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

[Jon144]

I'm sorry guys but all of the work in progress items I have posted here are all cancelled as they have been broken. This includes the new Kelaz 140T stock dump truck and stock P1000 Ratte development preview. Due to unexpected changes attributed to the changes of wheel physics these crafts as well as all of my previous craft using bearings are unusable. I do not foresee being able to return to craft that use bearings for quite some time and therefore I have no more purpose here on the forums. I will only return once I find a new method to make my designed. Which might never happen.

Since I will not being continuing development on any of the following I will provide download links to their development if anyone comes up with an inventive idea or just to archive them for 1.1

Kelaz 140T: https://www.dropbox.com/s/sa996ytkh6jw3zs/Kelaz-140T%20%28Plow%29.craft?dl=0

P1000 Chassis: https://www.dropbox.com/s/hw1injrphxoawg3/P1000%20Ratte%20Chassis.craft?dl=0

These are completely broken in 1.1

Edited March 31, 2016 by Jon144

[Majorjim!]

2 minutes ago, Jon144 said:

I'm sorry guys but all of the work in progress items I have posted here are all cancelled as they have been broken. This includes the new Kelaz 140T stock dump truck and stock P1000 Ratte development preview. Due to unexpected changes attributed to the changes of wheel physics these crafts as well as all of my previous craft using bearings are unusable. I do not foresee being able to return to craft that use bearings for quite some time and therefore I have no more purpose here on the forums. I will only return once I find a new method to make my designed. Which might never happen.

Since I will not being continuing development on any of the following I will provide download links to their development if anyone comes up with an inventive idea or just to archive them for 1.1

Kelaz 140T: https://www.dropbox.com/s/sa996ytkh6jw3zs/Kelaz-140T%20%28Plow%29.craft?dl=0

P1000 Chassis: https://www.dropbox.com/s/hw1injrphxoawg3/P1000%20Ratte%20Chassis.craft?dl=0

These are completely broken in 1.1

As I said just now in the other thread, relax guy! It's a buggy pre-release! The wheels are bugged, I submitted a report, they produce massive phantom forces. Try not to get stressed about it and wait for the full 1.1 release. Do not build or try to rebuild anything in the opt0in version.

[Jon144]

50 minutes ago, Majorjim said:

As I said just now in the other thread, relax guy! It's a buggy pre-release! The wheels are bugged, I submitted a report, they produce massive phantom forces. Try not to get stressed about it and wait for the full 1.1 release. Do not build or try to rebuild anything in the opt0in version.

Yeah I can't actually make anything new or try to make any new systems until 1.1 is actually finalized. No point making something work in progress when the game mechanics themselves are a huge work in progress.

[sgt_flyer]

6 hours ago, kmMango said:

What is this latest bit of wizardry? How does it work? 

i managed to build a very small mechanical joint around a sphere shaped object (built from linear RCS), to get these degrees of freedom  when i decouple the arm, each independant section can use it's torque wheels to change it's attitude - but because one end is 'fixed', instead of rotating around the COM, it rotates around the joint  

[Columbia]

1 hour ago, Jon144 said:

Yeah I can't actually make anything new or try to make any new systems until 1.1 is actually finalized. No point making something work in progress when the game mechanics themselves are a huge work in progress.

Yea, the devs stressed a lot about how it shouldn't be used for normal gameplay, just to deliberately find issues with the game. 

Also, does anyone know how planes from 1.0.5 and their landing gear are in the new update, notable Mk3 ones that use Medium and Large landing gear? I am mildly concerned about how much restoration processes will be needed.

Edited March 31, 2016 by Columbia

[Rushligh]

Moar Cyclops Ships!

[pTrevTrevs]

On March 31, 2016 at 11:18 PM, Columbia said:

Also, does anyone know how planes from 1.0.5 and their landing gear are in the new update, notable Mk3 ones that use Medium and Large landing gear? I am mildly concerned about how much restoration processes will be needed.

I guess that using the fixed landing gear for all of my plane replicas is paying off. 

I think that the only change you might have to worry about is that the small became like the medium, the medium became like the large, and the large became a new super large version. I wouldn't expect it to take long to fix.

Happy April Fools Day, by the way.

[selfish_meme]

On 31/03/2016 at 3:18 PM, Columbia said:

Yea, the devs stressed a lot about how it shouldn't be used for normal gameplay, just to deliberately find issues with the game. 

