New Warp Drive!

[westjet]

there's at least two that i know of.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/4426-FTL-Drive-MK-I-%28MKII-Pictures-inside%29

http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/0-18-antimatter-rocket-pack-v0-3/

they were actually pretty fun when I used them, I mean it would be pretty breath taking to go from the launch pad to orbit in like 8 seconds in real life.

the first one doesn't actually use anti matter as a fuel source, it just uses some standalone battery as fuel, it doesn't even register an output amount and can't be used to power anything else.

Are those mods compatible with KSP .19.1?

[trekkie_]

little bit more engine porn. I'm thinking of just running it on regular fuel only so people can have more free will and challenge and variety in their designs. I wouldn't want to force people to stack a single fuel tank type in order to get enough delta-v, because after all, most of a ships makeup is fuel tanks, engines, and command pods. I think they could pretend the fuel is whatever they want it to be

so far each engine weighs 10 tons, provides 4000 thrust and has an equal ISP of 3000. Those numbers aren't cemented though. the current size is probably going to be the final size. just big enough to make out the details, but not too big that it dwarfs smaller ships. emissives aren't working properly, so the engine glow is always-on. not so bad though.

at some lighting angles, they look extra stunning.

Edited May 15, 2013 by trekkie_

[Mekan1k]

Ping OrbitusII- He is a WIZARD when it comes to setting up animations.

Also: You might want to up the ISP. That ISP is closer to that of a nuclear light-bulb engine then a sci-fi efficiency engine. I would recommend multiplying both ISP's by a factor of 10 or so...

Edited May 15, 2013 by Mekan1k

[trekkie_]

Ping OrbitusII- He is a WIZARD when it comes to setting up animations.

Also: You might want to up the ISP. That ISP is closer to that of a nuclear light-bulb engine then a sci-fi efficiency engine. I would recommend multiplying both ISP's by a factor of 10 or so...

it's because all that energy is powering the glowy lights!

I want people to have to use at least a few fuel tanks or stages to do things, with room for aesthetics, and the use of more than dual engine designs. I initially had it with 20K thrust and ISP a piece, and it would just blow up instantly if throttled past a certain point. If people really wanted it to be more scifi, they could easily go into the config, or one can be included as an alternative config with really cheaty settings.

I recall having trouble with mechjeb when using other ultra high thrust engine mods, with disastrous effects.

Edited May 15, 2013 by trekkie_

[n4rf]

I was wondering if you had made these actual ftl drives at all... as in superluminal speeds or just very high speeds. I'm dabbling in this idea now just in concept. I dont have a ton of time so I might have missed this through a search.

[Tommygun]

Well I managed to destroy myself with my first four attempts.

Basically I ripped the engines off the body at full thrust.

I finally put about 12 struts on each engine and it's fine now.

It's hard to surface mount it to things, so I used two surface mount attachment nods (BZ-52 Radial Attachment Point).

The final version has more struts than is shown in the picture. So basically it is an incredible fast strut monster.

Just be careful of any speed bumps that may get in your way like moons or planets.

[Whirligig Girl]

I recomend making it stack instead of radial, get rid of the pylon there, so it could potentially blend in better if we used stock trusses for the nacelle pylons. Also please make the front red. It's a pet peeve of mine when people use JJ Abram's blue nacelles. Orange/Red is much better.

EDIT: this is a suggestion, no hate comments please.

[BlueSubstance]

Well I managed to destroy myself with my first four attempts.

Basically I ripped the engines off the body at full thrust.

I finally put about 12 struts on each engine and it's fine now.

It's hard to surface mount it to things, so I used two surface mount attachment nods (BZ-52 Radial Attachment Point).

The final version has more struts than is shown in the picture. So basically it is an incredible fast strut monster.

Just be careful of any speed bumps that may get in your way like moons or planets.

What mods are you using?

