[0.25+] HexCans - Standardized Resource Canisters 0.7.1 -- Breaking Ground Edition

[Greys]

Introducing radial containers for all of the things! Plus

Downloads available at Github

Link

You can also find the development thread here: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/29149-HexCans-Standardized-Resource-Canisters-20-Ready

License

This set of parts are released under CC-BY 3.0, you are free to use, alter, or add to as you desire, you may release your works using HexCans under whatever license you desire though I suggest open source as it's good for the community. You may distribute your works however you like.

Rules of Attribution

To make it simple and concrete I require only one thing to consider your released works sufficiently attributing me.

In the .cfg files for all HexCans parts there is the line

author = Greys

"Greys" must remain in that field, you of course can add your own name/names and I do not care about the order.

example:

author = BobDole & Greys

Nothing else is required for the license to be satisfied.

If you can I would like to have a link to either of the HexCans forum threads in your release thread, it does not need to be prominent, and that is not required.

Distribution

You are free to include as much of the base HexCans set alongside your add-on as you like with two conditions:

1. Do not distribute the original part set without modification.
   If you'd like to make modified variants of the stock parts that is fine, either as part of a greater add-on or a derivative HexCans set, but do not distribute the original parts as is. This is to prevent unnecessary confusion from the users and prevent the circulation of outdated assets.
   
2. Try to include only the assets that you need for your add-on
   Limiting the HexCan assets that are distributed alongside your add-on to those that are necessary has three main benefits:
   It reduces your distribution size which means players have to download less
   It eliminates unused assets which KSP will still load, reducing player's memory load if they don't choose to install the main set (marginally)
   It helps to prevent conflicts with the main set if assets have changed between your version and mine.
   

If you experience any bugs please let me know ASAP, either in this thread or in the dev thread.

Thanks for your time!

Edited October 20, 2014 by Greys

[rhoark]

This could be useful for the SampleReturn plugin. Also Ironcross Life Support.

[Phuckle]

Been looking for something like this for modular supply vehicles!

Very nice

[tazyload]

These will go really nicely into a space station idea I have, any chance crew storage is on the horizon? An entirely hexagonal station or even the smaller ones as one-man escape pods would be a lot of fun to mess around with.

[tek_604]

rhoark gave me the heads up on your package. Looks very nice! Is it ok to use these in my mod, as and when I find a use for them? Link below

[Camacha]

What pack are the floats in that can be seen in the last picture?

[Greys]

rhoark gave me the heads up on your package. Looks very nice! Is it ok to use these in my mod, as and when I find a use for them? Link below

Be my guest!

What pack are the floats in that can be seen in the last picture?

They're from Firespitter by Snjo, it's also where those propellers come from.

I'm about to upload a new set with some fixes for the Barite cans

Fixed nodes to match the rest of the cans

Rereverted the texture to what it's supposed to be instead of the generic

The links won't change so just wait 5 minutes and it'll be live, unless mediafire is annoying again

edit: Mediafire is up, Spaceport is up

Edited June 4, 2013 by Greys

[rditto48801]

I decided to take a quick look at this mod, fiddle around with the parts a little bit.

A number of things came to mind that seem a bit off to me.

The main thing being their dry weights seem a bit high. To me, all that extra weight greatly reduces their effective usefulness, especially on smaller craft.

Things I think that could use some tweaking.

Reduce dry weights of the assorted fuel cans to 20-25% of what they are now, to be closer to stock fuel tank dry weights. (personal opinion)

Reduce battery cans by a great deal, as they are presently very heavy compared to stock batteries. Larger battery pack (400 energy) is 0.02, Battery Bank (500 energy) is 0.05, compared to even the 'small' battery can being 0.1 with just 29 energy. Rough guess, maybe go with 0.003 for small, 0.012 medium and 0.1 for the large (personal opinion)

Increase Mono-propellent can capacity by double, to put it a bit closer to stock in terms of capacity (via visual guesstimate).

Increase Xenon can capacity by 40-50%, again closer to stock in terms of capacity. (more visual guesstimate)

For SAS/ASAS can weight, reduce small SAS (and ASAS) to 0.08, medium SAS to 0.2, large SAS to 0.6. (personal opinion)

RTG, seems a tad heavy since it is on par with the stock RTG, maybe reduce it closer to 0.1? Medium and Large RTG cans seem fine compared to their outputs.

