Orion aka "Ol' Boom-boom"

[magnemoe]

Ah, you mean dock the bomb tender to the big ship and pump the bombs from one to the other? Yes, I am still trying to figure out how to do that, I want it as well. Trouble is that bombs are not quite like resources, and the documentation is sketchy. But that does have a high priority.

Can you do the transfer with an script.

Right click on magazine A and B, and you get the bomb transfer menu who transfer bombs between them, you basically only need the transfer all option so if magazine A has 20 bombs and B has 60 A would get 40 from B.

One other way who might be more user friendly is to do this on ship basis, require that you can differentiate the bombs/ magazines on current ship and the one docked, now transfer the selected amount from ship A to B.

Naturally to use another orion for resupply.

Fallback plan might be to use specialized refueling canisters.

In short don't try to treat the bombs as fuel. Optionally use an dummy fuel you transfer and then convert into bombs.

[nyrath]

Can you do the transfer with an script.

Right click on magazine A and B, and you get the bomb transfer menu who transfer bombs between them, you basically only need the transfer all option so if magazine A has 20 bombs and B has 60 A would get 40 from B.

One other way who might be more user friendly is to do this on ship basis, require that you can differentiate the bombs/ magazines on current ship and the one docked, now transfer the selected amount from ship A to B.

Naturally to use another orion for resupply.

Fallback plan might be to use specialized refueling canisters.

In short don't try to treat the bombs as fuel. Optionally use an dummy fuel you transfer and then convert into bombs.

Hrpmp. From a menu, eh? I like that idea. Thanks, I'll look into that. I'd much rather fool with making a nice GUI to transfer stuff instead of trying to make resources do something it was not intended to do.

I had thought of using a dummy fuel for transfer (blutonium), but that quickly got messy as well.

[Anton P. Nym]

At the risk of spamming, here's a link to my overly-wordy write up of the first phase of Project DUNABOOM, Big Stan's voyage to Duna. http://anton-p-nym.livejournal.com/544267.html

As a teaser, and because it's so pretty, here's a picture of Big Stan circularising her orbit.

As I noted in my blog, this is about as close as I'm going to get to being Chesley Bonestell.

-- Steve

[nyrath]

{ Marvin the Martian voice } De-lays, de-lays!

Using a menu to transfer looks do-able, and I'm proceeding along those lines.

Then it dawns on me that in order to test the transfer of pulse units between docked vessels, I need two vessels that are docked. Which means I have to quickly learn how to dock two vessels. I'm probably going to cheat just this once and install MechJeb.

Then there is the slight matter of the nuclear charges destroying everything within a quarter of a kilometer (including the ship you are trying to dock to). So I strapped on some fuel tanks with chemical motors. It wasn't until I started circularizing my orbit that I noticed the strap on rockets were missing. Apparently the Orion's accelerating stripped them off slicker than scum on a Louisiana swamp. I'll fiddle with the design just a wee bit, but if it takes any longer I'll just temporarily disable the nuclear destruction code in the plug-in.

I'm visualizing the menu like this: it is activated by right clicking on the Orion engine. If the vessel is docked to another vessel that has Orion magazines (empty or not), the pop-up dialog will appear.

There will be a button in a tool-bar for each nuke type that [a] is represented by at least one magazine of that type on both vessels and at least one vessel has some spare capacity for that type (you cannot load 3.5MN nukes if all your 3.5MN magazines are full).

Click on the nuke type you want to transfer. Two indicators appear, displaying the number of that nuke type on the docker and on the dockee. Between will be two arrow buttons, one to transfer from docker to dockee, the other to transfer from dockee to docker. Each button will disable as soon as the recipient ship has no spare capacity for that nuke type.

If I am feeling energetic I'll put an "OK" and "CANCEL" button.

To simplify the dialog, the transfer will automatically evenly distribute the new nukes among all available magazines. Allowing the user to do it on a magazine by magazine basis will be incredibly complicated.

[nyrath]

At the risk of spamming, here's a link to my overly-wordy write up of the first phase of Project DUNABOOM, Big Stan's voyage to Duna. http://anton-p-nym.livejournal.com/544267.html

As a teaser, and because it's so pretty, here's a picture of Big Stan circularising her orbit.

As I noted in my blog, this is about as close as I'm going to get to being Chesley Bonestell.