[MOARdV]

This is definitely tricky to fly with that much power. You pretty well have to move your engines way forward on the fuselage, so the center of thrust is closer to center of mass (or maybe ahead of it?). Otherwise, off-axis thrust (gimbaling) will cause some wild spinning. A smaller gimbal range might be appropriate (0.5 instead of 3?) to help control it.

I also had trouble getting the engines to surface attach without using the flat surface attachment node.

As for engine glow:

in the cfg file, remove the MODULE for ModuleAnimateHeat (which looks like it was misspelled, btw) and do this, instead:

MODULE

{

name = FXModuleAnimateThrottle

animationName = warpglow

dependOnEngineState = True

responseSpeed = 0.5

}

I hacked that module out of the ionEngine part.cfg, and changed the animationName to warpglow. That gets the back of your nacelle to change brightness based on throttle, which makes the flame effect look even better.

I tried getting the front of the nacelle to work, too, by adding a second module like that with warpglow2 (which I think was the name of the other emissive node if I read the .mu file correctly), but that did not work. It didn't work by itself, either, so I assume that it's not set up as an animation (? - Don't know much about modeling, so I could be totally off base).

For resources, another idea would be to add antimatter as an additional resource that is consumed, in addition the liquid fuel and oxidizer. After all, it's not antimatter that generates power, it's matter-antimatter annihilation. You'd then need to add antimatter fuel tanks and tune resource consumption rates so that they would run dry at the same time as the LFO tanks (maybe have the antimatter ratio set to 2.0, so it matches the LF + O rate?).

I like the way it looks, BTW, and if the surface attach quirk could be sorted out, it would definitely be a good looking replacement for my boring nukes, even if I down-rate the engine thrust to keep it a bit easier to control.

[MOARdV]

I recomend making it stack instead of radial, get rid of the pylon there, so it could potentially blend in better if we used stock trusses for the nacelle pylons. Also please make the front red. It's a pet peeve of mine when people use JJ Abram's blue nacelles. Orange/Red is much better.

EDIT: this is a suggestion, no hate comments please.

As everyone who builds custom computers knows, blue lights make things run cooler. Red lights make them overheat.

Edited May 15, 2013 by MOARdV
Fixed the smilery

[trekkie_]

these things are definitely meant to be flown with mechjeb if you want any type of precision control. the reason why atomic rockets exist is for fine control in vacuum of human controlled ships. since each engine has 4000 thrust, you're getting 8000 combined thrust with the dual nacelles at a 3000 isp. definitely not an infinite fuel configuration, but also a step up from stock engines and more along the lines of other engines like the zpinch fusion. for larger heavy ship though, it will have a bit finer control due to the weight.

as for those who think there's a lack of distance to its fuel usage, try getting it into orbit with a separate stage or some fuel tanks you can jettison.

keep in mind, the combined delta-v needed to go to all celestial bodies is around 28K if I recall my calculations correctly from the grand tour challenge. as it is right now, the thing has 22K dV with an orange tank and command pod. the initial settings delivered about 130K dv with 720 units of fuel, which I think is overkill since that's enough to go to every body multiple times on one tank. the reason why I limited its fuel, is because it would take the point of design decisions out of the equation entirely.

I know there are some slight attachment issues; make sure once you select the part you press 'w' twice to rotate it properly. then keep moving it up and down from your command pod, rapidly clicking. eventually it'll stick to your command pod, THEN you can pull it off the command pod and it will stick more easily to fuel tanks. the smaller fuel tanks have more trouble than the larger ones.

you're definitely getting credit for that one moardv. as for the front part, it is indeed an animation named warpglow2. not sure why the second one doesn't work though, the animation follows the same exact settings as the other and plays fine in unity3d, but not the game. but I have to also keep in mind that even though warpglow2 wasn't listed in the config, the effect still shows up in the game. so obviously warpglow2 is working, it's just not animating properly for some reason. ideally, I'd like the front to match the back, but I'm happy with the front always being on, because that glow looks nice when its dark. may even be good for helping find a mothership for docking with on the dark side of a planet.