Issues.

Small Xenon can is labeled "HexCan-Xenon" in game, same as the medium size one.

One odd thing I can't figure out, the small oxy can has a dry mass of 2 in the VAB for me. The odd thing being I checked the config, and it says 0.1 there. I have no idea what is going on there.

Suggestions.

Half length cans, for extra compact/short designs and very small probes.

Kethane Cans. Need I say more?

Compressed Air Cans that store 'Intake Air', because... well... why not?

Weight Cans, small ones with several variations would be handy for things like rovers to help shift the Center of Gravity downward. Medium and Large types could be used both for craft balancing/CoG shifting, and to help test lifting capacities of rockets.

Also, what's on the nose of the 'rover' shown in the OP?

[Greys]

I decided to take a quick look at this mod, fiddle around with the parts a little bit.

A number of things came to mind that seem a bit off to me.

The main thing being their dry weights seem a bit high. To me, all that extra weight greatly reduces their effective usefulness, especially on smaller craft.

Lighter tanks, check. I don't have them on hand at the moment but i'm pretty sure it's large 0.6t, normal 0.3, small 0.1 so how about 0.4, 0.15, 0.06-0.08, the smaller ones would logically have more tank compared to their volumes so it's not a straight reduction.

Things I think that could use some tweaking.

Reduce battery cans by a great deal, as they are presently very heavy compared to stock batteries. Larger battery pack (400 energy) is 0.02, Battery Bank (500 energy) is 0.05, compared to even the 'small' battery can being 0.1 with just 29 energy. Rough guess, maybe go with 0.003 for small, 0.012 medium and 0.1 for the large (personal opinion)

Increase Mono-propellent can capacity by double, to put it a bit closer to stock in terms of capacity (via visual guesstimate).

Increase Xenon can capacity by 40-50%, again closer to stock in terms of capacity. (more visual guesstimate)

For SAS/ASAS can weight, reduce small SAS (and ASAS) to 0.08, medium SAS to 0.2, large SAS to 0.6. (personal opinion)

RTG, seems a tad heavy since it is on par with the stock RTG, maybe reduce it closer to 0.1? Medium and Large RTG cans seem fine compared to their outputs.

Actually all of the resource amounts are based on a set of measurements i did of the volume of stock parts vs their contents, though i can say without doubt that when I finished the tables and applied them to the tank-section volume of the hexcans, i was immediately disappointed (the shift key on this keyboard appears to be broken...). I'm working on a better set of measurement tools to get more solid measurements for the calculations. I even calculated the weight of battery per electriccharge for mine. That all said, i have no issue with increasing the amounts, but i'd like to get the revised measurements done first so i can at least be sure what the stock of it should be.

Issues.

Small Xenon can is labeled "HexCan-Xenon" in game, same as the medium size one.

One odd thing I can't figure out, the small oxy can has a dry mass of 2 in the VAB for me. The odd thing being I checked the config, and it says 0.1 there. I have no idea what is going on there.

Weight values not sticking is something i've battled with several times already, probably what it is is that cfg is setting drymass instead of mass, thought i'd fixed them all... I'll address those both when I get home.

Suggestions.

Half length cans, for extra compact/short designs and very small probes.

Kethane Cans. Need I say more?

Compressed Air Cans that store 'Intake Air', because... well... why not?

Weight Cans, small ones with several variations would be handy for things like rovers to help shift the Center of Gravity downward. Medium and Large types could be used both for craft balancing/CoG shifting, and to help test lifting capacities of rockets.

Half length will be tricky, I thing reducing their length significantly will conflict with the rack system and I'd rather not add six more racks, but I'll look into it.

Kethane is something I keep thinking I've already done for some reason... Is there a Kethane symbol?

(Btw, shift works now?)

I've avoided IntakeAir for a while, but it's easily the most requested tank, even over Kethane. To me it just seems cheaty, intake air isn't stored anywhere but engines because it's supposed to be fleeting and to fake how engines are supposed to be a linear process. Having a tank of compressed air shouldn't let you run a jet engine because the air won't have the proper velocity and you won't have enough of it.

