Orion aka "Ol' Boom-boom"

[Mecha Pants]

If anyone would like the .craft file for my Science fiction-ish Orion ship, there's a download and used mods list over here.

[nyrath]

If anyone would like the .craft file for my Science fiction-ish Orion ship, there's a download and used mods list over here.

Thanks!

Is there a download link for the .craft file?

[Mecha Pants]

There is now, I really shouldn't be posting just before bed

[Markarian421]

I ran into a bug last night trying to return to Eve. Any time I activated Mech Jeb's (2.0.8 i think) landing autopilot from orbit, it disabled the Orion. As in shut it off and clicking on it no longer brought up the menu to turn on and off various magazines. It would remain disabled until I shut off MechJeb and switched to the space center or another craft, and then back.

Trying to think what was different about this ship:

(1) Maybe this is the first time I've done something so insane as to try and land it from orbit with MechJeb? I know I've tried using MechJeb for final landing before with the Orion, with often hilarious/tragic results. Just a touch more thrust before we land *boom* . . . anyway that didn't shut down the Orion.

(2) This is the first ship where I've used the action groups with Orion, an action group to shut off all magazine types.

(3) That ship had an unnecessarily huge part count -- I was just throwing things together to see what worked. It did get to Eve, but very slowly with the game crashing once.

That's about it . . . if I get time later (a big if as to when that might happen) I'll try it on more basic ships and see if I can narrow it down.

[nyrath]

I ran into a bug last night trying to return to Eve. Any time I activated Mech Jeb's (2.0.8 i think) landing autopilot from orbit, it disabled the Orion. As in shut it off and clicking on it no longer brought up the menu to turn on and off various magazines. It would remain disabled until I shut off MechJeb and switched to the space center or another craft, and then back.

Trying to think what was different about this ship:

(1) Maybe this is the first time I've done something so insane as to try and land it from orbit with MechJeb? I know I've tried using MechJeb for final landing before with the Orion, with often hilarious/tragic results. Just a touch more thrust before we land *boom* . . . anyway that didn't shut down the Orion.

(2) This is the first ship where I've used the action groups with Orion, an action group to shut off all magazine types.

(3) That ship had an unnecessarily huge part count -- I was just throwing things together to see what worked. It did get to Eve, but very slowly with the game crashing once.

That's about it . . . if I get time later (a big if as to when that might happen) I'll try it on more basic ships and see if I can narrow it down.

Thanks for the report, let me know the results of your narrowing. Sorry you are having trouble.

Now, did MechJeb ever work with Orion? One of my major bugs is that since Orion does not use a resource, it is invisible to MechJeb and others. The delta V appears as zero. I'm still trying to figure out how to spoof MechJeb.

[Mekan1k]

It fires the orion, but it usually over-corrects.

[Markarian421]

It fires the orion, but it usually over-corrects.

Yeah, exactly. It takes a lot of management, I've used it for things like orbit altitude/angle changes and planetary transfers, I think it calculates burn time from the liquid fuel engines (when I have them installed) and then has some correcting to do. I generally let it do most of the work with the Orion and then switch to the liquid engines for the last few tens of m/s delta v. Or more generally I use it for orientation (RCS) control only and fire the engines manually. With the Orion there's much less need to get the transfer window exactly right!

For landing, like I say I can't recall having tried to land from orbit before. And also to be clear I don't know if this is an Orion bug or a MechJeb bug or a KSP bug. I've never seen MechJeb deactivate another part before.

[pizzaoverhead]

One of my major bugs is that since Orion does not use a resource, it is invisible to MechJeb and others. The delta V appears as zero. I'm still trying to figure out how to spoof MechJeb.

I saw you were attempting create an inert ModuleEngines for MechJeb to read from. Have you tried overriding ModuleEngines' methods with empty ones? You would do it like this:

public override void OnUpdate() { }

Normally if you were overriding something like OnUpdate(), you'd include the line "base.OnUpdate();" so that the default code would be called as well as your own. Leaving it empty should disable the method. When you type "override", it'll show you what else is available to be overridden. It'll probably involve some trial and error to see how much or how little needs disabled.

[crasher925]

I think crasher is serious.

I hope you meant that as a joke. Detecting sarcasm in written form is very hard for me

i am i RLY want em I'm working on the Pheonix and I want to add a nuke with the Titan II rocket for the LOLZ but it will only be a robe no nuke no mushroom cloud explosion no EMP

[nyrath]

I'm still trying to make resources work.

In the meantime, my only successes are silly stuff like animating tiny bombs dropping. Why does everything take so long?

Edited July 1, 2013 by nyrath

[hoojiwana]

Ooh that looks nice. Did you change the pusher plate animation at all? It looks faster and less smooth than I remember it being.

[Markarian421]

I like the bomb drop animation!

I spent a little time this evening trying to reproduce the MechJeb problem. I can reproduce it with my way too many parts and mods ship, I haven't reproduced it with a stock ship + mechjeb yet. I started adding parts to see if I could find one that broke it, but at some point I should probably sleep instead. And that point was probably about 20 minutes ago. Maybe 50.

When it happens, it shuts off all the magazines and then it acts like it does when the game is accelerated -- you can highlight the engine but when you click you don't get a menu. Only when the game goes back to 1x, unlike the other parts the menu doesn't come back. Or like it thinks all the magazines are empty.

