Stock fairing settings explanation?

[Arch3rAc3]

Hello

I was hoping the manual would explain and talk thoroughly about fairings, but it was barely able to say what a fairing was.

So, to start with, there's the "sides" options. The problem with this for me is that I can drag the bar, not having only whole numbers to choose from (for example: I can choose to have 4.09 sides, what got me pretty confused).

Then there's Ejection Force. I think it's pretty self-explanatory, but is there any usefulness in changing the force?

Now for Clamshell Deploy, Truss Structure and Interstage Nodes, I have absolutely no idea of what they're for or their uses. I'd be very glad if someone could explain at least this for me with pratical examples.

Thanks.

[4x4cheesecake]

Actually I don't have a reasonable explanation for all of that, but I'll try my best

1) I have no idea why you can choose odd numbers, my silder shows integer numbers only.

2)Ejection force: I guess higher ejection forces are necessary if you plan to open the fairing while you are still in the atmosphere (or at least your vessel is still under acceleration). The high forces pushes the debris far away so you don't crash into them. The only situation i've experienced so far to use  low forces, is to protect your payload. Once I had the problem, that deploying a fairing with high forces causes some of my solar panels to break, so I reduced the forces and everything went fine.

3) Clampshell? (For me) just a better looking way to open the fairing, don't know if there is a real difference except for the visual effect.

4)Interstage nodes are a really nice way to stack up multiple payloads in your fairing which can not by attached on top of each other with an decoupler, i.e. if you have some probes with an antenna dish on top. Just enable the interstage nodes and multiple attachment nodes will appear above the fairing base and you can place your probes there (you will see the nodes when picking up another, attachable part). The truss structur is just a physicless (no colliders) visualisation for the interstage nodes, so your probes/payloads just don't floar in the air. The structur will only apparea if you have placed something on an interstage node, so just try it and you will see

Be carefull when using decouplers on an interstage node. They remain there after decoiupling the upper payloads and may cause some troubles when decoupling the lower payloads (even though the truss structur is physicless, the decouplers keep their colliders), so I would recommend to use stack separator instead

[bewing]

8 hours ago, Arch3rAc3 said:

So, to start with, there's the "sides" options. The problem with this for me is that I can drag the bar, not having only whole numbers to choose from (for example: I can choose to have 4.09 sides, what got me pretty confused).

Agree with Mr. cheesecake -- my sliders are all whole numbers too.

8 hours ago, Arch3rAc3 said:

Then there's Ejection Force. I think it's pretty self-explanatory, but is there any usefulness in changing the force?

Big force = KABOOM! WHEEE!

Force = 0, no damage because everything is so gentle.

8 hours ago, Arch3rAc3 said:

Now for Clamshell Deploy

Aesthetics.

8 hours ago, Arch3rAc3 said:

Truss Structure

Aesthetics. If you are making an interstage, stuff doesn't look like it's floating.

8 hours ago, Arch3rAc3 said:

and Interstage Nodes

Vitally important concept. Fairings in the middle of your rocket, instead of at the top. So instead of having a point at the top, the fairing has a node instead. Actually, a bunch of nodes, and you get to pick your favorite one. And attach stuff to the other nodes, too.

If you completely decouple everything from the top node of an interstage, then that node disappears -- leaving the stuff that's attached to the next node exposed.

 

[PrvDancer85]

In the console Version the side slider do what the op descrip but the fairing behave normal

Edited May 11, 2018 by PrvDancer85

[Bakkerbaard]

15 hours ago, Arch3rAc3 said:

(for example: I can choose to have 4.09 sides, what got me pretty confused)

Indeed, the console has this isue. After fiddling with it for entirely too long I gave up and found out on the way that 4.09 is still four. Exactly the kind of specifics you want in rocket science.

 

15 hours ago, Arch3rAc3 said:

Then there's Ejection Force. I think it's pretty self-explanatory, but is there any usefulness in changing the force?

I've got nothing to add to what's been said, only to emphasise again: Be carefull not to blow off any parts from the stuff that's hidden behind the fairing. Happened to me once, with clamshell-deploy, no less.

[CrashyMcCrashFace]

Clamshells: I've had large clamshells not come off and get stuck in other bits. The same settings for non-clam ejected properly. I suspect there's no affect of half a clamshell stuck other than it annoyed the excrements out of me.

[Snark]

• Advantage of non-clamshell (a.k.a. "confetti") fairings:
  1. Works great.
  2. Is generally safe.
  3. Never gets "stuck" on other rocket parts (unlike clamshells).
  4. Rarely causes damage to the rocket when deploying (unlike clamshells).
• Advantage of clamshell fairings:
  1. Looks kinda cool, for the few seconds of deployment.
  2. Nothing else.

So which one's "better" pretty much depends on what your priorities are. 