Also, does anyone know how planes from 1.0.5 and their landing gear are in the new update, notable Mk3 ones that use Medium and Large landing gear? I am mildly concerned about how much restoration processes will be needed.

My small landing gear became large landing gear, not sure why

[SaturnianBlue]

I managed to get my Bismarck down to 666 parts!

Edit:

Oh my, what has April Fools done with me? Fixed.

Edited April 2, 2016 by SaturnianBlue

[FlipNascar]

So firstly, excuse the jaggies, have to turn of anti-aliasing for 1.1 pre-release to run on the Mac... I don't know what I want to do with this. Not sure which direction to go. The orbital vehicle has a smidge under 3k ∆V, the cockpit is removable with a neatly hidden docking port setup. But it can't really do anything, other than it doesn't look like a normal rocket... I realise now how reliant I've become on No Offset Limits and Editor Extensions.

 

 

[pTrevTrevs]

1 hour ago, SaturnianBlue said:

I managed to get my Bismarck down to 666 parts!

Based on the experiences I have had with a few KSP craft, I would recommend (as someone who has worked fairly extensively with watercraft in KSP), that you either decrease or increase your part count by at least one (1). Calling a priest for an exorcism on your computer can be expensive, depending on the conditions.

[SaturnianBlue]

3 hours ago, pTrevTrevs said:

Based on the experiences I have had with a few KSP craft, I would recommend (as someone who has worked fairly extensively with watercraft in KSP), that you either decrease or increase your part count by at least one (1). Calling a priest for an exorcism on your computer can be expensive, depending on the conditions.

Oh my.  Don't worry, it fell another 23 parts! TO 643, which is... A reduced part count ship.  EDIT My next project is the mighty Das UberBoot! 

(April Fools!)  

Edited April 2, 2016 by SaturnianBlue

[Azimech]

Raw and untuned test build. At least we know now stock turboshaft engines work in 1.1. Blowers: 18. Blades: 48. Part count: 246. Thrust/rpm: unknown at this time.

 

[Columbia]

48 minutes ago, Azimech said:

Raw and untuned test build. At least we know now stock turboshaft engines work in 1.1. Blowers: 18. Blades: 48. Part count: 246. Thrust/rpm: unknown at this time.

 

 

..How the hell? It's beautiful!

I've been working on pushbacking technology, and added a landing leg to the end of the "handle" of the truck so that the nose wheel of the aircraft can be "trapped" into connection with the truck and can be pulled.

Surprisingly, it worked reliably.

 

 

[Azimech]

Jet engines running inside a fairing!

 

_{But I wonder if it will actually help with the drag.}

[Columbia]

28 minutes ago, Azimech said:

Jet engines running inside a fairing!

 

_{But I wonder if it will actually help with the drag.}

Meanwhile..

*tries to build a bearing*

Story of my life.
 

[Castille7]

Ok here is my first craft build for 1.1, and I wanted it to be a little more dramatic then previous craft. After working with @Rune I now have an SSTO fever. My first experience with an SSTO was the K-Prize Challenge and I made that one by the skin of my teeth. That's when I realized SSTO craft are a very challenging craft to build. After my first go at being a Test Pilot with Rune's SSTO Beast Arrow I learned how much I didn't know about these majestic beast. After hours of engine swapping, mode changing, fuel balancing, electrical adjusting, takeoff exploding and most of all in the clutches of Kerbin's unforgiving gravity fight near 28k I am almost there, a few more test flights and no more tweaking I hope and this will be my second SSTO and one of my greatest achievements to date in KSP. I tell you with the weight of this craft slowly peeling off the runway it is so exciting and a cool experience. 

I wanted to name the craft persistent, something to that effect but decided to stick with Star Hunter

The first picture is Star Hunter now, the other pictures are where I was starting and how close I am to an Orbit so far.

Weight 68.8t

Star Hunter

 

 

Edited April 2, 2016 by castille7

[Rune]

3 hours ago, castille7 said:

Ok here is my first craft build for 1.1, and I wanted it to be a little more dramatic then previous craft. After working with @Rune I now have an SSTO fever. My first experience with an SSTO was the K-Prize Challenge and I made that one by the skin of my teeth. That's when I realized SSTO craft are a very challenging craft to build. After my first go at being a Test Pilot with Rune's SSTO Beast Arrow I learned how much I didn't know about these majestic beast. After hours of engine swapping, mode changing, fuel balancing, electrical adjusting, takeoff exploding and most of all in the clutches of Kerbin's unforgiving gravity fight near 28k I am almost there, a few more test flights and no more tweaking I hope and this will be my second SSTO and one of my greatest achievements to date in KSP. I tell you with the weight of this craft slowly peeling off the runway it is so exciting and an cool experience. 

