[WIP] Jade's Dev Thread

[JadeOfMaar]

My attention has been stolen away from Sterling Engines. With Angel-125 picking up pace in BlueShift, I found myself drafting something that I know I and a few would really like to have and enjoy using with BlueShift, and so, I've decided to change priorities for now.

Impulse Party

A very small suite of handwavium engines and scoops that FTL users will delight in having. Planned parts:

• Sublight "Impulse Drives" (already done but unfinished textures: 1.25m, Mk2, 2.5m). They will grant great dV and will work very well in both vac ant atmo. You've seen Elite Dangerous and Star Citizen.
• One custom modular warp nacelle. Bulkhead profile is 2.5m (head) 3.1m (body), Mk2 (tail).
• Trek style bussard scoops for eco exo harvesting whatever you like. In 1.25m, Mk2, 2.5m, 3.75m.
• Warp Cores (Fusion reactors in the absence of warp mods). Available in Mk2, 2.5m, 3.75m, and 1.25m sphere.

Edited February 16, 2021 by JadeOfMaar

[Spaceman.Spiff]

1 hour ago, JadeOfMaar said:

Trek style bussard scoops for eco harvesting whatever you like. In 1.25m, Mk2, 2.5m.

So is that an FFT/Spacedust type thing?

Im sure it’s gonna be awesome. 

[JadeOfMaar]

@Spaceman.Spiff Dangit. I meant "exo" harvesting. My English is stumbling too regularly these days.

But yes, you are correct.

Here are the sub-light engines. Their emissive and particles are by default "Star Trek Red" but there will also be a "Star Citizen/Elite Blue"

Edited February 1, 2021 by JadeOfMaar

[JadeOfMaar]

Modular warp nacelle inspired by starship Enterprise in J.J. Abrams' Star Trek AU. The bulkhead profiles are 2.5m to 3.13m to Mk2 and loosely styled after Angel-125's bits. It can be expanded by the included 3.13m segment and by Angel's Mk2 warp coil segment. I can't promise that I'll nail his style but I'll try to come close.

Alongside the sub-light engines above, this makes up the core of this mod. Pylon options will not be included. Unlike my Sterling Engines pics, these are unwrapped and with a basic, real texture, and not just a concept render. This set includes a 2.5m scoop but I haven't unwrapped the set of scoops just yet.

Edited February 16, 2021 by JadeOfMaar

[Spaceman.Spiff]

On 1/31/2021 at 11:46 AM, JadeOfMaar said:

sub-light

How powerful are these going to be? They look very awesome.

3 minutes ago, JadeOfMaar said:

Modular warp nacelle

Thank goodness. We needed some adapter parts 

[JadeOfMaar]

@Spaceman.Spiff The sub-light engines will likely have: 1.25m: 120kN; Mk2: 180kN; 2.5m: 540kN, (I may bump these thrusts up, who knows) and are meant to have a particularly generous Isp (whatever works of course).

• Before FFT I intend for them to be decent SSTO engines, maintaining high thrust in atmosphere at the cost of guzzling fuel and EC. How they'll behave when FFT is installed will be left up to FFT users. That's not important to me.
• With BlueShift (and without Kerbal Flying Saucers) they will sip on GravityWaves and a low-density propellant and work in atmo as well as vac. Their cost is your Graviolium supply and a Gravitic generator for their GravityWaves.
• With Kerbal Flying Saucers installed, they will become true gravitic engines (as on Federation shuttles), no longer having respect for atmo pressure curves or thrust torque, just like the one made for the core of Angel's UFO ships. At some point he updated the engine so multiple of it can run in parallel without inducing krakens. My engines and their purpose are why he did that. They will perfectly emulate the role and operation of impulse drives in Star Trek ships.

Don't get too eager for adapter parts. Those aren't part of my plan. But I've seen angel show that his warp devices still have the StaticCharge mechanism so I may make a little aerodynamic anti-static blade that you can surface-attach.

Edited February 16, 2021 by JadeOfMaar

[Spaceman.Spiff]

IDK... Some of those definitely look like a MK2->Something adapter.    