There is actually already a weight can, though it's not quite heavy enough to test weight capacities, the Liquid Barite cans which should be the first ones listed under the Propulsion tab contain the very dense Liquid Barite resource which can be shifted around in flight. it's not actually based on anything real though I did find out that Barite in a liquid slurry is used as a weighting agent in oil drilling, completely unrelated.

("What's something that's heavy?" "Bars." "Bars of what?" "Who cares, how'a bout Barite" "But it needs to be liquid" "So liquid Barite" "...")

I never did any real balancing on the LB hexcans, they could definitely stand to hold more.

Also, what's on the nose of the 'rover' shown in the OP?

That's the main laser thing from Romfarer's Lazor mod, and the octagonal lighted window pieces from LLL

[wasmic]

Ok, so the red is charge, the purple is xenon. The blue is oxidizer? What are the two yellow? What's the grey one?

[Greys]

Pale yellow with the fire symbol is Monopropellant, Vibrant yellow with the radiation symbol is RTG, pale red is LiquidFuel

I'll make the pale red less pale and the pale yellow more pale

[Moon Goddess]

Compressed Air Cans that store 'Intake Air', because... well... why not?

I seriously don't understand why people are always asking for this, I have never heard of a jet engine that works at too high of altitude by storing air. I mean I can't even how that would work or if it did, how you would ever store enough air to make it worthwhile, jets work by pushing massive amounts of air thru. Your compressed air would make it work for seconds. Heck if your are in orbit, simply releasing that compressed air would have more delta-v than running it thru a jet.

[Moon Goddess]

Kethane is something I keep thinking I've already done for some reason... Is there a Kethane symbol?

I have litterally not finished the set of tanks I've been making for lack of a proper Kethane symbol.

[rditto48801]

To be honest, I don't really use mod items with 'intake air' stored... partly because I seem to have an to many occasions where I make Jeb scared when I try to fly a high altitude aircraft... (I tend to include decouplers and parachutes on the cockpits due to that...) partly because of flat spins because one engine died in a duel engine design. Intake Air tanks would at least be a short 'notice' that if they start draining, my engines are about to choke and my plane about to imitate a winged frisbee again...

I think I am now contradicting myself... it's a nifty idea at least... like slapping a control seat on an SRB... nifty, if anything but practical... although I don't think I ever built a space plane 'after' finding one mod including a small 'intake air' tank... enough of intake air in a can, got the Space Balls theme song stuck in my head now... (bah, now I got a 'giant can of Peri-Air' image stuck in my head... or whatever the name of the canned air was in that movie)

I wonder if a liquid nitrogen and liquid oxygen mix (80/20) would be able to be 'heated' back into a gas and mixed together fast enough and in large enough quantities to be used as an effective 'air mixture' for air breathing engines in a low or zero atmosphere environment...

For Kethane... Why not slap a big Ke on a (kethane) green background for the symbol? If something better came along later, it could always be changed.

I had no idea the liquid barite was meant as weight. I think the descriptions mentioned something about storing oxidizer, which had me scratching my head.

Some of the stock parts seem to not be consistent in terms of how much something holds. Like the 1.25m RCS tank vs. the small radial RCS tanks. I guess I just think some make more sense than others, and compare other things to those...

For 'fuel' storage tank dry weights, I literally mean just 1/4 to 1/5th of what they are now. So something like 0.15 large, 0.07 medium, 0.02 small. I think the stock fuel tank (half height 1.25m) of capacity comparable to the large fuel can, had a dry weight of 0.1 something. I would go less than 25% of what they are now, but the 'black end caps' do give an impression of being able to get away with a little 'extra mass'.

Speaking of the mass/shape, another thing that strayed into mind. Being 'canisters', maybe one reason for having a little extra 'dry weight' would be due to being a bit more durable (so increase impact tolerance several fold?)

I bring this up because of a test where I 'radially spammed 24 small fuel tanks radially with probe engines', had the thing hover sideways after it cleared the 'launch tower (structural strut with decoupler for it to 'stand' on), crash and skid to a stop, destroy all the little engines, and leave the small radial fuel tanks intact...

Also, ASRGs.... Advanced Stirling Radioisotope Generator. A little more weight, and not 'solid state' like an RTG, but able to generate several times more power than an RTG. NASA has plans to use possibly such a thing in future space missions.

