Moar Procedural parts.

[Bloojay]

One thing that I really really would appreciate is the addition of moar procedural parts in the same vein as your fairings, like: 

Wings and Winglets, so you don't have to faff around with making your own wings by combining wings not designed to fit together. 

Fuel tanks, I just want more accurate lengths, and the ability to replace oxidizer with more liquid fuel for nervs.

And a few misc parts here and there like langing legs/wheels, solar panels, and/or to some extent a few engines.

I like the lego aspect of ksp but after playing for 1000+ hours, farting around with wings tanks and landing gear can become rather annoying if you know exactly what you want to make at what size but are restricted by the limitations of size set parts.

[AlamoVampire]

If they are done as badly and unituitively as the stock failure fairings then Id say heck no. However if done like the infinitely superior proc fairing mod and proc parts mod then yes.

[Alshain]

This following is my opinion.

Procedure Wings: No

Procedural tanks: No

Fuel Content Selection: Yes, please!

Procedural Landing Gear: Out of necessity, yes.  Because aligning landing gear from a mere 5 fixed heights is annoying.  It's pretty much the same reason fairings are procedural.

Procedural Engines: No

Procedural Solar Panels: No (why would you need that?)

[AlamoVampire]

Sometimes stock wings are too small. Take the shuttle style wings.   Decent for a nasa style shuttle but too small for bigger ships. 

Never a bad thing to be able to custom fit fuel tanks and fuels.

Squads procedural fairings are utter garbage. They are clunky, not user friendly and are so limited you cannot make egg shaped (mimicking some real world applications) and last I heard cannot do interstage fairings like say the Apollo missions. Which is why the mod proc fairings is superior. It is all that stock isnt.

proc engines? Meh.

proc solar panels? Making a longer gigantor ala ISS NASA style could be nice or a linear 3 panel small would be nice too

[ZooNamedGames]

33 minutes ago, Alshain said:

This following is my opinion.

Procedure Wings: No

Procedural tanks: No

Fuel Content Selection: Yes, please!

Procedural Landing Gear: Out of necessity, yes.  Because aligning landing gear from a mere 5 fixed heights is annoying.  It's pretty much the same reason fairings are procedural.

Procedural Engines: No

Procedural Solar Panels: No (why would you need that?)

This ^^^ . Totally my thoughts.

[Claw]

17 minutes ago, AlamoVampire said:

are so limited you cannot make egg shaped (mimicking some real world applications) and last I heard cannot do interstage fairings like say the Apollo missions.

 

Egg shaped?

But maybe not "smooth" without requiring more panels. Is what you mean?

 

Also, yes, you can do interstages that simulate an Apollo style mission (or should be able to, anyway). It requires using a decoupler on top of the fairing, so that you can separate the ship like you would any other time.

 

Which I suppose is off topic, but I wanted to clarify what the stock fairings are/aren't capable of.

[Alshain]

@Claw  I think he means something like this.  Which you can sorta do, but it's more difficult than it is worth to attempt, especially if you decide you need to alter the contents.  The one I made in that image I have been unable to reproduce since.  It's just that hard.

As far as interstage fairings go, you don't appear to have attached yours to the top so it's aerodynamically unsound, and if you did attach it and attempt to do TD&E using a decoupler underneath, the fairing would break the away anyway and without decoupler force so it would just get in your way during transposition and docking.  You can do interstage as long as you stage the fairing away.

So, Interstage fairings: yes, TD&E: no.

[Claw]

Just now, Alshain said:

more difficult than it is worth to attempt

More difficult than it's worth is a different set of feedback than "you cannot make." I won't disagree with the fact that it's hard to reliably and repeatedly replicate an exact shape.

Also, FYI...I've changed the logic here so that when the fairing base is pulled off the ship, it no longer forces a complete rebuild. Hopefully that'll help a bit.

 

2 minutes ago, Alshain said:

you don't appear to have attached yours to the top so it's aerodynamically unsound

It is attached to the top (the structural adapter). I just didn't take a picture of it before starting the decoupling process. It's simply a short demo to show that a part can be pulled out of a fairing without discarding the sides of said fairing.

 

 

 

19 hours ago, Bloojay said:

I like the lego aspect of ksp but after playing for 1000+ hours, farting around with wings tanks and landing gear can become rather annoying if you know exactly what you want to make at what size but are restricted by the limitations of size set parts.

Anyway, I suppose back to topic...I can appreciate this sentiment. I'm not sure if KSP will ever have more procedural parts. I know "there are mods for that," but I also know that isn't always a satisfying answer.

