[Minimum KSP: 1.12.2] Heisenberg - Airships Part Pack

[Abpilot]

probably havent seen anything yet but is it compatible wth extraplanatary launchpads? just thinking about the big runnway up top

[Krakatoa]

10 minutes ago, Abpilot said:

probably havent seen anything yet but is it compatible wth extraplanatary launchpads? just thinking about the big runnway up top

The Bison Construction Pad is a Launchpad and several of the pieces count towards Workshop Efficiency. The storage gondolas can hold all the resources, I'm pretty sure. Also, the GondoLab can become a Smelter and a Partshop.

Edited August 18, 2017 by Krakatoa
Misnamed the Bison Launchpad piece

[Abpilot]

thx

 

[Shnyrik]

Just couldn’t go past the tweakscale configs and not to try building a really big airship.

I’ve noticed that there is a problem with how the airship scales. By default it uses exponent of 3 to scale mass, amount of resources and buoyancy. So 40 meter airship becomes ridiculously heavy (although it also has absolutely ridiculous amount of lift).

I had to change those exponents in order to make scaling a bit more realistic.

SCALETYPE
{
    name = freePSA
    freeScale = true
    defaultScale = 10
    suffix = m
    scaleFactors   = 10, 20, 30, 40

    TWEAKSCALEEXPONENTS
     {

               mass = 1.5

               Resources {
                 !amount = 1
                 !maxAmount = 1
               }
     }

    TWEAKSCALEEXPONENTS:NEEDS[HLAirships]
     {
               name = HLEnvelopePartModule
               envelopeVolume = 1
     }
}

 

 

This is my much-suffering training carrier KAS Diamond again -- and I’ve rebuild it once more. It’s diameter is now 25 meters but it’s fully loaded mass increased only twice -- to about 300 tons. I know, even this is a bit too much, for USS Akron, for example, having almost the same length and being much “wider”, weighted less than 200 tons. But still it is much better than several thousands of tons.

It’s increased drag also made Diamond almost twice slower: four cyclone engines can accelerate it only to about 45 m/s. Which is actually more than 160 km/h. Which is actually still impressive for an airship

Here I'm on the deck after landing. As you can see, I’ve decided not to change the size of the flight deck.

That's because, first, it was enough for landing, second, now, comparing to the gigantic airship's hull, the deck looks small and light -- as if the airship could really hold it

Edited August 21, 2017 by Shnyrik

[panarchist]

On 8/21/2017 at 0:41 AM, Shnyrik said:

Just couldn’t go past the tweakscale configs and not to try building a really big airship.

I’ve noticed that there is a problem with how the airship scales. By default it uses exponent of 3 to scale mass, amount of resources and buoyancy. So 40 meter airship becomes ridiculously heavy (although it also has absolutely ridiculous amount of lift).

I had to change those exponents in order to make scaling a bit more realistic.

SCALETYPE
{
    name = freePSA
    freeScale = true
    defaultScale = 10
    suffix = m
    scaleFactors   = 10, 20, 30, 40

    TWEAKSCALEEXPONENTS
     {

               mass = 1.5

               Resources {
                 !amount = 1
                 !maxAmount = 1
               }
     }

    TWEAKSCALEEXPONENTS:NEEDS[HLAirships]
     {
               name = HLEnvelopePartModule
               envelopeVolume = 1
     }
}

 

 

This is my much-suffering training carrier KAS Diamond again -- and I’ve rebuild it once more. It’s diameter is now 25 meters but it’s fully loaded mass increased only twice -- to about 300 tons. I know, even this is a bit too much, for USS Akron, for example, having almost the same length and being much “wider”, weighted less than 200 tons. But still it is much better than several thousands of tons.

It’s increased drag also made Diamond almost twice slower: four cyclone engines can accelerate it only to about 45 m/s. Which is actually more than 160 km/h. Which is actually still impressive for an airship

 

Nice work! I agree that mass shouldn't scale at 3 - 1.5 is a good figure, midway between scaling by length and scaling by surface area, which makes sense - airship structures were a smaller percentage of mass as the envelope size scales. If you want to adhere to "real-world" physics, then the envelope / buoyancy should remain at 3 - lift / buoyancy is dependent on volume of the envelope, so doubling the "size" of the parts results in 8x the volume and 8x the lift.  The US Navy at one point had plans (here's a NASA study done under contract for USN) for some truly massive airborne carriers, which would have made use of what we view as "ridiculous" lift - as does the Zeppelin NT.

Anyway, my numbers were a first pass / rough draft.  I'll go back and edit the post later to modify the mass down to 1.5 and tweak some of the other values - I'm going to keep the envelope and resources at 3x for now, but I'd encourage anyone who disagrees to edit the files to whatever they personally find believable.  It's KSP, not real-world, so ultimately it matters only as much as you want it to.

"fully loaded mass increased only twice -- to about 300 tons. I know, even this is a bit too much" - are you sure? Remember, your carrier has that flight deck on top.  Remove all that, and what's the revised mass?  I think that will be closer (but still a little heavier) to what the Akron was. I might take some time to mess with the exponent a bit and see if I can get a couple of envelopes the size of the Akron and the Hindenburg to match the structural mass, and see what that mass exponent comes out to.

