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[0.23.5] Spherical and Toroidal Tank Pack (Updated 05/02/14) (New download link)

Talisar

By Talisar
in KSP1 Mod Releases

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Talisar

Talisar

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Lol, looks like that particular issue is settled already, but as zzz pointed out I do include the UV templates along with the download. The main reason for this is because I am very aware that my skills in texturing are decidedly lacking :). I absolutely encourage anyone who has the desire and ability to retexture any of the parts I make to do so, and I would be more than happy to provide links to any alternate textures available in the OP if they are provided to me. If desired by the authors, I could include them as alternate switchable textures in future pack updates in the same manner that you can switch the ring colors currently as well. (Within reason, of course. We don't want the pack size to get too large again due to tons of alternate textures)

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Rabada

Rabada

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Here's a automated fuel transfer vehicle I'm designing. Its the most realistic looking vehicle I've ever made. Next I'll be designing the its destination fuel depot.

yYzEuNF.jpg

I put the nosecone on top of a large docking port and put a pair of seperatons onto the nosecone. Once I get above the atmosphere I hit an action group that both decouples the port and activates the seperatons. I must say, your M2 tank looks awesome with the stock large nosecone!

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K3-Chris

K3-Chris

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I'd suggest your add one more seperatron that isn't symmetrical with the rest to have an offset CoT, to make the nosecone angle away from your trajectory safely, ejecting stuff forwards in a straight line can end very badly if you catch up to it again. (Yes I've had that happen).

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Rabada

Rabada

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I'd suggest your add one more seperatron that isn't symmetrical with the rest to have an offset CoT, to make the nosecone angle away from your trajectory safely, ejecting stuff forwards in a straight line can end very badly if you catch up to it again. (Yes I've had that happen).

This is good advice, but considering the nosecone has a dV of over 460 m/s if I eject it while still doing a gravity turn it will always fly above my ship. (I tested it after reading your post)

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K3-Chris

K3-Chris

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Sorry about that, I had to delete some messages again. It's clear now. As far as the frames, I've been slacking on those. I'll give you an update on what I have so far after work today.

*knock knock* Anyone there? :)

Those cylinders would be so useful for building a lot of more advanced designs like the copernicus mars mission:

Copernicus_NTR_LEO.2k.jpg

The part near the "front" with the docking adapter inside a cylindrical structure joining the inflatable habitat and the fuel tanks is a good example of the usefulness of hollow cylinders.

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Talisar

Talisar

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I'm still around, sorry again for the delay on those. I've been a bit distracted by another game lately (sandbox games are evil and addictive) so I've mostly been lurking the forums, but the "newness" has about worn off so I'll see what I can do about polishing up the models I made of those cylinders, making some adapters/hubs in the same style, and getting them out for testing soon.

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taniwha

taniwha

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Justin Kerbice: Their mass ratio is only 15.222 (137/9). While better than stock tanks (sphere vs cylinder), they're still terrible compared to real-world rocket tanks. Also, the difference isn't all that big: 24% more delta-v (theoretical maxium).

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Justin Kerbice

Justin Kerbice

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ok ;).

I got another comment/idea.

Templates may be moved from parts folders to somewhere else more useful (I guess most people ignore them at all and may complaint about lack of templates :D).

And toroidal tank could be even better if we are able to "cut" the 3 struts joint allowing us to remove dead weight, the rocket passing "through" it, as long as it is big enough.

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Talisar

Talisar

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ok ;).

I got another comment/idea.

Templates may be moved from parts folders to somewhere else more useful (I guess most people ignore them at all and may complaint about lack of templates :D).

I had considered this, but left them included in the part folder to make them easier to find by those who want to use them. Placing them anywhere else would make this difficult. I do plan on having them zipped into a single archive in the next release to keep KSP from loading them, however.

And toroidal tank could be even better if we are able to "cut" the 3 struts joint allowing us to remove dead weight, the rocket passing "through" it, as long as it is big enough.

