The Grand KSP 1.1 Discussion Thread

[SnakyLeVrai]

I splashed down the 1st one at a near stall, that was the best way.

Also I made a plane with high wings (for increased stability), high aspect ratio and straight configuration (for lift), as if I bred a Cessna and a U2. That makes a LOT of lift, with a low stall speed. Perfect for landing slowly. I equipped it with flaps ; for pitch I only use the horizontal stabilizers... All in all, it looked a lot like a DeHavilland Twin Otter. Just take off from the grass, not the T1 runway.

[Geschosskopf]

27 minutes ago, Alshain said:

I've gotten them off the ground.  The LY landing gear are seriously messed up though.  However once in the air, planes that worked fine in 1.0.5 now seem to over control.  Even the slightest touch on my flight stick (or the keyboard button, so it isn't the settings) sends the thing rolling out of control and don't you dare touch the yaw.  Something has changed about the Mk1 plane parts themselves and not for the better.  I haven't tried the higher ones yet.

The fixed landing gear have always been rather bouncy and buggy.  They are indeed a bit worse now

As to over-control, a new feature in 1.1 is that you can reduce the amount of movement of control surfaces, the same way you can adjust the thrust limiter of engines.  Give that a try.

[Alshain]

4 minutes ago, Geschosskopf said:

The fixed landing gear have always been rather bouncy and buggy.  They are indeed a bit worse now

As to over-control, a new feature in 1.1 is that you can reduce the amount of movement of control surfaces, the same way you can adjust the thrust limiter of engines.  Give that a try.

I already tried that, it really didn't help, in fact it didn't seem to change anything at all.  Something is really just off about it.

[Alshain]

19 minutes ago, LameLefty said:

Take it from this hones-to-$DEITY aerospace engineer - it's "re-entry vehicle."  

Yep. This. Tho' I use a heat shield on everything for my version of "realistic" and aim for a Pe of about 32 - 33 km for capsule entries. Haven't had a problem yet, even with many dozens of entries through all the pre-release Betas and the release version.

That is fine for capsules with ablators, but if you try to bring a shuttle in like that, you are going to burn up.  At least you would in 1.0.5, haven't tried it since.

[LameLefty]

2 minutes ago, Alshain said:

That is fine for capsules with ablators, but if you try to bring a shuttle in like that, you are going to burn up.  At least you would in 1.0.5, haven't tried it since.

I actually started a thread about spaceplane entries during the 1.1 betas. For a winged vehicle, set your Pe to 50km and keep nose-up as much as you can to decelerate as quickly as possible before you get to <38km or so. Since someone clued me into that technique I haven't lost a spaceplane yet in a dozen or so entries.

[Fearless Son]

2 hours ago, Norcalplanner said:

I must respectfully disagree. Gravity losses are much larger than aero losses beginning in 1.0.5, so don't worry about terminal velocity at all. Have an initial TWR of 1.5 to 1.7, do a real gravity turn starting around 20 to 50 m/s depending on the ship design, and ignore all the shockwaves and flames you see on the way up. As long as nothing explodes, you're good.

Fair enough, but if those shockwaves start getting red, that is usually a good indication to dial back on the throttle a bit.  Unless you have only heat-resistant components on the leading end of your rocket, you could end up losing something you need later like a parachute that is part of an aerodynamic cap.  From what I have seen of 1.1, that aero-heating can be really brutal on parts not meant to withstand it (though I understand that is a known bug.)

[Alshain]

3 hours ago, Fallarnon said:

The consensus seems to be that you shouldn't be trying to land anything much heavier than a simple cessna-like plane on them at present. Whether or not Squad will alter this or not in the future is undetermined.

I disagree, you shouldn't be trying to land on them at all at present.

 

3 hours ago, regex said:

Landing gear now have weight and impact tolerances.  You need to play to those limits, which means that tiny landing gear are not going to hold up to the stresses imparted by a heavy craft.  Unfortunately there is no indication on what, exactly, the values are within the game so you're either stuck inferring them from config files or testing.  The LY-01 and LY-05 are suitable for small, 1~2 ton craft from what I can tell.

I agree, which kind of goes back to the whole barely usable.  Maybe if you are building an ultra-light they are probably fine, but few Mk1 planes are that low in mass and in their current state they are probably going to be used only slightly more than the Micronode.  That is a real shame as they are the only good looking stock landing gear.

Edited April 22, 2016 by Alshain

[Fallarnon]

6 minutes ago, Alshain said:

I disagree, you shouldn't be trying to land on them at all at present.

Because?

[Alshain]

Just now, Fallarnon said:

Because?

They are unstable.  They wobble down the runway on take off and that is effect is just super accelerated on landing.

[Fallarnon]

Just now, Alshain said:

They are unstable.  They wobble down the runway on take off and that is effect is just super accelerated on landing.

They're fine if you use them on an appropriately sized plane and don't try to come screaming in for a landing at 80m/s

[Alshain]

Just now, Fallarnon said:

They're fine if you use them on an appropriately sized plane and don't try to come screaming in for a landing at 80m/s

No, they aren't.

[Geschosskopf]

22 minutes ago, Alshain said:

I already tried that, it really didn't help, in fact it didn't seem to change anything at all.  Something is really just off about it.

Maybe too much control surface area?  I've found that controls are indeed more sensitive now, so planes require several test flights to harmonize their controls, but for any given design there is probably a sweet spot (in terms of number, size, location, and throw of control surfaces as they interact with varying amounts of torque) that you can find with a bit of experimentation.

Those who choose to disallow reverting flights in the interests of making things harder on themselves should be very happy because they're now getting even more difficulty   The rest of us will happily tweak and revert however many times we allow ourselves before going with what we've got, and along the way discover some rules of thumb to make most of the control harmonization happen in the design and initial construction phases instead of as recommendations from post-crash investigations

 

[regex]

4 minutes ago, Alshain said:

No, they aren't.