I don't use red, because red is a non visually pleasing color. although....I could tweak it so that at just a notch below full thrust, it turns red to signify overheating. I however, still have to setup the config properly so it overheats at that mark. currently, it's setup to not overheat at all.

I don't think it would look good as a stackable engine, and would break with the theme of a star trek style nacelle. although I have thought of some similar designs that can be stacked rather than radial mounted. but those can be tricky because you have to make different sizes for different tanks. for example, if I made a 3m one, people would definitely be asking for a 1.5, 2, or 5m version. I just wanted a one size fits all engine, which is why I went radial.

as for antimatter, yes ideally I'd want it to run on its own fuel, but I don't want to over complicate things with conversions and such. I also want people to be able to use existing tanks in their designs so they can get some diversity in them. imagine if I did add its own custom fuel tank that gave it 120k dv or even just 10kdv. no one would have any reason to bother with anything else design wise, because all you would need is to stack a couple of those fuel tanks and it'd be just as good as infinite fuel. if I made an entire themed ship, this wouldn't be soo much of a problem, but again, I want people to be able to play around with variety in design while still having to worry about fuel just a little.

I'm surprised it had to be strutted, I had no problems at full thrust with zero struts.

there will be other tweaks like reducing some of the specular shading so it's not soo bright in sunlight.

Edited May 15, 2013 by trekkie_

[automcdonough]

My personal take on this:

That they work from electromagnetic fields, drawing nothing except obscene amounts of electricity. This also provides a lot of control, gimbal range of at least 180º. 360º? I would only turn it down just enough to avoid breaking the game engine. But for all intents and purposes you shouldn't even need rcs anymore.

The antimatter or whatever exotic fuel is decided upon comes into play in generating that electricity, the warp core is a separate part!

[MOARdV]

as for those who think there's a lack of distance to its fuel usage, try getting it into orbit with a separate stage or some fuel tanks you can jettison.

I used the B9 aerospace parts to build a Mk2 spaceplane with a pair of these. It was tricky getting airborne without things getting ugly, but I got it up to around 11000m and threw the throttle wide open while using Mechjeb to keep it roughly horizontal compared to the ground. It flamed out at 42000m and 10000+m/s - which was enough for the plane to be on an escape trajectory out of the solar system. I think it's got plenty of oomph...

[Ryugi]

Funny you mention that...

I made my own "warp engines" out of several CFG edits and gave them custom sounds. They use 3 parts. The first is the "MARA Engine", the second is the "MARA Reactor", and the third is the "MARA Tank." The tank holds the fuel, which I called "M/AM Capacity." That fuel basically counts as both matter and antimatter. Anyway, I mount a tank somewhere on the ship, and then, I pump the fuel through fuel lines into the reactor. The reactor then generates a metric crap-ton of "ElectroPlasma" for a very small amount of "M/AM Capacity" being drained. That ElectoPlasma is then sent through the whole ship, like electricity, and is used to power the MARA Engines.

I had plans for "Bussard Collectors" or a similar part, but instead, to cut down on part count, I simply made the MARA Tanks very slowly generate their own fuel to account for the presence of something like collectors. Anyway, just thought I'd mention it. My engines currently have a thrust of 3000, and I still can barely manage to keep them from ripping things apart without using Taverio's engine mounts, which for some reason don't get blown apart. My biggest issue is that I need lots of struts, otherwise my spacecraft like to accordion under the thrust. lol

When you release these engines, I'll probably swap them over to using my own system. Regardless, though, cool stuff.

EDIT: On that note, I realized I had a couple unread PMs. >__< Silly me.

Edited May 15, 2013 by Ryugi

[Tommygun]

What mods are you using?

Here are the ones I think cover it. A few you don't really need.

B9 Aerospace Pack for the cockpit and ladders

RLA Stockalike 0.5.1 (five way RCS)

JARFR Tri-Hexagonal Structural Strut

KSPX Parts Expansion

Lack Luster Lab's Mod for the vents

A blue recolor of Ioncross Crew Support Plugin

[trekkie_]

Funny you mention that...

