Battlestar Galactica Viper Recreation

[Tripod27]

Now, I'm using the words in the title pretty loosely. Since I've never actually seen a single episode of Battlestar Galactica, you can mentally change the title to "that one cool looking ship I saw the guy from HOC Gaming recreate recreation", but that'd be a bit confusing.

Anyway, the ship can do vertical takeoff/landing, horizontal takeoff/landing, airbraking and general badass aerobatics. You can even vertically land without the gear out if you're careful. I tried my best to have the fuel be dispersed as evenly as possible (so random sets of maneuver boosters don't die while others are still half full) but I didn't quite manage it since the rear ones steal fuel from the two lower engines they're mounted on, and it already has enough random fuel lines. Since the nose is one huge gas tank, and it drains first, you'll want to refill it from the engines or the mini center gas tank during flight to avoid the plane getting super dodgy as the center of mass shifts back.

When you load it up you'll probably realize a ton of part clipping (those dinky wings can't actually keep it up, I filled the gas tanks with hidden wings) this wasn't done with the debug menu, the game just let me do it. due to the angle of the main wing it does fly a bit more stably upside down than right way up, so I filled the rear tanks with wings slanted up the other way to counter that effect, and it does okay.

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Flying instructions:

1 activates main engines and closes decorative flaps

2 activates downward facing engines

3 activates forward facing engines

click the button again to deactivate

turn off main engines and turn on bottom and front engines for very tight turns

most stable under 90 m/s

if it gets really twitchy, transfer as much fuel as possible to the front fuel tank

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It does work well in space, but it can't get up there on it's own

Link is below, the 4 is just because it was my 4th major attempt at making something that didn't suck horribly, so you can just rename it if you want.

http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/42951400/BSG Viper 4.craft

EDIT: New improved version below. looks basically the same (fuel lines are less exposed though) but now the fuel balance is perfect and all tanks act as one massive combined tank. The front tanks drain first if you use a ton of the small thrusters, and the rear ones drain first if you use the 3 main thrusters more. Just something to keep in mind

Now also comes with parachutes (click space, only really work if most of your ship has been destroyed while playing whack a kerbal or something or if you're going really slow when they fully deploy) and the 4th action group, which almost perfectly balances the craft in a vacuum and makes it less nose heavy in atmosphere

http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/42951400/BSG Viper 5P.craft

Edited June 5, 2013 by Tripod27

[Mekan1k]

Well.... I must say one thing.

Well Done sir.

*Insert slow clap here*

[Scrogdog]

Niice!

Can't wait to see your Battlestar!

[meatballcannon]

Very impressive, I love the little details around the engines like the parallel stacks of girders and the sort of "plating" you made out of those small control surfaces, it reminds me of the overlapping plates used for armor in feudal japan. However, I will be making my own, no offense to yours. I simply won't download it yet and tempt myself to take it apart.

Oh and one thing: you totally need a mass driver to kick this thing off the runway,

that would be awesome in ways I don't know how to describe!

[Tripod27]

Niice!

Can't wait to see your Battlestar!

Oh man, don't even know how I would start with that one... I'd need a bunch of different "planes" all with the same base part to come and dock to , and then I'll have to balance the overall ship peice by peice and redock the parts with each change >_<. And since I never watched the series, I have no idea if it should work in atmosphere or not

No idea what a mass driver is or does, I might (probably not) be able to hide a mainsail between the 3 engines for a similar effect but I highly doubt it, and it would make the plane even more unstable at low fuel while damaging it's thrust/weight ratio when not in use. If it's a stage you drop after accelerating, it'd be easy, but I doubt they drop something as expensive sounding as a mass driver

Also the details around the wing aren't girders or there for show. The "girders" are the bottom of a bunch of upside down delta deluxe winglets, and the small control surfaces on top also help bring the center if lift back and up (the default "real" wings are too low and can't actually lift it till you're doing 150m/s. They also made the plane only stable upside down) Yhe fact that all of these changes made the plane look cooler was just an added bonus

Edited June 4, 2013 by Tripod27

[MockKnizzle]

And since I never watched the series, I have no idea if it should work in atmosphere or not

Well...

...Kinda?

[Tripod27]

yeaaaaaah..... don't think I can pull that off with stock parts:P

[Tripod27]

ok, building the battlestar now, someone throwing some schematics and good side/front/back/top/bottom shots of the ship would be nice, all of the schematics I find are tiny, hard to read and inconsistent

edit: well, so far I have the general shape of the launch tubes made from 2x2 structural squares, and even on lowest settings I'm getting 2 FPS. Even if I do manage to get the entire ship built, it'll destroy my computer

also it is off balance in a vaccum, working on an action group that fixes this (turns on a few of the bottom thursters to compensate)

Edited June 5, 2013 by Tripod27