[1.12] Extraplanetary Launchpads v6.99.3

[taniwha]

They are not currently modifiable via MM (I've been considering it, though).

@betelphi: It's probably a bit of a pain in windows, but mac (untested) or linux (what I use) it's pretty easy. You need git, make, mono (mcs), and bash for building within Source (just run "make KSPDIR=pathtomainkspdir install"). For building in the top level, you'll need a few other tools (cp, inkscape, lyx, xelatex).

That, or you could create a csproj file (all cs files are listed in Source/Makefile, but Assembly.cs is generated).

[Jarin]

I'm having an issue with a survey-stake construction appearing with the combined "origin" point apparently being its center of mass, so its half stuck in the ground and explodes as soon as physics loads. Any idea where I should start looking for an issue (or even what info to provide for better troubleshooting)? It's a small tail-sitter built in the SPH, constructed on Minmus' greater flats. I'd try to put a vertical-axis stake somewhere, but I can't put survey stakes on constructions, and there's no hills in physics range.

 

Edited March 22, 2017 by Jarin

[cgwhite4]

While I do not use survey stakes myself, from what I know about them (and I just double-checked an earlier post by taniwha: see top of page 184 for more information), it sounds like you need to use a -Y stake.  This will define the lowest altitude where any part of your vessel can be, forcing it upward, where it should avoid the ground.  Remember, KSP uses Y-up coordinates, and most people are used to Z-up, so make sure not to confuse the two.  Also, be aware that a +Y stake in a flat area is a recipe for Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly, so if you mistakenly planted one of these, remove it.

Edited March 23, 2017 by cgwhite4
added helpful reference

[Jarin]

12 hours ago, cgwhite4 said:

While I do not use survey stakes myself, from what I know about them (and I just double-checked an earlier post by taniwha: see top of page 184 for more information), it sounds like you need to use a -Y stake.  This will define the lowest altitude where any part of your vessel can be, forcing it upward, where it should avoid the ground.  Remember, KSP uses Y-up coordinates, and most people are used to Z-up, so make sure not to confuse the two.  Also, be aware that a +Y stake in a flat area is a recipe for Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly, so if you mistakenly planted one of these, remove it.

All I had was two origin stakes, which has never given me trouble in the past. Latest build materialized was notably shorter, and appeared fully below the ground, so it seems like it's an issue with vertical offset, not center of mass. I'll see if the -Y stake fixes things.

Edit: NOPE. This time it appeared below ground and sideways.

Edited March 24, 2017 by Jarin

[cgwhite4]

Sideways, you say?  Suppose you were to draw a line through your -Y stake that runs horizontally and is orthogonal to the vertical axis of your craft (i.e., the axis which would be up and down if your craft were correctly oriented for launch).  Now suppose that the craft were pivoted about that line until your craft's vertical axis matches true vertical.  Would it then be completely above the ground?  If the answer is yes, you are probably having an axis ambiguity problem.  It is possible that by placing only a -Y stake, you have confused KSP and/or EL about which axis should be where.

With your -Y stake still in place, try explicitly defining the X axis by placing -X and +X stakes (making sure to place them farther apart than the largest non-vertical dimension of your rocket).  EL should decide where to place your ship along the X-axis by taking the average.  With one axis explicitly defined, KSP and/or EL should have an easier time figuring out which way Y should be.  If even this is insufficient, try also explicitly defining the Z-axis.  If I recall correctly, in the event your defined X and Z axes are not perfectly orthogonal, KSP and/or EL will make them orthogonal by evenly distributing the error among the affected axes (e.g., if you set an 80 degree angle, they will both get moved 5 degrees away from each other to compensate).

Edited March 24, 2017 by cgwhite4
error correction

[DStaal]

Was this ship built in the VAB or the SPH?  (IIRC, they have different coordinate systems...)

[cgwhite4]

Oh, that's the problem.  I have done a lot from the VAB but nothing from SPH.  Jarin did say SPH above.  I'm assuming that means he needs to use a different stake.   Is it -X or -Z?

[taniwha]

Make sure that you're not mixing up direction and bounds stakes. If a -Y stake make your vessel spawn sideways, it was probably a direction (default) stake. Also, I'm pretty sure stakes keep their settings when passing through a KIS inventory.

[Jarin]

On 3/25/2017 at 9:55 PM, taniwha said:

Make sure that you're not mixing up direction and bounds stakes. If a -Y stake make your vessel spawn sideways, it was probably a direction (default) stake. Also, I'm pretty sure stakes keep their settings when passing through a KIS inventory.

The problem does remain that two "orign" stakes worked without any issue until my last patching. I'm gonna try a clean install of EL and report back tomorrow or tuesday.

[taniwha]

are you sure you haven't got a third stake lying around somewhere (within 200m of either of the known ones)?

[Jarin]

10 hours ago, taniwha said:

are you sure you haven't got a third stake lying around somewhere (within 200m of either of the known ones)?

Not unless it's somehow removed itself from the ability to switch between it with the bracket keys. Also I renamed my existing stakes.

Fresh install did not work. Two origin stakes still offset 2-3 meters down. Small constructions appear below-ground and fall into the void.

Edited March 27, 2017 by Jarin
sounded unintentionally sarcastic

[taniwha]

@Jarin: I just read back and you say it's a tail-sitter built in the SPH. Did you rotate the root part? If so, would you mind resetting the rotation and doing a test build? (rotation reset just for the test). It might well be an oversight in the bounds calculation.