On 8/17/2017 at 11:24 PM, Shnyrik said:

It seems that TweakScale somehow messes up SAS torque values. I have tweakable everything mod installed, and it shows negative torque for resized SAS parts. However the same tweakable everything can fix the problem, as it allows putting in some more reasonable value by hand.

It seems also that Tweakable Everything might not be reliable either.  I built a 20m airship after installing Tweakable Anything, and the resized gyros said they had torque values of -8 instead of 500 - but when I actually put it in flight, it had plenty of control authority and in the correct direction.  I'm not sure Tweakscale is getting it wrong, I need to test a bit more.  Since I was only having issues with the 40m airship, I'm wondering if the gigantic mass was the issue - 4x the part size = 64x the mass if using the default exponents, and 64x the lift - so the forces on the vessel are pretty enormous compared with the "stock" Heisenberg parts. I don't know what HL Airships' limitations are (if any) when dealing with large parts, so I'd imagine that there are several factors at work which could be causing me trouble. I'll take a look at it a bit more, but personally, I really like the 20m size.

Edited September 2, 2017 by panarchist
spelling and tone

[Angelo Kerman]

Heisenberg 2.8.5 is now available:

- BARIS is now an optional download as originally intended- just took awhile for me to figure out how to make that work. DO NOT DELETE the 000ABARISBridgeDoNotDelete FOLDER! That plugin is the bridge between this mod and BARIS.

[somethingcool]

so mr angel when i download the mod i do not get a thing on the right side of my screen like i used to so i cant controll the zeppelin at all except from air brake or air stop or what ever it is named but i can not controll anything else like boyancy in the air, how do i fix this ? this is basically what i see and as you can see im missing the heisenberg airships one

nvm im retarded i forgot i needed hooligans, soooooo just ignore me

Edited August 26, 2017 by somethingcool

[Shnyrik]

On 21.08.2017 at 4:59 PM, panarchist said:

If you're going for realism, then the envelope / buoyancy should remain at 3 - lift / buoyancy is dependent on volume of the envelope, so doubling the "size" of the parts results in 8x the volume and 8x the lift.

This is only the first glimpse at the problem

However I should mention, that going for realism would be impossible without initial reduction (and radical one ) of heisenberg's characteristics.

For instance, mentioned Zepellin NT has diameter of aprox. 14 m. and length of aprox. 75 m. Which is larger than typical Heisenberg. But it weights only about 11 tons and can carry about 2 tons more. While Heisenberg of that size weights hundreds of kerbal tons and carries a lot more. Which is really good for gameplay, but not very realistic

On 21.08.2017 at 4:59 PM, panarchist said:

I built a 20m airship after installing Tweakable Anything, and the resized gyros said they had torque values of -8 instead of 500 - but when I actually put it in flight, it had plenty of control authority and in the correct direction.

After some experiments with 20-25 m rescaled parts I can say, that initial torque, shown by Tweakable Everything UI right after rescale, is wrong. But saving and then reloading craft will show more reliable characteristics.

Edited August 31, 2017 by Shnyrik

[Shnyrik]

So, I've finally managed to find time to record a landing

Like I've already said before, the most important thing (except for fancy new camo suit and pilot's cap ) is a specially designed plane. It should allow flying at really low speeds.

For instance, the one, demonstrated in the video, with it's flaps deployed doesn't fall down even at 26 m/s (which is about 94 km/h) . So landing at 30+ m/s is comfortable. At high altitude it can accelerate up to 175 m/s (which is about 630 km/h), but here I fly low, so maximal speed will not be more than 155 m/s.

As for the airship, it is a "boosted" diamond-class pocket carrier with a hangar for 4 planes and parking pads for 2 more. I've moved arresting wire to the rear end of the flight deck. I also had to move catapult forward and add a launch rail so that I could have enough place for the elevator.

Unlike mid-air docking, where OLS can be just very helpful, here OLS is vitally important.

Again, turn subtitles on to see my comments

 

Edited September 2, 2017 by Shnyrik

[SpaceMouse]

Well this has grown slightly since I last looked at it. I'm sure its already been mentioned but, I should point out putting a big heavy flight deck on top of something buoyant would make it VERY hard to fly.

[Angelo Kerman]

4 minutes ago, SpaceMouse said:

Well this has grown slightly since I last looked at it. I'm sure its already been mentioned but, I should point out putting a big heavy flight deck on top of something buoyant would make it VERY hard to fly.

[SpaceMouse]

1 minute ago, Angel-125 said:

I will ALWAYS complain at egregious violations of the laws of physics.

[Angelo Kerman]

1 minute ago, SpaceMouse said:

I will ALWAYS complain at egregious violations of the laws of physics.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RuleOfCool

 

[SpaceMouse]

Just now, Angel-125 said:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RuleOfCool

 

This definitely classifies. Building a floating city without any of the limitations of a shortage of Helium.