 

[Geonovast]

I've found clamshells to be detrimental if ejected under acceleration.  Never had a problem ejecting them with all engines off.

[Snark]

3 minutes ago, Geonovast said:

I've found clamshells to be detrimental if ejected under acceleration.  Never had a problem ejecting them with all engines off.

I sure have.  Yes, they're even more dangerous when under acceleration (which, incidentally, is usually when I want to eject) ... but even in total free-fall, I've had problems with them where they get all stuck and/or jiggly while trying to "escape" the ship, and end up bonking my not-yet-deployed solar panels and shattering them.

I've never found any way to make clamshells reliably safe.  I like using them because they do look cool... but "will it work fine or will it go berserk and clobber my rocket" seems to be fairly random to me-- it varies from ship to ship, and I've never found any reliable way to determine in advance whether it will be a problem or not.

[Bakkerbaard]

11 minutes ago, Snark said:

So which one's "better" pretty much depends on what your priorities are.

So, obviously we're going with clamshell.

Safety is in the savegame, not the fairing. ;o)

[Snark]

2 minutes ago, Bakkerbaard said:

So, obviously we're going with clamshell.

Sure, as long as you don't mind that for a certain percentage of your launches, you're either going to have to live with a damaged ship in orbit, or else be willing to revert-to-VAB to redesign (or switch to confetti fairing).  It's what I do. 

[Goody1981]

1 hour ago, Snark said:

I've never found any way to make clamshells reliably safe.

Hi Snark  .. I too, dislike the behaviour of the clamshells when they get all jiggly and bash into things. But I have had success with upping the ejection force to a min of 200, and never using just 2 sides (although - does that make it not a clamshell then?). I haven’t had a single problem with them after always changing these 2 parameters .. though I do wish I could use 2-sided ones!

[Snark]

11 minutes ago, Goody1981 said:

Hi Snark  .. I too, dislike the behaviour of the clamshells when they get all jiggly and bash into things. But I have had success with upping the ejection force to a min of 200, and never using just 2 sides (although - does that make it not a clamshell then?). I haven’t had a single problem with them after always changing these 2 parameters .. though I do wish I could use 2-sided ones!

Yeah, my problem is that for small craft, the whole point (for me) of clamshell is to have 2 sides.  If it requires >2, the "looks cool" factor is mostly gone for me, and I might as well just go confetti.

And I don't like upping the ejection force, because again, for me that ruins the "looks cool" effect-- I might as well just go with confetting in that case.

Basically, "high ejection force and a large number of sides" is what confetti is, after all-- so doing those two things is basically "make it act like confetti", as far as I'm concerned.  And if I'm gonna do that, I might as well just use confetti. 

[Goody1981]

1 minute ago, Snark said:

Basically, "high ejection force and a large number of sides" is what confetti is, after all-- so doing those two things is basically "make it act like confetti", as far as I'm concerned.  And if I'm gonna do that, I might as well just use confetti. 

Haha fair enough (and true enough) :p 

[klesh]

I strictly use 2-sides clamshells.  The problem with them is their collider is not right against the visual model once popped.  What you need to do is give yourself extra space between the fairing walls and the payload, more than you think would be necessary visually.  The game will tell you when a payload part is in contact with the fairing and wont let you build that section, but it doesn't seem to take into account what the collider will be once popped.  I remember the collider being far worse in the initial iterations of the fairings, so this is probably as good as the colliders will ever be.

[Snark]

32 minutes ago, klesh said:

What you need to do is give yourself extra space between the fairing walls and the payload, more than you think would be necessary visually.

Which makes it a total and utter non-starter for me.  The whole point of a fairing is to reduce drag, which means "make it as ultra-small and compact as possible while not bumping into the payload."  Allowing extra space would completely defeat the purpose of the fairing by making it big, bulky, and draggier.  Also makes it look un-cool, which defeats the sole reason for using clamshells in the first place.

If I have a rocket where 2-side clamshell is what I would need, and where a fairing that's properly designed (i.e. snug around the payload) would run into cataclysmic problems with a 2-side clamshell... well, that's when I use confetti.  Because I'm not going to bork my rocket design in order to accommodate a design flaw in a feature whose sole purpose was "look cool" anyway. 

 

[klesh]

To be sure, its not how I would like the fairings to be at all.  But like so much with this game, it is what it is.

The other thing that bothers me about attempting to create a snug fairing is the enormous snap-to distance.  If you want your fairing just slightly wider than the base dimension, you're forced to deal with this snap-to-verticle amount that seems far further than it seemingly needs to be.   I recall there was a mod or modlet or mm config to alter that distance.

[Arch3rAc3]

Awesome!

I'll have to fiddle a bit with the interstage nodes to really understand how they work, but I got a pretty good idea from what you guys said.

Thank you all!