[1.1.2] Basic landing gear fixer

[GoSlash27]

 This patch is for use with ModuleManager 2.6.24, available here:

https://ksp.sarbian.com/jenkins/job/ModuleManager/113/artifact/ModuleManager.2.6.24.dll

 

Patch file here:

http://wikisend.com/download/269118/112GearFixer.cfg

 

ModuleManager dll goes into the KSP/GameData folder. My config patch will work anywhere within KSP or it's sub- folders.

 

What it does:

LY-01 Fixed gear

* Dramatically reduces sloppiness by increasing spring tension and damper.

* Maintains the ability to construct science carts without jittering

* Reduces tendency to overload and explode during spawning and landing.

* (Nearly) eliminates tendency to wallow during takeoff

* Increases brake strength

* Increased durability for rough field takeoffs and landings

LY-05 Steerable gear

* Adds braking ability (default on) so they can be used as main gear

* Increases spring tension, travel, offset, and damper

* Eliminates clipping, reducing tendency to initiate oscillations, skitter, and explode on spawning/ landing

* Increased durability for rough field takeoffs and landings

 

 This adjustment should make the entry level landing gear useful again.

Feel free to post any questions, comments below!

-Slashy

 

Edited April 30, 2016 by GoSlash27

[FreeThinker]

Thanks

Edited April 30, 2016 by FreeThinker

[Prowler_x1]

Please make available via CKAN. Thanks and best regards...

[KerbOrbiter]

I second CKAN request

[Bedwyr]

Ok, so I tried the changes and it does look like the undamped oscillations have disappeared. However I want to try playing without the cfg as I haven't attempted 1.1.2 vanilla yet.

The remaining issues appear to be pretty standard Kerbal problems such as the gear being too weak for the plane. For instance making small runway heading adjustments on takeoff results in significant wing dips and a crash if you're not careful. That can be managed and designed around as a typical sort of Kerbal weirdness (and lift induced rolls on takeoff are things student pilots *are* capable of in real life) due in part to all-or-none keyboard control.

In the interim you have a thumbs up from me. If I don't have any problems with 1.1.2 vanilla then Squad gets a thumbs up.  But given the changelog, I think you might actually have gotten it to behave better.

 

One design note: since the tech tree was tweaked, the first jet engine available is the Juno. This induces side-mounted engine designs like I did. You don't encounter an in-line engine first. This means that the weight distribution has a higher moment of inertia in roll and that the gear may have a harder time than before dealing with yaw inputs and yaw-roll coupled moments. Just a theory but I think it might be a reasonable one. I tried keeping my plane the exact same and replaced it with an in-line cockpit and circular intake + single engine at the back and I think I did notice a control improvement.

That sound plausible to you guys?

[GoSlash27]

Bedwyr,

 From what I've been reading, the root cause of the funky steering behavior is that the parts aren't perfectly aligned in the VAB. Snapping them to global coordinates instead of local seems to help. What was formerly causing uncontrolled roll oscillations now causes a (fairly) gentle yaw. Initially to the left in your case. The Juno has been the first engine available since KSP .9 or thereabouts, so it's not a recent change.

Best,
-Slashy

29 minutes ago, KerbOrbiter said:

I second CKAN request

I'm extra- dumb when it comes to CKAN. Not only can I not figure out how to do that, I can't even figure out how to figure out how.

 If one of you folks can assist me, I'll be more than happy to.

Best,
-Slashy

Edited April 30, 2016 by GoSlash27

[Bedwyr]

More like veering with strong wingtip-dragging roll moments on even small keyboard yaw inputs. I've experimented with a variety of takeoffs including no yaw input, slight early corrections below 20m/s, continuous yaw corrections through the roll, and so on. It just seems super sensitive.

Let me try global snapping and get back to you.

[GoSlash27]

3 minutes ago, Bedwyr said:

More like veering with strong wingtip-dragging roll moments on even small keyboard yaw inputs. I've experimented with a variety of takeoffs including no yaw input, slight early corrections below 20m/s, continuous yaw corrections through the roll, and so on. It just seems super sensitive.

