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[0.21.1] KAS v0.4.3 - Struts, pipes, part storage, containers, merged winches & more


KospY

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Is it possible to disable key control by default of Winches? I don't see an option anywhere in the KAS folder, and I'm tired of having to tell it to turn it off when I'm not using it.

I have Numpad 2 bound to my ship's controls.

Also, this has been mentioned before, but I use a Winch to reel in ships that have no docking port to my space station. Unfortunately, the speed the winch pulls is a bit excessive. And when the ship hits the station... it's not pretty. I had it shake itself apart.

An option to set the speed of the winch (especially in space) would be nice.

You can adjust the spool speed in the config.

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Does anyone have trouble placing KAS stuff in Munar Orbit? The ghost just stays yellow even after editing placement distance.

I have the same problem in Minmus orbit (though I haven't touched the configs). Everything works great landed on Kerbin, though.

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I've seen some people modify the winch length to allow airships and such to be anchored to the ground, even at altitude. How would I go about doing that, without causing bugs? I tried it myself and dropping an anchor resulted in camera weirdness and the airship being launched upwards.

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I can also report the strange turning problem with things that have winches on them... I have a space station with four winches and it's very hard to dock with it since it starts spinning almost instantly even after reloading a quicksave... -_-'

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@Kimberley: Most issues that arise from making KAS cable longer have to do with view distance, No matter what you can only have a cable/plug as far away from your CoM as your view/draw distance is set to. Default is 2km, unless your running a mod that extends that range your stuck with 2km.

Also some issues arise with extreme cable length and a craft that touches ground in multiple points.

@Benie: No anchors wont work for airships over water. An anchor allows an airship to save by touching the ground, so the crafted can be saved as 'landed'. This does not happen when a craft (or part of it) touches water. You would have to sink the anchor and plug in order for it to work over water (as youd still have to touch ground) but since the plug/anchor wont sink as is kinda out of luck there.

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Might it work to add some sort of weights to the anchor? Attaching some dense parts to it, etc.

Yes that is possible, but not very doable based on weight needed. I have done alot of testing with this (more for off-shore drilling...but sinking stuff is the same regardless of reason ya), and it takes about 1.8 tons just to sink the plug+cable at 1m/s(the unspool speed of winch). The real problem with that is the way KSP handles water physics. A 1meter cube will displace much much more than 1 square meter of water in KSP, as a result parts all have a silly super high boyance to em.

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What you could do is apply a force to push your craft underwater, and then use a grappling hook to attach your craft the sea floor. If you make the winch length a bit longer, you can get back up to the surface by extending it. At least, that should work on paper....

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Is there any way to make the cable "stronger" so lifting heavy loads produces less strain? Right now it seems impossible to retract the winch far enough to "lock" a heavy load in place, as even when the gui shows 0.00m of line payed out the strain value can be as high as -1.00m which seems to mean that the cable has stretched 1.00m, given that the plug is usually still a good distance away from the winch (there is also that weird air gap between the plug connector and the port it's attached to).

I did some experimenting with the .cfgs to try to fix it, initially changing the plugbreakforce values on the connector and the stack port from 50 and 40 to 500 and 400, respectively. While that seems to allow the plug to remain connected even at extreme strain values and large air gaps between plug and port, it didn't fix the problem. After that I increased the cablespring value of the winch from 1000 to 100000, as the comment in the .cfg seems to say that it would help hold the plug and port together (perhaps eliminating the air gap), but I didn't notice any difference in performance between the two values. I also tried increasing the lockmindist to 2.0 and decreasing the lockminfwddot to 0.01 just to see if I could get it to lock at all but it still says the connector is not aligned.

Is there any way to get the winch and plug to behave more favorably with heavy loads?

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Is there any way to get the winch and plug to behave more favorably with heavy loads?

Yes and no....

In all my testing and config tweeking I never found a way to fix the strain your talking about. However you can use more than one winch/plug on heavy loads to keep this from happening.

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Hey i am working on some movable parts and was wondering is their anyway to spawn the vehicle with a cable already connected to a piece of ship.

That is not possible with the current winches.

My current idea about that is to create a dedicated part that will be able to be attached from the editor, like the regular struts. But instead of a strut, you will get a motorized cable. I think this will be really usefull to strengthen cranes for exemple.

So has anyone heard from KospY in a while? Is development of KAS still continuing?

Development has slowed this last months, as I'm pretty busy IRL until the end of the year. I also didn't get any new models from Winn75, as it was busy too.

However, I managed to find time to add a completly new feature for KAS v0.4, something that a lot of people will like for sure :)

This feature is near completion, and will post more information about it soon :)

Edited by KospY
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from what i have been hearing it does work in 0.21, although i'm not sure as i haven't tried yet, i'm waiting for mechjeb to be updated before using it, (skycranes)

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I have been using it without problems today. Eager to hear more about kas 0.4 =) And the strut/cable idea is brilliant, if you could make it happen that would open ALOT of new designs.....oooohhhhh the glorious mining rigs I could build!

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@Benie: No anchors wont work for airships over water. An anchor allows an airship to save by touching the ground, so the crafted can be saved as 'landed'. This does not happen when a craft (or part of it) touches water. You would have to sink the anchor and plug in order for it to work over water (as youd still have to touch ground) but since the plug/anchor wont sink as is kinda out of luck there.

Hmm, what if I was to tweak the weight of the anchor and the plug to 1.8t to make it heavy enough to sink, then set the length of the cable to say, 100000 in hopes it'll grab the sea floor?

Then again that could be even worse. With the weight of both, my airship would be too heavy to fly. :(

Edited by Benie
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I've always had issues saving while a KAS Winch is deployed, after saving, going to the Space Center, Tracking Station, and back to it.

The plug and what it was attached to, disappears. Had that with my airship, of forgetting what to do to depart. Forgot you're not supposed to undock, ever. Just reel it in.

Undocking caused the anchor to be stuck in the ground, pulling my airship down with it.

Edited by Benie
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Hmm, what if I was to tweak the weight of the anchor and the plug to 1.8t to make it heavy enough to sink, then set the length of the cable to say, 100000 in hopes it'll grab the sea floor?

Then again that could be even worse. With the weight of both, my airship would be too heavy to fly. :(

Easy solution...make your airships also float, if you need to save you can splash down, come to a stop and hit the space center. I always include flotation on my airships that do extended runs over water. The pontoons from firespitter works great for this.

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