Thermal Tiles/Plates

[ZooNamedGames]

Ok I admit, this is very likely a very niche request.

I would like to have a basic part which would be like a thermal tile. It would be the size of a cubic strut, and be able to absorb high heat loads. The idea being that it can help protect space planes from additional reentry  heat, and help spaceplanes have a more formal design,  that's more realistic and aerodynamic in design. 

I doubt there's many who would back this idea, but let me know of your thoughts.

 And no, I don't want this as a mod to request; I want this to be added as stock. 

[Gaarst]

Spaceplane parts are already very resistant to heat, so I feel like these wouldn't be needed.

Also, way to add 1000 parts to a simple Mk2 spaceplane.

[Choctofliatrio2.0]

I like the idea, it could also be used for things like landers where parts stick over the heat shield but you don't want to increase the shield size. It would need some kind of procedural element so you don't overwhelm the part counts.

[ZooNamedGames]

1 hour ago, Gaarst said:

Spaceplane parts are already very resistant to heat, so I feel like these wouldn't be needed.

Also, way to add 1000 parts to a simple Mk2 spaceplane.

Because this-

does not equal this- 

You don't have a uniform body and it feels like a cop out to just say "it's insulated". Come on.

Edited October 1, 2016 by ZooNamedGames

[Gaarst]

33 minutes ago, ZooNamedGames said:

Because this-

does not equal this- 

You don't have a uniform body and it feels like a cop out to just say "it's insulated". Come on.

Then drop all parts heat tolerances to under 1500K, make differentiated heat tolerance within a single part (ie: bottom of Mk3 cockpit more resistant than back/top) and then adding heat tiles will be a sensible thing.

Using the realism argument (it would look real, it would feel real...) is not going to help your suggestion if it doesn't change/improve gameplay (right now you can literally throw a spaceplane in a volcano and recover it unharmed). So unless heat is getting a big revamp, I'll keep saying no.

[Stone Blue]

1 hour ago, Gaarst said:

Spaceplane parts are already very resistant to heat, so I feel like these wouldn't be needed.

Also, way to add 1000 parts to a simple Mk2 spaceplane.

Not to mention, but who wants to spend, like, -forever- , skinning half the exterior of a craft with 100's of tiny, repetitive parts... ??

Edited October 1, 2016 by Stone Blue

[NSEP]

2 hours ago, Gaarst said:

Spaceplane parts are already very resistant to heat, so I feel like these wouldn't be needed.

Also, way to add 1000 parts to a simple Mk2 spaceplane.

Have you ever plated a spacecraft with solar panels? That is exactly what thermal panels should be like. They do not produce any lag, at all.

I thought of exactly the same thing once, it does sound something that should be stock, i agree.

[ZooNamedGames]

1 hour ago, Gaarst said:

Then drop all parts heat tolerances to under 1500K, make differentiated heat tolerance within a single part (ie: bottom of Mk3 cockpit more resistant than back/top) and then adding heat tiles will be a sensible thing.

Using the realism argument (it would look real, it would feel real...) is not going to help your suggestion if it doesn't change/improve gameplay (right now you can literally throw a spaceplane in a volcano and recover it unharmed). So unless heat is getting a big revamp, I'll keep saying no.

Read the last line of the OP, I don't want this as a mod idea, even if it is my own mod.

Many aspects of the game were added that didn't do much for the game as it is and yet they got added.

Heating doesn't need a revamp, how parts handle heat; does need to change.

1 hour ago, Stone Blue said:

Not to mention, but who wants to spend, like, -forever- , skinning half the exterior of a craft with 100's of tiny, repetitive parts... ??

Yet you don't mind spending forever to manage your staging, put the vehicle together, strut it, make sure you have everything...

Moreover, you could use thermal plates, which would act similar to the tiles but larger.

[StahnAileron]

Wouldn't it just be easier to ask for an MM config file with IFS/FS support that lets you choose between stock and heavier, ablated parts?

