Coyote Space Industries - Dboi's Dev Thread

[Tex]

A lot of posts have been removed from this thread. Let's all try to keep discussion on this thread based on @dboi88's work, please 

[MaverickSawyer]

Forgive the somewhat stupid question, but... what exactly is the weight balancer good for? The one time I tried to use it in a bid to find out what exactly it did, the engine block and half of the cargo modules on the rear spar decided to spontaneously convert themselves from matter to energy.

That said, any chance of someone making a MM patch to allow the engine to run on other exotic fuels? Karborundum will probably be a touch hard to get in the large quantities required to feed this thing... but fusion fuels from Nertea's Far Future pack could be useful. Or, perhaps make an engine mounting block at the rear compatible with 3.75m engines, and allow the fuel tanks in the main hull to be varied.

Also, some sort of landing gear and hover engines suitable for low-gravity worlds like Minmus would be very cool, but probably too difficult to manage. And a way to change the cargo module loadout in flight other than KIS/KAS would be most welcome. I strongly suspect that there won't always be the same mission needs on each flight.

[DStaal]

32 minutes ago, MaverickSawyer said:

Forgive the somewhat stupid question, but... what exactly is the weight balancer good for? The one time I tried to use it in a bid to find out what exactly it did, the engine block and half of the cargo modules on the rear spar decided to spontaneously convert themselves from matter to energy.

What it should be doing is making each supported part that's directly attached to the balancing part physicless - meaning that it's weight gets added directly to the balancing part, instead of being off on it's own.  That means that you can have tanks of varied resources and not have your COM move, because the tanks are all computed as if their mass was part of the truss.

The basic purpose is that it should allow the freighter to fly straight, without having to micro-manage the levels of resources in all the cargo bays.

It does have limitations in that what it does is convert attached parts to being physicsless, those parts shouldn't really have parts attached to them - as the physics gets wonky at that point.

[MaverickSawyer]

So... which part should I activate the balancer on, the main hull or the spar?

[DStaal]

59 minutes ago, MaverickSawyer said:

So... which part should I activate the balancer on, the main hull or the spar?

Depends on what you're doing - only some parts can be balanced, they should not try to include each other when doing that.  Most likely you want both: The spar will balance the Kontainers you attach to it, and the main hull will balance the various modules you install in it's bays.

What you don't particularly want is parts attached to those modules or Kontainers.

[Stone Blue]

3 hours ago, DStaal said:

What you don't particularly want is parts attached to those modules or Kontainers.

THAT's the part that kinda sux...

Edited April 29, 2017 by Stone Blue

[MaverickSawyer]

2 hours ago, Stone Blue said:

THAT's the part kinda sux...

Indeed. Puts the kibosh on actually USING the hangar bays.

What happens if I don't use the balancer? Does the ship go wildly out of control or something?

[DStaal]

(I will admit I haven't tested attaching things much - I'm just going on my impression of the process, and knowing that 'things attached to balanced things' is a bit of a beyond the original design of the feature...)

9 minutes ago, MaverickSawyer said:

Indeed. Puts the kibosh on actually USING the hangar bays.

What happens if I don't use the balancer? Does the ship go wildly out of control or something?

That likely depends on what you have loaded.  With the balancing, you can be sure the CoM is right, because it's where it was designed to be.  Without it, it's up to you to get it right.

I should note this is all second or third-hand info: I've played with the load balancing feature of MKS (which this appropriates - it's the reason for the USI-Tools dependency), but only a bit and I haven't done much testing of it.

[Stone Blue]

Also, on the hangars, IIRC, @dboi88 was going to/or did, incorporate use of Allista's Hangar mod

 

[dboi88]

4 hours ago, MaverickSawyer said:

Indeed. Puts the kibosh on actually USING the hangar bays.

What happens if I don't use the balancer? Does the ship go wildly out of control or something?

No, this is still a 4000 ton freighter, put 50 tons of shuttle off center in the hanger bay and you'd notice almost no difference at all.

4 hours ago, Stone Blue said:

Also, on the hangars, IIRC, @dboi88 was going to/or did, incorporate use of Allista's Hangar mod

This is correct, and i REALLY wanted to have this ready for release, but unfortunately after following the given instructions something isn't working and I'm hoping Allista has the time to read my messages and provide some support at some point.

