[1.6.1] Tiny Parts and Other Useless Junk

[SciMan]

Its not dead, the pack was updated to be 0.18+ compatible sometime between October 2012 and when the forums came back up. The pack is on SpacePort, and I use parts from it in a lot of my probes and stuff.

[ultrasquid]

I've found these parts extremely useful. If you're just sending a small probe, there's no need to strap a Mainsail engine under it. These are perfect for lofting those small unmanned loads, and ought to be less expensive once economics enter the game, provided updates continue at that time.

The current version is at Kerbal Spaceport

Edited April 24, 2013 by ultrasquid
added link update

[Nuke]

i updated this thread with the new version. looks like those updates were lost in the forum crash. all the pics here are from the beta. the most recent version is the one on the space port (which i believe i released mid february).

will probibly add some parts post .20, with bugfixes and updates. i got some parts that are about halfway done, and ideas for others. looking to do some large parts, some wings, and possibly some rover parts too.

looks like my dev thread is completely gone as well.

Edited May 9, 2013 by Nuke

[rditto48801]

It's nice to see this surface again after the forum implosion.

On a side note, I don't know if I am just not looking in the right place, but I cannot seem to locate the short RCS tanks that were in previous versions. (the one that is a little shorter than the RCS nosecone)

I do have nuke mod R3.

[Nuke]

It's nice to see this surface again after the forum implosion.

On a side note, I don't know if I am just not looking in the right place, but I cannot seem to locate the short RCS tanks that were in previous versions. (the one that is a little shorter than the RCS nosecone)

I do have nuke mod R3.

thats because some rebalencing that happened somewhere around .18. the old tank was just too small, you get a few seconds of rcs thrust unless you had several of them or very few thrusters. so i made a longer monoprop tank and repurposed the old tank as a half meter battery.

[rditto48801]

Well, I am now confused.

During my last KSP session, I took a look at the new, longer Nuke mod RCS tank, and I saw it only has a capacity of 24.

Even the much smaller stock radial RCS tanks hold 40.

Am I missing something?

Also, Spaceport link in the OP is broken. There appears to be some extra stuff in front of the actual URL itself, even though the displayed url is correct.

[Nuke]

this forum handles urls differently from what im used to. *fixed*

as for the tanks, i base my capacity on the volume and capacity of stock tanks. actually i think all my formulae for figuring this all out are written down in some of my cfg file comments. my math could be totally wrong though.

// half meter rcs tank
// tank model volume is 0.27 m^3
// non-structural volume (95%) is 0.256 m^3
// units per m^3: 92.105263157894736842105263157895
// fuel amount = 23.578947368421052631578947368421

pretty much the measured volume of the tank from the modeling program

of which i consider at least 5% of that volume is occupied by structural bits and cant contain fuel.

units per m^3 i think is a guesstimate based on assumed tank sizes. its probibly completely wrong. *

fuel amount is just the multiplication of the second and 3rd values, which i usually round it off to the nearest integer.

*note that i dont use the games 1.25 scaling value, i asssume 0.5, 1, 2 meter (as opposed to .625, 1.25, 2.5) to make it consistent with how things show up in the modeling program. i think my estimate of the tank height by eyeball. the 1.25m tank (which i assume is 1m for consistency), and a guesstimate of height based on the proportionality of width to height (i think i just held a ruler up to the screen and did height/width = 1x diameter). then i use that to calculate the volume of a cylinder (minus 5% for structural volume), and use that to figure out how many units of fuel a cubic meter holds.

Edited May 11, 2013 by Nuke

[rditto48801]

I guess that the stock radial RCS tanks tend to throw a monkey wrench into things., since they can store 40 RCS fuel each, even though maybe 4 could fit into the space of the stock 1m RCS tank.

One other mod I use (KSPX Parts Extention, a 'stock parts' themed mod) has a 0.5m RCS tank (very close in size to the old Nuke mod RCS tank) that holds 45 RCS fuel.

Did you take monopropellant density into consideration with your calculations?

My basic assumption is that the 1m RCS tank likely is considered to use several (4-6?) roughly spherical tanks for storage. Even with insulation, plumbing, impact protection (anti-micro-meteorite stuff and whatnot) etc, there might be some 'wasted space' in there.

That might explain the reasoning behind the devs having the 1m RCS tank hold 100, compared to 40 in the radial RCS tanks.

