Launch optimisation

[Flibble]

This is really a post to gauge interest in a tool I made for my RO game. It simulates many launches (512 to be exact) to calculate the best pitch over angle and speed (and a few other things). I don't think there's anything out there that does this at the moment. It's fairly quick, a run of 512 launches over 10 minutes of game time takes around 3 seconds on a typical desktop.

I've not tried it for a stock game but it should work in theory. The only issue would be drag calculations as I'm relying on FAR for that.

Here's a screenshot for an early orbital rocket:

You can see the heat maps on the left which show how good each launch is rated in various things. The main graph shows details for the selected launch.

If there's some interest in this I'll get it tidied up and released on github.

[QFA4983]

Yes! I came out with the same idea last night and I was trying to see if anyone already did this lol

[James Kerman]

This is a fantastic idea, @Flibble.

[Flibble]

Awesome.

Next steps, other than getting it ready for release would be trying it with stock setup and coming up with some drag modelling for stock.

Also it currently uses powered explicit guidance since I wrote it as a bit of a test bed for that, so I'll need to get it fixed for burn and coast I think.

[DStaal]

The closest to this I've seen is in the GravityTurn mod, which will vary the pitchover angle and speed over consecutive launches of the same craft and can produce a similar graph for your current launch.  It doesn't do it as a simulation however, and will only show you the current launch.  (And it's graph is less detailed.)

[Flibble]

I've set up a github repo with the WIP stuff in. Not really release ready yet, but if anyone wants a look, they are welcome to. I've started trying to get Stock settings working also, but they're not quite there yet (I think I need a stock rocket as my RO rocket doesn't really work correctly in Stock).

https://github.com/RCrockford/ksp-launch-optimisation

[Flibble]

Slow going on this, sorry everyone. Just other things getting in the way.

I have been poking at the Kerbin launch profile and it seems to be somewhat working now, though the flight path isn't quite right so it's giving fairly poor orbits. ~3500 m/s to orbit though, so I'm in the right ballpark.