I came up with 3 different ways for attaching the toroidal tanks when I was working on them:

The first way is the way my original prototype was made, with the mounting hub permanently attached. This made for easier placement, but would require more tanks in the VAB to allow all the variation of attachment points

The second way was to use surface attachment rather than an attach node to attach the tanks around existing pieces. The problem with this method was similar to the first one. I could make it work, but they only worked properly if the part you were attaching them to was the correct diameter. If you attached it to something of larger or smaller size, the toroidal tank would be off center. The only way around this that I saw was again, more tanks each with different surface attach placement.

I finally settled on this third way, which allows each of the 4 tanks to be used with any of the hubs for the most flexibility with the least amount of parts (you should have seen this mod before I started going modular... It added over 150 tanks to the VAB). This way seemed to be the best compromise between the other two methods.

A workaround to do what you suggest is possible. Just edit the config of the tank that you want to put the toroid around to add another attach node centered inside it where you'd like to place the toroid, then attach the toroid to that without using the hub.

Along those same lines, I've been looking at possibilities for a different attachment method, so if I can get it working it may be more along the lines of what you are looking for. I'll post more about it once I've gotten it figured out.

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Talisar

Talisar

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edit: IGNORE ME!

DOH! I was all excited to see what you had to say!!!

edit: seriously, I got all happy when I saw you had posted here :) I hope that didn't sound rude.

Edited by Talisar
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Talisar

Talisar

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I'm pretty certain that the node sizes for the tanks and structural pieces are all correct, however the hubs for the toroidal tanks may cause issues (I believe I used the smallest node for the center attachment point due to space constraints). If there are problems, please let me know so I can make adjustments.

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Tallinu

Tallinu

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And toroidal tank could be even better if we are able to "cut" the 3 struts joint allowing us to remove dead weight, the rocket passing "through" it, as long as it is big enough.

This... I love this idea. An optional decoupler module to cut them free of the hubs would be amazing.

I'm using a mod that adds VAB-tweakable toggles to remove (even stock) decouplers from staging, so I know it COULD be made optional even without creating new parts. And as long as the tanks' colliders didn't extend inward along the structural members (something I will need to test) there'd be no risk of collision even without modifying the models. They already count as stack-mounted so fuel flow wouldn't be a difficulty, although pipes might be required to get the rearmost toroid to drain first if more than one was used or they were placed behind other standard fuel tanks.

I suspect a Module Manager patch could even add such a decoupler without requiring any other changes... Hmm, time for some hacking!

Edit:

With TweakableEverything and the following in a MM .cfg you can have an optional decoupler in the toroidal tank hubs which will detach the tank. You can use it without TE if you prefer but you won't be able to disable the decoupler module in situations where you don't want it.

Another option would be to duplicate the four hub parts, adding something like 'Decoupling' to the part names, but that's more the author's purview.


@PART[TAL_Toroidal_Tank_Hub_*]:FINAL
{
	MODULE
	{
		name = ModuleDecouple
		ejectionForce = 0
		explosiveNodeID = center
	}
	MODULE
	{
		name = ModuleTweakableDecouple
		decouplerModuleName = ModuleDecouple
	}
}

Looks like it behaves rather oddly with fuel lines though. It seemed to be draining all of the toroids evenly, even though I had pipes hooking them up in series from bottom to top. Also, MechJeb apparently got VERY confused about the remaining fuel, and once I started decoupling toroidals it thought there was zero dV remaining and did some strange auto-staging on me. It might be better off to put the decouplers in the tanks after all, rather than the hubs.

Edit 2:

Fixed previous code, forgot to have FINAL on it.

Putting the decoupler modules on the tanks themselves fixes MechJeb's confusion, and it autostages properly. But fuel flow is still derped up despite the fuel lines. Probably a KSP thing. The only way I can think of to fix that is to be able to optionally disable fuel crossfeed on the tank parts via some tweakable. If you weren't using the decoupling option, you probably wouldn't want it disabled, and you might not even if you were, but this little test ship I launched really has it behaving strangely.