Or a 'combo' unit, like an RTG, but much less output, but include a small amount of electric charge capacity so it doubles as storage. Basically a 'backup power' type thing...

A side note, isn't it now possible to put multiple entries into a single config file, so you can have several types of parts using the same models, with the options of just rescaling each one, or sharing the same models but using different textures, all laid out in a single config file? (edit: Or to allow something like fuel tanks to have 'empty' versions that can share the same model/texture)

Okay, that's a lot of text... I better stop typing now...

Edited June 4, 2013 by rditto48801
forgot something.

[tazyload]

I was sat in a meeting this evening, doodling designs for rockets and while sketching out one of your tanks it occurred to me that octagonal variants of these would also be of great use. So I made a note and here I am to ask whether something like this was within your future designs for the mod or if you would consider releasing an octagonal version of the mod. I am not aware of the work it would take but the idea of a "polytank" mod based on different polygons would be awesome.

[Greys]

For Kethane... Why not slap a big Ke on a (kethane) green background for the symbol? If something better came along later, it could always be changed.

a big Ke looks too much like Xe but maybe just a big K

I had no idea the liquid barite was meant as weight. I think the descriptions mentioned something about storing oxidizer, which had me scratching my head.

Fixed... Again...

Some of the stock parts seem to not be consistent in terms of how much something holds. Like the 1.25m RCS tank vs. the small radial RCS tanks. I guess I just think some make more sense than others, and compare other things to those...

That's one of the things I'm gonna address once Jeb's Big Stick is done, measure everything and chart some ****, see how inconsistent stock parts are, find some standard deviancies, maybe try to guess why things are inconsistent if I can make it make sense, and so on.

For 'fuel' storage tank dry weights, I literally mean just 1/4 to 1/5th of what they are now. So something like 0.15 large, 0.07 medium, 0.02 small. I think the stock fuel tank (half height 1.25m) of capacity comparable to the large fuel can, had a dry weight of 0.1 something. I would go less than 25% of what they are now, but the 'black end caps' do give an impression of being able to get away with a little 'extra mass'.

That sounds fine too.

Speaking of the mass/shape, another thing that strayed into mind. Being 'canisters', maybe one reason for having a little extra 'dry weight' would be due to being a bit more durable (so increase impact tolerance several fold?)

I bring this up because of a test where I 'radially spammed 24 small fuel tanks radially with probe engines', had the thing hover sideways after it cleared the 'launch tower (structural strut with decoupler for it to 'stand' on), crash and skid to a stop, destroy all the little engines, and leave the small radial fuel tanks intact...

I'm not quite sure if you're asking for them to be more durable or saying it's good that they're very durable already...

Also, ASRGs.... Advanced Stirling Radioisotope Generator. A little more weight, and not 'solid state' like an RTG, but able to generate several times more power than an RTG. NASA has plans to use possibly such a thing in future space missions.

Or a 'combo' unit, like an RTG, but much less output, but include a small amount of electric charge capacity so it doubles as storage. Basically a 'backup power' type thing...

I'll definitely look into these.

A side note, isn't it now possible to put multiple entries into a single config file, so you can have several types of parts using the same models, with the options of just rescaling each one, or sharing the same models but using different textures, all laid out in a single config file? (edit: Or to allow something like fuel tanks to have 'empty' versions that can share the same model/texture)

Yes, but really there's no reason to have multiple parts in a single cfg file.

The way the new system works is that when the game loads it looks at /GameData/, finds any files that it cares about, image files, model files, .dll, .cfg, and probably some other things, and loads it, then it looks at /GameData/A..., /GameData/B..., etc; Effectively the file structure inside inside /GameData/ does not matter at all. Furthermore the PART{} wrapper that has somehow confused a bunch of people makes it so .cfgs don't really matter ether, the system treats them as a folder and parses what's in them. Important to note, KSP Does Not load the File into memory. What it does is it reads the file, and loads the nodes, PART{}, RESOURCE_DEFINITION{}, INTERNAL{}, PROP{}, and probably some others I don't know about, into memory, then closes the file. As you can see from that, it does not matter where your .cfg is, or what is in it, at all. Any organization you choose to do is purely for your own benefit. (note, flags do need to be in a folder named Flags and plugins will automatically generate a new folder for their data to go in, that's a KSP thing not a mod thing)

