Tank butts, --- your thoughts?

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

More modularity = better.

[Reactordrone]

1 hour ago, Motokid600 said:

1 hour ago, Motokid600 said:

 

You wouldn't even need them to be procedural. Squad could ditch the tank butts all together if they remodeled all the fuel tanks to look like actual fuel tanks with sidewalls and hemishphereical ends. ( tank butts )

The Kerbodyne fuel tanks do have hemispherical ends (and I would assume so do all the others under their dust caps). The structures on the top of the engines are the covers for the engine mounts and engine turbomachinery. There's no tank structure in them. The Vector is the oddball rocket because it's just an engine bell (in the same way that the jets in the game are just nozzles), in reality it would be longer and everyone would have to offset them to hide most of the engine when making space shuttles.

[NathanKell]

@Reactordrone you say that, but...

 

That's the butt of a tank, clear as day. Since it's literally modeled on one:

[I_Killed_Jeb]

22 hours ago, Tweeker said:

        To me it seems like a bunch of mental gymnastics to justify the Vector. Are they really going to re-work all the engines in the game to justify the presence of one engine? 

Oh.. ok. That's a real excellent invitation for discussion

[Nothalogh]

13 hours ago, monophonic said:

I also think the multi-adapters should be lower in the tech tree. They would naturally direct new players towards the idea of clustering smaller engines. Butts or no butts.

Yeah, it's quite ridiculous, given that most early heavy rocket designs were a massive cluster of existing engines

[tater]

The tech tree is absurd.

[Tw1]

They aren't too bad where they appear to be containing the other parts of the engine. (Aside from the nozzle.) I do like the way they make the visual connection from tank to engine, but when you offset or cluster, they don't look so good. 

[NecroBones]

Personally, I'd love if they made the tank butts a toggle option. Partly because it would be great to have a stock mesh-switcher.

 

[Fearless Son]

21 hours ago, Motokid600 said:

You wouldn't even need them to be procedural. Squad could ditch the tank butts all together if they remodeled all the fuel tanks to look like actual fuel tanks with sidewalls and hemishphereical ends. ( tank butts )

I think that the worry is that it would make stacking other modules on the ends of the tanks difficult.  Supposedly nose cone bits are intended to be the hemispherical ends of a fuel tank, in resemblance if nothing else.  

Come to think of it, I would love genuinely hemispherical fuel tanks for "rounding out" my cylinders.  Or stick two together and make a spherical tank!  

3 hours ago, NecroBones said:

Personally, I'd love if they made the tank butts a toggle option. Partly because it would be great to have a stock mesh-switcher.

Maybe the tank butt could be a tweakable option in the VAB?  Seems like the best of both worlds there.  

[TMS]

19 hours ago, NathanKell said:

@Reactordrone you say that, but...

 

That's the butt of a tank, clear as day. Since it's literally modeled on one:

True, but the Apollo tank butt fits into the tank.  The top of the modelled tank butt has a circumference exactly the same at the tank.  When offsetting the engine, that tank butt circumference often z-fights with the tank texture.

[Slam_Jones]

Realism aside, I personally prefer the "tank butts."  I prefer the aesthetics already provided by the "butts."  Forcing us to use the same 3 adapters for every engine is (in my opinion) ridiculous.

Personally, I couldn't care less on how realistic it looks.  It is a video game after all, and aesthetics are important for a lot of people, myself included.

I agree with the mesh switcher for the best of both worlds.  But it'll likely be the vocal minority shouting and crying their way to Squad that gets their way.

[regex]

10 minutes ago, Slam_Jones said:

But it'll likely be the vocal minority shouting and crying their way to Squad that gets their way.

I love this argument, it's pretty much a foolproof attempt to shut down the dissenting opinion, by implying that they have a minority opinion which is not widely shared and is thus less important.  It's a great stand-in for a well-reasoned opinion.

[Jetski]

Toggle able please!

 

[NathanKell]

58 minutes ago, TMS said:

True, but the Apollo tank butt fits into the tank.  The top of the modelled tank butt has a circumference exactly the same at the tank.  When offsetting the engine, that tank butt circumference often z-fights with the tank texture.

You're missing the point. THAT IS THE TANK. That's why it's called a tank butt. Tanks are capsules. The stage is made up either a combined-bulkhead single capsule, or two capsules with an intertank skirt. The stage also has forward and aft skirts. It's like you took a capsule and put a belt on the top and the bottom.

