Boat Parts ~~~0.90~~~ R4.65~~~

[Hellbrand]

any way to make the hull sections(minus the elevators and moving parts and such part welded?

[colmo]

The broken bits are the secondary damage mesh, they will show up in the hangar and on launch then disappear. The reason they show in the hangar is so you don't build on that spot, almost as a reminder. As the mesh changes when it is damaged it could cause things to look silly. The issue at launch is a bug and will be sorted on the next update.

The damage mesh bits persist after launch for me, not that it matters much.

I spent a few hours trying to land planes on my now-4x warp proof carrier, in readiness for a voyage to collect Fine Print aerial surveys. No airbrakes or arrestor hook unlocked yet, so challenging! Edit: Have since unlocked the arrestor, and it really does stop planes dead. I had to rebuild planes with the internal strut trick to hold them together, nothing new in that. It does add to the part count, though, and I notice FPS does start to tank once you have a few planes on the carrier, so a few optimised or multipurpose parts may be in order.

I've realised all landing gear is frankly rubbish - lack of variety to serve different roles, and lack of tweakable suspension. I might have a hack at Firespitter's. Not a complaint of the carrier, it's just a very demanding kind of landing.

I've mentioned using Klaw code in landing gear to eliminate the docking slots, this is just a reminder. Edit: or alternatively...make a hangar floor tile with a Klaw-powered 'sticky' surface. Just park the plane, rover or whatever on it, right click and dock. Much simpler than doing it with landing gear, avoids potential clipping issues on release, but unsure if this effect can be applied to a large area?

I noticed gear can fall between hangar deck tiles - I know the standard workaround, dropping and raising the gear, but might be an argument for fewer, larger pieces.

I found myself wanting a few more pieces to change up possible ship format; the hull side pieces, if made a bit taller, would allow a straight-sided vessel, and the lift piece is fractionally too wide to place at the rear instead of the stern+ramp.

In terms of structural integrity, instead of manually strutting everything (I think my carrier weighed in at 78 parts, still very good), could the carrier parts use an autostrut system, like Procedural Fairings does?

If you get round to sorting out the fore and aft castle sections for crew, you may as well put KAS storage in them too - anything to reduce part count!

BTW, what became of the naval aircraft parts you were doing? Did Skillful take precedence?

While I appreciate your interest in warfare, your boat parts are also a great platform for exploration - with contract mods like Fine Print, and EPL, Kethane, Karbonite, KAS and that Hangar mod, a carrier really can become home from home.

I think I'll have a stab at making a helipad piece the same width as the deck runway, for a shorter, wide research vessel. About time I DIY...

Edited August 12, 2014 by colmo

[InfiniteDice]

The damage mesh bits persist after launch for me, not that it matters much.

I've realised all landing gear is frankly rubbish - lack of variety to serve different roles, and lack of tweakable suspension. I might have a hack at Firespitter's. Not a complaint of the carrier, it's just a very demanding kind of landing.

I've mentioned using Klaw code in landing gear to eliminate the docking slots, this is just a reminder. Edit: or alternatively...make a hangar floor tile with a Klaw-powered 'sticky' surface. Just park the plane, rover or whatever on it, right click and dock. Much simpler than doing it with landing gear, avoids potential clipping issues on release, but unsure if this effect can be applied to a large area?

I noticed gear can fall between hangar deck tiles - I know the standard workaround, dropping and raising the gear, but might be an argument for fewer, larger pieces.

I found myself wanting a few more pieces to change up possible ship format; the hull side pieces, if made a bit taller, would allow a straight-sided vessel, and the lift piece is fractionally too wide to place at the rear instead of the stern+ramp.

In terms of structural integrity, instead of manually strutting everything (I think my carrier weighed in at 78 parts, still very good), could the carrier parts use an autostrut system, like Procedural Fairings does?

If you get round to sorting out the fore and aft castle sections for crew, you may as well put KAS storage in them too - anything to reduce part count!

BTW, what became of the naval aircraft parts you were doing? Did Skillful take precedence?

While I appreciate your interest in warfare, your boat parts are also a great platform for exploration - with contract mods like Fine Print, and EPL, Kethane, Karbonite, KAS and that Hangar mod, a carrier really can become home from home..

Thanks for the comments.

