Slightly Larger Mk3 Plane Parts?

[uNiverselEgacy]

I like building space planes but I often find them quite useless since even the largest mk3 cargo bay is a bit small. It's fine if the payload doesn't have radially mounted parts but as soon as I attach something like a landing leg, it becomes too big to fit in the cargo bay. Oftentimes they are only useful for carrying 1.25m ships, which is quite disappointing.

I know there is TweakScale but I'm a little hesitant to try it out. Also for people who want near stock experience, I don't think TweakScale is a good solution.

[Ozymandias_the_Goat]

Yeah, I see. It would indeed be nice if mk. 3 parts could carry 3.75 meter tanks to orbit. There are, of course, mods!

This one's my favorite.

[Sharpy]

Yup. MK4 is cool. Ability to load up a Mammoth based rocket into the cargo bay? Hell yeah.

Yesterday I was planning my Eve mobile base around MK4 craft. I really, really wanted to put the *deployed* Interplanetary Launchpads runway in the Cargo Bay (...an airplane with a RUNWAY inside its cargo bay!) but it was *a little* too big.

Won't stop me from putting an aircraft carrier catapult in there though. The base/craft WILL be performing launches from the cargo bay.

And there's always Tweakscale. It won't touch MK4, but MK3 is a fair game. If I really, really wanted to go wild, I'd tweakscale MK3 to 20 meters diameter, and then the runway would fit for sure.

Note: Tweakscale is NOT a "cheat mod". It doesn't scale parts it has no clue about, and it scales price and mass of a part following either a semi-small algorithm (that is more likely to leave you short-changed, for having a part worse than "native" counterpart of the "extra" size) or a preset set of configurations that were meant to be balanced.

Edited December 13, 2016 by Sharpy

[Leafbaron]

OPT is another great mod for larger spaceplanes. I find the Mark IV coupled with OPT makes for a great combo. 

 

[NoMrBond]

The current wing selection is a bit small, not selection wise but can require a large number of wing elements to be stitched together

While you can now hold them together better with AT:Autostrut's, this exacerbates the physics slowdown you already get with lots of parts.

If you could switch up their size a bit (like the 2x2 panel is available), that could cut down on the number of wing parts by 75% (in some cases), and could be done with either MODEL{} calls or scale arguments, although having this accessible as an advanced tweakable rather than further discrete parts would be preferable (so as not to clutter up the parts selection).

[Leafbaron]

30 minutes ago, NoMrBond said:

The current wing selection is a bit small, not selection wise but can require a large number of wing elements to be stitched together

While you can now hold them together better with AT:Autostrut's, this exacerbates the physics slowdown you already get with lots of parts.

If you could switch up their size a bit (like the 2x2 panel is available), that could cut down on the number of wing parts by 75% (in some cases), and could be done with either MODEL{} calls or scale arguments, although having this accessible as an advanced tweakable rather than further discrete parts would be preferable (so as not to clutter up the parts selection).

theres a mods for that....

 

[Sharpy]

9 hours ago, Leafbaron said:

OPT is another great mod for larger spaceplanes. I find the Mark IV coupled with OPT makes for a great combo. 

How do you couple Mark 4 with OPT?

While both provide some really cool parts, I never found a neat way to combine the hulls. Also, OPT bays are wider than MK3, but not taller I think. Mk4 has converters to most native sizes. OPT has only converters between its own three bulkheadprofiles, and I think a 2.5m bicoupler or something...

One more thing: OPT really has some cheaty parts. Dark Drive - 3000s of ISp in all pressures at a pretty high thrust? I installed the mod only recently and decided to give it a more thorough try through a "school trip", the standard "fly by moon, land on Minmus, peek out of Kerbin SOI" thing to bring kerbals to 3 star level. The trip was 20 or so kerbals, in an SSTO spaceplane of a very modest proportions, which arrived into the orbit with some 16,000m/s of delta-V to spare, performed the whole trip in a very wasteful manner, and when I found myself in standard neat equatorial LKO preparing to reentry with some 6000m/s left in the tanks, and noticed I *just* flew over KSC and would need to wait most of an orbit for reentry, I just pointed my craft retrograde, performed a 3000m/s burn, and flew directly to KSC from the sea side.

3 hours ago, Leafbaron said:

theres a mods for that....

 

although finding the up-to-date download is a little tricky Mods where the main post links to Kerbalstuff don't fill me with confidence...

 

[Leafbaron]

11 minutes ago, Sharpy said:

How do you couple Mark 4 with OPT?

While both provide some really cool parts, I never found a neat way to combine the hulls. Also, OPT bays are wider than MK3, but not taller I think. Mk4 has converters to most native sizes. OPT has only converters between its own three bulkheadprofiles, and I think a 2.5m bicoupler or something...

One more thing: OPT really has some cheaty parts. Dark Drive - 3000s of ISp in all pressures at a pretty high thrust? I installed the mod only recently and decided to give it a more thorough try through a "school trip", the standard "fly by moon, land on Minmus, peek out of Kerbin SOI" thing to bring kerbals to 3 star level. The trip was 20 or so kerbals, in an SSTO spaceplane of a very modest proportions, which arrived into the orbit with some 16,000m/s of delta-V to spare, performed the whole trip in a very wasteful manner, and when I found myself in standard neat equatorial LKO preparing to reentry with some 6000m/s left in the tanks, and noticed I *just* flew over KSC and would need to wait most of an orbit for reentry, I just pointed my craft retrograde, performed a 3000m/s burn, and flew directly to KSC from the sea side.

although finding the up-to-date download is a little tricky Mods where the main post links to Kerbalstuff don't fill me with confidence...

 

When i say coupling i mean using engines from OPT on MK IV parts. while the dark drive is cheaty the other engines are very reasonable