10 hours ago, MaverickSawyer said:

Forgive the somewhat stupid question, but... what exactly is the weight balancer good for? The one time I tried to use it in a bid to find out what exactly it did, the engine block and half of the cargo modules on the rear spar decided to spontaneously convert themselves from matter to energy.

 

I have absolutely no idea why that would be. Maybe something to do with autostruts?

10 hours ago, MaverickSawyer said:

That said, any chance of someone making a MM patch to allow the engine to run on other exotic fuels? Karborundum will probably be a touch hard to get in the large quantities required to feed this thing... but fusion fuels from Nertea's Far Future pack could be useful. Or, perhaps make an engine mounting block at the rear compatible with 3.75m engines, and allow the fuel tanks in the main hull to be varied.

I'll be completely honest, i'm also finding it EXTREMELY difficult to obtain in the quantities i expected. I might switch to Karbonite. This Eeloo support network is a tad more difficult to set up than Minmus.

10 hours ago, MaverickSawyer said:

Also, some sort of landing gear and hover engines suitable for low-gravity worlds like Minmus would be very cool, but probably too difficult to manage. And a way to change the cargo module loadout in flight other than KIS/KAS would be most welcome. I strongly suspect that there won't always be the same mission needs on each flight.

I won't be doing any legs/vtol engines. I love shuttles too much. In regards to the modules, i'd honestly love to be able to do that but i just can't come up with any reasonable ideas on how to achieve this. I'm open to all suggestions.

This is the current issue with the 'Hanger' support It calculates everything correctly but then won't let me load anything no matter the size into the bay.

[dboi88]

I've been working hard on getting things polished off for the next release. This ones going to be a big one. i finally manged to iron out the remaining issues with the EVA Prep Space's Kontainer Rack and the Kontainers to go on it. I needed to sort these before moving forwards with MM patches for more life support mods.

[dboi88]

[Fenixs]

 

My English is not too good, but from what I see you are updating the mod constantly. I am looking forward to try it with the IVA finished with ASET. A note ... Is it a good idea to incorporate a robot arm for the rear loading ports? a greeting

Edited May 1, 2017 by Fenixs

[steedcrugeon]

13 hours ago, Fenixs said:

 

My English is not too good, but from what I see you are updating the mod constantly. I am looking forward to try it with the IVA finished with ASET. A note ... Is it a good idea to incorporate a robot arm for the rear loading ports? a greeting

A robotic arm would be a sizeable undertaking, it would require learning of how IR works, then implementing a custom patch for it (ignoring the model building and texturing that would have to be done in addition). Potentially a lot of work because KSP does not naturally do 'robotic' arms.

IF the mod author was to choose to do something like this I imagine its quite low down in the pecking order, this whole mod has taken many, many hours to put together. (however if you were to offer to make said part and write said patch/config, that may be a different story...)

[Sevgenko]

My Windows are all black and i can't move kerbals in the buildings...

Some help?

Edited May 2, 2017 by Sevgenko

[dboi88]

20 minutes ago, Sevgenko said:

My Windows are all black and i can't move kerbals in the buildings...

Some help?

Sorry but i'm going to need more info than that to help. I don't even know what you mean by moving kerbals in the buildings

Which windows?

Where are these windows?

Which buildings?

What scenario does this happen in? 

Does it always happen?

Also pictures are worth a thousand words.

19 hours ago, Fenixs said:

 

My English is not too good, but from what I see you are updating the mod constantly. I am looking forward to try it with the IVA finished with ASET. A note ... Is it a good idea to incorporate a robot arm for the rear loading ports? a greeting

As @steedcrugeon said an arm would be a lot of work and it'd be of very little use. 

I am also looking forward to an IVA, might be a while though , , , ,

[Sevgenko]

I'm sorry,

The Workshop windows, greenhouse windows fishtank windows.... those buildings....

With move kerbals i mean, transfer them in those sections of the ship... i cant put a kerbal that whent in EVA back in the workshop building/section...

