totm june 2018 Work-in-Progress [WIP] Design Thread

[david50517]

Mech Runner

 

Download Link: https://kerbalx.com/BlackRockStar/Mech-Runner

[Chaotic Protocol]

So, I started playing with designing custom engine bells in Stock KSP to cover up mass amounts of clipping on my SHLVs.

[The Dressian Exploder]

Loving the sea dragon look!

[He_162]

Another sneak peak

[KandoKris]

I got it to fit and learnt a bit 

Work no longer In Progress

https://kerbalx.com/kandokris/Plane-Folding-Prop-Mk3

It surprisingly a lot of fun 

 

Spoiler

 

 

[Yukon0009]

[panzer1b]

Came back to mech design and for once ive actually made something viable, albeit slow (goes average 6m/sish on flat ground).  I will tweak the anims a bit more, but overall quite happy with it as its a chikin walker style (never was a huge fan of humanoid walkers as they look too earth, um human, inspired and not something youd find on another planet).

Really, the only reason i was able to make it work at all is i didnt start building this leg setup with the intention of going fast, just something thats relatively stable and can carry a few lighter SRMs for engaging lightly protected targets, and no thrusters as those weigh too much if you bring any more then negligible fuel, and are just aimless if you have enough fuel for a single jump that wont really help you either escape pr get into battle.  I may make a scout model lateron without armor/guns and full jumping ability, but ill see how well it works in the 1st place.  Still, the combined weight of armor and weapons will be about as much as that suspension can handle without slowing to a crawl, and i dont want to go to the larger sized servos as they are notorious for getting shot off in testing (the smaller ones are relatively difficult to actually hit with anything be it stock or BDA weaponry and are fairly easy to protect by adding some of those small circular adaptors to the sides and the legs just get some radiators or something on them.

If it works well once loaded up, ill have made my 1st truly viable 2 legger since the DLC was released.  All my previous attempts failed as i obsessed over getting them to at least 20m/s on level ground, something that i think may very well be impossible for a fully armored and armed walker tank.  Guess ill just have to eat the fact that coolness comes with a lack of speed, practicality, or simplicity.  Then again, as cool as mech type walker tanks are in games and movies, there is a reason no military has seriously considered the concept as its way too complex, insanely expensive, and has dubious benefits over a tracked/wheeled vehicle which can often carry superior weapons and armor due to it purely needing not to sink into the ground under its own weight (no need to balance a tank that sits on a square base of tracks).

[Servo]

I've been quiet lately, but productive!

Got this ugly ducking into the air. Due to the way I built it, it was very front-heavy, but some clipped wings helped that. Seriously underpowered with just two panthers, hopefully two more will solve the problem.

I also re-winged my Catalina - I'm 10x happier with how this one compared to the old version. Airfoil is smoother, wingtip floats look better and actually work, and I think it's actually fewer parts

I also remade the Pratt and Whitney R-1830s that power the beast. Shaved 20 parts on the build and make it look better doing so. I love how well the engine cylinders turned out, and it's also got a twitch hidden in the back so I can have exhaust on startup. Not sure exactly how to use the KALs to program non-motor parts, but we're going to find out!

 

[IkranMakto]

45 minutes ago, Servo said:

I also re-winged my Catalina

Beautiful!

[panzer1b]

Well, its still very much wip, but ive made some progress on my walker tank...

This is what the 1st trial looked like (pathetic speed under 5m/s).

2nd test with reanimated legs (took me like 3 hours to get it actually working and not flipping itself, going waay too slowly, or otherwise sucking in some manner).

Interior is very pretty imo, too bad there is no IVA camera for command seats, that would be amazing if the devs actually gave those things ability to see from kerbal's viewoint (maybee even kept the helmet interior rendered letting you see out the glass/plastic window in front of the face).

