The only thing thing that I care to see in .24

[regex]

The point I was making is that the structural parts in the game are stronger than many others, so if you want to build big you've got to use them..... and avoid the weaker connections like sticking stuff to orange tanks radially. It's kinda hard to see with my rockets because I hide everything, but look at how many structural pieces whackjob uses on his rockets to make sure they're strong enough to fly.

The point I was making is that perfectly reasonable aerodynamic-ish rockets don't work as expected because the engines dance around underneath tanks, decoupler connections are floppy, and the large SAS you installed fails every other launch even when you've strutted it. Even using ferram4's mod I still have to strut my boosters to the side of the main rocket body; that's to be expected since you need more than a single point of contact acting like a fulcrum when the engines are ignited. Struts shouldn't need to be used to ensure the basic integrity of a reasonable craft, they should be used in cases where you actually expect a failure to happen.

[Moar Boosters]

The point I was making is that perfectly reasonable aerodynamic-ish rockets don't work as expected because the engines dance around underneath tanks, decoupler connections are floppy, and the large SAS you installed fails every other launch even when you've strutted it. Even using ferram4's mod I still have to strut my boosters to the side of the main rocket body; that's to be expected since you need more than a single point of contact acting like a fulcrum when the engines are ignited. Struts shouldn't need to be used to ensure the basic integrity of a reasonable craft, they should be used in cases where you actually expect a failure to happen.

Well thats the whole challenge of the game. If they make it so you can just stick any combination of parts together and have it fly, there isn't much of a game left. You can already do that with the cheat menu or by modding.

[regex]

If they make it so you can just stick any combination of parts together and have it fly

Because that's exactly what I was talking about, amirite? Well played, sir, well played.

[Moar Boosters]

Well how much weight do you want a decoupler to be able to hold before it fails? How much weight do you want to stack on top of that sensitive hollow circle of computer insrtuments and gyros?

[Comrade Jenkens]

When I first got KSP I found that my rockets would collapse even when I stuck them together with hundreds of struts. Now I can make considerably larger ships and I only need to use a few well placed struts to keep it rock solid!

Having said that I think it would be a bit nicer on new players if the joint connections were improved a bit.

[oggylt]

Well, to avoid wobbly rockets i use 4 liens of struts and it makes my aerodynamic stacks rock solid

like there if you look closely you can see a line of strut going by the side of the rocket raised up by small cubes. I put 1 cubic strut(4-symmetry) on each fuel tank and then connect them with struts.

Before complaining of how many of them u must use, you may want to learn how to effectively use them. There was a post somewhere, teaching how to strut your rocket.

Edited January 2, 2014 by oggylt

[chuangatronic]

As I've built more and more rockets, I've learned how to build bigger and bigger with less and less struts. The real trick is to really build a superstructure and treat all the fuel tanks as fragile tanks. Once I started using thrust plates and support columns for my stages I've kept some pretty fat rockets down below 300 parts. They're nowhere near whackjob or Moar Booster level huge but they're big enough to boost any heavy payload (100 tons or more) to LKO.

[Wallace]

We all know that in real life we see lots of tall thin rockets, and no widey rockets with zillions of drop tanks and booster all over the outside. We also don't see trusses sticking out all over with struts between them on real rockets. If we could stack tanks up without it going wobbly and snapping off at the decouplers all the time, then we would be able to make much more realistic rockets.

I don't think it's unreasonable to put a tank on top of another tank and it to hold it in place. I don't want unbreakable rockets, but I don't think it's to much to ask to have 2 orange tanks and an engine on the bottom without it flapping about like a firehose.

[LameLefty]

Struts shouldn't need to be used to ensure the basic integrity of a reasonable craft, they should be used in cases where you actually expect a failure to happen.

Exactly.

Even in the real world, only a very few key structural members are needed between the segments of the largest liquid-fueled U.S. rocket flying today.

[regex]

Well how much weight do you want a decoupler to be able to hold before it fails?

Enough to act like a proper staging device.

How much weight do you want to stack on top of that sensitive hollow circle of computer insrtuments and gyros?

Because Kerbals just stack stuff on top of sensitive computers and gyroscopes instead of packing them carefully into a load-bearing structure, right?

Basically I'd like building a rocket in KSP to be a proper, intuitive abstraction rather than an exercise in guessing where the physics engine will fail, especially given its failings. Most joints should be far stronger than they actually are and stitch-strutting shouldn't ever be needed. Supportive strutting in cases where one would expect a failure (a booster with a single point of contact, a large payload, etc...) makes perfect sense.

[Moar Boosters]

Exactly.

