[WIP] THSS - Tri-Hexagonal Structural Strut

[Gristle]

Gristle: that is a very nice station.

Thank you. Didn't get to finish it though before .21 was released. Had plans to add another section of solar panels, a garage with space for 2 of the small work vessels and a larger hab module. Biggest obstacle to completing the station was that it was in a polar orbit which limits your launch windows to just 2 times per K-day.

[taniwha]

Ah, heh, I'd failed to notice the ice-cap.

[Benzschwagel]

you know what would also be really cool? Kethane versions of the tanks (and possibly a converter, although Lack made one for LLL). I'm trying to make a floating kethane barge for mining and distributing kethane, but I keep having to go from THSS part to Lack Luster Labs kethane tanks and back. Also, it would be real nice to have deuterium tanks as per the Impossible Innovations mod, but that's not as important. I'm not a modder, but I figure that since the models are already made, it would be as simple as making the tanks "kethane green" and then changing the stats of them. But hey, good job on the work that's already been done, and thank you.

Benz

Edit: I'm not sure if this was discussed earlier, but figured that I'd put it out there.

Edited August 15, 2013 by Benzschwagel

[taniwha]

Benzschwagel: since the THSS are all orange and indistinguishable from each other anyway, just copy the part.cfg and hack the resource sections. Just and the liquid fuel and oxidizer amounts and multiply by 2.5 to get an appropriate amount for kethane.

[User Unrelated]

Love this modpack!

I didn't even think about those little docking guidance things as being used for docking guidance...

I was using them to mount lights, and solar panels at different angles!

[johnsonwax]

Another vote for a dedicated Kethane tank, particularly in the octo fuel tank sizes. My station needs some kethane green to contrast nicely with all that orange.

And I agree with JeBuSBrian that standardized sizes are important for these kinds of sets. This is a widespread problem across all sets - we've managed to standardize around certain diameters, but we're a bit all over the place on lengths. I think this set actually does a pretty good job of it, it's around the edges where this gets hard. If you want to construct a large modular station, using docking connectors as part of that effort throws off your spacing just enough. It requires having either zero height connectors to keep your size standardization, or connectors that have corresponding non-connector parts which can pad them out to a standardize length - and some sets do these kinds of clever tricks, but its neither obvious nor easy to do. You get selection challenges with the former, etc.

Rather than put a specific request on this set, we need a structural equivalent to the 1.25m/2.5m/3.75m propulsion standard. It could be exactly the same standard (that would be useful, actually) but that would allow us to mix/match structural elements from different sets, habitation modules, etc. Tall order, but food for thought.

[Benzschwagel]

this might be something that might require goblin enterprises' assistance, since he has helped in the past to design parts to connect parts of different mods together.

Edited August 16, 2013 by Benzschwagel
I apparently can't spell when I'm exhausted

[Benzschwagel]

Here's a thought, might we be able to get permission to work on / edit parts? And if so, can someone do the work of standardizing parts to size and/or creating kethane versions? I could probably try, but I would have to learn everything from scratch, and I'm not artistic...

[Starwaster]

Here's a thought, might we be able to get permission to work on / edit parts? And if so, can someone do the work of standardizing parts to size and/or creating kethane versions? I could probably try, but I would have to learn everything from scratch, and I'm not artistic...

Maybe with some proper UV mapping and texturing. Shaders don't work right at all if you don't have a UV map.

[Ghostshark27]

I have been working with this mod for a while and love it! While admitedly I haven't tried docking with the Tri-strut couplers yet, I would agree that there needs to be more of them. I first got this mod to use it in a transporter-style ship that would move base modules from Kerbin to wherever, and put a bunch of the stock couplers around it to fit that goal. Problem was I'm not creative enough to design a ship well enough to get into orbit in one piece (and I refuse to hyperedit), so I'd really like some different styles of couplers to help piece together a ship in orbit that will fit said bill. As such, I've been using these parts in various space station designs I'm working on and they are coming out great! Keep up the great work and I can't wait to see what you come up with next! This is definately in my top 5 of fav mods!

[Toyotawolf]

Is there any chance this mod will be updated to be less poly intensive, and not such a huge memory hit?

[johnsonwax]

I've written up a tutorial on how to add the kethane tanks to this mod. It's pretty straightforward and should help people be able to modify other modules.

I've written another tutorial on how to weld parts using THSS struts. This first welding tutorial builds a tri strut dock welded to a 1.25m adapter, preserving the docking functionality. A more advanced tutorial in a few days will take 6 separate parts (5 from this, plus one stock) to build a modular space station component that is also subtly scaled so it perfectly matches the size of FusTek Karmony nodes. Armed with that knowledge, you'll be able to weld any number of THSS struts together and tweak their size to match whatever you need. In my case, I'm reducing a 23 part assembly which gets repeated several times in my station to 8 parts. With 4 assemblies, this reduces the part count by 60, increases rigidity, and further reduces part count by allowing me to eliminate some struts and produces parts that are perfectly sized so that I can have the backbone of the station be a double dock of a FusTek CBM dock as well as a Tri Strut positive orientation dock. Very sturdy.

[johnsonwax]

I've added the intermediate welding tutorial.

What's most notable is that is shows you how to stretch pieces in only one dimension, so if you need to stretch/contract a truss piece along it's length to make it fit, you can do that without changing the other dimensions.

