Rigid attachements and Autostrut

[Warzouz]

• What those 2 options works ?
• What are their effects ?
• How and what for do you use them ?

Thx

 

[Jarin]

I'm lazy and autostrut anything even vaguely loose to "heaviest part". It literally just works like a free strut between the center of that part and the center of the heaviest nearby part on the ship (or root part, or grandparent part), making it trivially easy to stabilize oddly-shaped craft now, without a mesh of ugly and draggy struts all over it.

I never use rigid attachments, so I'll let someone else field that.

Edited March 14, 2017 by Jarin

[AeroGav]

Rigid attachment makes the joint between an object and it's parent rigid.  This will help if you were having control problems caused by a heavy engine on the end of a long stack of fuel tanks wobbling around, or a wing/aerodynamic control surface wobbling for similar reasons.  But, the downside is the joint now breaks with no warning under too much load.  It actually snaps at a lower stress level than with floppy joins.

[Foxster]

Auto-strutting has changed KSP quite a bit for me. 

Before it, I I seemed to spend ages finding the most frugal use of struts for a craft and yet it still usually ended up looking messy, or else you had a soggy noodle of a craft. 

Auto-struts have taken it to the other extreme. You can now have ridiculous craft with parts sticking out all over the place with no visible strutting.

I prefer it as it is now but do sometimes feel it is a tad cheaty. 

 

[DerekL1963]

I just use Kerbal Joint Reinforcement, and rarely have to bother with Autostrut or Rigid Attachment.

[Grounder]

It's literally the ability to use a rocket of significant length without it wobbling like a pool noodle during the ascent.  Before I used it, I had one rocket pick up some radial-torsion, the nose making circles just before unplanned disassembly.  Now I use it every time.

[Razorforce7]

Be carefull when using rigid attachment though.
Any heavy stack of weight that is connected to 1 joint will break under the weight if the rigid attachment point involves part holding that connection.
The same goes for wings falling of under earodynamic loads.

How to strut doesn't seem to make to much difference. I did find that on very large craft it is good to have some strategic parts autostrutted to "root part"
But I can't define "strategic" specifically because that depends on your vessel.
I use autostrut for almost any part. usually any part when it involves 3.75m, Mk 3 size or larger.

Edited April 10, 2017 by Razorforce7