Orion aka "Ol' Boom-boom"

[Canopus]

Wow you are really fast with your update progress

[nyrath]

The engine also seems to fire, playing the animations, using a bomb, applying no thrust, but still destroying anything nearby. I just had it blow up Roche on an attempted docking with a quickload.

Wait, the engine fired off a nuke which destroyed Roche??!!?

Oopsie. I didn't know Roche was considered a "vessel" by the KSP code. I'll have to fix that.

edit

Roche has a mass of 597 tons, I'm going to arbitrarily set it so any part caught in a bomb blast will be spared if that particular part has a mass over 100 tons.

This means if a second Orion ship is too close, it will all be destroyed except that the 15 kiloton magazines will come flying out of the explosion.

(of course the 100 tons is defined in the nuke magazine part.cfg file, so that users can fiddle with it if they want)

Edited June 3, 2013 by nyrath

[Canopus]

Yes Roche is basically just a big part.

[hoojiwana]

Wait, the engine fired off a nuke which destroyed Roche??!!?

Oopsie. I didn't know Roche was considered a "vessel" by the KSP code. I'll have to fix that.

Yeah Roche is just a bit part that you cant attach anything to in the VAB and has a docking port designed to work with the asteroid stabber you get given. It shows up as debris on the map. KSP planets and moons are all on-rails and cannot be affected by physics, so Nova had to "cheat" the asteroid into space on the savefile for the scenario.

[Der Kosmos]

I imagine that detonating nuclear explosives near Roche would violate the scientific objectives the same way exposing it to an atmosphere would.

[nyrath]

I'm currently working on hoojiwana's restart problem.

I have made it so activating the Orion does not automatically spit out a bomb. This should fix the bug with unexpected bomb detonations upon quicksaving and switching between vessels. The autospit was originally to allow the user to launch an Orion held with stablizer struts, before the throttle was implemented.

Bombs can no longer destroy Roche. Unless the user sneakily decides to edit the part.cfg file. There is a maximum mass parameter, any part with more than that mass is immune to bombs.

Bombs now do not just cause impact to other ships, it also heats them up.

Struts are no longer required with individual bomb magazines. Before, if you failed to add struts, the magazines would dance around like Mexican jumping beans and explode, while the vessel was on the launch pad. This is because the attachments are shaky if one part has more than x10 the mass of an attached part. Since the large magazines have about x100 times the mass of the engine, this was a problem. Now, upon activation, all the magazines sort of weld themselves solid to the engine. This will probably prevent jettisoning magazines via decouplers, but I'm fixing one bug at a time.

I'll get a new version up once I've fixed hoojiwana's restart problem.

[Canopus]

No struts needed anymore? Awesome!

[nyrath]

New Version Up for Testing

Go to first entry in thread

[Canopus]

It works perfect. No wobbling at all.

Edit: i discovered a little bug. It seems like if you attach things too low on the engine the whole thing wobbles itself to death on the pad.

Edited June 4, 2013 by Canopus

[nyrath]

It works perfect. No wobbling at all.

Edit: i discovered a little bug. It seems like if you attach things too low on the engine the whole thing wobbles itself to death on the pad.

Oops. What did you attach and where? Was the Orion sitting on the launch pad with no support struts or with? If with, how many? Engine with the support column on top or engine without?

This thing has more problems with wobble than it should.

[Canopus]

Oops. What did you attach and where? Was the Orion sitting on the launch pad with no support struts or with? If with, how many? Engine with the support column on top or engine without?

This thing has more problems with wobble than it should.

It was the engine with the column on the top. I noticed everytime i put the launch clamps to low on the engine, the whole ship exploded right when the physics kicked in. Putting them near the top of the engine solver that issue.

[Anglave]

The "jumping beans" issue isn't entirely resolved.

They never actually let go of the craft, but the magazines were certainly trying to escape on their own.

Edited June 4, 2013 by Anglave

[Canopus]

The "jumping beans" issue isn't exactly resolved.

They never actually let go of the craft, but the magazines were certainly trying to escape on their own.

That actually never happened to me. Are you sure that you have the latest version?

[nyrath]

The "jumping beans" issue isn't exactly resolved.

They never actually let go of the craft, but the magazines were certainly trying to escape on their own.

Arrgh.

Did they do that on the launch pad, or only after lift-off?

Usually when I see them jumping that much, the ship explodes shortly afterwards.

They never ever totally let go, but while they flail about sooner or later they hit something, then Boom!

[Anglave]

From the time physics loads until I end the flight. Including on the pad.

I tried using just one layer of 80MN magazines and it was stable enough to fly. I replaced two with two 400MN magazines (still just one layer total) and they induced a jitter that was quite evident in my craft's motion. I got to Kerbin orbit before I completely lost control and the craft began spinning faster and faster on its own. Two layers of magazines is immediately uncontrollable.

All I did was unzip USAFOrionMod_v9.zip and put the subfolders in the KSP main file structure. The mod seems to be working great except the jumping behavior.