[Krakatoa]

 

All depends on what you wanna go for. That it's concept art from the 50s or 60s makes it good enough for me

[SpaceMouse]

4 minutes ago, Krakatoa said:

 

All depends on what you wanna go for. That it's concept art from the 50s or 60s makes it good enough for me

Technically it could be done, sure. but the amount of Helium you'd need to lift anything meaningful is massive. You'd probably need a gas bag the size of NYC to lift a small town.

[Shnyrik]

18 minutes ago, SpaceMouse said:

I should point out putting a big heavy flight deck on top of something buoyant would make it VERY hard to fly

People have created counterweights to deal with such situations And if the whole design becomes too heavy to fly, you can always add more boosters and pour more hydrogen

Edited September 2, 2017 by Shnyrik

[SpaceMouse]

1 minute ago, Shnyrik said:

People have created counterweights to deal with such situations And if the whole design becomes too heavy to fly, you can always add more boosters and pour more hydrogen

Putting a counterweight on something BUOYANT seems a tad counter-productive. You could probably do it just fine with some upward facing propellers. Even before computers it probably wouldn't be THAT hard to balance...

[Shnyrik]

1 minute ago, SpaceMouse said:

Putting a counterweight on something BUOYANT

Not "on" -- under

5 minutes ago, SpaceMouse said:

You'd probably need a gas bag the size of NYC

There are no such words as "too big" on Kerbin

[Angelo Kerman]

8 minutes ago, SpaceMouse said:

Putting a counterweight on something BUOYANT seems a tad counter-productive. You could probably do it just fine with some upward facing propellers. Even before computers it probably wouldn't be THAT hard to balance...

I'm getting more than a little annoyed by people who demand perfect adherence to reality in my mods. If you don't like how things work, don't install the mod. Nobody is twisting your arm. Either make changes to suit your play style or move on. But coming here to complain that a mod doesn't fit your version of reality is just a cry for attention, and I'm no longer willing to entertain such behaviors.

[BlimpJosh2006]

Just put the instructions there I cant find the post 

[SpaceMouse]

43 minutes ago, Angel-125 said:

I'm getting more than a little annoyed by people who demand perfect adherence to reality in my mods. If you don't like how things work, don't install the mod. Nobody is twisting your arm. Either make changes to suit your play style or move on. But coming here to complain that a mod doesn't fit your version of reality is just a cry for attention, and I'm no longer willing to entertain such behaviors.

Wasn't demanding perfect adherence. Twas a joke. and then people wanted to have a conversation about it. Haven't tried putting something heavy on top but I imagine it would act mostly realistically.

[panarchist]

On 8/31/2017 at 5:49 AM, Shnyrik said:

For instance, mentioned Zepellin NT has diameter of aprox. 14 m. and length of aprox. 75 m.

I think I had it confused with Lockheed Martin's hybrid airship design, which is supposed to lift 20 tons rather than NT's 2 tons. In any case, the truly massive lift was the Navy designs I linked to in that NASA study. I'm going to mess around with some designs, and then update my post with the Tweakscale configs to something closer to what you recommended. I like accuracy but not as much as playability and what "feels" right.

Edit: After playing around with things a bit, I created an airship roughly the size of the Navy Akron / Macon. If you empty it of all resources, the Tweakscaled parts are 3x the mass of the actual Akron. It looks like most of the mass increase was due to the enormous increase in resources - all that Liquid Fuel has a lot of mass. I also found out that the stock KSP "engineer" tool in the SPH has some rather... odd concepts of measurement.

10 hours ago, Angel-125 said:

I'm getting more than a little annoyed by people who demand perfect adherence to reality in my mods.

I'm more than happy to start a thread in the add on general discussion for those who want to debate airship "realism" for you and @JewelShisen to direct people to who want to debate that ad nauseum.  My intent was never to start a lengthy discussion, and frankly, I'm sorry I even said anything like that in this thread. 

Edited September 3, 2017 by panarchist
Expanded reply to Shnyrik

[DerekL1963]

I'm working on this little beast and have encountered an oddity with the helicopter controls:



They'll let me tilt the rotors forward and gain speed - but not backwards to put the brakes on.

[lBoBl]

Hi there,

This mod is a ton of fun. However I'm having performance issues with the bison gondola parts. I have a heavily modded install so that could come from conflicts with another mod. In flight, nothing pops in the console except normal airpark messages. In the SPH I get a lot more messages but still no exceptions or warnings.

However just a single bison part (command pods are the worst) will impact my framerate in an almost imperceptible manner, but the effect increases exponentially. If I just stack 20 command cabs in SPH I drop to 2 fps and it takes forever just to be able to click them and delete them. And a normal craft with something like 10 bison parts will make my clock run yellow inflight and have a not smooth at all framerate.

Also, some of the USI modules don't work properly, notably the GondoHab living module which just doesn't, making me have to add regular USI parts to get my hab timer to a reasonnable level.

Has someone else encountered this kind of problems ? Let me know if I should upload a log file.