I did find out something else with the stock ship though -- I put six stock liquid fuel tanks on top of the magazines, and the radial mount engines could only get fuel from one of the six. I could manually transfer fuel between all the rest, so the game thought they were connected, but the engines could only use one of them. Which reminds me that when I use the large spherical tank on top, I've started always adding multiple fuel lines to connect it to the Orion because otherwise the engines can't always see it. It's like only one of the seven attachment nodes on top is letting fuel through to the engines. (And not the middle one, at least not all the time.)

I also discovered that MechJeb can't land the ship on Orion alone -- it made a de-orbit burn and course correction, but when it came to the final landing it didn't even fire the engine. Interesting that it will use an engine it doesn't understand in some cases and not in others.

[Canopus]

Wow i didn't even think the bomb animation was needed but having one is super cool. And it looks good too

[Der Kosmos]

Now all you need is a better explosion animation.

[nyrath]

Ooh that looks nice. Did you change the pusher plate animation at all? It looks faster and less smooth than I remember it being.

Yes, I had to.

In the engine part.cfg file are values for detonationDelay. In the two engines I supply, the shortest delay is 0.8 seconds between bomb detonations.

This means that the animation has to take no longer than 0.8 seconds.

Before, the only thing the animation had to do in 0.8 seconds is make the pusher plate move up and down. Now it has to animate the bomb drop AND the pusher plate movement in 0.8 seconds. So the pusher plate animation is faster and less smooth.

In order to simplify the code, I have the 0.8 seconds divided into five equal sections: bomb drop, plate from neutral to full up, plate from full up to neutral, plate from neutral to full down, plate from full down to neutral. I might have to try and make the bomb drop section shorter. Of course that will make the bomb drop less smooth.

Now all you need is a better explosion animation.

The only way I know to make an explosion is by calling FXMonger.Explode(). I'm open to a better animation, but the documentation is sparse. Understandably so, the Dev's priority is making the game work and implementing features, documentation is secondary.

Edited July 1, 2013 by nyrath

[nyrath]

Idle thought: should I make it so if the throttle is in the red zone, the pusher plate will tend to overheat and explode?

[Canopus]

Idle thought: should I make it so if the throttle is in the red zone, the pusher plate will tend to overheat and explode?

Not to much please.

[Mekan1k]

Idle thought: should I make it so if the throttle is in the red zone, the pusher plate will tend to overheat and explode?

No! NOOOOOOO!!!

Please don't.

[nyrath]

Not to much please.

No! NOOOOOOO!!!

Please don't.

The nays have it.

[Manifest]

Oh hey, now we get to build huge cruisers, I've actually played with this mod for some time now and have found more than joy in using it.

I've got to ask though, is there a possibility that the many different magazines will get their own version of the multimagazine?

The thing is all the little magazines quickly turn into hundreds of parts (at least for me, since, well, I build cruisers with the thing.)

and my computer doesn't like it when ksp tries to load more than around 300 parts.

I know this probably sounds like something that might be more for my convenience, but at the same time it would be easier to simply have a huge block instead of many upon many little parts, wouldn't it?

Any way, love the mod, love your face for making it, and all the best of luck to you and the mod in the future.

On wards, to litter the planets and moons with radiation!

[nyrath]

I've got to ask though, is there a possibility that the many different magazines will get their own version of the multimagazine?

The thing is all the little magazines quickly turn into hundreds of parts (at least for me, since, well, I build cruisers with the thing.)

and my computer doesn't like it when ksp tries to load more than around 300 parts.

I'll see what I can do. I think it is possible to make multi-part part.cfg files. The main issues are

[1] not having to re-use the texture for each multi-magazine, since the blasted texture file is 3 megabytes! KSP's ram usage is tight enough as it is

[2] clogging up the VAB catalog

[Canopus]

I thought the Small magazines would actually fuse to solve the wobble problem?

[Tommygun]

I'll see what I can do. I think it is possible to make multi-part part.cfg files. The main issues are

[1] not having to re-use the texture for each multi-magazine, since the blasted texture file is 3 megabytes! KSP's ram usage is tight enough as it is

[2] clogging up the VAB catalog

Yes, maybe you could have just two larger magazines.

The first one with small, medium and large nukes in it.

The second one with extra large, enormous and humongous.

They could also carry more of each type of nuke. Each magazine would still weight more, but you reduce the part numbers in the VAB and on the rocket.

[nyrath]

I thought the Small magazines would actually fuse to solve the wobble problem?

I do not think they are talking about the wobble problem. It is my understanding that in KSP the frame rate will rapidly degrade if the part-count of the ship becomes too high.

Yes, maybe you could have just two larger magazines.

The first one with small, medium and large nukes in it.

The second one with extra large, enormous and humongous.

They could also carry more of each type of nuke. Each magazine would still weight more, but you reduce the part numbers in the VAB and on the rocket.

The good news is that with KSP 0.20 it is now easy to make multiple parts that share the same model and/or textures. I did a quick test, just by changing the part.cfg file a bit I made two multi-magazines appear in the VAB catalog.

The bad news is that making one magazine part containing multiple nuke types will be tricky. Currently the magazine and the magazine handler code assumes only one nuke type per magazine.

Increasing the number of nukes in a multi-magazine is doable, but I have to be careful. Increasing the mass of a part but not increasing the volume has the effect of increasing the part's density. And for whatever reason the KSP physics engine does not handle dense parts very well, the physics break and strange things happen.

I'll have to experiment.

[Canopus]

I do not think they are talking about the wobble problem. It is my understanding that in KSP the frame rate will rapidly degrade if the part-count of the ship becomes too high.

Oh i thought the magazine parts would actually become one.