No, that is not spam at all, I love it! And that is a remarkably dramatic image of the Orion, most impressive! As is your commentary in your blog.

[Manifest]

What if the many different resources where made into one resource, so we didn't have to juggle 40, 80, and so on around?

And it was then made so you could determine the payload fired by the Orion drive,

meaning you could sort of choose yourself how many resources you wanted to use on the engine at that particular moment,

the magazines could then hold different loads of the resources.

What I propose, in short; is this: you only have one resource,

the different magazines will then hold different loads of the resource (the higher capacity the more weight),

you can then increase and decrease the loads of resources used in every burst at will.

Just an idea I had, if any one can broaden this idea that would be great, you know, juggle some different perspectives on the project around.

/making my self indirectly part of the project even though i contribute nothing what so ever, yay for passive critique herpderp.

Edited July 8, 2013 by Manifest

[magnemoe]

{ Marvin the Martian voice } De-lays, de-lays!

Using a menu to transfer looks do-able, and I'm proceeding along those lines.

Then it dawns on me that in order to test the transfer of pulse units between docked vessels, I need two vessels that are docked. Which means I have to quickly learn how to dock two vessels. I'm probably going to cheat just this once and install MechJeb.

Then there is the slight matter of the nuclear charges destroying everything within a quarter of a kilometer (including the ship you are trying to dock to). So I strapped on some fuel tanks with chemical motors. It wasn't until I started circularizing my orbit that I noticed the strap on rockets were missing. Apparently the Orion's accelerating stripped them off slicker than scum on a Louisiana swamp. I'll fiddle with the design just a wee bit, but if it takes any longer I'll just temporarily disable the nuclear destruction code in the plug-in.

I'm visualizing the menu like this: it is activated by right clicking on the Orion engine. If the vessel is docked to another vessel that has Orion magazines (empty or not), the pop-up dialog will appear.

There will be a button in a tool-bar for each nuke type that [a] is represented by at least one magazine of that type on both vessels and at least one vessel has some spare capacity for that type (you cannot load 3.5MN nukes if all your 3.5MN magazines are full).

Click on the nuke type you want to transfer. Two indicators appear, displaying the number of that nuke type on the docker and on the dockee. Between will be two arrow buttons, one to transfer from docker to dockee, the other to transfer from dockee to docker. Each button will disable as soon as the recipient ship has no spare capacity for that nuke type.

If I am feeling energetic I'll put an "OK" and "CANCEL" button.

To simplify the dialog, the transfer will automatically evenly distribute the new nukes among all available magazines. Allowing the user to do it on a magazine by magazine basis will be incredibly complicated.

Something like this was that I thought off.

To simplify stuff you might just show the full magazines to, if both ships has full capacity of 3.4MN nukes you can not move anything around.

Main problem might be to differentiate between the two docked ships, in the game they are treated like one but have no idea how they are handled in scripts.

Note you can build docked parts in the wab and test on the launchpad.

Another more realistic version is to build two rovers with docking ports or use KAS, you can just drive the first off then launchpad and then the second. Kerbal attachment system make this simple.

To launch two ship and dock them would be the last option.

I always add chemical rockets to my orions, used for close in work, fine orbital changes and landings.

[Canopus]

Sorry Manifest but i sure would like to keep the different bombs

[nyrath]

Main problem might be to differentiate between the two docked ships, in the game they are treated like one but have no idea how they are handled in scripts. .

I'm pretty sure that all parts are leaves on a tree data structure, with the roots being a command unit. So the magazines would be grouped according to which command unit was their root. In this case a docked ship would be an assemblage of parts with at least 2 command units.

Your other ideas for testing docking are good, I'll try them out, thanks!

What I propose, in short; is this: you only have one resource,

the different magazines will then hold different loads of the resource (the higher capacity the more weight)

Thank you, that was a nice brain storming idea. I was toying with something similar, where a Blutonium-236 resource would be transformed into bomb units of the same type as the magazine. But the basic problem is that an infinitely dividable fluid resource does not work well with discrete bomb units. They just do not play well with each other.

Edited July 8, 2013 by nyrath

[magnemoe]

I'm pretty sure that all parts are leaves on a tree data structure, with the roots being a command unit. So the magazines would be grouped according to which command unit was their root. In this case a docked ship would be an assemblage of parts with at least 2 command units.