Now there was a bug in .20.0 that made it impossible to reference assets that were not located in the same folder or a child folder, which is why I currently have this all set up with each kind of hexcan being in one folder with it's own copy of the model. I don't know if .20.1 or .20.2 fixed the reference thing but I intend to make it so there is one set of model files in /GameData/HexCans/ and all of the parts will reference them, bringing the total model count down from 14 to 4. However, the textures and .cfgs will remain where they are. As I said, you can have any number of any root nodes in any .cfg file, but this does make it substantially more difficult to keep track of changes as you may have edited This part of That file, but not the other part, and as mentioned, the .cfg does not matter, the number of them does not matter, having fewer of them only minutely reduces the distributed file size, it Does Not Impact The Game.

Technically speaking, you could have every part in the game, every resource, and every IVA set and it's props, all defined in a single giant ungodly file. Don't do that.

For your reference, this is the (updated) LiquidBarite single cfg file

RESOURCE_DEFINITION
{
  name = LiquidBarite
  density = 0.01
  flowMode = STACK_PRIORITY_SEARCH
  transfer = PUMP
}

PART
{
	// --- general parameters ---
	name = HexCanLBSmall
	module = Part
	author = Greys

	// --- asset parameters ---
	mesh = model.mu
	// texture = hexcan.png
	scale = 1
	rescaleFactor = 0.5
	specPower = 0.3
	rimFalloff = 3
	alphaCutoff = 0

	// --- general parameters ---
	node_attach = 		0.0, 0.0, -0.2,   0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 2
	node_stack_top_01=	0.0, 0.0,  0.166, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 1
	node_stack_top = 	0.0, 0.75, 0.0,   0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 1
	node_stack_bottom = 0.0,-0.75, 0.0,   0.0,-1.0, 0.0, 1

	attachRules = 1,1,1,1,1

	// --- editor parameters ---
	cost = 200
	category = Propulsion
	subcategory = 0
	title = HexCan-LiquidBarite-Small
	manufacturer = PanSpace Manufacturing Inc. Ltd. LLC. Co.
	// 				small= 0.75m, normal= 1.5m large= 3m
	description = A 0.75m long resource canister containing half a ton of Liquid Barite, with space for up to one ton

	// --- general parameters ---
	mass = 0.02
	dragModelType = default
	maximum_drag = 0.2
	minimum_drag = 0.3
	angularDrag = 2
	crashTolerance = 12
	breakingForce = 400
	breakingTorque = 400
	maxTemp = 2900

	// --- resource parameters ---

	RESOURCE
	{
	 name = LiquidBarite
	 amount = 50
	 maxAmount = 100
	}
}

PART
{
	// --- general parameters ---
	name = HexCanLBNormal
	module = Part
	author = Greys

	// --- asset parameters ---
	mesh = model.mu
	// texture = hexcan.png
	scale = 0.07
	rescaleFactor = 1
	specPower = 0.3
	rimFalloff = 3
	alphaCutoff = 0

	// --- general parameters ---
	node_attach = 		0.0, 0.0, -0.2,   0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 2
	node_stack_top_01=	0.0, 0.0,  0.166, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 1
	node_stack_top = 	0.0, 0.75, 0.0,   0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 1
	node_stack_bottom = 0.0,-0.75, 0.0,   0.0,-1.0, 0.0, 1

	attachRules = 1,1,1,1,1

	// --- editor parameters ---
	cost = 200
	category = Propulsion
	subcategory = 0
	title = HexCan-LiquidBarite-Normal
	manufacturer = PanSpace Manufacturing Inc. Ltd. LLC. Co.
	// 				small= 0.75m, normal= 1.5m large= 3m
	description = A 1.5m long resource canister containing 1.5 tons of Liquid Barite, with space for up to 3 

	// --- general parameters ---
	mass = 0.3
	dragModelType = default
	maximum_drag = 0.2
	minimum_drag = 0.3
	angularDrag = 2
	crashTolerance = 12
	breakingForce = 400
	breakingTorque = 400
	maxTemp = 2900

	// --- resource parameters ---

	RESOURCE
	{
	 name = LiquidBarite
	 amount = 150
	 maxAmount = 300
	}
}

PART
{
	// --- general parameters ---
	name = HexCanLBLarge
	module = Part
	author = Greys

