[PART, 1.0.2] Anatid Robotics / MuMech - MechJeb - Autopilot - Historical thread

[sarbian]

Is it with the AR202 part or did you include MM in your command pods ?

[FireWille]

I manualy edit the "mechjeb_settings_global.cfg" in the Mechjeb2 folder. I tried with stock installation, with "stockplugin" and with build 447. No success.

Everything is just fine now with Build 448 with and without the "stockplugin".

[Frostiken]

Is it with the AR202 part or did you include MM in your command pods ?

Ever since the 1.0 build I've had everything unlocked. I'm currently using a dev build (445) and cleaned my save completely before using it, and it still unlocked everything. A few others have reported as such. Starting a new career with ModuleManager to add the mechjeb functionality gives me everything right away, regardless if I've unlocked any techs at all. Removing the MM and relying on the AR202 part (default behavior) does the same thing, just when I unlock the part.

EDIT: 448 seems to be working just fine.

Edited May 9, 2015 by Frostiken

[sarbian]

Sorry, I was replying to Sokar408

Sokar408 : I had a look and indeed things get slower. I am not sure why yet. I have an idea to test but that require a large code change that I did not plan before I get a new official release so I am afraid you ll have to wait a bit.

[mr_flood]

I downloaded the latest stable version, have the MechJeb2 folder in the gamedata folder and have the MechJeb module available to put onto my craft. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to be drawing power even though it says it's available. It also is not giving me any MechJeb windows. Also, if I abort flight and go back to hangar, then try to relaunch it says I have an unsupported part.

This is in career mode.

[sarbian]

Post a log, I can't do a thing without one.

Edited May 9, 2015 by sarbian

[Frostiken]

I'm having issues with the UI scale feature and the 'only use title bar to drag menu' setting. I was able to drag some menus from the top-left corner of the screen where they populate by default, but I got about halfway across the screen and lost dragging functionality. I can't drag them at all now, well, not unless I turn off the titlebar drag. It works fine then. Moving them back to the top left without titlebar drag and reenabling titlebar drag doesn't seem to do anything after they become 'bugged'. Reverting to 1.0 scale makes titlebar drag work fine.

MORE: 0.999 scale seems to work with titlebar dragging, but 0.99 scale only seems to work if you grab the titlebar towards the bottom. At 0.97 they become undraggable.

Seems like the titlebar grab area is being scaled improperly.

EVEN MORE: 'Restore factory settings' doesn't seem to affect scaling. This is with 448.

EVEN MORE AND MORE: Creating a custom window in 448 doesn't seem to populate the Mechjeb master list with the new window.

Edited May 9, 2015 by Frostiken

[futrtrubl]

Checked my design by flying it manually and it made it to orbit no problems. The issue isnt' a lack of control surfaces, mechjeb simply isn't using the CS i have on the craft to ensure proper alignment during ascent.

Then the profile you are using is not correct for the craft. Try a higher turn start altitude and speed.

[Sokar408]

Sorry, I was replying to Sokar408

Sokar408 : I had a look and indeed things get slower. I am not sure why yet. I have an idea to test but that require a large code change that I did not plan before I get a new official release so I am afraid you ll have to wait a bit.

I can wait, knowing that at least isn't on my end, and that its been made aware of Great work thus far btw! ^^

[sarbian]

Frostiken : fixed

Kokanee : do you have AoA limit on ?

[LameLefty]

Then the profile you are using is not correct for the craft. Try a higher turn start altitude and speed.

This, exactly.

If you design rockets the way you see them in the real world (e.g., Atlas, Saturn, Delta, Soyuz, Falcon 9, Antares, Zenit, Ariane ...) they'll work. If you design top-heavy rockets, you'll need fins. Even fins and gimbaling engines won't work if your design doesn't look somewhat realistic if you follow the default MJ2 ascent profile. If your design is too prone to tumbling and you can't add more aero surfaces, you'll probably have to fly a "lofted" trajectory - start your gravity turn a bit higher, use a more gradual turn rate to avoid the worst aerodynamic effects. You'll pay for that with higher gravity losses but that's the nature of the beast. Spaceflight is hard.