As an FFT user (I heard you were looking for those ) I think the SL engines should function like a MUCH better version of the NFA Project Eeloo engine. It would kind of "match mechanics". The atmo mode could be similar (using IntakeAtm as reaction mass), and more compact, while the "Closed Cycle" would function like a high performance fusion engine rather than a fairly lame NTR. I'm not sure what the performance should be like, or how much realism you're going for, but an ISP of maybe 20-35k would be fairly good for what I assume is intended to be a local system/planetary transport engine. If it's supposed to be a Brachistochrone-capable engine, then probably closer to hundreds of thousands. 

Resource wise... I'd just go with Lqd.Deuterium; that way the FFT patched reactors will work with the same fuel as these engines.

I'm very excited for more progress! This seems like the perfect compliment to fill out BlueShift. 

Maybe we need some new starfighter parts to go with it !

[JadeOfMaar]

@Spaceman.Spiff Local system/Modest interplanetary (Let's say you could brachistochrone between the homeworld (or a gas giant) and its moons if you really wanted to push an envelope) is what I'm aiming for in the absence of the UFO plugin. I'm not interested in having hundreds of thousands for Isp. I would make a dedicated chemical engine model for that. In which case, I feel like Daedalus and Epstein have been overdone by now so I want to avoid adding to those populations.

Deuterium is going to be very busy then. You'll have more to patch than just those engines, of course. And I hope to unwrap and reveal them by Friday.

Impulse Party is indeed meant to complement BlueShift...And then some.

Starfighter parts. Heh.

[Spaceman.Spiff]

13 hours ago, JadeOfMaar said:

Deuterium is going to be very busy then. You'll have more to patch than just those engines, of course. And I hope to unwrap and reveal them by Friday.

Indeed. I'll need some good atmospheric engines to make a Jool-Diver then!

I will look into maybe adding Deuterium Exo configs somewhere. No promises 

[JadeOfMaar]

The scoops/harvesters, unwrapped and textured. 1.25m, Mk2, 2.5m, 3.75m

Edited February 23, 2021 by JadeOfMaar
updated textures. practically finished

[Spaceman.Spiff]

1 minute ago, JadeOfMaar said:

The scoops/harvesters, unwrapped and with basic texture. 1.25m, Mk2, 2.5m, 3.75m

 

Wow!

This and the KSP2 news has made my Friday about 200% better!

[JadeOfMaar]

Geordi LaForge approves. Main power is GO! All ship systems adequately charged. (Textures are basic and subject to change.)

The 1.25m core is primarily surface-attach but includes a top and bottom node with fairings. It is not to be confused for a beam emitter.

Edited February 23, 2021 by JadeOfMaar
update: textures nearly finished

[JadeOfMaar]

Milestone time.

Engines (Video)

• Plumes and emissive switching via B9PS. Choose Star Trek Red or Star Citizen Blue.
   
   
• With Angel-125's Flying Saucers mod installed, they become antigravity engines just like the ones on any Star Trek shuttle or runabout. But you lose the plume switch. Red is the only option. The plumes aren't supposed to move. Hopefully I can fix that. Also, for some reason KER breaks and null spams and I don't know if I can relieve that so I'd avise (for now) not using my engines with Flying Saucers.
  

Scoops (Video)

• Featuring deploy animation (light) and active animation (spin). They also take advantage of the Restock ISRU module where the deploy function is no longer a separate toggle but is intelligent and triggers on or off when it is aware that no harvester module is running or you run out of EC or there's nothing to harvest, which means you get a very clear indicator of either bad situation.
• The glass covers can be toggled too.
   
• 

Power (Video)

The 1.25m (spherical) reactor taking its place as, not a primary, but secondary power source. With Wild Blue Tools installed, all of the reactors will produce ElectroPlasma, and have a secondary converter to release ElectricCharge from it (the use case is roughly the same as StoredCharge in NF Electric).

 

Warp Nacelle

Well. The pieces for it all work correctly. They're just missing the scrolling emissive feature. Maybe my own texture needs to have a pattern in it.