[Nuke]

i wasnt really happy with it when i got to measuring its capacity. im actually thinking about stretching it out a little bit, to increase its capacity, but also to make my tanks of more uniform length for construction purposes. so you could build structural frames with them and the connector hubs without having a bunch of mismatched tank lengths. also thinking about round girders of at least 4 different lengths.

not really taking the fuel density into consideration. i dont really think i need to. thats mostly for determining the mass of the fuel and is handled automatically by the game. im mostly just figuring out how much volume a stock tank (with the same fuel type) has, how many units of fuel the tank can hold, and use that to figure out units of fuel per 1 cubic unit volume. then multiply that by the non structural volume of my tank to get the capacity.

whether it be determining the volume of one of my tanks, or one of the stock tanks, i am always assuming that 5% of that volume is structural, and subtract that from the total volume. now this may be a little low, or a little high, idk. i may consider looking at all the stock tanks of a particular fuel type and see how much discrepancy there is between how much fuel they should be able to hold and how much they actually hold. the difference is structural volume. the tank with the lowest structural volume would be the yard stick for all the others. then i can also use the range structural volume values for stock tanks to determine acceptable fudge factors for structural volume in my own tanks. if a tank seems to hold less fuel than it should, i can just make the structural volume smaller, down to the stock minimum.

then again i may just be over thinking things. squad seems to be using fudge factors in several places, and maybe i should just fudge things along too.

[Artfact]

I was skeptical about this pack at first, since the cockpit on the screenshot seemed a bit so smooth for my liking.

But after seeing all the goodness this brings, it has instantly become one of my favorite packs.

Thanks allot, I love the style and will have loads of fun with it.

[Nuke]

i admit the alpha parts had really bad normal mapping, and it took a couple versions to fix that. its very difficult to get normal maps to look good (especially with the 2d techniques i was using).

[Nuke]

just finished up the 0.20 compatibility fix. added a few more structural parts (new lattice system). fixed a whole pile of bugs. re-exported everything with the newest part tools and unity 4. textures are all png now so if you dont like em you can change 'em.

waiting on the space port. i guess il upload it to google drive for now.

[Nuke]

dont know what the space port is doing. it said the pack uploaded, but i've yet to see it show up.

[Nuke]

sorry for so many consecutive posts, but download is now on the space port. can haz some feedback this time?

[Mekan1k]

Dude- parts are amazing. Sorry, having too much fun playing with your parts to commend on your parts

[Bassoe]

Cool pack, but I've been having issues with the pod hatch. It aways claims to be obstructed even when in one test I used decouplers to have it be the only part within a two-kilometer radius.

Even so, I still like the pack. The little liquid-fuel engines are perfect for rover sky-cranes.

[Nuke]

bug confirmed. this is probibly because i changed the colliders for the model and didnt adjust the positions of the ladder/airlock bits. or it could have been because of the cg issue i fixed. either way i think i forgot to test entry/exit before release. will try to roll out a bugfix release. i want to do some 0.20.2 bugtesting to make sure nothing was broke as well, so i guess its a chance to upgrade the mod to the lastest version.

this problem is somewhat perplexing. ive done stuff like move the ladder and airlock boxes really far from the colliders and mesh. and the hatch is still obstructed. ive grouped the colliders and its still obstructed. the only thing that worked was to delete 2 of the 3 colliders for the model.

while the old version of the model had only one collider, which made it hard to surface attach anything to the rather oddly shaped cockpit. i have since replaced this with 3 colliders, one for the hull, one for the window, and one for the cylindrical part. this fixed the construction issues. but now its breaking the hatch for some reason. so far the only fix has been to delete 2 of the colliders which means i can either roll back to the old collider (which sucked, and theres the issue where i think i overwrote the source model with the revisions, thinking that everything worked). or i can model a whole new collider, again.

e:

well i got it to work with 2 of the 3 colliders. only the canopy isnt colliding right, but really you shouldnt be attaching parts to it anyway. i will keep playing with it and see if i cant make all 3 colliders work.

e again:

i think i got it working. if you have any more bug reports now is the time to post em. il roll out a small update tomorrow if i dont find anything else wrong.

in the mean time heres a little temporary hotfix for the model

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B0xTBHKy0hAAR3NlQUZieV84MWM/edit?usp=sharing

just overwrite the model.mu in the GameData\Nuke\Parts\Command\HalfMeterCockpit with the new one. should make it possible to exit the pod.

99 bugs in the mod again, 99 annoying bugs

fix 2 bugs package again, 102 bugs in the mod again!