[mr_flood]

Post a log, I can't do a thing without one.

I'm hoping you're talking about the KSP.log, here it is:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6Qn-HMIh0xQOFczZ2hLVWI5eGs/view?usp=sharing

If not, let me know which log you want.

Edited May 9, 2015 by mr_flood

[Galane]

Oddly for me the limiter is NOT functioning.

I completely removed all of MechJeb, booted up the game, shut it down again, installed the latest 447 dev build and restarted the game. During launch the limiter briefly flashed green and the throttle had a slight dip. And then it continued at full throttle.

Moar boosters. To hit the TV limiter you need to have enough thrust to be able to reach TV at the altitude/density. At the ascent speeds a rocket can now achieve, the current TV changes rapidly and increases with altitude. Ie. the higher you go the higher the TWR must be to stay at terminal velocity. Not easy to do when you keep throwing away engines... That's why several of my rockets staged tanks off the top of stacks, to keep the engines on longer. New aero will make that tactic trickier to do.

In testing I've found that hitting TV as soon as possible and for as long as possible saves fuel. The rocket is going as fast as it can so throttling back reduces fuel use. In .90 and earlier I'd attach some SRBsto kick it up to speed so MechJeb would throttle back. Had some rockets where right after launch it'd completely cut throttle while the SRBs carried the whole load. A few thousand meters of ascent not burning liquid fuel and oxidizer can make quite a difference.

[Frostiken]

You can go into MechJeb and make a custom window containing atmospheric information (honestly I think it should be a default window now, would be nice to have it automatically pop up and close when in an atmosphere if it is). Mine contains atmospheric density, pressure, vessel drag, mach, and terminal velocity.

Point is, terminal velocity might be much higher than you think. It rapidly climbs to the 700m/s range long before most of my rockets are even capable of going that fast.

- - - Updated - - -

Frostiken : fixed

Did you catch my edits? The custom window thing appears to only be a problem when you first make the window. Switching vessels seems to have populated the list with my custom windows again. Not really a big problem.

[Tex_NL]

Moar boosters. To hit the TV limiter you need to have enough thrust to be able to reach TV at the altitude/density. At the ascent speeds a rocket can now achieve, the current TV changes rapidly and increases with altitude. Ie. the higher you go the higher the TWR must be to stay at terminal velocity. Not easy to do when you keep throwing away engines... That's why several of my rockets staged tanks off the top of stacks, to keep the engines on longer. New aero will make that tactic trickier to do.

In testing I've found that hitting TV as soon as possible and for as long as possible saves fuel. The rocket is going as fast as it can so throttling back reduces fuel use. In .90 and earlier I'd attach some SRBsto kick it up to speed so MechJeb would throttle back. Had some rockets where right after launch it'd completely cut throttle while the SRBs carried the whole load. A few thousand meters of ascent not burning liquid fuel and oxidizer can make quite a difference.

Don't take me for a n00b. I know when I am hitting terminal velocity and how to recognize it. My full throttle TWR is roughly 3.5 and I am getting re-entry effect on the way up.

[smjjames]

Then use less powerful boosters or adjust their thrust so that you don't get reentry effects or that you're at a higher altitude when you do hit it, also check the thermal overlay, you may actually be fine as far as heating goes.

[Frostiken]

Don't take me for a n00b. I know when I am hitting terminal velocity and how to recognize it. My full throttle TWR is roughly 3.5 and I am getting re-entry effect on the way up.

Like I said, make a custom window and add the 'terminal velocity' info readout. It's possible the terminal velocity measurement is incorrect, but as far as MechJeb is concerned, unless your rocket is pushing that velocity, it won't limit you at all.

Also, 1,000 pages. Noice.

[futrtrubl]

Don't take me for a n00b. I know when I am hitting terminal velocity and how to recognize it. My full throttle TWR is roughly 3.5 and I am getting re-entry effect on the way up.

Ok, how do you recognize when you are hitting terminal velocity? Because your TWR and re-entry effects are not it.