Your other ideas for testing docking are good, I'll try them out, thanks!

Thank you, that was a nice brain storming idea. I was toying with something similar, where a Blutonium-236 resource would be transformed into bomb units of the same type as the magazine. But the basic problem is that an infinitely dividable fluid resource does not work well with discrete bomb units. They just do not play well with each other.

Just nice to help, the Blutonium resource is nice but should be combined with an miner and a bomb factory.

Or you could just launch it to obit and process it in an in ship factory.

Time for some real missions.

This ship is on an 28 day trip to Jool, cargo is 800 ton of spare parts for orbital construction crew is 18 ketbals.

I lost one of the chemical engines, think the problem is that they has to be strapped both ways, both to be pulled by the orion and pushing the ship.

four mainsails is a bit overkill but gave me the option to land the ship then it started to become empty.

[nyrath]

Time for some real missions.

This ship is on an 28 day trip to Jool, cargo is 800 ton of spare parts for orbital construction crew is 18 ketbals.

I lost one of the chemical engines, think the problem is that they has to be strapped both ways, both to be pulled by the orion and pushing the ship.

four mainsails is a bit overkill but gave me the option to land the ship then it started to become empty.

That's one serious mission. And you have a mean stack of nuclear magazines if I'm any judge.

[magnemoe]

That's one serious mission. And you have a mean stack of nuclear magazines if I'm any judge.

Added a lot for three reasons, primary is actually that if you load up with magazines over the framework of the rack you get an very solid base to put stuff on.

The two orange tanks contains 400 ton of spare parts, try to place it any other places.

Bonus is that the ship get legs even then with all the cargo and extra stuff, still have enough bombs for another trip or another target.

The key binding for the orion works nice, I assigned 1 for chemical, 2 for 1kt and 3 for 1.9kt. it disables the other engines.

Works surprisingly well with mechjeb.

Next version will have two changes, use small fuel tank for chemical engine and piping from tanks on top of the magazines. chemical engine set as an rotation helper.

[Markarian421]

I've only been away from KSP forever, but finally got back to it tonight, and here's a stock+Orion+Mechjeb ship that shows the Orion going dead problem. It will happen right on the launch pad.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/3cbpxvqy1vaitvp/Orion%20Test%2032b.craft

You will also need some way to get crew in the second command module.

To recreate:

(0) Put crew in the lander can on the Orion.

(1) Decouple node.

(2) Fly the cupola away.

(3) Switch back to the Orion.

(4) Try to launch. Maybe use MechJeb ascent guidance. Watch the Orion go dead. It shows 0 bomb and the menu vanishes.

Note I haven't updated anything since I last posted, I think I'm one version behind on the Orion.

I can only get it to happen when there are two stages with different command modules involved -- if the root command module is on the Orion I can't recreate it.

[nyrath]

Thanks Markarian421, I'll see if I can track down the bug

[TurboNisu]

This is already a brilliant mod, but since there were files to help in retexturing I couldn't resist. Is it kerbal enough?

http://i1280.photobucket.com/albums/a497/TurboNisu/2013-07-07_00006_zpsa3e90b9f.jpg

http://i1280.photobucket.com/albums/a497/TurboNisu/2013-07-08_00001_zpsa6ed90a0.jpg

[Anton P. Nym]

Updates on ol' Project Dunaboom here: http://anton-p-nym.livejournal.com/546267.html (phase 2), http://anton-p-nym.livejournal.com/546907.html (phase 3). TealDeer; uh, you know it's bad when you see Jebediah losing his cool. (Not a problem with the Orion itself, but an undetected error I made laying out struts.)

In the spirit of KSP, however, Project DUNABOOM II is already in progress with improved strut layouts. It'll be a stripped-down mission with just one lander, to prove out the main design, but it will proceed.

-- Steve

[nyrath]

This is already a brilliant mod, but since there were files to help in retexturing I couldn't resist. Is it kerbal enough?

http://i1280.photobucket.com/albums/a497/TurboNisu/2013-07-07_00006_zpsa3e90b9f.jpg

http://i1280.photobucket.com/albums/a497/TurboNisu/2013-07-08_00001_zpsa6ed90a0.jpg

Ah, TurboNisu! Those are beautiful! Much more Kerbal than what I had. You did a top-notch job of texturing.