I don't think this is needed. The main heating point for spaceplane re-entry is the inmost cases. A combinations of things that take advantage of how the game works mitigates all of this. (Then again, so does a shallow re-entry angle.) I was trying out a challenge and got an aircraft to 200km AP straight up and survived the re-entry at 1500m/s straight down relatively consistently (whether or not I could land was another matter... My design had issues with low speed handling... Or there's something quirky with 1.2pre's aero on re-entry. Yeah, horrible version to test something out, I admit.)

I have to ask what kinda of re-entry profile some players attempt that make them think that spaceplanes need a better way to deal with re-entry heating. I never had issues unless I was doing something like a direct re-entry from the Mun or Minmus; no problems from LKO. And I make my spaceplane generally have decent aesthetics (IMHO anyway).

While I admit KSP does have game mechanic and balance issues (more so the former than the latter, IMO), I never felt re-entry heating was a problem. (If anything I have issues with LAUNCH heating, but I can be aggressive with launches, so that's a style problem on my part.) I feel like because the KSP devs are relatively open to the community and incorporating changes that some players have taken to wanting to mold to game to their gameplay styles rather than adapting to the limitations KSP tries to enforce. KSP is a simulator that's also an engineering puzzle. (SQUAD's still working on the "game" part.) Feels like there's a lot of players that want to minimize part of the engineering puzzle aspect. Want easier re-entry? You have the option of tuning down heat effects when you start a new game. Why not just use that option?

[Gaarst]

2 hours ago, ZooNamedGames said:

Read the last line of the OP, I don't want this as a mod idea, even if it is my own mod.

I did read the last line of your OP, and?

Quote

Heating doesn't need a revamp, how parts handle heat; does need to change.

That pretty much sounds like the same thing to me.

2 hours ago, NSEP said:

Have you ever plated a spacecraft with solar panels? That is exactly what thermal panels should be like. They do not produce any lag, at all.

I thought of exactly the same thing once, it does sound something that should be stock, i agree.

No I don't plate my spacecraft in solar panels exactly for this reason. More parts, more lag, more mass: I play on a laptop and can't afford 500 parts per ship. Sticking 2 deployable panels is enough for all my needs.

 

Right now, with part being made of unmeltanium, adding heat tiles is useless, end of story. When reentry will start doing actual damage to crafts, I'll reconsider my opinion.

Edited October 1, 2016 by Gaarst

[ZooNamedGames]

19 minutes ago, Gaarst said:

I did read the last line of your OP, and?

That pretty much sounds like the same thing to me.

No I don't plate my spacecraft in solar panels exactly for this reason. More parts, more lag, more mass: I play on a laptop and can't afford 500 parts per ship. Sticking 2 deployable panels is enough for all my needs.

 

Right now, with part being made of unmeltanium, adding heat tiles is useless, end of story. When reentry will start doing actual damage to crafts, I'll reconsider my opinion.

You admit to the thermodynamics being flawed but make no motion to have it replaced or even just have efforts for it being added.

[Gaarst]

36 minutes ago, ZooNamedGames said:

You admit to the thermodynamics being flawed but make no motion to have it replaced or even just have efforts for it being added.

If you break your leg, taking painkillers isn't going to fix it. If the aerodynamics are flawed, then they must be fixed, adding heat tiles won't solve the problem.

And as a matter of fact, adding heat tiles because reentry heating is not intense enough doesn't make any sense. This is how I see it.

[ZooNamedGames]

1 minute ago, Gaarst said:

If you break your leg, taking painkillers isn't going to fix it. If the aerodynamics are flawed, then they must be fixed, adding heat tiles won't solve the problem.

And as a matter of fact, adding heat tiles because reentry heating is not intense enough doesn't make any sense. This is how I see it.

It's one step of many. Before they fixed aerodynamics, they added wings and jet engines.

[Gaarst]

1 hour ago, ZooNamedGames said:

It's one step of many. Before they fixed aerodynamics, they added wings and jet engines.

And I still view this as a bad choice. Fix, then add.

[ZooNamedGames]

22 minutes ago, Gaarst said:

And I still view this as a bad choice. Fix, then add.