It always happens, Where? Space.... wile building the ship.... everytime

if you need screenshots.... here they are. wait a moment

My KSP version is 1.2.2

Edited May 2, 2017 by Sevgenko

[dboi88]

@Sevgenko much better, I know what's wrong with the side of the greenhouse missing, the windows though, hmm, i have an idea but will need to have a play when i get home later . . can you send me your mod list to take a look at as well. I've also got some ideas about the crew transfer issue, i use ShipManifest so haven't actually tested the stock crew transfer, again will have a play later tonight.

[Sevgenko]

DON'T WORRY :3 You're doing a really great job!

I'll download this ShipManifest... KEEP ER GOING!

 

[Fenixs]

... Yes....A really, really great job!!  I love it

[dboi88]

@Sevgenko The greenhouse side panels will be fixed in next release, the black windows, they are deff being caused by either a broken install, or a conflict with another mod, I've tested with a clean install and with dependencies and i can't replicate at all.

Do you have any mods that mess with shaders? Like the one that makes windows shiny, or something that messes with emissives like indicator lights? 

I've confirmed the crew transfer bug, no idea what that is, but will look into it.

[Sevgenko]

Goodafternoon,

No, i just have that mod in the gamedata folder... I got the mod from course (website) install, and i put everything i got in the gamedata folder.

need some screens?

plus i THINK i know what cousing the crew bug, 

Ex. i put 50 kerbals in the ship... i could see only 5/8 on the down right coner... i pressed the button for look at the kerbals from outside the ship...(you know that thing that makes the kerbal visible and you can see them in the modules... if not i'll send you a screenshot) and i saw only 2 of the 4 kerbals sitting in the science module, none in the workshop,cupolamodules,and passenger module... maybe that's it. The tranfer it's impossible, because that module isn't really having free seats for the kerbals.... they are empity... but the bug is making them stand there at the start of the mission.

#bestEnglishEVAR (ok ok i will make some screens or edit this post with the right words...)

Edited May 3, 2017 by Sevgenko

[dboi88]

2 hours ago, Sevgenko said:

Goodafternoon,

No, i just have that mod in the gamedata folder... I got the mod from course (website) install, and i put everything i got in the gamedata folder.

need some screens?

plus i THINK i know what cousing the crew bug, 

Ex. i put 50 kerbals in the ship... i could see only 5/8 on the down right coner... i pressed the button for look at the kerbals from outside the ship...(you know that thing that makes the kerbal visible and you can see them in the modules... if not i'll send you a screenshot) and i saw only 2 of the 4 kerbals sitting in the science module, none in the workshop,cupolamodules,and passenger module... maybe that's it. The tranfer it's impossible, because that module isn't really having free seats for the kerbals.... they are empity... but the bug is making them stand there at the start of the mission.

#bestEnglishEVAR (ok ok i will make some screens or edit this post with the right words...)

That,s really odd because i seem to have traced the issue with the Black windows to JSI which is included with a number of mods. Can you send me a copy of your gamedata folder?

I have traced the crew transfer issue, it isn't anything to do with IVA's it's being caused by a stock bug in relation to physicsless parts. I've found a work around for now which will mean crew transfers will work properly with the next release.  

[Sevgenko]

GOOOOD MORNENG!

MY SHIP JUST EXPLODED! 48 KERBALS ARE LOST IN SPACE.... RED ALLERT!!!

that patch man.... cool  "defense system"? Nothing more happend.

 

Dude... sending you the gamedata folder makes no sense.... the only stuff that you will see is yours!

(that was a scary simulation... good thing the karbals are still here)

Edited May 4, 2017 by Sevgenko

[steedcrugeon]

6 minutes ago, Sevgenko said:

GOOOOD MORNENG!

MY SHIP JUST EXPLODED! 48 KERBALS ARE LOST IN SPACE.... RED ALLERT!!!

that patch man.... cool  "defense system"? Nothing more happend.

 

Dude... sending you the gamedata folder makes no sense.... the only stuff that you will see is yours!

(that was a scary simulation... good thing the karbals are still here)

By sending him a copy for your exact GameData folder he will be able to replicate your setup in game and can review the debug console live. Without your exact GameData folder he will be unable to EXACTLY replicate your conditions (no 2 save files are the same, etc).