I made my own "warp engines" out of several CFG edits and gave them custom sounds. They use 3 parts. The first is the "MARA Engine", the second is the "MARA Reactor", and the third is the "MARA Tank." The tank holds the fuel, which I called "M/AM Capacity." That fuel basically counts as both matter and antimatter. Anyway, I mount a tank somewhere on the ship, and then, I pump the fuel through fuel lines into the reactor. The reactor then generates a metric crap-ton of "ElectroPlasma" for a very small amount of "M/AM Capacity" being drained. That ElectoPlasma is then sent through the whole ship, like electricity, and is used to power the MARA Engines.

I had plans for "Bussard Collectors" or a similar part, but instead, to cut down on part count, I simply made the MARA Tanks very slowly generate their own fuel to account for the presence of something like collectors. Anyway, just thought I'd mention it. My engines currently have a thrust of 3000, and I still can barely manage to keep them from ripping things apart without using Taverio's engine mounts, which for some reason don't get blown apart. My biggest issue is that I need lots of struts, otherwise my spacecraft like to accordion under the thrust. lol

When you release these engines, I'll probably swap them over to using my own system. Regardless, though, cool stuff.

EDIT: On that note, I realized I had a couple unread PMs. >__< Silly me.

I do like that idea. it made me think of using regular fuel tanks, but having anti matter tanks to combine with them to make the actual fuel. I know I definitely want to stay away from single custom fuel tanks, because it does really limit people to specific design requirements, with the rest being aesthetic. converters are kind of pointless to me because it just adds an unnecessary middle man. to me it's like saying "ok you can have infinite fuel.....but you must wait for it", when people can simply time warp and get it rapidly, making the act almost mundane. this does work well for things like kethane though, because you must mine it, and the tanks are empty on launch. that would be more suitable for this engine I think. but the fuel would have to be VERY sparse in the solar system since it provides soo much power. this would require people to build normal engine ships in order to search for and obtain the fuel, which means they're going to have to tug at least 20 tons of engines around, or bring the fuel back to kerbins launch pad.

of course, I wouldn't even know where to begin to make a plugin like the kethane mod, I'm just a modeler. but I did also think of making the engine primarily run on pure kethane; but that would require people to use the kethane mod. decisions decisions, but kethane does seem like the best bet, especially since it's a decently established fuel among mod users. but due to its abundance in the solar system, that's what makes kethane seem like a bad idea, especially since people would be limited to kethane tanks, again kind of destroying the versatility of design decisions.

now if I could get it to run on multiple fuel types with their own ISP's, that would be a bit more appealing and versatile.

this engine does make me wish the stock game had more resources and mining already.

Edited May 15, 2013 by trekkie_

[Ryugi]

My intention was to really duplicate the "Trek" style of propulsion as best I could, within my personal preferences. Typically, they just had the Warp Core and the Deuterium Storage Tanks etc. I didn't want to create multiple fuels to mix together, so I settled for the single fuel that accounts for both. It DOES limit my designs a bit to using my own fuel tanks, but honestly I don't mind it. What matters to me is that I have the closest thing to a Treky Impulse Engine on my ships, and it makes me happy.

Closest thing to a real Warp Drive is the Hyperjump Mod, which is buggy. But I use both my engines and the hyperjump mod on most of my designs. It works well enough for me. XD

[Galacticruler]

I think my Impulse drives might be more powerful than your warp drives.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/24967-19-X-Firebird-Industries-Release-Thread-MORE-Pictures!

Come to think of it, if your not busy, would you like to model, texture and rig for me? (I suck at those.)

PM if you're interested.

Edited May 16, 2013 by Galacticruler

[trekkie_]

I think my Impulse drives might be more powerful than your warp drives.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/24967-19-X-Firebird-Industries-Release-Thread-MORE-Pictures!

Come to think of it, if your not busy, would you like to model, texture and rig for me? (I suck at those.)

