, that can change into each different tank required for the launcher. It would certainly reduce part list clutter a huge amount. E.g The Titan tanks could all be a single part, then change for each iteration, stage, and tank length.

16 hours ago, Barzon Kerman said:

So could this be done with BDB (Theoretically)?

13 hours ago, Saltshaker said:

Yes, I believe someone by the name of Gotmachine was working on B9 part switch configs to do exactly that but he seems to have stopped working on it.

As much as I'd like to have better organized VAB part lists, I don't want to go crazy with that sort of stuff unless there's precedent. We were eagerly looking forward to the integration of Gotmachine's fork of B9 Part Switch but as @Saltshaker said, he seems to have disappeared since October. I posted a gif he sent me a couple months ago, showing the SRMU parts condensed into a single part that was selectable. I don't want to go too crazy with that if it ever gets added, especially because I don't want to have too many things hidden, but I was looking forward to using it. A short list of a couple examples of what we wanted to be able to do with it, which for some reason skews towards SRBs:

• Condense the radial and inline variants of the Titan SRBs
• Maybe condense all the UA120X SRBs into a single part, which also would let us add more variants (like the missing 3,4, and 6 segment boosters, the last of which flew IRL) without feeling guilty about part list bloat
• Add the SR-118 variant of the Castor-120 (10-15% shorter, much higher thrust but less total impulse)
• Add a sea level variant of the SR-119 (for the Eaglet LV family proposed in the 90s

I hesitate to go as far as to, say, condense an entire family of fuel tanks, or engines, into a single part like that. But it would theoretically be possible if those features ever finished getting integrated into B9.

 

10 hours ago, Jso said:

BDB-ProceduralFairings_v0.1.5

• Rewritten to eliminate the need for the extraNodeShift adjustment.
• More complete removal of stock fairing modules.
• All fairings should be working now.

Note: PF does not like top nodes below the fairing base so the Atlas 5xx fairing has the inner node removed. Use the translate tool to adjust.

 

Thanks @komodo and @Cheesecake for helping sort this out.

Great to see this updated!  

 

9 hours ago, mr. engino said:

I appeared to have that trouble myself, but I think I know the solution! In my science mode save, I noticed that all or most of the probe cores in BDB have their sas functionality added via part upgrades. Therefore, under the assumption your skylab is in a sandbox save, all you have to do is go to the difficulty options and enable the 'part upgrade' option.

9 hours ago, Jso said:

I thought that as well, but when I tried to duplicate it in a sandbox game with upgrades off the SAS worked. I may just go and remove those first level upgrades anyway.

I still am hoping for the "we weren't obvious about having to include the Instrument Unit" solution because it means nothing is broken and needs fixing.

 

So, I was feeling pretty crappy yesterday, but I did get to UV unwrap the LR-91-AJ5/7 and get a small start on texturing it - it's still very WIP, obviously. My understanding is that some of the AJ5/7s may have had the brown/orange looking bell extension, but I'm saving that for the AJ11 variants to help keep them distinct from the others. Apologies for the low res, I had to jump off in a hurry last night. Cleaning up all these engines and rigging them to get them in game is going to be a mess... I'm trying to not think about that too much for now - I am just trying to get all the models and textures put together, since some of the variants will have to be cobbled together from others.  As you can see, the 'compact' variant of the LR-91 won't be all that compact. I had a general plan to have the single-bell variants of the LR-87 basically reuse the LR-91 model, just with the LR-87 thrust chamber. Anyone have feelings on that? The vernier will be removed as well, obviously.

 

[Pappystein]

5 hours ago, CobaltWolf said:

 I'm trying to not think about that too much for now - I am just trying to get all the models and textures put together, since some of the variants will have to be cobbled together from others.  As you can see, the 'compact' variant of the LR-91 won't be all that compact. I had a general plan to have the single-bell variants of the LR-87 basically reuse the LR-91 model, just with the LR-87 thrust chamber. Anyone have feelings on that? The vernier will be removed as well, obviously.

 

 

 Cobalt, Thanks for the update.   RE LR-87 Upper stage, you are going to have a completely new engine bell below the combustion chamber (white area of the engine on the left)   And the Turbopump exhaust would likely still be there for Roll Control like the LR-91 (just writ larger) Maybe scale up the Turbopump/Vernier and drop the LR87 combustion chamber with a new 40:1 bell (or whatever the Vac Optimized LR-87 was supposed to have.)  

Re the Blankets, I have said off channel my distaste for them (It hides so much of the texture work you do so well.) but I understand the need for them IRL.   Could I make a suggestion?  Add a 3rd set of colors for Hydrolox engine variants (Zinc Chromate green or bright cobalt blue or something not normally associated with the LR-87/LR-91 families?)   ALSO LR-91-AJ-3 would have had silver metallic blankets IRL....  And they would be UGLY (not the nice smooth shapes like above.)

Oh and most importantly GET WELL!

Edited February 8, 2019 by Pappystein
added missing word ALSO