[0.21.1] StretchyTanks v0.2.2 (updated 8-26-13)

[AncientGammoner]

TAC Fuel Balancer is clearly unable to dump either fuel or oxidizer from a procedural tank. Other tanks on the same vessel dump normally. Upon switching resource type to monopropellant, Fuel Balancer doesn't even know the tank exists. Transferring resources out of procedural tanks generates them out of nothing, transferring them in vanishes them.

It's not a bug with StretchyTanks. I just loaded up a clean install with just TAC fuel balancer and StretchyTanks and it could dump fuel/transfer fuel no problem with all types of tanks. And as I've stated previously, the StretchyTanks plugin does nothing while you're in flight, so there's nothing FOR it to accidentally do, the game sees it as just another fuel tank it's the game that's manages it. Maybe you have another mod that is conflicting.

[Mihara]

It's not a bug with StretchyTanks. I just loaded up a clean install with just TAC fuel balancer and StretchyTanks and it could dump fuel/transfer fuel no problem with all types of tanks. And as I've stated previously, the StretchyTanks plugin does nothing while you're in flight, so there's nothing FOR it to accidentally do, the game sees it as just another fuel tank it's the game that's manages it. Maybe you have another mod that is conflicting.

Found it. The conflicting mod was, of all things, Chatterer -- apparently that bug with partless modules caused it to mess up TAC fuel balancer resource list loading or something of the sort, but in a way that only affected stretchy tanks. (Truly a bizarre way for them to malfunction...) Removing it fixed the problem. Well, I can do without Chatterer for a while...

The other problem I have reported, however, remains:

When you change the texture or contained fuel type for a tank, save it and launch it, then revert flight to VAB, the texture and the fuel type get reset to defaults and will be saved as such if you save again. As far as I can see, when you launch the saved craft file via launchpad instead of VAB, the correct saved fuel type and texture will appear, but it is nevertheless quite annoying during iterative development.

[Starwaster]

Found it. The conflicting mod was, of all things, Chatterer -- apparently that bug with partless modules caused it to mess up TAC fuel balancer resource list loading or something of the sort, but in a way that only affected stretchy tanks. (Truly a bizarre way for them to malfunction...) Removing it fixed the problem. Well, I can do without Chatterer for a while...

CHATTERER???

That's truly bizarre.

Wait I think I see what happened.... Chatterer must be using radio frequencies that was causing intereference with TAC Balancer's fuel calculation computers..... must be.

[drtedastro]

oh, ok, must have caused the 'gazinta' to reverse polarity and become a 'gazouta'...

Never seen that before....

[7rex]

Is anyone else having an issue with tanks over a certain size disconnecting from parts attached to them the instant you launch your ship?

This obviously causes the ship to explode when physics loads. If i shorten the tank the problem is seems to be solved.

Is there some sort of mass limit or.....

I am using other mods with this.

Edit: I'm having the same issue as MilkDust on page 15, parts just slide off the top if the tanks are very long.

Edited August 25, 2013 by 7rex

[AncientGammoner]

When you change the texture or contained fuel type for a tank, save it and launch it, then revert flight to VAB, the texture and the fuel type get reset to defaults and will be saved as such if you save again. As far as I can see, when you launch the saved craft file via launchpad instead of VAB, the correct saved fuel type and texture will appear, but it is nevertheless quite annoying during iterative development.

The saving of texture/fuel types is a known issue that will be fixed in the next update.

Is anyone else having an issue with tanks over a certain size disconnecting from parts attached to them the instant you launch your ship?

This obviously causes the ship to explode when physics loads. If i shorten the tank the problem is seems to be solved.

Is there some sort of mass limit or.....

I am using other mods with this.

Edit: I'm having the same issue as MilkDust on page 15, parts just slide off the top if the tanks are very long.

I contacted MilkDust and got the craft file and there were no bugs with the mod, the issue was (and might be for you) the stock game isn't setup to handle objects of that weight and so connections break under the load on the pad, especially if you're relying on stuff like stock struts/decouplers. If you want to stretch the tanks really big and actually be able to launch them you're going to need something like the Heavier Struts from NovaPunch2.

[Starwaster]

The saving of texture/fuel types is a known issue that will be fixed in the next update.