	// --- asset parameters ---
	mesh = model.mu
	// texture = hexcan.png
	scale = 0.15
	rescaleFactor = 2
	specPower = 0.3
	rimFalloff = 3
	alphaCutoff = 0

	// --- general parameters ---
	node_attach = 		0.0, 0.0, -0.2,   0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 2
	node_stack_top_01=	0.0, 0.0,  0.166, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 1
	node_stack_top = 	0.0, 0.75, 0.0,   0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 1
	node_stack_bottom = 0.0,-0.75, 0.0,   0.0,-1.0, 0.0, 1

	attachRules = 1,1,1,1,1

	// --- editor parameters ---
	cost = 200
	category = Propulsion
	subcategory = 0
	title = HexCan-LiquidBarite-Large
	manufacturer = PanSpace Manufacturing Inc. Ltd. LLC. Co.
	// 				small= 0.75m, normal= 1.5m large= 3m
	description = A 3m long resource canister containing 4 tons of Liquid Barite, with space for up to 8 

	// --- general parameters ---
	mass = 0.6
	dragModelType = default
	maximum_drag = 0.2
	minimum_drag = 0.3
	angularDrag = 2
	crashTolerance = 12
	breakingForce = 400
	breakingTorque = 400
	maxTemp = 2900

	// --- resource parameters ---

	RESOURCE
	{
	 name = LiquidBarite
	 amount = 400
	 maxAmount = 800
	}
}

Okay, that's a lot of text... I better stop typing now...

I really do appreciate your questions and suggestions, and most importantly right now the bugs you've mentioned.

Thanks!

[rditto48801]

For durability, I was suggesting maybe they could be a little more durable, on account of being cylinders with tough looking end caps.

Yet another stray idea... an empty 'structural' can... just for the sake of mounting stuff on, and for style...

Or a small can that has elements of all four of the stock sensors in it... (temp, gravity, acceleration and air pressure, iirc)

Or a solar can (appears to be covered in solar panels...) Although maybe that just might be a bit silly as it is practical (and probably tricky to implement since that would be multiple sides to handle as solar panel surfaces...)

A probe/craft support/utility/service can, something to have a mixture of a little fuel/oxy, a little mono-propellent, and a little electric charge. The small can might be a bit iffy (so little capacity as it is), but medium and large would have enough to be of some use on some craft that need fuels and power, without being to complex as far as number of parts.

More Barite can variations? Such as fully filled (for those that just need a lot of extra weight) and fully empty versions (for use with a possibly more complex ballast system)... Or would those just be a little redundant?

Just for crazy flexibility, have the cans have connection nodes on all sides, not just one side... but, yeah, maybe that is a crazy idea (and be a visual node nightmare for small cans)... not sure what I would do with that, other than make it easier to evenly 'surface attach' multiple cans to each other... or at least just a second side node opposite of the first side node. Even if just for the above structural can idea.

[Greys]

Hey, had a bit of a rough week but the money worked out within a buck and then I died for a little while. When I was alive I made Jeb's Big Stick, measured everything except the RTGs, they just slipped my mind, and I just now got around to applying my new numbers to the cans, Liquid Barite should now be fixed, Xenon I don't know why it was using the wrong mass but please tell me if it still is. I've done a bad job of keeping track of what I've done so far but I'm keeping better update notes in the readme now. Should just be a lot of fixes overall.

Oh and by the way, the links are updated so have at it

These are my measurements, note that in the ElectricCharge table Units/Ton should be Tons/Unit but basically the weight of battery to retain 1 unit of electric charge is 0.0001t completely standard.

I decided because I felt like it to use the max value out of the stock range for each resource, before the numbers were 20~% lower, not the lowest of the stock range but near the bottom. Biggest impacted are Battery and Xenon, the Xenon measurement before turns out to have been really bad, and now those tanks contain a bit over double what they had before.

Tell me what you think! I'm actually not going to be able to play with them until tomorrow because I'm leaving for work pretty much now.

[MR4Y]

I seriously don't understand why people are always asking for this, I have never heard of a jet engine that works at too high of altitude by storing air. I mean I can't even how that would work or if it did, how you would ever store enough air to make it worthwhile, jets work by pushing massive amounts of air thru. Your compressed air would make it work for seconds. Heck if your are in orbit, simply releasing that compressed air would have more delta-v than running it thru a jet.