A note: I'm currently locked in my cube, testing on a Core i5 Latitude laptop. And I've only got KSP 0.20.0 here. I don't suspect this is an issue that would change with updating to 0.20.2, but I'll spend the hour to download it and see if it helps.

Edited June 4, 2013 by Anglave

[Canopus]

From the time physics loads until I end the flight.

I tried using just one layer of 80MN magazines and it was stable enough to fly. I replaced two with two 400MN magazines (still just one layer total) and they induced a jitter that was quite evident in my craft's motion. I got to Kerbin orbit before I completely lost control and the craft began spinning faster and faster on its own.

All I did was unzip USAFOrionMod_v9.zip and put the subfolders in the KSP main file structure. The mod seems to be working great except the jumping behavior.

I see that you use the big magazines. I haven't tested them myself yet. Maybe these are problematic.

[nyrath]

I noticed everytime i put the launch clamps to low on the engine, the whole ship exploded right when the physics kicked in. Putting them near the top of the engine solver that issue.

Very interesting! I did not realize that where the launch clamps were attached was important. In retrospect it makes sense. The engine is relatively light, the magazines are quite dense.

[Anglave]

Update: Two layers of the 2MN magazines works fine. Three layers of the 3.5MN magazines caused a spontaneous unplanned dis-assembly, followed by blatantly non-physics behavior. (My craft flew up in the air while rotating very rapidly, and hovered there, bobbing up and down a few hundred meters over the pad. Note that I had not yet activated the engine.)

[nyrath]

From the time physics loads until I end the flight. Including on the pad.

I tried using just one layer of 80MN magazines and it was stable enough to fly. I replaced two with two 400MN magazines (still just one layer total) and they induced a jitter that was quite evident in my craft's motion. I got to Kerbin orbit before I completely lost control and the craft began spinning faster and faster on its own. Two layers of magazines is immediately uncontrollable.

All I did was unzip USAFOrionMod_v9.zip and put the subfolders in the KSP main file structure. The mod seems to be working great except the jumping behavior.

A note: I'm currently locked in my cube, testing on a Core i5 Latitude laptop. And I've only got KSP 0.20.0 here. I don't suspect this is an issue that would change with updating to 0.20.2, but I'll spend the hour to download it and see if it helps.

Not sure what is happening. Does the \plugins\USAFOrion.dll have a modified date of 6/4/2013?

I made an Orion stack: a Mk 1-2 Command Pod, an Advanced S.A.S. Module Large, UKAF Nuclear Pulse Engine (with center column), two 400MN magazine, four 80MN magazines (all in a single layer), and 16 launch support struts attached to the engine right below the magazines. No jumping, launched fine, got it into orbit, but had trouble turning it because it was a bit massive for the poor SAS. I should have put a set of RCS on it but I wanted to simplify things. The magazines never jumped.

[Anglave]

Not sure what is happening. Does the \plugins\USAFOrion.dll have a modified date of 6/4/2013?

It does.

I don't know what's up either. I suppose it could be the version of the game, but that seems unlikely to me.

I'm going to try replicating your stack exactly.

Update: I did exactly that. If I don't launch, it walks itself off the pad in about 30 seconds, tips over, and explodes.

I'm now downloading 0.20.2. It should take just over an hour... (I'm tethered on my phone, at work).

Edited June 4, 2013 by Anglave

[nyrath]

And while you are at it, be sure to shut down the entire game and restart it again. Just to be sure.

I've had KSP start acting weird sometimes, but a restart fixes it. Things like in the VAB, I set the symmetry button to "4" then it re-sets itself to "6"

Update:

I'm on Steam, so I am forced to use the latest version. According to the title screen I'm using v0.20.2.186

I'm on a Windows 7 (64-bit) with an AMD 3.50 GHz six-core processor with 8 GB RAM, not that should make a difference.

Edited June 4, 2013 by nyrath

[Anglave]

I've restarted a few times now, in between testing. The "overstimulated legume" behavior persists.

[Anglave]

Brand new clean download and install of the game. Version 0.20.2

Unzipped Orion v_9 and put the Parts and Plugins folder in the game's root directory.

Launched the game and built a new ship. Mk1-2 command pod, ASAS, Orion engine with modular stack, an assortment of magazines.

Launched my ship, and...

it hung out there for a while, hovering and bouncing excitedly, before it fell and exploded.

The magazines seem a little over-energetic.

Edited June 4, 2013 by Anglave

[nyrath]

{ facepalm }

Ohboy, that's bad. I'm sorry you are having so much trouble. I'll have to think about this.

You might try using some struts on the magazines, bottom and top, to see if that changes anything.

You did launch your ship by setting the throttle, turning off all the magazines except the most powerful one, and hitting the space bar, right?

Edited June 5, 2013 by nyrath

[Anglave]

You did launch your ship by setting the throttle, turning off all the magazines except the most powerful one, and hitting the space bar, right?

I did not launch my ship, I should have been more clear. I clicked the "launch" button, which loaded it sitting on the pad.

Then the photo, above.

Edited June 5, 2013 by Anglave