This is also a potential solution to improving modularity and reducing memory footprint. Instead of having a dedicated strut, double strut, 1/3 strut, 1/6 strut, you could take the 1/3 strut, weld 3 of them together to replace the strut, weld 6 to replace the double strut. KSP would only load one model for those 3 parts (instead of 3 models) and unlike the existing parts which aren't multiples of each other (strut is 1.5, double is 2.982, short is .516, unscaled), you could shrink the 1/3 strut length to 94% and after scaling would be exactly 1.25m - a standard size. The standard strut would then be 3.75m, the double 7.5m, etc. That way if you need to build your station up with components, you can do it and always wind up with the same dimensions. I'm planning on doing the same thing with the Octo fuel tanks, eliminating the triple tanks for 3 singles welded together, etc.

Something for Semni to consider. I'll probably work up the .cfg files myself, which I'm happy to share.

[alacrity]

Any thoughts on adding fuel/consumables to the square girder structures.

I really like the triangular, but when I have to use rcs ports i need a balanced symmetry base for them (usual add some stock square struts to the end for the RCS)

Alacrity

[JeBuSBrian]

I've written another tutorial on how to weld parts using THSS struts. This first welding tutorial builds a tri strut dock welded to a 1.25m adapter, preserving the docking functionality. A more advanced tutorial in a few days will take 6 separate parts (5 from this, plus one stock) to build a modular space station component that is also subtly scaled so it perfectly matches the size of FusTek Karmony nodes. Armed with that knowledge, you'll be able to weld any number of THSS struts together and tweak their size to match whatever you need. In my case, I'm reducing a 23 part assembly which gets repeated several times in my station to 8 parts. With 4 assemblies, this reduces the part count by 60, increases rigidity, and further reduces part count by allowing me to eliminate some struts and produces parts that are perfectly sized so that I can have the backbone of the station be a double dock of a FusTek CBM dock as well as a Tri Strut positive orientation dock. Very sturdy.

This is pretty much what I found myself doing while building my own station. Replacing a bunch of struts by welding multiples together, rescaling, etc. Ended up spending more time doing that than actually playing the game.

[dizzysaurus]

This is pretty much what I found myself doing while building my own station. Replacing a bunch of struts by welding multiples together, rescaling, etc. Ended up spending more time doing that than actually playing the game.

This makes me wonder if there will ever be a way to combine parts in-game *and* get the reduced-part-count speed/memory benefit from doing that.

Could be an interesting mod to program, but procedurally combining models could be really difficult...

[1of6Billion]

This makes me wonder if there will ever be a way to combine parts in-game *and* get the reduced-part-count speed/memory benefit from doing that.

Could be an interesting mod to program, but procedurally combining models could be really difficult...

IIRC that's on the ToDo list of the Developers

[1of6Billion]

Can I persuade you to just post the damn thing here?

[Catsceo]

Are better textures going to be comming soon? The Octo-strut station modules are really lacking. Otherwise, great pack!

[Moencino]

Love these struts! I agree they could use some love in the texture department, and for my taste the orange is a woefully day-glow (something a little more rugged n' weathered would look fantastic), the style is fantastic. I wanted to use them in my first station, but alas...one of the key parts simply won't work. Photos below, but basically the 6 way adapter won't connect regardless of what I do. It'll connect on the round side, but not the triangle side. Sadly, that means I can't make it fit the plan I had. Any thoughts on what's going on?

No problem connecting the round side:

No amount of spinning, rotating, or adjusting camera angles will let me connect the triangle side. It clicks into place like it wants to connect, but won't actually attach.

[johnsonwax]

There's another adapter in the set that has two of the tri nodes as primary. You might need to rotate it, but it'll connect.

[Moencino]

Ahhh, ok, I'll try that. Thanks J.

[Gristle]

Love these struts! I agree they could use some love in the texture department, and for my taste the orange is a woefully day-glow (something a little more rugged n' weathered would look fantastic), the style is fantastic. I wanted to use them in my first station, but alas...one of the key parts simply won't work. Photos below, but basically the 6 way adapter won't connect regardless of what I do. It'll connect on the round side, but not the triangle side. Sadly, that means I can't make it fit the plan I had. Any thoughts on what's going on?No problem connecting the round side:No amount of spinning, rotating, or adjusting camera angles will let me connect the triangle side. It clicks into place like it wants to connect, but won't actually attach.

Parts like this can only initially attach on 2 sides. There are 2 almost identical THSS-033-H parts. The one you want is the THSS-033-H as this had the initial attach points on a tri-hex-strut side. The one you have int he pisture is hte THSS-033-H Tipped part that has the initial attach nodes on the circular sections.edit: Ninjaed

[WhatsThisButtonDo]

I've added the intermediate welding tutorial.

What's most notable is that is shows you how to stretch pieces in only one dimension, so if you need to stretch/contract a truss piece along it's length to make it fit, you can do that without changing the other dimensions.

This is also a potential solution to improving modularity and reducing memory footprint. Instead of having a dedicated strut, double strut, 1/3 strut, 1/6 strut, you could take the 1/3 strut, weld 3 of them together to replace the strut, weld 6 to replace the double strut. KSP would only load one model for those 3 parts (instead of 3 models) and unlike the existing parts which aren't multiples of each other (strut is 1.5, double is 2.982, short is .516, unscaled), you could shrink the 1/3 strut length to 94% and after scaling would be exactly 1.25m - a standard size. The standard strut would then be 3.75m, the double 7.5m, etc. That way if you need to build your station up with components, you can do it and always wind up with the same dimensions. I'm planning on doing the same thing with the Octo fuel tanks, eliminating the triple tanks for 3 singles welded together, etc.

Something for Semni to consider. I'll probably work up the .cfg files myself, which I'm happy to share.

Maybe you could work something out with Semni so you could post a download of your welded/modified parts?

[Benzschwagel]

hmm, is this dying off? been over a month since the last post, almost 4 months since the last pack update... bump anyone?