On 2/16/2021 at 2:29 PM, Spaceman.Spiff said:

Thank goodness. We needed some adapter parts 

I'm seriously considering that now, actually: an adapter and tail, in 2.5m and 1.25m.

 

Edited February 26, 2021 by JadeOfMaar

[Spaceman.Spiff]

18 minutes ago, JadeOfMaar said:

Plumes and emissive switching via B9PS. Choose Star Trek Red or Star Citizen Blue.

I think i'm gonna go with blue....

It depends on the ship i'm trying to make though.

an X-Wing would get a red plume I think. 

Other random thought... this would be a good use for WaterFall 

 

[OrdinaryKerman]

39 minutes ago, JadeOfMaar said:

Star Trek Red or Star Citizen Blue

Trek impulse engines have been variously shown with red, blue, and orange/yellow exhausts
 

Quote

 

 

, maybe

a. make the 'red' slightly orange
b. not include 'Star Trek' or 'Star Citizen' in the display name

These are just suggestions, not requests

39 minutes ago, JadeOfMaar said:

But you lose the plume switch

Is this intended behavior or a bug?

Edited February 26, 2021 by OrdinaryKerman

[JadeOfMaar]

@Spaceman.Spiff Heh. Waterfall. That waits to be seen. (Whether I can do plume switching on that)

@OrdinaryKerman I will take your color suggestions. As for losing the plume switch, that's on purpose. I'm currently not inclined to test whether Angel's engine module is friendly to it. When I do test it and if I confirm it works, I'll keep it.

[JadeOfMaar]

I finally fixed the Mk2 profile issue I didn't know I had, and updated the plume selection:

(2.5m engines video)

Sprinkles (Trek) Red-Orange, Yellow, Cyan + Torch (Star Ctiizen) Blue + Ions (Star Wars X-Wing) Pink

https://imgur.com/gOxupGuhttps://imgur.com/gOxupGu

 

[Spaceman.Spiff]

3 minutes ago, JadeOfMaar said:

Sprinkles (Trek) Red-Orange, Yellow, Cyan + Torch (Star Citizen) Blue + Ions (Star Wars X-Wing) Pink

Y E L L O W 

Kinda funky how much that pink one looks like WF..... I know it's not, but it looks nice.

Spoiler

you best believe that I am going to use the yellow plumes though

 

[JadeOfMaar]

Testing a Mk2 ship (classified stuff, not necessarily for military applications ) I realized... the Mk2 fusion reactor is rather short for EC storage in itself and I remembered a familiar pain from way back: Lack of Mk2 batteries. So I drafted some:

• 0.4m (holds 2000 EC)
• 1.6m (with 1.875m variant) holds 8000 EC
• CLS passable

[Spaceman.Spiff]

20 minutes ago, JadeOfMaar said:

Testing a Mk2 ship (classified stuff, not necessarily for military applications ) I realized... the Mk2 fusion reactor is rather short for EC storage in itself and I remembered a familiar pain from way back: Lack of Mk2 batteries. So I drafted some:

• 0.4m (holds 2000 EC)
• 1.6m (with 1.875m variant) holds 8000 EC
• CLS passable

I think there were some in Recycled Parts,

but these look muuuuuch better 

[JadeOfMaar]

18 minutes ago, Spaceman.Spiff said:

I think there were some in Recycled Parts,

The Mk2 Solar Batteries. Those were pretty nice. They really stood out by having solar panels in them.

[Spaceman.Spiff]

8 minutes ago, JadeOfMaar said:

Those were pretty nice. They really stood out by having solar panels in them.

True. 

But who needs the Sun when we have FUSION!

Spoiler

waitaminute, the sun is fusion. we have had fusion all along

 

[Cyne]

Impulse drives 

[Ryugi]

I love everything in this thread and I am sad it doesn't yet exist.  Great work, man.

[OrdinaryKerman]

On 3/20/2021 at 7:28 AM, JadeOfMaar said:

Why open-ended corridors? Though being uncrewed, I guess that makes sense rather than having an airlock on each tank. can also make for an exposed entrance for some creepy derelict ship.