I know all landing gear suck! The problem with them is they aren't designed to work on other parts, they slide all over the place. My naval landing gear were made to work on the carrier, but yes they were shelved until I get the time. I have been doing more thinking on this and I might just release naval aircraft parts with boatparts. I can only stretch my time so far these days.

I'll finalize some plans for that in the next few days.

[InfiniteDice]

any way to make the hull sections(minus the elevators and moving parts and such part welded?

Probably not, as my code uses custom float code, that needs to look at those sections separately.

[colmo]

It is possible to DIY other kinds of ship with these parts. Here's an ultra-simple utilitarian barge made from 16 parts (inc. 3 struts), which needs an engine of the class somewhere between the carrier and medium engines (as if a barge would ever be nuclear...), and 4 of the mid rudders because the carrier one made the draft too deep for getting close to land. Two engines (reverse or cut off one to steer) and no rudder would drop part count further and give it a very shallow draft. With a few KAS and Infernal Robotics parts, ideal for retrieving splashed down pods for hard -core RPers. It's even viable for short-landing aircraft using an arrestor cable.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=299669595

One last thing - as the Boat Parts have their own code, could boats lose velocity more realistically, rather than the current abrupt halt the moment the throttle is killed?

[Eskandare]

Probably not, as my code uses custom float code, that needs to look at those sections separately.

I worked out how by using one module and combining the numbers. It takes a lot of config edit work on the welded part file, but it does work.

Edit: Also You must combine the bottom hull and top hull seperately. Leave out the elevators, engines, rudders, arrestor cable, plane docks, and bridge. Add thoseparts after the weld.

Edited August 12, 2014 by Eskandare

[colmo]

Hurry up with that landing gear, motorised with good steering and drag brakes when motorised, please! I just landed on deck, then got in a tangle and dunked my plane trying to park it...but I'd quicksaved on landing; oops. Now I cannot load the plane or carrier without the carrier violently exploding - it is apparently splashing down hard on load. Trying to edit my way out of the mess, but even getting rid of the plane doesn't work. Sigh.

Edit: It appears it is getting transported to the bottom of the ocean. Something to do with landed or splashed down status.

Edit2: Yup, changing the carrier to sit = FLYING sorted it out. I sit = LANDED the plane at 17km altitude and recovered it (only for the pilot, I run Final Frontier). Let's just say he had a mishap with the plane and went home to recover...

Edited August 13, 2014 by colmo

[Capt.Joseph Kerbertson]

Dice... glad to see you are still working on this mod!

[InfiniteDice]

Hurry up with that landing gear, motorised with good steering and drag brakes when motorised, please! I just landed on deck, then got in a tangle and dunked my plane trying to park it...but I'd quicksaved on landing; oops. Now I cannot load the plane or carrier without the carrier violently exploding - it is apparently splashing down hard on load. Trying to edit my way out of the mess, but even getting rid of the plane doesn't work. Sigh.

Edit: It appears it is getting transported to the bottom of the ocean. Something to do with landed or splashed down status.

Edit2: Yup, changing the carrier to sit = FLYING sorted it out. I sit = LANDED the plane at 17km altitude and recovered it (only for the pilot, I run Final Frontier). Let's just say he had a mishap with the plane and went home to recover...

Crazy stuff can and will happen when there is debris stuck on the carrier. Normally just returning to the spaceport then back to the carrier will remove any debris, I suggest jumping pilots out of the plane if the cockpit gets stuck on the carrier, in order to save him.

I'll re-visit some of these things shortly, like the ship slowing in water. I think in the beginning I had the ship slow fast as many people hated waiting for the ship to come to a stop before being able to do other tasks. I'll try to find a happy medium.

The landing gear are mostly good, so again I'll have another look at those and consider them for inclusion. I'm still not back from my modding holiday for another few weeks. Consider me attentive, but not active.

- - - Updated - - -

Dice... glad to see you are still working on this mod!

Thanks. Glad to see you're still kickin' as well!

[InfiniteDice]

I worked out how by using one module and combining the numbers. It takes a lot of config edit work on the welded part file, but it does work.

Edit: Also You must combine the bottom hull and top hull seperately. Leave out the elevators, engines, rudders, arrestor cable, plane docks, and bridge. Add thoseparts after the weld.

The real issue might be when it combines with Skillful, I can't say what would happen, but it's likely it won't behave correctly. For non-combative carriers/boats, could be a cool solution to pick up some frames.