Even in the real world, only a very few key structural members are needed between the segments of the largest liquid-fueled U.S. rocket flying today.

http://i1342.photobucket.com/albums/o777/LameLefty/Odds%20and%20Ends/deltaivh_zps7f6766da.jpg

Well a Kerbal equivalent of the Delta VI heavy is 3 orange tanks and a couple of smaller ones. You don't have to go nuts with the struts to build something that performs like the Delta VI and launches sattelites into GKO.

[PDCWolf]

Exactly.

Even in the real world, only a very few key structural members are needed between the segments of the largest liquid-fueled U.S. rocket flying today.

http://i1342.photobucket.com/albums/o777/LameLefty/Odds%20and%20Ends/deltaivh_zps7f6766da.jpg

Those are not struts, dude, those are the equivalent to our radial decouplers.

[pigletx2]

Well thats the whole challenge of the game. If they make it so you can just stick any combination of parts together and have it fly, there isn't much of a game left. You can already do that with the cheat menu or by modding.

The real challenge is landing, going to other places, and making good designs. I shouldn't have to strut my lander to Eeloo and back to just land on Minmus with Kethane miners attached.

[Lukaszenko]

I always felt uneasy with the struts. Not only do they look ugly and out of place (with no way to snap them to orderly locations), but I could never reconcile using them with decouplers. I mean, when the decoupler decouples, how do the struts know to break as well? Do they have small decouplers on their joints? Do they just tear out of the rocket?

I've found myself lately using the small decouplers with 2.5 m rockets, strutting the joint to make up the strength defecit. It doesn't seem right that I can do that.

Edited January 4, 2014 by Lukaszenko

[agentKmurph]

Well this rocket is much heavier than the Saturn V and is pretty reliable. The trick to building big rockets is to use the structural pieces to create hardpoints that take all the strain. Just sticking fuel tanks together isn't going to work, as it wouldn't in real life. Real life fuel tanks are about as strong as soda cans. Rockets have thrust structures that hold them together.

If they make connections stronger it's just going to dumb the game down a lot. If you want to play like that you can already use the cheat menu to make them stronger, or download mods.

What we really need is more performance enhancements, so rockets like this don't run at stupidly low frame-rates.

http://i.imgur.com/6sxQ2kg.png

Wow 50% larger by mass than a Saturn V according to the MechJeb readout. Props for making that monster work!

But my real point was that KSP rockets have immense difficulty maintaining stability even with a decent engineering mind behind their construction. I am not asking for something like this:

To keep its form without bracing (or total redesign ).

I want this, a launcher I used to use for mid-sized probes:

to stop bending like a twig whenever I try to steer the darned thing. I've phased out use of this thing because its a bear to control until the first stage detaches.

Yeah I get it. Making the joints stronger could lead to making whacky machines that are totally outside the realm of of even distended plausibility and sap the fun out of the challenge of building a successful craft, but I think that only begins to happen when the joints become nigh unbreakable. An decent but not gratuitous increase to their current strength would greatly alleviate some of the most frustrating aspects of this game, like the infamous orbital wobble.

[PDCWolf]

Guys, how can you call strutting a challenge? Where's the challenge on recurrently placing 3 struts between tanks and ASAS or 4 symmetrical struts to hold your boosters? Sure, it should be like that on stuff that goes out of logic, but not for normal rockets. That's not challenge, that's tediousness to overcome a bug in the game that became popular and somehow accepted because of the community's jokes.

[CleverClothe]

Please read the rest of my post because it seems you did not.

Uh oh, he brought out the bold text.

I still stand by my statement. I think part of the problem is that KSP rockets look OK in the editor when you snap them together, so people think they will work just like they look. But real rockets have a lot of strutting that is built in to their structure. That is not something that is obvious until you try to build rockets yourself. Then when your rocket fails, the game doesn't give you a lot of information or help about what to do.

I went through this same process when I picked up the game.

[johnnyhandsome]

All I want to see for .24 is more biomes! At least Duna and Eve and their moons. Come on Squad, give us more sweet, sweet science.

[draeath]

Uh oh, he brought out the bold text.

I still stand by my statement. I think part of the problem is that KSP rockets look OK in the editor when you snap them together, so people think they will work just like they look. But real rockets have a lot of strutting that is built in to their structure. That is not something that is obvious until you try to build rockets yourself. Then when your rocket fails, the game doesn't give you a lot of information or help about what to do.

I went through this same process when I picked up the game.

Real rockets do not have struts inside the tanks. The tanks are just made out of something stronger than aluminum foil, and are attached to things with more than a bit of rubber cement.

Note the ribbing is not a support structure, it is a baffle to help combat slosh.