Yes they are.  The ultralight I posted in the command chair thread has zero issues and masses some 1.3 tons.  Those gear are for small craft, it's that simple.  While the mass limit could probably be upped by half again, they're not as useless as you're making them out to be.

[Fallarnon]

7 minutes ago, Alshain said:

No, they aren't.

Well, since you said so it must be true...

[Alshain]

3 minutes ago, Geschosskopf said:

Maybe too much control surface area?  I've found that controls are indeed more sensitive now, so planes require several test flights to harmonize their controls, but for any given design there is probably a sweet spot (in terms of number, size, location, and throw of control surfaces as they interact with varying amounts of torque) that you can find with a bit of experimentation.

Those who choose to disallow reverting flights in the interests of making things harder on themselves should be very happy because they're now getting even more difficulty   The rest of us will happily tweak and revert however many times we allow ourselves before going with what we've got, and along the way discover some rules of thumb to make most of the control harmonization happen in the design and initial construction phases instead of as recommendations from post-crash investigations

 

Yeah, I've been playing with it a bit just now, and found it really helps to set the yaw just barely above 0 and the roll to around 25, at least on my most basic Mk1 plane.  It's still a bit wobbly though.

Another thing I've noticed is the deploy direction on my flaps in the editor is always backward.

[Alshain]

12 minutes ago, regex said:

Yes they are.  The ultralight I posted in the command chair thread has zero issues and masses some 1.3 tons.  Those gear are for small craft, it's that simple.  While the mass limit could probably be upped by half again, they're not as useless as you're making them out to be.

Sorry, but no they aren't.  They shouldn't be limited to just ultralights.  They should be able to handle at least 5 tons.  As they are now, they can only barely support the lightest cockpit... with no other parts.

Edited April 22, 2016 by Alshain

[Fallarnon]

6 minutes ago, Alshain said:

Sorry, but no they aren't.  They shouldn't be limited to just ultralights.  They should be able to handle at least 5 tons.  As they are now, they can only barely support the lightest cockpit... with no other parts.

You're in atmosphere, use a rover chair.

[Alshain]

Just now, Fallarnon said:

You're in atmosphere, use a rover chair.

That is not a cockpit.

[Fallarnon]

2 minutes ago, Alshain said:

That is not a cockpit.

A space rated cockpit is not a reasonable expectation for a light aircraft. I mean hell, Cessnas only weigh a little over a U.S. ton. You don't see fixed landing gear on planes much better than that.

[Alshain]

1 minute ago, Fallarnon said:

A space rated cockpit is not a reasonable expectation for a light aircraft. I mean hell, Cessnas only weigh a little over a U.S. ton. You don't see fixed landing gear on planes much better than that.

That is fine, except for one small problem, there are no Cesna cockpits aren't available in this game.  Your saying these wheels are meant for cockpits that don't exist?

[Fallarnon]

Just now, Alshain said:

That is fine, except for one small problem, there are no Cesna cockpits aren't available in this game.  Your saying these wheels are meant for cockpits that don't exist?

Fly it from a chair...

[Geschosskopf]

3 minutes ago, Alshain said:

Yeah, I've been playing with it a bit just now, and found it really helps to set the yaw just barely above 0 and the roll to around 25, at least on my most basic Mk1 plane.  It's still a bit wobbly though.

The yaw authority you need depends largely on 2 things:

1. How much adverse roll you're willing to accept from off-centerline rudders, and;
2. Whether you do your turns mostly by yaw or roll-then-pitch.

Given the vagueness of KSP instrumentation and control systems, I tolerate zero yaw-induced roll except on very small, simple planes with enough control authority by other means and/or on other axes to be able easily to ignore whatever an off-center rudder does to me.  I always turn (as opposed to orienting or hammerheading) via roll-then-pitch, so rudder only affects my delta-altitude (and thus my delta-speed) during the turn, but not the turn radius or turn rate.  Depending on plane design and flight regime, sometimes you need LOTS of rudder authority to keep the nose where you want it because that controls both of the desired speed and altitude during the turn. 

3 minutes ago, Alshain said:

Another thing I've noticed is the deploy direction on my flaps in the editor is always backward.

Flaps in stock KSP do nothing but add drag and control force.  In real life, they usually increase effective wing area.  If you want that kind of functionality, use FAR.  If you want more control authority in stock, don't set anything as a flap/

[Alshain]

1 minute ago, Fallarnon said:

Fly it from a chair...

That is not a cockpit. (I feel like  I said that already, oh well.)

Edited April 22, 2016 by Alshain

[Fallarnon]

2 minutes ago, Alshain said:

That is not a cockpit. (I feel like  I said that already, oh well.)

It functions fine as one, note the ultralight. The issue here is simply that you don't like the answer, not that the answer is flawed.

[Alshain]

8 minutes ago, Fallarnon said:

It functions fine as one, note the ultralight. The issue here is simply that you don't like the answer, not that the answer is flawed.

No, it doesn't.  You can't launch it with a pilot inside, and therefore, as far as version 1.1, it is not intended for use as a cockpit.  Some players, like @regex have found a work around for that, creative workarounds let you do a lot of beautiful and interesting things in KSP, but that doesn't change the fact it is not meant to be a cockpit, at least not in 1.1.  The wheels should be able to support at least a plane built with the lightest cockpit, currently the Mk1 Inline.

I've been able to whittle my Mk1 plane down to 3.5 tons.  It still wobbles down the runway on these wheels.  I might could knock of another 0.5 tons, but I doubt that little will make a big impact.  Therefore the wheels are barely usable on regular planes.

Edited April 22, 2016 by Alshain