Let me try global snapping and get back to you.

 Yeah, you're not imagining that. Unfortunately, this is the best I can do with what's available. It was either this or the crazy wallowing that was happening before.

Best,
-Slashy

[Bedwyr]

Right. And I'm not complaining; just adjusting expectations. The gear are usable, but have to be treated like rolling eggshells.

I'm strongly inclined to think that the two big design considerations for these things are:

- Either get the airplanes mass tighter in (read "in-line engines") to reduce moment of inertia or find a way to spread the gear out for better stability.

- Find a joystick or gamepad controller that lets you input much smaller control inputs... like 1/4 yaw deflection or less. Keyboard control, even tapping the keys, is less than optimal. Pilots in real life hardly ever input full deflection on anything unless they're flying gnarly aerobatics like this fine lady:

Doesn't that look like fun?

 

Edit: after re-watching that pay attention to the end of the video when she lands and compare what her legs are doing on the landing roll compared to her routine (note: tailwheel planes are squirrely on landing).

Edited April 30, 2016 by Bedwyr

[GoSlash27]

Bedwyr,

 What I do is design my aircraft so that they take off and land at much lower speeds. I dial in some static incidence and trim with tailplane (or canard) pitch. I keep the mains close to the CoG longitudinally to ease rotation in pitch. I haven't played with flaps yet in early career, since action groups aren't available, but I can make some pretty good rough field science planes with the early gear. By the time they get to a speed where they'd want to veer, they're already flying. So while a single engine would probably be easier to handle, my twin designs have been fine.

Best,
-Slashy

 

Edited April 30, 2016 by GoSlash27

[Bedwyr]

Yeah that's not too far off from my process. My airplane is pretty unoptimized (keep in mind I'm coming back from before 1.0.5... that's a long time away from the game), but I'll mess around still with angles of incidence and position a lot. My interest is mostly in getting the uninformed off the ground with as little hassle as possible. So I'm trying to think somewhat stupid-proof.

[Errol]

How do you do this "global snap"?

[mcirish3]

Just a suggestion:  say what folder to put things in.  Thanks again for all your hard work and help to the community.

[GoSlash27]

16 minutes ago, Errol said:

How do you do this "global snap"?

Erroll,

 I hold "space" while placing the gear. There's probably a dedicated key for this, but I don't recall.

Best,
-Slashy

15 minutes ago, mcirish3 said:

Just a suggestion:  say what folder to put things in.  Thanks again for all your hard work and help to the community.

mcirish,

 Good suggestion. Done!

-Slashy

[Bedwyr]

F key swaps between local and global.

[Bedwyr]

Hmm. For some reason the module manager isn't loading the cfg for me today. I've got the correct version of MM in the GameData folder and tried the cfg file in the game's root folder, the GameData folder, and a separate new folder inside GameData. 0 modules loaded every time I try to fire up the game.

Edited May 1, 2016 by Bedwyr

[foonix]

3 minutes ago, Bedwyr said:

Hmm. For some reason the module manager isn't loading the cfg for me today. I've got the correct version of MM in the GameData folder and tried the cfg file in the game's root folder, the GameData folder, and a separate new folder inside GameData. 0 modules loaded every time I try to fire up the game.

Check that you downloaded the actual file.  I tried to "Right click -> Save As" on the link above, and that was actually the page serving the file.  I had to go to the page and click another download link.

[Bedwyr]

Ha. Yeah, that was it.

I'm obsessing with landing now. Quite a bit less forgiving of error isn't it? I'll admit I'm not very good at handling energy the pattern for these things. They really like long dragged in approaches. I think I successfully break nothing on the landing about 1 out of every 3 times so far. Working on it.

Edited May 1, 2016 by Bedwyr

[GoSlash27]

52 minutes ago, Bedwyr said:

Ha. Yeah, that was it.

