More stock structural parts

[ReconXPanzer]

Hi Guys,

 

Just a little idea, it's by no means imaginative but has been something I for one have longed to have for quite a while. What I'd like to see (maybe even in the next release, pretty please? XD) is additions to the structural parts, specifically I'm talking about the M-beams and the structural panels. What I'd like to see are M-beam 200 look alikes but scaled to structural panels (say have 0.5m, 1m, 2m and 4m long versions) as at the moment nothing quite aligns the way I'd like to. The next idea is a few more sizes for structural panels - specifically a 0.5x0.5 and 0.5x1m panels to supplement the M-beam 650 and make making stuff more aesthetically appealing a fair bit easier. Here's the real dream though - panels that take the shape of a right-angled triangle, having 0.5x1, 1x1, 1x2 sizes (or make them procedural, like the fairings). As this would make some designs far easier by a simply hugelous^TM amount.

 

Cheers,

 

Ollie 

[The_Rocketeer]

I do occasionally wish that most stock structural parts (and perhaps wings) had a procedural length on at least one axis.

Take the I-beams, the two lengths given are very arbitrary and not very convenient. In any situation where one beam of the right length would do, your choices are very limited. You can rebuild your whole craft to suit the dimensions of the beams, but that's rarely convenient. You can clip multiple parts together, but then you've got unnecessary cost/mass. You can use alternative parts, like Cubic Octagonal Strut, but that could really mess with your aesthetic. You could use a strut, but again aesthetics and you can't add any radial attachments. And whatever you use, your part count goes up and up. Even if you fall back on Tweakscale, that changes the size of the whole part in all 3 dimensions, so again messes with the aesthetic and somewhat breaks game-immersion when a twig-like beam has the same structural tolerance as a massive hunk of steel.

Then again, for me working around these problems is part of the fascination with the editor. In KSP I don't have to deal with the real engineering nightmares of constructing space-grade materials, but I do get a sense of the difficulty of it when the specifications of the materials at my disposal don't suit the brief of the problem I'm trying to solve. It's a bit of an abstract approach, but it works for me - it makes it ok to get frustrated with it and abandon and start over. For every space-vehicle that NASA ever engineered there must be dozens of others that were tested but never deployed, dozens for each of those that were designed but never built, and dozens for each of those that were thought up by someone but abandoned as unworkable by the designer.

[Azimech]

Yes, I'd love more structural parts. Both much smaller and much larger than we have now.

[septemberWaves]

As well as other structural parts, one thing I'd particularly like lengthened versions of the cubic octagonal strut. Things which look basically like several cubic octagonal struts attached end-to-end, so that you can achieve that sort of appearance but with far fewer parts.

I'd also like more structural panels, both shape variants (triangles would be nice) as well as color variants of them (so that you can have either just the existing plain grey, as well as silver or gold foil between the grey structural ribs).

[Tex_NL]