[Minimum KSP: 1.12.2] Heisenberg - Airships Part Pack

[RoboRay]

This is looking pretty nice...  I like the more realistic design over most of what's in the HL pack.

Any thoughts on an inflatable blimp envelope that deflates into a package that's designed to match up with your gondola parts?  Dirigibles are great, but something that can be easily packed up in a smaller container for shipping to other planets is awfully convenient. 

[Angelo Kerman]

1 minute ago, RoboRay said:

This is looking pretty nice...  I like the more realistic design over most of what's in the HL pack.

Any thoughts on an inflatable blimp envelope that deflates into a package that's designed to match up with your gondola parts?  Dirigibles are great, but something that can be easily packed up in a smaller container for shipping to other planets is awfully convenient. 

Actually yes, though not right away. I want to get the basic components done first, then I can look at creating a folding blimp parts.

[Angelo Kerman]

New and improved command cab for the gondola:

[Drew Kerman]

Dayum. I've been using Airships as background objects because I haven't wanted to do any up-close detail work on them but this all giving me more reason to want to...

[sirrliv]

On 10/30/2016 at 4:28 PM, Shnyrik said:

12 hours ago, Angel-125 said:

New and improved command cab for the gondola:

Not a bad design, though I must admit I think it rather lacks some of the charm of the previous version. Your original design looked like it could be a proper airship command bridge and make for a unique looking rover front, whereas this frankly reminds me of an angular 80's car. I'm also rather concerned about visibility in this version. In the first version, visibility was excellent, particularly below, a much overlooked angle but very important for airship commanders. Here, visibility seems limited to all sides with no downward viewing angles at all.

Of course, I recall your concerns about the original design, particularly with regard to headroom on the lower deck. Even so, I'm not sold on this new design and would humbly urge you to give your original design another look.

[Angelo Kerman]

27 minutes ago, sirrliv said:

 

Well, if you'd like to see a different cab, then I suggest you create one. This design meets my requirements of looking good as both a rover and a gondola, has two decks and enough headroom for the kerbals. The previous design didn't meet those requirements and needed to be redesigned.

[Angelo Kerman]

@sirrliv Gave it some thought and decided to make two command cabs: one for the gondola, and one for the rover. Here is the gondola:

Fortunately, this wasn't as big a detour as I was thinking. The rest of the parts will be compatible with both command cabs.

Edited November 5, 2016 by Angel-125

[ToasterRoboto]

Hey, I know this might sound like a stupid question, but are the parts not supposed to do anything other than hold fuel on their own? I can't seem to get them to be buoyant at all.

[Angelo Kerman]

9 hours ago, ToasterRoboto said:

Hey, I know this might sound like a stupid question, but are the parts not supposed to do anything other than hold fuel on their own? I can't seem to get them to be buoyant at all.

At present, Hooligan Labs is a dependency and provides the plugin needed to fly the airship. I have prototype buoyancy code included in the Airships plugin that I played with during KSP 1.2 pre-release, but it's not ready yet.

[BigFatStupidHead]

4 hours ago, Angel-125 said:

At present, Hooligan Labs is a dependency and provides the plugin needed to fly the airship. I have prototype buoyancy code included in the Airships plugin that I played with during KSP 1.2 pre-release, but it's not ready yet.

Another really interesting balloon mod is JoePatrick1's KerBalloons mod. It's more focused on weather balloons but has very well done balloon swelling on atmospheric pressure. Might be interesting to check out?

Edited November 5, 2016 by BigFatStupidHead

[CobaltWolf]

15 minutes ago, BigFatStupidHead said:

Another really interesting balloon mod is JoePatrick1's KerBalloons mod. It's more focused on weather balloons but has very well done balloon swelling on atmospheric pressure. Might be interesting to check out?

Judging from the design, I'd say that these are dirigibles, rather than blimps. Dirigibles have an outer structural frame with a skin stretched over it, and the light-than-air bladders are located inside. So you wouldn't get any visible swelling. Good though tho - sounds neat!

[sirrliv]

17 hours ago, Angel-125 said:

@sirrliv Gave it some thought and decided to make two command cabs: one for the gondola, and one for the rover. Here is the gondola:

Fortunately, this wasn't as big a detour as I was thinking. The rest of the parts will be compatible with both command cabs.

I feel I owe you an apology for my conduct in this thread. It's been a long time since I've been this excited about a new mod's development, or indeed about KSP in general. But I've been letting my excitement get away from me and have been getting overly pushy in my requests and suggestions. For that, I am honestly sorry.

For what it's worth, I do think that this new command cab looks excellent, as does your rover version. I can easily see both designs being used for either purpose. Please, do keep up the good work.

[Angelo Kerman]

22 minutes ago, sirrliv said:

I feel I owe you an apology for my conduct in this thread. It's been a long time since I've been this excited about a new mod's development, or indeed about KSP in general. But I've been letting my excitement get away from me and have been getting overly pushy in my requests and suggestions. For that, I am honestly sorry.

For what it's worth, I do think that this new command cab looks excellent, as does your rover version. I can easily see both designs being used for either purpose. Please, do keep up the good work.