Here's another drawing, this one's not the whole craft but shows the makeup of the first stage tank.

Edited January 3, 2014 by draeath

[kzauner]

Wow 50% larger by mass than a Saturn V according to the MechJeb readout. Props for making that monster work!

I want this, a launcher I used to use for mid-sized probes:

http://i.imgur.com/BOXUUbT.png

to stop bending like a twig whenever I try to steer the darned thing. I've phased out use of this thing because its a bear to control until the first stage detaches.

Then redesign it, so that your steering-input leads to the wanted result. The Torque on top with all this winglets will create wobble. Too many different force-vectors. You might also consider making the lowest stage a little bit longer, an cutting out the middle-stage (and doing so also ditching the winglets in the middle).

Maybe use 3 struts for holding the engines of the bottom stage together (a real-world rocket would have some structural component there too). And yes: steer carefully, with minimal inputs.

Yes, and strutting is an art. OK, you can just randomly snap some onto your design. But look at each strut as an error in your building and flying skills.

[regex]

But look at each strut as an error in your building and flying skills.

No. Stitch-strutting to combat what should be a strong joint (given that we're slapping fuel tanks together in a game abstraction instead of properly engineering each stage as a single structure) is in no way a reflection of my building and flying skills, it is a reflection of how bad the game handles those joints.

[LameLefty]

Real rockets do not have struts inside the tanks. The tanks are just made out of something stronger than aluminum foil, and are attached to things with more than a bit of rubber cement.

Note the ribbing is not a support structure, it is a baffle to help combat slosh.

Here's another drawing, this one's not the whole craft but shows the makeup of the first stage tank.

Well actually, almost all the longitudinal strength of an aerospace structure is in the stringers (think of them as struts if you must). The skin is generally only a few hundredths of an inch thick (sometimes less, 16/1000ths isn't uncommon). The skin carries the torsional load.

[sal_vager]

People use far too many struts, my biggest craft use about a dozen, placement matters.

[BubbaWilkins]

Guys, how can you call strutting a challenge? Where's the challenge on recurrently placing 3 struts between tanks and ASAS or 4 symmetrical struts to hold your boosters? Sure, it should be like that on stuff that goes out of logic, but not for normal rockets. That's not challenge, that's tediousness to overcome a bug in the game that became popular and somehow accepted because of the community's jokes.

It's not a bug, its a limitation of the game engine. Strutting is the compromise we make for the ease of construction. Part of the challenge is understanding where and why to put parts to make things work well together, not just slapping them in place because they look good.

Wow 50% larger by mass than a Saturn V according to the MechJeb readout. Props for making that monster work!

But my real point was that KSP rockets have immense difficulty maintaining stability even with a decent engineering mind behind their construction. I am not asking for something like this:

*snip*

To keep its form without bracing (or total redesign ).

I want this, a launcher I used to use for mid-sized probes:

*snip*

to stop bending like a twig whenever I try to steer the darned thing. I've phased out use of this thing because its a bear to control until the first stage detaches.

Yeah I get it. Making the joints stronger could lead to making whacky machines that are totally outside the realm of of even distended plausibility and sap the fun out of the challenge of building a successful craft, but I think that only begins to happen when the joints become nigh unbreakable. An decent but not gratuitous increase to their current strength would greatly alleviate some of the most frustrating aspects of this game, like the infamous orbital wobble.

Since we are limited to only attaching at a single point, you need to add struts to bind those three tanks at the bottom together. I would also relocate that reaction wheel at the top to some point in the middle. This will reduce the bendy behavior quite a bit. Personally, I'd also remove that second mid engine and coupler and just make that a two tank stage. Should be a net gain in DeltaV (I have not done the maths, just saying.)

[draeath]

People use far too many struts, my biggest craft use about a dozen, placement matters.

This is true.

Couplers, separators etc are all single attachment points, even though they don't look like it - a single strut elsewhere on the part connecting to the main body will form a pair, forming a MUCH more solid connection - while still a pivot, it's now only one axis. Without that, there is a 3-axis pivot.

Add a second strut (such that the three points form a Y of sorts - a tripod) will lock it down, eliminating any pivot points - at that point you should be stable, and any additional struts would only be used if you needed additional strength. You might need to add more though to conserve symmetry - though if a strut's mass throws your rocket off you've got other problems - consider reaction wheels and/or engines with thrust vectoring.

In other words, think of it like a stool or chair. No struts is basically one-leg, add a strut and you've two legs. Still tippy, but only in one direction. Third strut brings it to three legs and is now stable - anything extra is, well, extra.

Edited January 3, 2014 by draeath
I can spell, I promise!