Screw the drouge chute, we have tweakables... wait a second...

[Themohawkninja]

On of the things that I was most excited about with tweakables would be the alterable altitudes that parachutes could deploy at (this is going to be put to use on Duna. Waiting for that parachute to open just gets way too nerve-racking from the thin atmosphere). That being said, I was disappointed that the slider maxes out at 5000 meters. I was really hoping that we could just get rid of the drouge chute altogether, and make it so parachutes can open immediately after entering the atmosphere, so that you can get the most out of the drag it produces. Obviously you couldn't have it fully deploy due to a lack of air pressure, but it would be really nice if you could allow it to partially deploy at 70k and fully deploy at much higher altitudes (like 15k). It would allow players to be able to turn the smaller parachutes into drogue chutes (since we only have 1m drogue chutes).

Thoughts?

[Nao]

Aside from that there is also a [bUG] there.

For drogue the minimum pressure is actually 0.01 when tweaking (as with every other chute) while it should be 0.007 as for default.

[Kasuha]

You still cannot tweak the drag value of the open chute. Even if you opened your main chute in vacuum, it could break your ship once you reenter. At least I think it could. Because the chute drag is applied to just one point where it is mounted, while during reentry, the drag is applied about evenly to all parts in the same direction. That's why ships have no problems surviving it (without heat effects).

By the way, I think you can actually test it if you manage to open the chute below 500 m and still get to orbit (there was a challenge about this once). Because then you can try what reentry with open chute does.

[C7Studios]

With the tweakables it's a balance of ranges vs precision. The higher the range the less precision each step will have. I'll test some different minimum and maximum variables for the next update, as well as upgrading the minimum ranges a bit so you don't have an issue like you do with the drogue chutes.

[Duxwing]

With the tweakables it's a balance of ranges vs precision. The higher the range the less precision each step will have. I'll test some different minimum and maximum variables for the next update, as well as upgrading the minimum ranges a bit so you don't have an issue like you do with the drogue chutes.

Booyah!

-Duxwing

[Themohawkninja]

With the tweakables it's a balance of ranges vs precision. The higher the range the less precision each step will have. I'll test some different minimum and maximum variables for the next update, as well as upgrading the minimum ranges a bit so you don't have an issue like you do with the drogue chutes.

What exactly do you mean by 'precision' in the context of the parachutes?

[vexx32]

Judging by the UI implementation, I'd say he means that the bar you set the value on is a specific length, so if you have a large range, moving the bar a small amount will change the value a lot (low precision), whereas if the range is much smaller, you can change the value by smaller increments (i.e., higher precision).

[Themohawkninja]

Judging by the UI implementation, I'd say he means that the bar you set the value on is a specific length, so if you have a large range, moving the bar a small amount will change the value a lot (low precision), whereas if the range is much smaller, you can change the value by smaller increments (i.e., higher precision).

In that case, why not replace the slider with a textbox and some IF statements to prevent the wrong characters from being inputted?

[vexx32]

It's a possibility, but I think a neater solution is to allow the current click and drag method of the slider, and just tack a button on the end which turns it into a textbox (and back) at will. Best of both worlds.

[Miro Beero]

On of the things that I was most excited about with tweakables would be the alterable altitudes that parachutes could deploy at (this is going to be put to use on Duna. Waiting for that parachute to open just gets way too nerve-racking from the thin atmosphere). That being said, I was disappointed that the slider maxes out at 5000 meters. I was really hoping that we could just get rid of the drouge chute altogether, and make it so parachutes can open immediately after entering the atmosphere, so that you can get the most out of the drag it produces. Obviously you couldn't have it fully deploy due to a lack of air pressure, but it would be really nice if you could allow it to partially deploy at 70k and fully deploy at much higher altitudes (like 15k). It would allow players to be able to turn the smaller parachutes into drogue chutes (since we only have 1m drogue chutes).

Thoughts?

I had the same issue. I think the parachute could have opened up a lot early - when I told it to.

I burned a lot of extra fuel slowing down when I didn't think I needed to.

[Nao]

Oh just as a heads up. The values for tweakables are saved for each craft individually in craft file. It's quite easy to edit them to whatever you desire.

It's not really a solution but works as a temporary fix

[peadar1987]

I had to turn the white parachute into an early-opening drogue in the cfg file, as an engineering solution/cheat, as Jeb's capsule was out of electricity, and with Deadly Reentry installed, if it entered the atmosphere tumbling, it would have burned up. The drogue went up in flames at about 19000m, but by that stage the worst of the reentry heat was over, and the capsule could ride it out till reserve chute deployment without cooking Jeb alive. One of my prouder moments in KSP (even though all I did was change a number and hit space a few times!)

[Kasuha]

I had to turn the white parachute into an early-opening drogue in the cfg file, as an engineering solution/cheat, as Jeb's capsule was out of electricity, and with Deadly Reentry installed, if it entered the atmosphere tumbling, it would have burned up. The drogue went up in flames at about 19000m, but by that stage the worst of the reentry heat was over, and the capsule could ride it out till reserve chute deployment without cooking Jeb alive. One of my prouder moments in KSP (even though all I did was change a number and hit space a few times!)

In my humble opinion, accepting the fact that you failed a mission is more worth to be proud of than hacking into files to make it succeed.

[peadar1987]

In my humble opinion, accepting the fact that you failed a mission is more worth to be proud of than hacking into files to make it succeed.

In my mind, changing the opening altitude of a parachute is something that any self-respecting mission control/spacecraft crew should be able to do. I'm happy enough to change the cfgs to solve problems like that, ones that are only problems because KSP is still an alpha, and things like tweakables aren't fully implemented yet. If I'd used it to recharge the batteries, get infinite fuel, or just disabled deadly reentry or something, I'd totally agree with you.