I'm obsessing with landing now. Quite a bit less forgiving of error isn't it? I'll admit I'm not very good at handling energy the pattern for these things. They really like long dragged in approaches. I think I successfully break nothing on the landing about 1 out of every 3 times so far. Working on it.

Entry level planes are tricky now because there's no action group for flaps and spoilers. Clean designs are difficult to force to bleed off airspeed.

 What I do is run a normal pattern, but then s-turn on final to bleed off any excess energy. With a little practice, I'm able to drop my plane into very tight spots.

 I occasionally screw it up, but it's usually not the gear that does me in. They're actually pretty forgiving with this adjustment.

 

Try this little puddle jumper. Extremely docile and easy to fly with good rough field capabilities.

http://wikisend.com/download/311698/Kondor1.craft

 

Edited May 2, 2016 by GoSlash27

[White Owl]

@Bedwyr, Are you flying with precision control enabled? Default keybinding is capslock, and you know it's turned on when the control position indicators turn blue. Precision control mode fixes the default KSP stupidly awkward control scheme of instantly slamming control surfaces to full deflection, which is a very bad idea for airplanes. (And rockets, and rovers, and anything else really.) In precision control mode, the control surfaces and/or engine gimbals take a second or so to move, so tapping keyboard inputs can approximate an appropriately smooth and gentle style of piloting.

Of course a joystick is best... but that's not always an option.

[Alshain]

Wow, seems to have fixed all my problems.  Makes me wonder why Squad couldn't do this... in 3 versions no less.

Edited May 2, 2016 by Alshain

[GoSlash27]

40 minutes ago, Alshain said:

Wow, seems to have fixed all my problems.  Makes me wonder why Squad couldn't do this... in 3 versions no less.

Well... Unity5 caught everybody off guard. It's wheel collider system is a dumpster fire. The first iteration was set up to try to mimic the 1.05 gear, but it's really bad at aircraft landing gear and our tendency to use landing gear as wheels aggravated it. The devs missed the kraken bait, which is understandable. When you get wrapped up in tweaking parts, you don't really have a chance to use them as they are used in normal game play.

 I crutched the parts to deal with the problems in 1.1, but the loose mounting (and a poor choice of design points on my part) made a wheel that wouldn't act as kraken bait under any circumstances, but was way too sloppy to be useful as an airplane landing gear. The devs folded my adjustments into 1.1.1, so you can blame me for that.

 After that, they added auto- strutting to shore up the mounting points, so I had another go at rebalancing the parts. It was pretty much what you see here, but the 1.1.2 patch came out so quickly that I didn't have time to get it incorporated.

 So now they're on vacation for 2 weeks. I'll try to get this in 1.1.3 when they come back.

 This won't be truly sorted out until Unity fixes their wheel system.

Best,
-Slashy

 

 

[Alshain]

Ah I see, well it sounds like it's a lot more complicated than what it looked like from the outside.  I can certainly understand trying to fix Unity, which is something they shouldn't have to do at all.

[Bedwyr]

12 hours ago, White Owl said:

@Bedwyr, Are you flying with precision control enabled? Default keybinding is capslock, and you know it's turned on when the control position indicators turn blue. Precision control mode fixes the default KSP stupidly awkward control scheme of instantly slamming control surfaces to full deflection, which is a very bad idea for airplanes. (And rockets, and rovers, and anything else really.) In precision control mode, the control surfaces and/or engine gimbals take a second or so to move, so tapping keyboard inputs can approximate an appropriately smooth and gentle style of piloting.

Of course a joystick is best... but that's not always an option.

Good point; I'll have to try that.

I also have a XB1 controller. Unsure how the mapping is on that. Also have a Steam controller, but the default Squad mapping is purely WASD assignment. I'd have to spend some time to see if there's a flexible analog solution for that controller.

[Alshain]

15 hours ago, White Owl said:

Of course a joystick is best... but that's not always an option.

@tetryds & @ferram4's mouse flight mod is an excellent alternative to not having a joystick.  It's not as good IMO as a flight stick, but not as stupid as the keyboard.

Edited May 2, 2016 by Alshain