Edited June 1, 2013 by Nuke

[freedomispopular]

Wow, this is definitely one of the most useful parts packs I've come across so far. Not to be a whiner, but I'm really not a fan of the color scheme. I'd love to see these in more of a stock color.

[Nuke]

looks like switching the textures over from mbm to png made parts with normal maps fugly again, as it was in the alpha release. probibly not going to repaint all the parts (i hate making textures), but i will at least get the more offensive parts (the lf/oxy tanks for example) back to how they were. to make matters worse the new part tools update didnt work right (i even followed the instructions) and now i have no export button. so much for that point release. im going to have to nuke the entire site from orbit, because its the only way to be sure. and i might as well update unity again. might have to reimport all my models and textures. this will not be fun. on the other side of it im modeling a new one meter two seater pod, my spinneh pod, and a reactor that can power my mpd thrusters in a fun sort of way (i have a ship with 40 large solar panels and its still hard to keep the engines juiced).

e:

after restoring my part library, installing new version of unity, loading said library into unity, deleting every script in the folder, and importing the new part tools it looks like everything is working. i just had to go in and redo all of my part tools components (all 40! of them, and thats not counting the unreleased experementals), but that was supposed to happen. didnt make it suck less. at least they added global directories, and a browse button for finding the destination folder. thing is i still got to edit 40! cfg files now, to reflect the new model names. but some of the new features look awesome. also cool things like the lattice system not using so many duplicate textures and color decals on the batteries. yea its gonna be awesome.

Edited June 6, 2013 by Nuke

[WhatsThisButtonDo]

Wow, this is definitely one of the most useful parts packs I've come across so far. Not to be a whiner, but I'm really not a fan of the color scheme. I'd love to see these in more of a stock color.

Totally agree freedomispopular. I would really like to use these parts but the look doesn't fit in with stock parts or any of my mods. Nuke if you were willing but didn't want the work of changing textures maybe someone else would take on that task for you that could be released as an alternate pack.

Edited June 6, 2013 by WhatsThisButtonDo

[Nuke]

this is kinda why i decided to switch over from mbm to png, to make the textures tweakable for those that didnt like them. i would not be against an alternate 3rd party texture pack releases.

[Talisar]

this is kinda why i decided to switch over from mbm to png, to make the textures tweakable for those that didnt like them. i would not be against an alternate 3rd party texture pack releases.

I feel the same way. I used png for the tanks I made, and I included the UV template with the parts as well. Several people have tweaked the textures for their own use, and some of them have provided those textures to me. One I use as the default for my tanks now.

That being said, while they don't exactly fit with the "stock look", I really like the sleek textures of your parts

[alacrity]

A reall big fan of your 1/2 meter scaled parts and wondering if anyone has cried about the 21.1 update? Wanting to add it to my permanent lost of mods as I have been basing all my rovers on it since I first saw it.( It just feels like a better scale for the engines and wheels available right now... and the look snazy.)

Hope you are able to keep it up, and while my skills are somewhat lacking if I can be of help throw me a line.

Alacrity

[Nuke]

i haven't tested the mod with the new version yet, kind of in the middle of an unrelated coding project. but since my parts really dont try to do anything exotic and dont depend on any plugins most of them should work. might be some issues with things like the cockpit and the hall thrusters, since there have been some changes that may affect those.

if anyone finds any bugs i will try and fix them as quickly as possible, but its kind of on the back burner. if i do a .21 version now there wont be any new content for it, just a maintenance release. im kinda stalled on my centrifuge and my reactor (these are actually large parts and might go into another pack all together), but there are a few more parts i want to add, things like a monoprop engine, a mini-nerva, and a larger than stock rtg to name a few.

[RychschaX]

So is it just me, or are the MPD engines getting nowhere near the mileage (so to speak) they used to? I can't find anything in the config files that would explain it, but I used to get >10km/s of vacuum delta V on my surveyor probes, and now I am lucky if i get 4km/s. all evidence in the config files would suggest that my fuel tanks should weigh even less now with the switch to xenon (.0005 density for arrrghon versus .0001 for xenon), so I would sorta expect to be getting slightly more delta V now. Any idea why, or is the reason totally obvious and I am just missing it?

though now that I think of it...if the tank stores a similar number of units of xenon, and the engines produce the same thrust as before, maybe it would have to consume more xenon to pruduce the same thrust, thanks to xenon having only 1/5 the density of arrrghon...

Edited August 16, 2013 by RychschaX