I contacted MilkDust and got the craft file and there were no bugs with the mod, the issue was (and might be for you) the stock game isn't setup to handle objects of that weight and so connections break under the load on the pad, especially if you're relying on stuff like stock struts/decouplers. If you want to stretch the tanks really big and actually be able to launch them you're going to need something like the Heavier Struts from NovaPunch2.

I can tell you that the heavier struts will not help. Pretty sure I posted some pics not long ago demonstrating the folly of really MASSIVE tanks. Bottom line is that stock physics will cause small things to pop off of really massive rockets just as though they were load bearing parts that failed instead of hanging off the side like fins.

[AndreyATGB]

Don't know if anyone else mentioned this, but the tanks are basically invincible. It takes somewhere around 150-200m/s to destroy one. Other than that, this mod is awesome. It should both fix lag with big ships (less parts) and just make building easier.

[Starwaster]

Don't know if anyone else mentioned this, but the tanks are basically invincible. It takes somewhere around 150-200m/s to destroy one. Other than that, this mod is awesome. It should both fix lag with big ships (less parts) and just make building easier.

Wow now I feel really freaking depressed. I swear, I posted a series of pictures just a few pages back that show a giant stretchy tank bouncing around the launch pad.

Did NOBODY see it? Nobody comments on it? It was so funny and I thought people would laugh but nobody saw it and nobody cares

[Papa_Joe]

Wow now I feel really freaking depressed. I swear, I posted a series of pictures just a few pages back that show a giant stretchy tank bouncing around the launch pad.

Did NOBODY see it? Nobody comments on it? It was so funny and I thought people would laugh but nobody saw it and nobody cares

Awww...

Yes, I did notice. Yes, they were funny . It is a known issue, so I didn't think a comment added value. I'll add one here so you know I've been paying attention to your contributions.

[AndreyATGB]

Wow now I feel really freaking depressed. I swear, I posted a series of pictures just a few pages back that show a giant stretchy tank bouncing around the launch pad.

Did NOBODY see it? Nobody comments on it? It was so funny and I thought people would laugh but nobody saw it and nobody cares

I'm really not sure how to interpret your response so I'm sorry if I offended you somehow, I didn't mean to.

[drtedastro]

Someone needs to have a cookie.....

[Mihara]

CHATTERER???

That's truly bizarre.

...also wrong, because the problem mysteriously reappeared. I did find out was that it vanishes after I quicksave/quickload, though, so it's definitely something going wrong only during launch.

I have a suspicion it manifests only when you create a vessel with a stretchy tank, launch it, revert to VAB and launch it again, but if nobody can recreate this, I'm back to searching for a specific elusive mod conflict...

[Motokid600]

How many textures are there to choose from?

[TaranisElsu]

One more problem to report...

Attempts to dump fuel from the Stretchy Tank with TAC Fuel Balancer produce a bizarre result -- the fuel counter in TAC Fuel Balancer changes, and is retained, but this apparently has no effect on actual tank contents and mass.

Curioser and curioser.

TAC Fuel Balancer is clearly unable to dump either fuel or oxidizer from a procedural tank. Other tanks on the same vessel dump normally. Upon switching resource type to monopropellant, Fuel Balancer doesn't even know the tank exists. Transferring resources out of procedural tanks generates them out of nothing, transferring them in vanishes them.

It's not a bug with StretchyTanks. I just loaded up a clean install with just TAC fuel balancer and StretchyTanks and it could dump fuel/transfer fuel no problem with all types of tanks. And as I've stated previously, the StretchyTanks plugin does nothing while you're in flight, so there's nothing FOR it to accidentally do, the game sees it as just another fuel tank it's the game that's manages it. Maybe you have another mod that is conflicting.

I actually noticed this (and fixed it) on Friday but have not had a chance to upload a new version yet. It is not a bug with either StretchyTanks or with TAC Fuel Balancer. Though it is an incompatibility in how we do things.

When StretchyTanks loads, it replaces the Resource block in the part with a new one with the appropriate capacity. The problem is that my mod may have already iterated over the parts and grabbed the information about what resources were where, and retained a reference to the (now invalid) Resource block.

I have changed my mod so that it now updates its reference to the new Resource block whenever it rebuilds the lists. My mod will also wait a short time after loading before grabbing the resources information, which allows StretchyTanks to make its change first.