I even added side windows to it.  I genuinely like the limitations of stock with the exception of a complete lack of transparent parts (with the possible exception of a lack of squareish cross section parts as not much sci-fi makes starships have circular cross sections), we really need some bloody stock windows so that i dont have to keep on using girders/octa struts to make pseudo transparent stuff with.

And this is what it turned into at least after 1 iteration of attempting a cool looking hull style (vaguely based on marauder style at least with regards to the weapon layout with the massive cannon up top).

Now all i have to do (besides cut the weight and part count of this monstrosity) is figure out a method of accurately shooting the weapons (maybee ill just stick some BDA on it and call it a day though, ill see how lazy i am this weekend)...

[KestrelAerospace]

On 4/17/2020 at 6:28 AM, Servo said:

I've been quiet lately, but productive!

-snip-

Servo, you madman, no sane person would try to replicate the shape of a semi-angular, semi-curvy flying boat hull!! But you handled it very well, as usual. I just wonder how it's going to handle in the water, KSP physics often don't play nicely with my flying boats...

[Servo]

7 hours ago, KestrelAerospace said:

Servo, you madman, no sane person would try to replicate the shape of a semi-angular, semi-curvy flying boat hull!! But you handled it very well, as usual. I just wonder how it's going to handle in the water, KSP physics often don't play nicely with my flying boats...

Thanks! There are bigger problems to solve before I get to that one, I fear.

My day started off with a bunch of successes, but ended mired in annoying lack-of-progress, unfortunately.

The PB-52Y Stratolina program was a success. I was able to use the power from the rebuilt P&W R-1830s to take off and control flight with an 80t aircraft with relative ease

From there, I was able to integrate the engines successfully without problems from the fairings being dumb. Here's how the full build will appear on release. Unfortunately, this is where the trouble started

Turns out, it's a pig to get airborne. I probably could have guessed, but whatever. I had to add wheels underneath to support the main gear, since the hinges were far too weak. I might resign myself to rebuilding the gear using bigger hinges, or I could cheat in a different way and CFE the craft to be about half the weight. I fear that the second option will be necessary, given just how dense the craft is in parts. Also - I tried programming the floats to retract as practice for the gear, but they're not quite strong enough either. Will definitely need to beef up the retraction somehow, but I'm not quite sure how yet.

 

[IkranMakto]

8 hours ago, Servo said:

Will definitely need to beef up the retraction somehow, but I'm not quite sure how yet.

Maybe it's wheel suspension problem. I had similar issue with my tb-3 if it weighted more than 18 tons. Try deleting wheels and test retract 

[Servo]

17 hours ago, IkranMakto said:

Maybe it's wheel suspension problem. I had similar issue with my tb-3 if it weighted more than 18 tons. Try deleting wheels and test retract 

The problem is probably with the damping, I think. That and enabling rigid attachment. I've done a lot more testing today and it's very hit or miss as to how the gear behaves.

Here's my 80t suspension testbed, and as you can see - it works just fine. Getting everything to lock right is a little more difficult, but wasn't impossible.

Further testing with the PBY itself showed that it works well enough... about half the time. 

I've also narrowed down the liftoff issue to a lack of pitch control. The engines are in an awkward spot and there's not enough places to hide horizontal stabilizers to cheat it up. I'll probably wind up replacing the custom Hstab with Big-S elevons (and a lot of them) to get the thing into the air. That would solve several other unrelated problems I'd been having in the process.

It's still really jittery on the ground, which is frustrating, but the end is in sight (I hope). 

I added an engine startup animation, since those are always fun. Enjoy (and ignore the cursor)

 

Edited April 20, 2020 by Servo

[IkranMakto]

1 hour ago, Servo said:

Here's my 80t suspension testbed, and as you can see - it works just fine.

Good job!
 

1 hour ago, Servo said:

I added an engine startup animation, since those are always fun.

If KSP could manage so many parts... Anyway the plane looks just awesome! It even shakes a bit while engines are idling

[Castille7]

8 hours ago, Servo said:

It's still really jittery on the ground, which is frustrating.

