Main Engines Go!

[NewtSoup]

Is there a mod that will let me use RCS motors as main engines and equally choose other motors and tie them into the RCS ?

In an ideal world I'd like to be able to make clusters of terriers or even poodles for instance and use them in place of RCS blocks.

Equally I'd like to be able to take some of those bigger RCS engines and make them main engines for.. well actually the "Puff" is indeed a "main" engine so, see above

But even place anywhere's would be cool to use as mains in low gravity environments and have them tied into the main engine schema.

The reason I'm asking is that I'd love to make some "Eagle" style ships for my minmus and upcoming mun base that can do VTOL using ventral thrusters but also have forward and aft thrusters capable of getting a sizeable payload in to mun and minmus orbit.

I could just use action groups to activate and deactivate groups of "main" engines but that's clunkier than just being able to hit R and use puffs of thrust.

Edited February 26, 2018 by NewtSoup

[Ultimate Steve]

I'm not sure about using main engines as RCS, but using RCS as a main engine is a stock feature. In the editor you can right click the RCS, select Fore By Throttle, show actuation toggles, and make sure fore/aft is on.

[NewtSoup]

1 minute ago, Ultimate Steve said:

I'm not sure about using main engines as RCS, but using RCS as a main engine is a stock feature. In the editor you can right click the RCS, select Fore By Throttle, show actuation toggles, and make sure fore/aft is on.

Yes.. I recall that now.. but using main's as RCS is my primary thing

 

maybe I should learn to mod

my programming skills were rather good 20 years ago.  Perhaps I need to dust them off and have a crack at it.

[Gargamel]

A stock solution would be to add a second probe module facing in a vertical orientation to the main vessel.  When you want to do your VTOL, Control from There, and Enable the VTOL engines and disable the others through the action groups. 

As for a mod, TCA (Throttle Controlled Avionics) might do what you want.  You can use that to do the VTOL landings.  Use action groups to enable/disable the engines as above, and then enable the TCA to apply the correct thrust from each engine.  If the engines aren't perfectly aligned with the COM, you'll end up flipping.   TCA set's the throttle for each engine individually to account for this, and can balance the craft nicely. 

[NewtSoup]

I think I'm going to have a crack at it. 

I am going to make an RCS thruster block and Place Anywhere RCS thruster alternatives that use LfOx as their resource and have 20kN and 60kNthrust respectively

I've chosen those values so I can simply copy the isp and thrust data from other existing engines.

Basically the LfOx Thruster Block will be a cluster of Sparks and the Place anywhere LfOx thruster will be a terrier.

This way they can be tied into main throttle AND conform to RCS rules at the same time.

No programming needed, just some modelling.  The rest can be done with config files it seems.

I've no idea if I will manage it but I see no reason why I can't

Though It would be nice if I can get to understand the attachment rules and make them need actual nodes to attach to.  After all they are much bigger than standard RCS engines.

[wasml]

The surface attach nodes are defined with the "node_attach =" line in the config. Also enabled/disabled with the "attachRules =" line. Add a "node_stack_xxxxxx =" to add a stack node.

attachment rules are: stack, srfAttach, allowStack, allowSrfAttach, allowCollision

where a 1 enables and 0 disables.