Edited March 28, 2017 by taniwha

[Jarin]

12 hours ago, taniwha said:

@Jarin: I just read back and you say it's a tail-sitter built in the SPH. Did you rotate the root part? If so, would you mind resetting the rotation and doing a test build? (rotation reset just for the test). It might well be an oversight in the bounds calculation.

Sadly it's happened on every design I've tested. The tailsitter was upright, but clipped through the ground. I've built a couple mk1 shuttles (airplane shaped) since then, and they appear properly horizontal and *below* the ground because they're significantly shorter. The only way I've had any success is removing the stakes entirely and launching in "no survey area found, explosions likely!" mode, which has the craft appear in midair slightly above and behind the survey station. These appear rotated 90 degrees, but it's Minmus so I can deal with flipping them upright before fueling.

Edit: I wouldn't think any of my mods would cause conflict, and I removed the only thing I'd added recently, but maybe you can see a potential issue:

(Patches is just a couple MM files for things like deflating heat-shield and RCS defaults)

Edited March 28, 2017 by Jarin

[taniwha]

How many of your problem designs use TweakScale?

[Jarin]

3 hours ago, taniwha said:

How many of your problem designs use TweakScale?

Two out of three tested so far, I believe. One was something I'd built several of on the same spot previously, though.

Edited March 28, 2017 by Jarin

[taniwha]

Well, with tweakscale in use, all bets are off (last I checked (admittedly a few years ago), TS did its scaling in Update which is too late for EL to see the changes before spawning the vessel).

However, I am very interested in the details of the problem vessels that do not use tweakscale.

[Agnemon]

I have used tweakscale repeatedly with EL builds with no problems. In fact, I would say that over 80% of the builds over the last 18 months have had the scaling tweaked to some extent on the majority of parts in the build. 

 

[taniwha]

Good to hear, actually. I tried to support TS properly (build costs) a while back and couldn't due to the timing issue.

[Jarin]

6 hours ago, taniwha said:

However, I am very interested in the details of the problem vessels that do not use tweakscale.

All stock, except for the RCS blisters. And yes, I'm building a plane on minmus where wings are useless. <.< (it's a high-speed return shuttle, in an all-aircraft career)

This materialized level and facing the direction I expected... except that it was fully underground and fell into the depths of the planetary void. 

Edited March 29, 2017 by Jarin

[taniwha]

Fully underground, or just the wheels? (wheels do seem to be a problem)

[DarknessHasLost]

 

On 11/24/2013 at 11:51 PM, 5thHorseman said:

I got so excited that there was a new update to EL... Oh well!

Congrats on the official change and I'm looking forward to see how things go from here.

As the old thread has been closed I'd like to continue a conversation we had going on it, here. I'm still having issues with the mod though I think I understand the mechanics now. I successfully - by modding a ton of ore into the hex surrounding KSC in sandbox mode - created a base that will mine ore, smelt metal, and then create rocket parts. I then used those 3 resources to build an assemblage on the smaller, newer launchpad.

And then everything exploded and I literally cannot access that save game. KSP freezes and I have to kill it with task manager. Luckily it's in my sandbox game but I simply can't use this mod in my career game if that's a possibility.

Is this common? Was there something I could/should have done to prevent it or at least make it less likely?

you probably built too much for the physics to handle, or a craft too small. the release fucntion acts like a decoupler, and may had destroyed parts as it was creating

 

Edited March 29, 2017 by DarknessHasLost
Left over comment from solved issue

[Superfluous J]

13 minutes ago, DarknessHasLost said:

 

you probably built too much for the physics to handle, or a craft too small. the release fucntion acts like a decoupler, and may had destroyed parts as it was creating

 

Wow that post was over 3 years ago!

I actually remember that. Don't know if I ever figured it out or if it just went away in later versions or when I stopped using Kethane.

[DarknessHasLost]

1 hour ago, 5thHorseman said:

Wow that post was over 3 years ago!

I actually remember that. Don't know if I ever figured it out or if it just went away in later versions or when I stopped using Kethane.

yeet

[Jarin]

On 3/29/2017 at 11:35 AM, taniwha said:

Fully underground, or just the wheels? (wheels do seem to be a problem)

Fully. Like, nothing above-ground. If it had just been the wheels, it'd probably have exploded, not fallen into the core of the planet.

[dunebugmi]

On 11/12/2016 at 10:59 AM, beta546 said:

Hey does anyone know how to make this work with stock `ore` rather than the `metal ore` this mod adds? I tried messing around with the .cfgs, changed all references of metalore to ore, but it does nothing but stop it working with either of them. guess the actual plugin plays a part in it..

 

Edit. Looks like it is possible to change the stock drills and converters to use metal ore, instead of the stock ore lol....I just think it is much easier to only have one resource to deal with to make rocket parts and also fuel, and the stock drills are much nicer...

I was working on a module manager cfg for this last night and I think I had it working.  I used the stock ISRU to convert ore into rocketparts, and then built and launched a rocket using those rocket parts.  My goal is to eliminate the 40 or 50 EL parts used for storage and smelting.  They're all unnecessary if you can get it to use the stock ore.  I can post the MM cfg lines I used if you're still interested.

 

Taniwha describes here why metal ore was used instead of ore, but using ore worked ok for me last night.  It was from the launch pad at KSC, so maybe ore concentration is much lower everywhere else?  I must be missing a piece of the puzzle.