I once found overloaded landing gear causing jitters to some of my builds.

[kapteenipirk]

Despite all the millions of other things to do, ive managed to get the British side of the naval project very close to completion, just need to build at-least 1 destroyer and a couple gun-boats/pt-boats, and it's ready for release.

There will be lots more ships and aircraft added in later, but for now, the package is pretty complete, the rest is more for the sake of variety.

 

Remember when i set a bar for myself that i would try and make every one of my carrier planes able to land on the VAB helipad. I managed something even better with the fleets latest fighter, the mighty Hurricane.

 

Landing on the VAB helipad is just too easy .

As one might expect, it took a LOT of tries, but in the end i nailed it.

[sturmhauke]

[david50517]

Car Fork

Download Link: https://kerbalx.com/BlackRockStar/Car-Fork

[Chaotic Protocol]

Breaking Ground conversions make me want to die

[Chaotic Protocol]

Here's what I've actually done to the Murmask so far:

Integrated Breaking Ground pistons to the lift.

Completely Rebuilt the front to make it less janky, as well as add hull to the flight deck where it stick out.

To do list: Finish the hull, rebuild the stern, make the hanger section smaller, add more fuel capacity.

Edit: If anybody is interested I may make a release, including the modified BD armor panels (Which I do not own and would need to ask permission)

Edited April 29, 2020 by Chaotic Protocol

[pTrevTrevs]

I don't remember the last time I actually posted here; it must have been at least a year ago. But I set up a new install of the game tonight and started working on a helicopter using the Breaking Ground parts. So I guess I'm back, at least for a little while.

One of the most annoying things I've ever tried to do, not least because I couldn't find many other examples of conventional main/tail rotor helicopters. But oh how satisfying it was when I got this thing *halfway* working!

Honestly though it flies really badly; it keeps wanting to roll to the left or right, and changing tail rotor pitch to control yaw is a really sluggish way of doing things. I know there are people on here who were building helicopters long before these parts were even in the game; maybe they can help me here?

Also, I'm not sure if this is a bug or what, but sometimes when I engage the torque on the main rotor, the engine block itself spins rather than the rotor mast:

Spoiler

It's only a picture but hopefully it illustrates what's going on. It's really bugging me because I don't know why it's doing this or how to prevent it; my best guess is that it comes down to a dice roll as to whether or not this will happen when I launch the craft. When it does, I have to reload back to launch because I can't fix the engine or get it to actually turn the blades.

If the problem persists I'll make a bug report or ask in the support forum, but for all I know it could be gone next time I load the game.

 

[qzgy]

On 5/1/2020 at 9:53 AM, pTrevTrevs said:

Honestly though it flies really badly; it keeps wanting to roll to the left or right, and changing tail rotor pitch to control yaw is a really sluggish way of doing things. I know there are people on here who were building helicopters long before these parts were even in the game; maybe they can help me here?

By no means an expert (though I have messed with stock helis before) but it could be like lift asymmetry or something like that. When moving forward, the blades when moving forward generate more lift than the rotor blade moving back, creating some extra lift on one side. I'm not sure how it works with breaking ground, but I've heard about cyclic controls that came with BG that should be able to account/correct for that stuff somehow. But it could also be some other thing, cause you say it rolls both left and right. Angular momentum is also annoying to work with, so could also be something with that, and works intuitively. Both the lift asymmetry and the angular momentum things are definitely helped out by using coax rotors, but you dont want to do that apparently. I'm not so sure what you could do to preserve that, other than maybe trying to control it with reaction wheels.

TL;DR - helicopters are hard.

BTW, I really like the helicopter body and also the cockpit. Nice and compact, and also smooth.

[david50517]

Crane 1 DLC

Download Link: https://kerbalx.com/BlackRockStar/Crane-1-DLC

[Thingymajigy]

DLC upgrades yee

 

 

Also new and improved tail section   +100% realism   -100% tailstrikes