KSP "tanks" are in fact stages with long forward and aft skirts (long enough so the skirt is as tall as the dome) and then a covering plate at each end. That's partly why it's so wacky to then have a closing tankdome as the top part of the engine...

[Foxster]

I used to date a girl with a tank butt...

OK, I'll get my coat . 

[Choctofliatrio2.0]

Just now, Foxster said:

I used to date a girl with a tank butt...

OK, I'll get my coat . 

I laughed

 

While having the tank butts on engines is more realistic, I really would like to be able to put multiple engines on the same fuel tank. It would be difficult to attach it to the rest of the rocket as an upper stage, but it'd be useful for first stages

[TMS]

37 minutes ago, NathanKell said:

You're missing the point. THAT IS THE TANK. That's why it's called a tank butt. Tanks are capsules. The stage is made up either a combined-bulkhead single capsule, or two capsules with an intertank skirt. The stage also has forward and aft skirts. It's like you took a capsule and put a belt on the top and the bottom.

KSP "tanks" are in fact stages with long forward and aft skirts (long enough so the skirt is as tall as the dome) and then a covering plate at each end. That's partly why it's so wacky to then have a closing tankdome as the top part of the engine...

So keep engines as engines and tanks as tanks.  Not engines as "engines-with-a-bit-of-tank-on-it".  Mutual exclusivity in part typology maximises modularity.

Get rid of the tank butts and have them auto generate if the end-user wants them.  Assuming that the engine will be attached to a tank of the same size and configuration is presumptuous.

[Fearless Son]

1 hour ago, Foxster said:

I used to date a girl with a tank butt...

OK, I'll get my coat . 

I heard she had Buns of Steel.  

[NecroBones]

59 minutes ago, Fearless Son said:

I heard she had Buns of Steel.  

And aircraft grade aluminum!

 

[EladDv]

45 minutes ago, NecroBones said:

And aircraft grade aluminum!

 

aluminium* (that's the correct way you rebel americans!)

 

yeah tank butts should be procedural i would love make an accurate falcon 9 (at least to scale) but i can't because engines are either not strong enough at 0.625m or i can't fit them under the tank nicely (vector bell engines are huge and they are also way too strong) and 1.25m engines will fit without the butts.

but on the other end it would end the joke of "i like big butts and cannot lie" of getting big engines on small tanks and i'll miss it...

[waterlubber]

Tanks should have butts, NOT engines.

 

Here's what I mean. The Skipper will have it's butt-ugly butt removed. So will all the other engines. However, the butts will be added to tanks. Each tank will have a tweakable/automatic option that gives a tank it's proper size ending. For example, attaching any 1.25m engine to an SLS tank will have a lovely, white butt be added on, and adding a .2.5m engine to a 2.5m tank will also add the proper texture.

Less work, since there are only 4 tank types, and you only need 4 textures. Those textures will blend well with their proper tanks. Everybody wins!

[Temstar]

28 minutes ago, waterlubber said:

For example, attaching any 1.25m engine to an SLS tank will have a lovely, white butt be added on, and adding a .2.5m engine to a 2.5m tank will also add the proper texture.

So what's going to happen when you cluster 1.25m engines on 2.5m or 3.75m tanks?

[Reactordrone]

On 19/1/2016 at 9:23 AM, NathanKell said:

@Reactordrone you say that, but...

 

That's the butt of a tank, clear as day. Since it's literally modeled on one:

Then again, the green conical section isn't part of the tank, it's the Thrust structure assembly that distributes the thrust over the bottom of the tank. http://www.apollosaturn.com/sibnews/pg5_2c.gif

[TMS]

10 hours ago, Temstar said:

So what's going to happen when you cluster 1.25m engines on 2.5m or 3.75m tanks?

I would expect auto generation to only occur when the engine is snapped onto a tank's node.

[monophonic]

Why would anyone want to stick the combustion chamber and/or turbomachinery inside a tank anyway? Those things run HOT, and boiling fuel or oxidizer that way can only result in a RPD event. (P is for Planned in case you were wondering...)

Right now the throat of the Vector's nozzle is pretty close to the attachment point. There's nowhere for the machinery to be but inside whatever part you stick that into. If that part is a fuel tank, by all rights you should have built an elaborate firework.