[Alshain]

5 minutes ago, Claw said:

More difficult than it's worth is a different set of feedback than "you cannot make." I won't disagree with the fact that it's hard to reliably and repeatedly replicate an exact shape.

Also, FYI...I've changed the logic here so that when the fairing base is pulled off the ship, it no longer forces a complete rebuild. Hopefully that'll help a bit.

Different feedback, same result.  No eggshell fairings will be used with stock fairings.

 

5 minutes ago, Claw said:

It is attached to the top (the structural adapter). I just didn't take a picture of it before starting the decoupling process. It's simply a short demo to show that a part can be pulled out of a fairing without discarding the sides of said fairing

Well I don't know then, every time I've tried the piece the fairing is connected to rips the fairing apart as it separates.  It's like it won't let go.

Edited August 14, 2016 by Alshain

[AlamoVampire]

@Claw and how long did that take to achieve? With Procedural Fairings, I can achieve that in less than 1 second. Place the Egg Shaped fairing piece onto the fairing base and BAM done. Why cant you fine devs just take out the less than friendly, less than easy to use stuff out and just make Procedural Fairings stock? They are 100% easier to use, 100% easier to duplicate should you need to alter the payload, they are 100% at redesigning should that be needed. I see no reason that makes any sense, short of the current mod maker saying no, you cant do that, for it to not happen... Just saying. Also, Procedural Fairings are always clean in terms of separation in flight and in the VAB/SPH, the stock ones like Alshain said, never are.

[tater]

3 hours ago, Alshain said:

Procedure Wings: No

Procedural tanks: No

Fuel Content Selection: Yes, please!

Procedural Landing Gear: Out of necessity, yes.  Because aligning landing gear from a mere 5 fixed heights is annoying.  It's pretty much the same reason fairings are procedural.

Procedural Engines: No

Procedural Solar Panels: No (why would you need that?)

I almost entirely agree.

Procedural Wings? Dunno, I don't use them ever, so my opinion is not well informed.

Procedural tanks: Yes. They need not be fully procedural, they can snap to first the unlocked size, then in some discrete intervals. SSTU does this, it's awesome.

Fuel Content Selection: Yes, please!

Procedural Landing Gear: No opinion on the aircraft types, I never use them.

Procedural Engines: No

Procedural Solar Panels: No (why would you need that?)

[AlamoVampire]

@tater why would we need procedural solar panels? as i put it before: enlarging or shrinking or adjusting the number of panels there in for various looks and applications based off real world applications with out the need of a mod or set of mods.

[tater]

I was copying Alshain's post, obviously... but I have no strong feelings on solar arrays. I just don't like many procedural parts, like taking stock solar panels and making them identical, but huge, or identical, but tiny---they look terrible. If the procedural panels were made in such a way that they looked good, I'd be OK with them. 

For example, if the stock PVs had a texture where each small element was 10cm x 10cm, then a procedural version at 10X the size would look terrible with these texture elements stretched to 1m x 1m, but would look OK if it was mad of an array of those 10cm PV squares.

[Frozen_Heart]

I'm not sure what I think of procedural parts. On one hand it would open up the creation of much better craft but would also kill the lego aspect of the game. I like trying to be able to salvage my mission with chunks of the leading edge ripped off but with 1 part procedural wings it would just be 'poof' half the ship gone.

[tater]

It depends on the parts. I, for one, cannot stand playing without KJR. Wobbly rockets are not a thing, and adding "moar struts" is absurd, IMO.

Since I stated using SSTU, I frankly almost never use any stock parts at all except science experiments, solar panels, and some structural parts. You can have tanks such that when a short tank is all that is allowed, you can only get that size or shorter in the procedural part, for example. Once you get the Jumbo 64, you can get 2.5m tanks up to that length, or any size smaller. SSTU is more lego in that they snap to 0.625, 1.25, 1.875, 2.5, 3.125, etc. in both diameter, and length (independently). Still has a lego feel, but they look far better.

If you build a "lego" spaceplane right now in KSP, it doesn't look lego, since the parts all match, and don't look awful. A lego rocket looks like it came from the junkyard, that certainly has something to do with it.

[storm_soldier2377]

15 hours ago, AlamoVampire said:

If they are done as badly and unituitively as the stock failure fairings then Id say heck no. However if done like the infinitely superior proc fairing mod and proc parts mod then yes.

What is wrong with the stock fairings?

[Alshain]

41 minutes ago, storm_soldier2377 said:

What is wrong with the stock fairings?

The answer to your question is already in this thread.  Can we not go backward please.

[tater]

Well, the "egg shaped" example wasn't what a real fairing looks like. I think the concept was rounded nosecones on fairings, just look at real fairings (or PF) vs stock.