[colmo]

In the interim, I've discovered Firespitter gear plus TweakScale produces a nice sized landing gear. If I use the FS tail gear (140% scale) or regular FS fighter gear on the wings, and stock gear on the nose, that should mean good braking without tipping, a landing light, and does away with the need for the reversing engine.

One thing that would really help is some sort of glideslope indicator - it's hard to line up a landing until you can see the carrier properly, at which point it's too late to correct for that attempt. Lighting built into the deck part would help, though I'm not sure how much of a performance hit that would incur.

I'd also like to decouple the arrestor hook from the airbrake on the landing system. I want to deploy the hook well in advance, but only use the airbrake at the last moment (the default drag value fairly drops it out of the sky, and weaker values are hard to get 'just right'). The airbrake deploys and retracts very slowly, which can mean disaster if you misjudge the landing, which is the majority of the time...using separate airbrakes in parallel would help, but we're all about keeping part count down on these beasts.

Edited August 13, 2014 by colmo

[the_Butler]

Does anyone have any tips on how to move aircraft about the deck better?

It seems almost impossible to turn the aircraft, even trying to toggle thrust vs brakes.

End up not turning enough/at all and going right off the deck.

[colmo]

Does anyone have any tips on how to move aircraft about the deck better?

It seems almost impossible to turn the aircraft, even trying to toggle thrust vs brakes.

End up not turning enough/at all and going right off the deck.

Have you tried unlocking steering on the stock gear? You need to unlock them all, the nose wheel isn't enough.

I've given up on the reversing engine and stock gear. Firespitter has landing gear that turns sharper and has a built in motor (turn off cockpit torque to avoid draining the electric charge). TweakScale can be used to increase it's size for better clearance and alignment front-to-rear.

[InfiniteDice]

Have you tried unlocking steering on the stock gear? You need to unlock them all, the nose wheel isn't enough.

I've given up on the reversing engine and stock gear. Firespitter has landing gear that turns sharper and has a built in motor (turn off cockpit torque to avoid draining the electric charge). TweakScale can be used to increase it's size for better clearance and alignment front-to-rear.

If you check all my older videos I mostly used stock gear and the reverse engine. Before I created the easy docking ports it was a real pain in the butt.

I have started to take a look at adding claw code to the naval gears. Just needs some tuning to get the range right and perhaps some specific animation in the gear to fool the claw into thinking it's open/closed. Shouldn't be a problem.

I looked into the carrier speed issue and realized there was way too much drag being applied, also found a bug with the engine. So those are being fixed. 40m/s to full stop is about 30 seconds now, I'd like to get it to where reverse engines will be helpful but not ultimately required to stop the boat.

[colmo]

I have started to take a look at adding claw code to the naval gears. Just needs some tuning to get the range right and perhaps some specific animation in the gear to fool the claw into thinking it's open/closed. Shouldn't be a problem.

I also had the idea of, instead of making the landing gear 'sticky', making the hangar floor tiles (the square grey ones) 'sticky' instead. This means you don't uncouple two of the three gears one at a time, and have the plane flop through the deck while the last one is still attached. I suppose this is only a problem because we can't edit action groups on the fly - that would make the gear the better, more versatile, candidate. If we could link the gears on the same planes together so they all release or couple at the same time, that might be handy. I'm not sure if it's possible to make some parts exempt from the 'clipping allowed when part of the same craft' mechanic, which I recall was introduced around 0.15 - if so, that would mean only one gear needing to dock, and the others would not pass through the deck.

Either way, we get rid of the docking slots, so it's all good.

Is it possible to alter the strength of the bond? We don't want it to be that strong, just enough to hold on in x4 warp, but not enough to rip off the gear. Making it only possible to dock when not moving fast might be a good idea, to prevent cheaty (and very abrupt!) landings :-)

There's a few parts were there's a few different sizes to choose from - engines and rudders. I recommend TweakScale to reduce part catalogue clutter.

Edited August 14, 2014 by colmo

[InfiniteDice]

There is two...

So after lots of fiddling around I have a somewhat stable solution for the Naval Gears. I feel with some testing/tweaking they can get better.