SasquatchM's Pulse Detonation Engine uses compressed air and most Firespitter helicopter parts use more air than intakes can produce.

[Moon Goddess]

SasquatchM's Pulse Detonation Engine uses compressed air and most Firespitter helicopter parts use more air than intakes can produce.

No, I was talking about real world jet engines.

but I do wanna apologize about that rant, it was rather harsh.

[rditto48801]

I got back to KSP today, and was looking over the latest version of HexCans.

I am liking the capacity of the assorted 'fuel' tanks now, much more balanced as far as capacity.

The normal sized Barite container is 2.5/500 capacity.

Looking at the normal probe core, I noticed it is a bit heavy at 0.4. For comparison, the 2.5m Remote Guidance Unit is 0.5, the 1.25m RGU is 0.1.

While I think the RCS cans could use a bit more, I can't argue that they are about right as far as the stack RCS tanks. I guess in a way the stock radial RCS tank is itself with a bit to much RCS.

The Small oxidizer can is still showing up in my VAB as having a dry mass of 2.

The markings on the SAS/ASAS cans (mainly the ASAS and small size SAS) are a little hard to see. Would it be possible to make the letters a little larger and/or darker so they stand out a little better on the small one?

On a related idea, how about a 'gyroscope' type icon for the SAS?

One sort of important thing about RTGs I kind of forgot about previously.

The surface area of the radiator panels. I wonder how or if that would affect the whole 'hot side, cold side' aspects of the RTG, when the cans just have just their own surface area for heat dissipation. (if one wants to get technical, anyways...). Might not be as much of a factor for an ASRG, since a fair bit more energy can be generated for the same amount of heat.

One thing I am not sure how I missed before, but the normal and large RTGs seem a little over powered, but not by much. With the small (and stock) RTG just producing 0.75 per second, wouldn't it be a bit better balanced to go with 6/sec and 48/sec for the normal and large versions of the RTG cans?

I was toying around with the little fuel lines on a smaller craft with small radial engines, and couldn't help but think they are kind of... well, 'cute'...

[Greys]

Barite fixed.

Probes lighter

Oxy fixed

Textures, sure thing; not sure I'll have time tonight but that's no problem at all

If realism is the goal then you're in luck, one of the new features of .20 is that you can load multiple model files into one part, I'm working (not really atm) on converting everything over to use single model files where applicable and assembled models too; I already plan on splitting the decoupler into a rack model and a piston model, the rack model will be shared with the Rack part so instead of having the whole thing twice I'll have a second smaller model for the unique elements. In this case, it would not be particularly difficult once I get that all set up to have a model for fins overlaid onto the standard hexcan; if I get better at this by then I could even animate them by the activation state.

I daw'd the first time I used them, they're definitely cute.

Working on making sure this mass issue doesn't come up again, should have an update within a halfhour or so.

Edit:

Update uploaded, same links as always, v0.2.2 now

Edited June 12, 2013 by Greys

[Greys]

New version! No functional changes! v0.3.0!

Moved to the MODEL{} system, split the Decoupler model into a Rack and Pistons model, the rack and decoupler both use the Rack model, the Decoupler overlays the Pistons model onto it. I'm trying to figure out a way to have a similar system for textures, which should allow me to have one full hexcan texture and a bunch of much smaller label plate texture sheets

If you mess around with the unfinished parts the HexPod is now available untextured, and largely not set up

Also the RamHex or whatever hexy BS I named that thing has a terrible texture, but I've got a plan~

Also the TurboHex engine has been made less powerful, and I messed with it's velocity curve.

I should be able to figure out some base textures for most of the Unfinished parts this week, then all that's left is to get them to resemble balanced and I'll probably call that 1.0.0

After that things might get a bit more interesting

[Mekan1k]

The RamHex looks.... AWESOME!!!

Also, I like the cockpit. I hope that gets an IVA (Honestly, it looks great!)

[Greys]

Cockpit looks a lot less like nothing now

And the other parts with mostly just the bumper material look decent as a beginning

Only basic colors applied so far, and time to sleep, it's nearly sunrise