Here's the tank-decoupler config:


@PART[TAL.Toroidal.Tank.*.Fuel]:FINAL
{
	@fuelCrossFeed = False
	MODULE
	{
		name = ModuleDecouple
		ejectionForce = 0
		explosiveNodeID = center
	}
	MODULE
	{
		name = ModuleTweakableDecouple
		decouplerModuleName = ModuleDecouple
	}
}
@PART[TAL.Toroidal.Tank.*.Utility]:FINAL
{
	MODULE
	{
		name = ModuleDecouple
		ejectionForce = 0
		explosiveNodeID = center
	}
	MODULE
	{
		name = ModuleTweakableDecouple
		decouplerModuleName = ModuleDecouple
	}
}
@PART[TAL.XLarge.Toroidal.Tank.Fuel]:FINAL
{
	@fuelCrossFeed = False
	MODULE
	{
		name = ModuleDecouple
		ejectionForce = 0
		explosiveNodeID = center
	}
	MODULE
	{
		name = ModuleTweakableDecouple
		decouplerModuleName = ModuleDecouple
	}
}
@PART[TAL.XLarge.Toroidal.Tank.Utility]:FINAL
{
	MODULE
	{
		name = ModuleDecouple
		ejectionForce = 0
		explosiveNodeID = center
	}
	MODULE
	{
		name = ModuleTweakableDecouple
		decouplerModuleName = ModuleDecouple
	}
}

YetAnotherEdit:

Okay it's not the fuel lines' fault. Even without any of them, it drains fuel from the toroidal tanks, evenly, before draining any from regularly stacked tanks. Regardless of the relative position of the toroidals' hubs and the normal tanks in the stack. And even changing fuel cross-feed to false, like in the above config, doesn't stop it from draining fuel from them. I'm really confused now. Maybe crossfeed has to be disabled on the part that a tank is attached to? But that doesn't explain surface-attached fuel tanks not feeding fuel to the stack they're mounted on...

Edited by Tallinu
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Justin Kerbice

Justin Kerbice

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Posted (edited)

@Tallinu: good work :) I'll try this soon.

For the fuel line, KSP have its rules Kasuha make a very detailed document about, it's fuel flow rules and coupler, there is a lot of examples of different situation and the issue you got might be due to some less-known specific rule.

EDIT: sadely, the fuel is pumped from all toroidal tanks before any other :|

Good stuff anyway, it's fun to drop them (a new kind of bombs :P they can also be turn into drones)

(by the way, are you all coming from the same mold ? Tal-something, is the clone war already started ? Or is it the same as The Arrival :) )

Edited by Justin Kerbice
tried + Kasuha doc link
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Talisar

Talisar

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This... I love this idea. An optional decoupler module to cut them free of the hubs would be amazing.

I'm using a mod that adds VAB-tweakable toggles to remove (even stock) decouplers from staging, so I know it COULD be made optional even without creating new parts. And as long as the tanks' colliders didn't extend inward along the structural members (something I will need to test) there'd be no risk of collision even without modifying the models. They already count as stack-mounted so fuel flow wouldn't be a difficulty, although pipes might be required to get the rearmost toroid to drain first if more than one was used or they were placed behind other standard fuel tanks.

I suspect a Module Manager patch could even add such a decoupler without requiring any other changes... Hmm, time for some hacking!

Edit:

With TweakableEverything and the following in a MM .cfg you can have an optional decoupler in the toroidal tank hubs which will detach the tank. You can use it without TE if you prefer but you won't be able to disable the decoupler module in situations where you don't want it.

Another option would be to duplicate the four hub parts, adding something like 'Decoupling' to the part names, but that's more the author's purview.


@PART[TAL_Toroidal_Tank_Hub_*]:FINAL
{
    MODULE
    {
        name = ModuleDecouple
        ejectionForce = 0
        explosiveNodeID = center
    }
    MODULE
    {
        name = ModuleTweakableDecouple
        decouplerModuleName = ModuleDecouple
    }
}

Looks like it behaves rather oddly with fuel lines though. It seemed to be draining all of the toroids evenly, even though I had pipes hooking them up in series from bottom to top. Also, MechJeb apparently got VERY confused about the remaining fuel, and once I started decoupling toroidals it thought there was zero dV remaining and did some strange auto-staging on me. It might be better off to put the decouplers in the tanks after all, rather than the hubs.

Edit 2:

Fixed previous code, forgot to have FINAL on it.