Naval Gears and any related aircraft parts will be released with ICE. Sorry that's just the way it's going to be. After shelving Naval Aircraft parts for so long, the wheel code I had adapted to the Naval Gears evolved into the wheel code I used for ICE, this means it makes sense for me to include it with that pack. If you don't want the other ICE parts, simply delete them, just remember to keep the ICE dll.

Essentially to dock:

1) land 2) turn off the jet engine 3) park the plane and apply the brakes 4) right click the nose gear and click 'Arm' - the aircraft should dock to the deck.

To un-dock:

Right click the nose gear, click disarm and then click release. - plane should pop off the deck and be on the gear. - Sometimes gear can get into the deck - retract then extend.

Issues:

The dock node needs to be manually adjusted (depending on positioning of the gear on the aircraft) this is done by right clicking the nose gear and dragging the park distance slider. If the plane won't connect when armed/stopped then adjust this slider until it does connect. In some cases after connecting the gears are clipping the deck. You'll NEED to retract the gear, then disconnect the plane, or bad things happen. - this will disconnect the plane onto it's belly.

I had to modify the float code yet again, the carrier was freaking out and breaking the aircraft off. I changed the craft file a bit so it's a bit more stable.

The screen above proves I was able to not only land and dock one plane, but the plane survived loading without falling off or getting into the deck, and I was able to land and dock another aircraft.

I'll likely do a bit more testing before packing it up for release.

[Endersmens]

Am I the only one who sees two of infinites last posts? They are identical. Maybe its just my computer

[InfiniteDice]

Made my first video in a while, showing some Naval Gear action and how they will operate.

[Hellbrand]

any chance we can get the textures shifted over to a .png format? that way we can edit it and have numbers and custom textures for our ships??

[LORDPrometheus]

Hey dice how are things looking for R5? Still on schedule?

[colmo]

I LOLed at the landing and parking fails!

Great to see, and the tunable suspension is just gravy - perfect for widely varying craft masses. The fiddliness is unavoidable. It's stuff only Squad can change.

Bundled with ICE is cool - three major mod packs is enough for anyone to keep track of. The part savings from this might just give us breathing room for some funky carrier projects.

I must put allista's Ground Hangar on a carrier to see how those interact.

I'm wondering about docking helicopters with fixed landing rails - it's possible it may end explosively given there's no gear to drop, and this would also be true of a sticky helipad.

Intrigued by the Boat Parts updates. Have you considered getting some modellers to help, freeing your hands to concentrate on code and just smooth out a few rough edges, especially with textures?

[colmo]

P.S. About using autostruts for carrier parts - I had a look through FairingBase.cs in the Procedural Fairing source, and there's not much to it. It seems (I think!) to iterate through each node checking for a connection, and struts the ones that aren't. If this was put on the side pieces and maybe the deck of the carrier (not the hull, it has way too many nodes), it would really reduce or eliminate strut usage. I'm not sure if there'd be a performance saving, as the autostruts would add to computational load if not part count, but it would massively simplify the build. It would also be more efficient than manual strutting because it's never quite clear where nodes are attached until you gun the engines in warp.

I was also thinking of the need to ruggedise carrier plane parts - perhaps using larger node sizes than would be normal for parts of those sizes would stiffen things up without strutting.

Edited August 22, 2014 by colmo

[pellinor]

Would procedural decks be possible, maybe with a tweakable number of sections? If a large part of the deck is one part with one collider, this would avoid lots of physics load and strutting.

[colmo]

Would procedural decks be possible, maybe with a tweakable number of sections? If a large part of the deck is one part with one collider, this would avoid lots of physics load and strutting.

With all the side pieces the carrier needs, it wouldn't save much on the strutting. We'd also need variable length hull pieces to go with the deck.

[InfiniteDice]

With all the side pieces the carrier needs, it wouldn't save much on the strutting. We'd also need variable length hull pieces to go with the deck.

This is what I was moving towards, essentially if you look at the old grasshopper design it was really short. the goal was to have the flight deck and other parts the right length to allow for length variance, although fairly large.

I've been messing with a light carrier, it's around 50 parts or so, the only issue is when it reloads its proximity to the water usually means aircraft attached are battered.

Yes with the 'soon to be released fix' I'll be changing a few things!

1) safer resumes for the ship and parked aircraft.

2) revamped arrestor system

3) prototype catapult system

4) reduced drag in water for a slightly more boat-like feel.

5) various bug fixes.