[sarbian]

mr_flood: You have on old MJ install in "D:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Kerbal Space Program\Plugins\MechJeb2.dll" make sure that "Kerbal Space Program\Plugins" and "Kerbal Space Program\Parts" are empty. This is where the mods were pre 0.19

Frostiken : I missed the edit but I have the fix here too. I ll push it later with something more worthy of a whole new build. I added a cache with the window list earlier and I was not cleaning it when adding or removing windows.

Others : play nice.

[smjjames]

Ok, how do you recognize when you are hitting terminal velocity? Because your TWR and re-entry effects are not it.

Yep, the reentry effects confused me for a while back in 0.90 and made me think the terminal velocity wasn't working before it was explained that it's not actually connected to the terminal velocity, more like x speed is at y altitude or rather atmospheric pressure .

[Fizwalker]

First off, I love the mod. It's been one of my must haves since I learned of it back in .22. I've come to the conclusion that the stats regarding dV and TWR (and when landing or flying, actual height above ground) to be immensely useful. While I am sure, that eventually, I could build effectively without this.... I don't think I want to!

At any rate, has anyone come across any issues when using the current release with KSP Ver. 1.0.2?

To the current discussion about the Terminal Velocity thing..... I've been playing (with a rather lengthy break last year) since August of 2013.... I STILL don't know how to recognize when I hit my ship's terminal velocity. (Guess I should have had a nifty custom read out with that info..... >.>)

Tex: Is that TWR your Sea Level TWR? Or the TWR at the end of your first stage? When I launch a ship, and this is something I learned while messing around in RSS/RO, I start off with a Sea Level TWR of ~1.4 and try to have my first stage cut off TWR < 3. Anything higher than that and I would end up blowing my rocket up when it overheated. I've pretty well kept this when I came back to running around in the standard Kerbal system. I still used FAR in .90 and with ~3900 m/s/s of dV I could get into a 100 km orbit with a few hundred m/s/s dV left over in case I screwed something up... *cough* That HARDLY ever happened though.... *Cough* (Incidentally, the start of my 2nd stage TWR is usually between .8 and .9 and I try to start my 2nd stage above 30 km... Now that I think of it.... I might start to put probe cores onto my 2nd stages so I can de-orbit them with the remaining fuel.) Also... I tend to look at total dV (and I use the vacuum statistic) as a measure of what I need to get to orbit. Perhaps there are more fuel efficient ways.... But I knew that I use that much dV at a minimum. I haven't quite figured out the new dV requirements with the new aero yet. Anyway, hope you find some use for this rambling passing along of experience....

[Starwaster]

Don't take me for a n00b. I know when I am hitting terminal velocity and how to recognize it. My full throttle TWR is roughly 3.5 and I am getting re-entry effect on the way up.

Reentry effects have nothing to do with terminal velocity, as has been said elsewhere.

The reason the TV limiter is not working for you is because it only takes into account the vertical component. Right or wrong, whether anyone agrees with that or likes it / dislikes it, it is by design that it only uses the vertical component.

Edit: So, actually, it is working. It's just that if your vertical velocity isn't high enough to trigger it except for the brief moments that you see it trigger.

[BARCLONE]

Sarbian,

Running 449 now. That fix did the job! Thanks! I landed a Kerbalship about 10m from one of the MJ Pods after setting it as a target, then changing the landing coordinates by a few seconds each direction. The floating blue target in map mode worked correctly, too.

Still experiencing the post-landing HDD craziness, but I'm beginning to think it's a Unity issue more than a game or mod issue now. The KSP.log file actually ended on a NRE from Unity. Annoying, to say the least.

[smjjames]

Minor bug here, when the landing AP wants to move to low orbit deorbital burn point, it doesn't autowarp if the option is on. It does kill the timewarp when you hit the burn point though.

Out of curiosity, what's the DecEndAlt under debug info about? Declination End Altitude? I'm not worried about the numbers, I'm just wondering what it's measuring.

Edited May 10, 2015 by smjjames

[mr_flood]

mr_flood: You have on old MJ install in "D:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Kerbal Space Program\Plugins\MechJeb2.dll" make sure that "Kerbal Space Program\Plugins" and "Kerbal Space Program\Parts" are empty. This is where the mods were pre 0.19

Thanks, that fixed it.