PM if you're interested.

lol the thought of an impulse drive being faster than a warp nacelle is funny, or is it that this darn warp drive is soo slow? hehe. but keep in mind, these are radial mounted. more engines = more thrust. so if I did a symmetry of 8, the ship gets an effective power of 32,000 thrust, which is 21 rockomax engines thrust wise...which is way beyond anything anyone would ever reasonably need. I didn't want to limit people to just 2 nacelle designs, and I didn't want throttle accident explosions with the default dual nacelles. I can just picture the users face.... "full throttle this baby!", *boom!*, "aww gay".

I may be able to help you with some things, but no promises as I do this in my spare time and it's actually more time consuming than it would seem. really though, I think you should make the rest of it yourself since you would want something to match your engine design. anything I make would certainly be far more complex than the engine itself, which would be kind of unbalanced visually.

It can be hard to follow someone else's vision, especially without completely replacing it with your own. I think I speak for all modelers when I say that what most modelers are looking for is someone to lighten the work load considerably or that can do things they can't themselves.

Edited May 16, 2013 by trekkie_

[Mekan1k]

lol the thought of an impulse drive being faster than a warp nacelle is funny, or is it that this darn warp drive is soo slow? hehe. but keep in mind, these are radial mounted. more engines = more thrust. so if I did a symmetry of 8, the ship gets an effective power of 32,000 thrust, which is 21 rockomax engines thrust wise...which is way beyond anything anyone would ever reasonably need. I didn't want to limit people to just 2 nacelle designs, and I didn't want throttle accident explosions with the default dual nacelles. I can just picture the users face.... "full throttle this baby!", *boom!*, "aww gay".

I may be able to help you with some things, but no promises as I do this in my spare time and it's actually more time consuming than it would seem. really though, I think you should make the rest of it yourself since you would want something to match your engine design. anything I make would certainly be far more complex than the engine itself, which would be kind of unbalanced visually.

It can be hard to follow someone else's vision, especially without completely replacing it with your own. I think I speak for all modelers when I say that what most modelers are looking for is someone to lighten the work load considerably or that can do things they can't themselves.

I gotta say- still less thrust than ONE large-gauge frameshift drive. (Thrust, 50,000)

[Devo]

Any luck Kerbtrek? I still cant get the tester to load - just freezes on loading for me, have tried 2 computers now and 2 separate vanilla KSP installs.

[trekkie_]

Any luck Kerbtrek? I still cant get the tester to load - just freezes on loading for me, have tried 2 computers now and 2 separate vanilla KSP installs.

did you use the new download link in the update mail? that fixes it.

[Devo]

did you use the new download link in the update mail? that fixes it.

You sent me turbofan, which would not load.

You then sent me warp1, which would not load either..

That's all I have so far, the config looks sound, did you add any unusual game objects to the engine that might stop is loading?

[mrrpamplemousse]

Generaly, I don't like warp drive, but that one ...

It's too sweet, I want it!

[Nobody_1707]

Okay, sorry I haven't posted in a while. Here are my thoughts after testing out your warp drive a few times: It doesn't want to connect radially. I had to use radial attachment points to get them to stick. After I did that they weren't angled straight up and down, so I had to fix that with option-shift. These things clearly don't have structural integrity fields, since they break off the ship as soon as I throttle them up to full. I was also getting phantom spin, but that's probably because of the radial attachment points.

The blue warp trail makes sense, but do you think you could make the ramscoops at the front glow red kind of like the surface of the Kerbol?

Also, the idea that it magnetically bends space makes a lot of sense. I would try and make it so it could provide precision turning by itself then lower each nacelles thrust to half the thrust of an ion engine and find a way to make it multiply the thrust of other engines based on how high you throttle it. Then I'd make it use enough electricity that you would basically need an antimatter reactor to power it, especially if you use ion engines for impulse.

PS. 3000 ISP isn't as fuel efficient as I thought it would be.

Edited May 18, 2013 by Nobody_1707
I had a better idea.