There was water before water physics. 

[EpicSpaceTroll139]

I feel like a way to fix this would be some kind of function to "paint" sides of a part with thermal tiles and have that affect a sort of heating cube (similar to the drag cubes used for the aero now, except changing the multiplier by which the part is heated). They would of course have a mass penalty. That way we don't have to add a whole bunch of parts, but still get the nice heatshield tiles.

[322997am]

Radiators can act as thermal plates. If you are for the realism argument, then this is a game, it was always a game and will always be a game.

[Jonfliesgoats]

I like this idea.  Perhaps it could be something like our customizable fairings?  Otherwise, we could add an ablative slider to tweak ambles on certain parts.

[sdj64]

14 hours ago, ZooNamedGames said:

Ok I admit, this is very likely a very niche request.

Whenever you start with "niche request", you should think "mod".  And it turns out, the KSP community is very very good at handling niche requests...

Features that are niche requests will be the lowest priority to add to stock.

First one will handle your space shuttle needs but is only good for that.  Second one is not updated but does allow custom shapes... Also, they used to have thermal tiles on Mk2 and Mk3 (the really old 2m size) parts.  People complained that they were asymmetric, and when Porkjet's Mk2 and Mk3 parts got added, there were no heat tiles so people could make bomb bays and other forms of symmetry or flipping without it looking bad, weird, or unrealistic.

Edited October 2, 2016 by sdj64

[Wjolcz]

I'm not against the idea of some sort of heat shielding that you would paint onto your ship, but a small piece of a heat tile? The question is how many of them would be necessary to protect a single vessel if it's of a size of a cubic strut? Probably too many.

Yes for painting them on parts, no for single part heat tiles. But then I don't think it's needed. Maybe for aestethics. The parts have pretty high heat resistance right now anyway. Nerfing them for the sake of a small part that absorbs the heat is unreasonable.

21 hours ago, ZooNamedGames said:

There was water before water physics. 

What kind of argument even is that

[Salmon]

On 10/1/2016 at 11:07 PM, Stone Blue said:

Not to mention, but who wants to spend, like, -forever- , skinning half the exterior of a craft with 100's of tiny, repetitive parts... ??

You could make a part variant for certain parts.

[Ol’ Musky Boi]

Eh, I don't think that this is something I would end up using, I've never had problems with re-entry on my spaceplanes unless it's one of those "Advanced nosecones" with weirdly low heat tolerance. I wouldn't mind a few more part variants where you could have a heat shield texture on the bottom though (maybe with some inbuilt ablator?).

[Cheif Operations Director]

On 10/1/2016 at 8:08 AM, ZooNamedGames said:

Ok I admit, this is very likely a very niche request.

I would like to have a basic part which would be like a thermal tile. It would be the size of a cubic strut, and be able to absorb high heat loads. The idea being that it can help protect space planes from additional reentry  heat, and help spaceplanes have a more formal design,  that's more realistic and aerodynamic in design. 

I doubt there's many who would back this idea, but let me know of your thoughts.

 And no, I don't want this as a mod to request; I want this to be added as stock. 

I'm in favorite of it, we could crash into the Jool atmosphere and go deeper now. Also it would be good for interplanetary SSTOs

[FleshJeb]

On 3/9/2019 at 8:44 AM, Cheif Operations Director said:

I'm in favorite of it, we could crash into the Jool atmosphere and go deeper now. Also it would be good for interplanetary SSTOs

Fine, I'll post it again: This has no heat shield parts on it whatsoever: 

I would suggest that the major problem is that people don't know what they're doing.

Edited March 11, 2019 by FleshJeb

[Cheif Operations Director]

1 hour ago, FleshJeb said:

Fine, I'll post it again: This has no heat shield parts on it whatsoever: 

I would suggest that the major problem is that people don't know what they're doing.

I'm not saying it can't be done, but I've had many an aerodynamic nosecose explode on me during enentry from LKO with the shuttle. I'm not saying their is nothing you have do about that but I do no know what flat tiles are too much to ask for.