1.1 new reaction wheels

[Tahib]

I just came across the new reaction wheels in 1.1. Where is the difference between Normal, SAS only, Pilot only? Seems they all do the same.

Why i cannot switch them off anymore? They are draining energy when i dont want to use them because i have rcs or control surfaces.

Edited May 18, 2016 by Tahib

[Curveball Anders]

6 minutes ago, Tahib said:

I just came across the new reaction wheels in 1.1. Where is the difference between Normal, SAS only, Pilot only? Seems they all do the same.

Why i cannot switch them off anymore? They are draining energy when i dont want to use them because i have rcs or control surfaces.

"Toggle Torque"?

[Rath]

What are you seeing?

[Tahib]

Lol, must have been blindfolded to not seeing the torque option. Thankyou.

Pilot only still includes SAS..

[Snark]

Moving to Gameplay Questions.

"Normal" is the usual mode we've all been familiar with, lo these many years.

"Pilot only" means that it will contribute torque in response to the player pressing the roll/pitch/yaw keys, but won't assist with SAS action.

"SAS only" is the reverse: the reaction wheel will ignore your control input from the keyboard, but does contribute to SAS action.

[Warzouz]

On 19/5/2016 at 9:20 AM, Snark said:

Moving to Gameplay Questions.

"Normal" is the usual mode we've all been familiar with, lo these many years.

"Pilot only" means that it will contribute torque in response to the player pressing the roll/pitch/yaw keys, but won't assist with SAS action.

"SAS only" is the reverse: the reaction wheel will ignore your control input from the keyboard, but does contribute to SAS action.

To add on that. This option allow you to handle over-powerfull torque which SAS is not able to manage.

• Build al ship with a probe core with torque : set it as SAS only
• Add a more powerful reaction wheel (usually embedded in pods) : set it to pilot only

That was, if you set SAS, you will use the low power torque only, so your ship wont vibrate. If your ship turns too slowly, just help it with the keyboard (which will use the more powerful reaction wheel)

[Snark]

6 hours ago, Warzouz said:

To add on that. This option allow you to handle over-powerfull torque which SAS is not able to manage.

• Build al ship with a probe core with torque : set it as SAS only
• Add a more powerful reaction wheel (usually embedded in pods) : set it to pilot only

That was, if you set SAS, you will use the low power torque only, so your ship wont vibrate. If your ship turns too slowly, just help it with the keyboard (which will use the more powerful reaction wheel)

^ This.  Or, if you've got a ship that consists of command pod, plus one or more reaction wheels, plus the rest of the usual tonnage ... just set one or more of the reaction wheels (or the command pod) to "pilot only" to reduce jitter.

Personally, I don't set the SAS-enabled wheels to "SAS only" as Warzouz suggests, mainly because I never find myself with "too much manual torque".  I just leave them as "normal".

Incidentally, @Tahib, if you're setting various reaction wheels to various modes, and having trouble keeping track of who's doing what, there's a little mod I've been working on lately that may be of interest.  Among other things, it adds indicator lights to reaction wheels.  A combination of color, brightness, and some animation allows you to see what mode they're in, whether they're on or off, whether they're idle or not, and whether they're electricity-starved:

If you're interested, here's the mod:

 

[Warzouz]

@Snark,

Even the tiniest reaction wheel is too powerful for small ships. A probe core (advance flat ones) have a small torque (0.5). This is enough for most usage.

We really need the ability to tune down reaction wheels.

[Snark]

3 hours ago, Warzouz said:

@Snark,

Even the tiniest reaction wheel is too powerful for small ships. A probe core (advance flat ones) have a small torque (0.5). This is enough for most usage.

We really need the ability to tune down reaction wheels.

Too powerful for SAS, certainly, which is what the jitter is about.  I never, ever have too much torque for my own control inputs.  (Because if that were the case, I wouldn't have put the reaction wheel on the ship in the first place).

Ships can tolerate considerably more pilot torque than SAS torque.  The problem happens when you have to have a certain amount of pilot torque to do what you want, and that turns out to be too much for SAS to handle. That's what the "pilot only" mode is useful for, as you point out. I'm simply saying that I have never found any use for "SAS only" in my own gameplay.

To illustrate, let's take your example that you gave in your post.  Let's say we have a ship with a HECS probe core (torque 0.1) on top of a Mk1 command pod (torque 5), for a total possible torque of 5.1, which is too much for SAS if the ship is otherwise very light.  Your suggestion is to set the probe core to SAS-only and the pod to pilot-only.  This gives 0.1 SAS torque and 5.0 pilot torque.  That's fine, and nothing wrong with that-- I wasn't disagreeing with your solution.  However, in my own case, I would have left the probe core as "normal" (different from you), while setting the pod to "pilot-only" (same as you).  This would mean 0.1 SAS torque and 5.1 pilot torque.  In other words, nearly identical behavior to yours-- it just has 2% more pilot torque, which isn't going to cause any problems.

In other words:  as long as you've put the too-powerful reaction wheel into pilot-only, it doesn't really matter whether the tiny, weak one is "normal" versus "SAS-only" since it won't make much difference.  All I'm saying is, I tend to leave it just set to "normal" since that's the default and it's one less thing to set up. 

 

I strongly agree with you that reaction wheels should have tweakables for their output torque, instead of either "100% on" or "completely off".  TweakScale gives a way to do that-- even better, it gives separate sliders for the roll / pitch / yaw torque.  That should totally be stock behavior.

[oliezekat]

What's mean "Wheel Authority" feature added into KSP 1.2 ?

Is it a way to setup reaction wheel strength ? Or is it a way to define which reaction wheel SAS will use first ?

[bewing]

53 minutes ago, oliezekat said:

What's mean "Wheel Authority" feature added into KSP 1.2 ?

Is it a way to setup reaction wheel strength ? Or is it a way to define which reaction wheel SAS will use first ?

It is supposed to set reaction wheel strength.

 

[Snark]

^ What @bewing said.

Note that this is an old, dormant thread that's discussing about the changes with 1.1, and the original person's question has long since been answered.  Since new discussion of 1.2 features is only marginally relevant at this point, locking the thread to prevent confusion.  If there are current questions about how reaction wheels work in the current version of KSP, feel free to spin up a new thread!