Putting the decoupler modules on the tanks themselves fixes MechJeb's confusion, and it autostages properly. But fuel flow is still derped up despite the fuel lines. Probably a KSP thing. The only way I can think of to fix that is to be able to optionally disable fuel crossfeed on the tank parts via some tweakable. If you weren't using the decoupling option, you probably wouldn't want it disabled, and you might not even if you were, but this little test ship I launched really has it behaving strangely.

Here's the tank-decoupler config:


@PART[TAL.Toroidal.Tank.*.Fuel]:FINAL
{
    @fuelCrossFeed = False
    MODULE
    {
        name = ModuleDecouple
        ejectionForce = 0
        explosiveNodeID = center
    }
    MODULE
    {
        name = ModuleTweakableDecouple
        decouplerModuleName = ModuleDecouple
    }
}
@PART[TAL.Toroidal.Tank.*.Utility]:FINAL
{
    MODULE
    {
        name = ModuleDecouple
        ejectionForce = 0
        explosiveNodeID = center
    }
    MODULE
    {
        name = ModuleTweakableDecouple
        decouplerModuleName = ModuleDecouple
    }
}
@PART[TAL.XLarge.Toroidal.Tank.Fuel]:FINAL
{
    @fuelCrossFeed = False
    MODULE
    {
        name = ModuleDecouple
        ejectionForce = 0
        explosiveNodeID = center
    }
    MODULE
    {
        name = ModuleTweakableDecouple
        decouplerModuleName = ModuleDecouple
    }
}
@PART[TAL.XLarge.Toroidal.Tank.Utility]:FINAL
{
    MODULE
    {
        name = ModuleDecouple
        ejectionForce = 0
        explosiveNodeID = center
    }
    MODULE
    {
        name = ModuleTweakableDecouple
        decouplerModuleName = ModuleDecouple
    }
}

YetAnotherEdit:

Okay it's not the fuel lines' fault. Even without any of them, it drains fuel from the toroidal tanks, evenly, before draining any from regularly stacked tanks. Regardless of the relative position of the toroidals' hubs and the normal tanks in the stack. And even changing fuel cross-feed to false, like in the above config, doesn't stop it from draining fuel from them. I'm really confused now. Maybe crossfeed has to be disabled on the part that a tank is attached to? But that doesn't explain surface-attached fuel tanks not feeding fuel to the stack they're mounted on...

This is very cool. As I'm sure you found already, there is no collider associated with the struts to cause issues with the method you're using here. Making it so the struts themselves would "decouple" would require a model rework, but I think I have some ideas on how it could work. Something to look into when I go for V4.

@Tallinu: good work :) I'll try this soon.

For the fuel line, KSP have its rules Kasuha make a very detailed document about, it's fuel flow rules and coupler, there is a lot of examples of different situation and the issue you got might be due to some less-known specific rule.

EDIT: sadely, the fuel is pumped from all toroidal tanks before any other :|

Good stuff anyway, it's fun to drop them (a new kind of bombs :P they can also be turn into drones)

Yeah, that weird fuel flow has been an issue from the beginning. I honestly have no idea what the cause is, but I'm pretty sure it has to do with the strange way I built the attachments between the toroids and the hubs. What confuses me is that I expected them to drain in the same order as regular stack tanks (top to bottom, etc), and for the life of me can't figure out why they drain evenly all the time.

(by the way, are you all coming from the same mold ? Tal-something, is the clone war already started ? Or is it the same as The Arrival :) )

Shhh, we're keeping it on the down-low until it's time...

Everything looks like it's working fine in the new KSP version. I'm really looking forward to the modular nodes you posted a while back. Any news on that?

Nothing really yet. My idea is to have a part similar to the current hubs, but make it so that the center attachment node is moveable (the idea comes from the Floatnode mod, if you look at what his mod does, you'll see what I mean). While playing around with it, sometimes it seemed to work, and other times things went all pear-shaped. I was planning on sending codepoet a pm and see if he'd be willing to help me out with it, but I wasn't rushing too much as I was afraid that .24 would come out and break the plugins the day after we get it working. Then we got 23.5 instead and I put it off some more. I'm interested to see if it'll work though, so I'll look into it again soon.

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