Found it. The conflicting mod was, of all things, Chatterer

Not sure why it looked that way, unless the initialization order changed with Chatterer. The issue has nothing to do with Chatterer nor any other mod.

... You can't dump fuel when you're on the launch pad. At least I never can. ...

You must have something else going on. There is no restriction on when or where you can dump fuel. Though you can hide the Dump option in the settings. You can also Edit the amount of fuel while prelaunch -- i.e. type in how much you want up to the capacity.

[Starwaster]

Awww...

Yes, I did notice. Yes, they were funny . It is a known issue, so I didn't think a comment added value. I'll add one here so you know I've been paying attention to your contributions.

Thank you

[Starwaster]

Sorry to re-hash the ModularFuels mass issue again but I just used a stretchy to duplicate one of the Nova 5mx12m and the dry mass was ~25.5 mt to the Nova's 6.144

Not meaning to nag, just trying to illustrate the differences there. (and I had the right value earlier, I just divided instead of multiplying...)

[Mihara]

Not sure why it looked that way, unless the initialization order changed with Chatterer. The issue has nothing to do with Chatterer nor any other mod.

It's a race condition on who gets to the resource block first, and Chatterer also needs to load on launch, so it's not surprising they would affect each other. It's also not surprising this wouldn't stick.

[Galane]

A problem I'm having with a rocket using these are engines falling off. It has a TVR-400L with 4 engines. I first tried to tie it on with 8 struts between the quad adapter and the stretchy tank but upon hitting the coast phase the engines and adapter went sailing away.

I finally had to resort to sticking a X200-8 between the stretchy tank and the quad adapter and using 12 struts to staple it in place. (With the version prior to 0.2.1, haven't tried the ship without those struts with the current version of Stretchy Tanks.)

The rocket is BLB-5 in this small archive http://partsbyemc.com/pub/AARP-Kerbal-Space-rockets.zip

Kerbals apparently use something like blu-tack to attach some parts. ;-)

[Starwaster]

A problem I'm having with a rocket using these are engines falling off. It has a TVR-400L with 4 engines. I first tried to tie it on with 8 struts between the quad adapter and the stretchy tank but upon hitting the coast phase the engines and adapter went sailing away.

I finally had to resort to sticking a X200-8 between the stretchy tank and the quad adapter and using 12 struts to staple it in place. (With the version prior to 0.2.1, haven't tried the ship without those struts with the current version of Stretchy Tanks.)

The rocket is BLB-5 in this small archive http://partsbyemc.com/pub/AARP-Kerbal-Space-rockets.zip

Kerbals apparently use something like blu-tack to attach some parts. ;-)

The great thing about this mod, the thing that all of us have always wanted is the ability to arbitrarily define any size of fuel tank we want. But that doesn't mean that we can't define a tank so massive that it runs afoul of KSP's physics quirks. If a part is massive enough or the whole rocket massive enough, you have to expect that smaller parts will pop off it like... err like popcorn popping or something.

[AncientGammoner]

Update - v0.2.2

-Fixed issues with saving/loading the tank type/texture

-Changed crash tolerance of tanks from 100 to 10

-Breaking Force/Torque now scale with tank size

-Added "Oxidizer" to the list of tank types

[drtedastro]

Thanks for update. This is working really, really good.

Are you going to add Kethane to your list of supported fuel types?

if this has been addressed earlier, i missed it...

EDIT: also ability to create empty tanks?

Edited August 26, 2013 by drtedastro
forgot something

[blizzy78]

I've noticed a small typo when cycling through a tank's fuel type: It must be "Monopropellant", not "Monopropellent".

[pantheis]

How well (if at all) does this work with Modular Fuel tanks?

[Starwaster]

How well (if at all) does this work with Modular Fuel tanks?

It works with Modular Fuels if you patch the stretchy tanks to include ModuleFuelTanks modules. There should be a set of MM patches in the download to do that but you have to unzip them and move them somewhere into your gamedata folder

Unfortunately last time I tested them they were way too massive. Stretchy tanks use their own mass calculations and ignore the MF tank type's mass. As an example: NovaPunch has a 5m x 12m tank. Configured under MF (Tank type: Default) they should be about 5-6 tons. A Stretchy tank of the same size comes in at about 25 tons. That's dry mass. That will affect both your Delta-V and your TWR.