If you have any suggestions on how to improve the retexturing notes, please let me know.

Updates on ol' Project Dunaboom here: http://anton-p-nym.livejournal.com/546267.html (phase 2), http://anton-p-nym.livejournal.com/546907.html (phase 3). TealDeer; uh, you know it's bad when you see Jebediah losing his cool. (Not a problem with the Orion itself, but an undetected error I made laying out struts.)

In the spirit of KSP, however, Project DUNABOOM II is already in progress with improved strut layouts. It'll be a stripped-down mission with just one lander, to prove out the main design, but it will proceed.

Still a fascinating read, keeping track of Projevct DUNABOOM. Stuff falling off is such a pain. But your design is still most impressive!

[bs1110101]

This is already a brilliant mod, but since there were files to help in retexturing I couldn't resist. Is it kerbal enough?

http://i1280.photobucket.com/albums/a497/TurboNisu/2013-07-07_00006_zpsa3e90b9f.jpg

http://i1280.photobucket.com/albums/a497/TurboNisu/2013-07-08_00001_zpsa6ed90a0.jpg

Where can i download this? And did you rescale it?

[TurboNisu]

Ah, TurboNisu! Those are beautiful! Much more Kerbal than what I had. You did a top-notch job of texturing.

If you have any suggestions on how to improve the retexturing notes, please let me know.

Only problem I had was that some of the lines in the UV maps didn't quite seem to match the model, it was especially tricky on the magazines. But nothing a bit of trial and error couldn't fix.

Then there was stretching and such as well, but those can't really be fixed without tinkering with the model.

[TurboNisu]

Where can i download this? And did you rescale it?

Well you can't, not yet anyway. I don't know what nyrath's opinion is on other people poking with his mod. I might put the textures for download somewhere if he's okay with it.

And I did play around with the config file, so it's rescaled on the other screenshot.

[Railgunner2160]

This is already a brilliant mod, but since there were files to help in retexturing I couldn't resist. Is it kerbal enough?

http://i1280.photobucket.com/albums/a497/TurboNisu/2013-07-07_00006_zpsa3e90b9f.jpg

http://i1280.photobucket.com/albums/a497/TurboNisu/2013-07-08_00001_zpsa6ed90a0.jpg

OH, MY GOD!! Those are beautiful, They Blend almost seamlessly with the stock textures! I hope that you can get permission to release them, or that Nyrath adopts them as the texture, ABSOLUTELY TOP NOTCH!!!

[nyrath]

I'd be willing to offer the alternate textures in my mod package, but of course I'm fond of my own. Or TurboNisu can feel free to release them.

I did give instructions on how to alter the textures in the hope that somebody would alter the textures.

[magnemoe]

Updates on ol' Project Dunaboom here: http://anton-p-nym.livejournal.com/546267.html (phase 2), http://anton-p-nym.livejournal.com/546907.html (phase 3). TealDeer; uh, you know it's bad when you see Jebediah losing his cool. (Not a problem with the Orion itself, but an undetected error I made laying out struts.)

In the spirit of KSP, however, Project DUNABOOM II is already in progress with improved strut layouts. It'll be a stripped-down mission with just one lander, to prove out the main design, but it will proceed.

-- Steve

You have the exact same problem as I had, first I lost one engine during boost then an second during braking.

The upper parts however holds up well, makes me wonder if its some issue with mounting stuff on the orion engine. Some chance of the nuclear blast hit things on it.

One option might be to mount the engines higher up. one the magazines or higher. Downside of this is that mechjeb tend to get confused by this. The Minmus landing failed because of this. On switching to chemical for final decent it tried to rotate the ship, I switched to manual but was unable to kill all vertical speed.

[magnemoe]

One strange issue, My current ship orion engine has gone dead after loading the game.

Restarting the game does not help, chemial engines work but the two remaining is on the same side.

Only thing odd I did was spawning an service module with orbital construction close to the ship, this module spawned to far away to reach it with rcs, probably the long and non circular orbit created problems, next atempt did not leave launchpad because of some bug but this should not affect the other ship.

[TurboNisu]

Modified textures can be downloaded from here.

http://dfiles.eu/files/uu6blcjyx