[Alshain]

4 hours ago, Frozen_Heart said:

I'm not sure what I think of procedural parts. On one hand it would open up the creation of much better craft but would also kill the lego aspect of the game. I like trying to be able to salvage my mission with chunks of the leading edge ripped off but with 1 part procedural wings it would just be 'poof' half the ship gone.

It depends on the parts.  The wheels, if done like @BahamutoD's implementation would not kill the Lego-like aspect as the type of the wheel (i.e how many wheels and therefore strength) is still part based, just the length and angle of the wheels is procedural.  His implementation also has scale as procedural but that could be sacrificed.  The main need for stock equivalents is length, leg angle, and wheel angle.

Fuel content selection could be limited, but most tanks need to be selectable between LFO and LF-only, simply because of the LV-N.  Carrying large tanks that are ~half empty just for nuclear engines is senseless and stupid, and the LF tanks we have aren't available in Size 2 and Size 3 variants.  They could add MORE tanks, but honestly I think more versatility so we can design our craft to look the way we want would be better.

8 minutes ago, tater said:

Well, the "egg shaped" example wasn't what a real fairing looks like. I think the concept was rounded nosecones on fairings, just look at real fairings (or PF) vs stock.

Egg shaped fairings are real, though their technical name is "elliptical".  I think Proc Fairings calls them egg shaped or something.

http://www.spacex.com/sites/spacex/files/spacexfairing.jpg

Edited August 14, 2016 by Alshain

[tater]

I'm not talking about what they are called, I was thinking more what they actually look like in practice.

You cannot make a realistic fairing with the stock system, except for very angular kinds.

 

[Alshain]

2 minutes ago, tater said:

I'm not talking about what they are called, I was thinking more what they actually look like in practice.

You cannot make a realistic fairing with the stock system, except for very angular kinds.

 

I absolutely agree.  I mean, you can get kinda close, and if you install the StockFairingTweaker mod, you can get a little closer with it's smoothing option, but even then it just still looks bad when put side by side with Proc Fairings, even if you replace the texture it looks bad.  This was the best I could do, it took Stock Fairing Tweaker and KSA Better Fairings, plus 20 minutes of my time trying to get it right, and still doesn't look as good as the 2 second Proc Fairings.

[Wjolcz]

I wouldn't mind having procedural wings and tanks BUT their models would have to be softbody-ish. Like in the Kerbal Krash System (or whatever it's called). Otherwise very tall, 1-part constructions would go *puff* in the middle and anything on top would fall 50 meters down, or something like that. A silly way to lose important equipment.

[Bloojay]

On 8/13/2016 at 6:57 PM, Alshain said:

Procedural Engines: No

I just want different sizes and more engines in general. Maybe just RCS thrusters, sometimes I want 18Kn of thrust at the cost of monoprop 

On 8/13/2016 at 6:57 PM, Alshain said:

Procedural Solar Panels: No (why would you need that?)

Mostly vanity for solar panels specifically; larger single panels, bigger retractable panels (with shielding), and really super massive ones so I don't have to create ridiculous panel pillars for space stations.
Maybe some more and varied shapes too, rectangular isn't always a good option when dealing with rovers and cylindrical crafts.

22 hours ago, tater said:

Procedural Landing Gear: No opinion on the aircraft types, I never use them.

What about Landing legs?
Also structural components like the I-Beams and panels, sometimes you want to properly build something and we got 4 parts to do that so we have to get creative, suddenly a low altitude air intakes become the prime part for making curved sections on a space station, and the best option for paneling is not actual panels but aerodynamic lift producing wings, because they come in shapes and sizes better than just "square or bigger square"

Heat-sheilding too. Like seriously, heat-sheilding.

[tater]

Yeah, legs would be cool. Heat shields? Sure.

[Alshain]

You could do legs for length, though I've never had trouble getting them to align right.  It's a lot harder on a plane.  The big issues come from aligning the front wheel with the rear wheels while maintaining neutral or positive incidence and maintaining enough rear wheel* stance width for a good safe landing, and to keep it at a good distance behind the center of mass.  It's just too many variables to do with static fixed wheels and it results in limiting plane design choices more than they should be.  I've seen Squad employees on the forums saying they can't wait for an update for Adjustable landing gear.  The stock wheels just suck (and not just because of the bugs, though that doesn't help).

*Or front wheel for tail draggers, or both for 4 wheel variants, etc.

Heat shielding, I'm not sure it's necessary with the inflatable available.

IMO, Structural components should have a tweak scale-style procedural implementation, rather that a full on procedural parts style implementation.  I would say you could do that for the modular wing pieces as well.

Edited August 15, 2016 by Alshain