I totally get it. I wish I had the parts done yesterday so that I could be using them in my save right now. It does take time, and there are bound to be steps and missteps as I figure out what works and what doesn't. Meanwhile, I'm putting the props in place for the gondola cab. The way it's shaping up, the lower deck with all the windows is the flight deck, while the upper deck is the captain's cabin. The theme is modern tech, but with an eye towards the past. I'm planning on a first class cabin with dining tables on the lower deck and a sleeping area on the upper deck. The first class cabin will also tie into Pathfinder's habitation wing. There will also be a coach class cabin, similar to the stock Mk3 passenger module. Finally, I'm planning on a lab that has stock MPL functionality, and ties into Pathfinder's science wing. One step at a time though, gotta get the gondola done.

[Angelo Kerman]

@sirrliv

[Ruedii]

The Gyro ring shouldn't be necessary if you add some form of thrust vectoring and rudder/elevator flaps.

[Shnyrik]

Now, when BD armory's autopilot is functional again, I keep on trying

Edited November 6, 2016 by Shnyrik

[Shnyrik]

Watch out for tail!

Final meters.

And we have contact!!

[Angelo Kerman]

1 hour ago, Shnyrik said:

Watch out for tail!

And we have contact!!

Way cool!! Love the designs. Congratulations on a successful docking attempt.

Meanwhile, now that I've separated the gondola pod from the rover pod, I can ditch the TransAm look in favor of a rover pod that complements the Buffalo:

I think I finally have the definitive look for the gondola and rover command pods in a way that lets them share the same body parts, have two decks, and still fit the Buffalo rover chassis while being compact enough to fit in a Mk3 cargo bay.

[Ciaran]

25 minutes ago, Angel-125 said:

 

Meanwhile, now that I've separated the gondola pod from the rover pod, I can ditch the TransAm look in favor of a rover pod that complements the Buffalo:

I think I finally have the definitive look for the gondola and rover command pods in a way that lets them share the same body parts, have two decks, and still fit the Buffalo rover chassis while being compact enough to fit in a Mk3 cargo bay.

Will the older cab be abandoned? I prefer this version over the buffalo look.

Spoiler

 

Edited November 6, 2016 by Ciaran

[sirrliv]

50 minutes ago, Ciaran said:

Will the older cab be abandoned? I prefer this version over the buffalo look.

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Oh dear. Here we go again.

Just offering the thought, but with all three models presented so far apparently so close to completion, there's nothing wrong with including all three. Players do like options.

[Angelo Kerman]

51 minutes ago, Ciaran said:

Will the older cab be abandoned? I prefer this version over the buffalo look.

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Not sure, the part is basically done at this point but it doesn't fit the esthetic that I'm looking for. I might keep the art assets around and just leave the part's config file as a .txt.

[Ciaran]

8 minutes ago, Angel-125 said:

Not sure, the part is basically done at this point but it doesn't fit the esthetic that I'm looking for. I might keep the art assets around and just leave the part's config file as a .txt.

What do you mean exactly? You could just put the parts in an extras folder, If that's what you mean.

EDIT: Alright, Thank you.

Edited November 6, 2016 by Ciaran
Response

[Angelo Kerman]

2 minutes ago, Ciaran said:

What do you mean exactly? You could just put the parts in an extras folder, If that's what you mean.

It means I don't want extraneous parts cluttering my catalog. If I include the TransAm cab, the config file will be there but renamed as a .txt extension instead of a .cfg extension.

[Khantemplation]

On 11/5/2016 at 0:42 AM, ToasterRoboto said:

Hey, I know this might sound like a stupid question, but are the parts not supposed to do anything other than hold fuel on their own? I can't seem to get them to be buoyant at all.

I'm having this issue as well. Right now I'm running a fresh install of 1.2.1 with just Heisenberg and HL. I can get the HL envelopes to work just fine, but when I try to open up the airships UI on a vessel using a Heisenberg envelope, the UI doesn't open.

Output Log:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0Y3RQE834lTcHc4MmMwTEhlZVE/view

EDIT:

And when the two mods are used on the same vessel, I can open the menu, but it does not appear that the Heisenberg envelope provides any lift: http://imgur.com/a/UadxI

Edited November 8, 2016 by Khantemplation

[Angelo Kerman]

18 hours ago, Khantemplation said:

I'm having this issue as well. Right now I'm running a fresh install of 1.2.1 with just Heisenberg and HL. I can get the HL envelopes to work just fine, but when I try to open up the airships UI on a vessel using a Heisenberg envelope, the UI doesn't open.

Output Log:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0Y3RQE834lTcHc4MmMwTEhlZVE/view

EDIT:

And when the two mods are used on the same vessel, I can open the menu, but it does not appear that the Heisenberg envelope provides any lift: http://imgur.com/a/UadxI

Definitely not seeing that. I have HL 6.0 installed along with the Heisenberg parts, and the GUI appears and the airship flies:

Make sure that your ModuleManager is up to date. You can also go to the HL folder and remove all the ":NEEDS[HLAirships]" ModuleManager tags from the envelope parts. I suspect though it's an issue related to ModuleManager.