I wanted to name the craft persistent, something to that effect but decided to stick with Star Hunter

The first picture is Star Hunter now, the other pictures are where I was starting and how close I am to an Orbit so far.

Weight 68.8t

Well, SSTO building, in the end, is all about two numbers, TWR and mass ratio, with the added caveat that the whole thing has to fly like an airplane... sometimes! Never discount vertical takeoff... Anyhow, once you find what the right ratios are, all it takes is doing a few simple calculations with the numbers that you get in the SPH.

In fact, it's quite easy to calculate the weight of fuel and such in KSP... the "mysterious" kerbal units of measurement are actually good old kilograms (long live MKS!), even tough it's never mentioned anywhere (and is also a bit weird, they don't measure liquid by volume ), so add oxi+LF units, divide by 1000, and you get mT. Subtract that number from total weight to get the empty weight (or empty the tanks, but if you have many, that is more time consuming than looking the summary) divide total weight by that, and you have your MR. In other words, if M is total mass, F fuel mass, and E empty weight, MR=M/(M-F)=M/E.

TWR is even easier, take you thrust in kN (as KSP presents it in the engine descriptions), divide by 9,81 to get "mT of thrust" (actually, you can say you are converting to kiloponds, AKA kilograms-force, and then going to "metric tons-force"). Then all that's left is dividing that between you mass in mT to get your TWR. Literally two multiplications in a row, and you won't get them them too bad if instead of 9.81 you use 10. Or in other words, TWR=~T/(10*M), where T is the thrust in kN and M the mass in mT, the units the game uses (and actually tells you it uses, for once).

Once you have a successful SSTO tested, you just have to copy those ratios over to a new size, and you are good to go, all that's lefts is to actually make it fly straight... enough.

The big thing is this: If a is ship X times as heavy as another ( and X can be 0.1 or 100), it should have X times the fuel and X times the thrust to fly the same way.

If it relies on wings for a particular profile, of course, it also needs X times the really magical "units of lift", and a similar ballistic coefficient (in RL, that magical number would be substituted by something loosely related to wing area, and weird coefficient curves that are very difficult to come up with and that are "the stuff aeronautical engineers study really hard to guess"). Now, don't ask how you calculate those aeronautical things in KSP, especially ballistic coefficient... I go mostly by "make it look cool and be very drag-less" here, too much work otherwise. And the CoM/CoL stuff has been studied to death elsewhere...

 

Rune. Looking good is what happens next, and usually what takes much longer, at least for me.

Edited April 2, 2016 by Rune
For extra-clearness and typos and stuff

[Castille7]

1 hour ago, Rune said:

Well, SSTO building, in the end, is all about two numbers, TWR and mass ratio, with the added caveat that the whole thing has to fly like an airplane... sometimes! Never discount vertical takeoff... Anyhow, once you find what the right numbers, all it takes is doing a few simple calculations with the numbers that you get in the SPH.

In fact, it's quite easy to calculate the weight of fuel and such in KSP... the "mysterious" kerbal units of measurement are actually good old kilograms (long live MKS!), even tough it's never mentioned anywhere (and is also a bit weird, they don't measure liquid by volume ), so add oxi+LF units, divide by 1000, and you get mT. Subtract that number from total weight to get the empty weight (or empty the tanks, but if you have many, that is more time consuming than looking the summary) divide total weight by that, and you have your MR. In other words, if M is total mass, F fuel mass, and E empty weight, MR=M/(M-F)=M/E.

TWR is even easier, take you thrust in kN (as KSP presents it in the engine descriptions), divide by 9,81 to get "mT of thrust" (actually, you can say you are converting to kiloponds, AKA kilograms-force, and then going to "metric tons-force"). Then all that's left is dividing that between you mass in mT to get your TWR. Literally two multiplications in a row, and you won't get them them too bad if instead of 9.81 you use 10. Or in other words, TWR=~T/(10*M), where T is the thrust in kN and M the mass in mT, the units the game uses (and actually tells you it uses, for once).

Once you have a successful SSTO tested, you just have to copy those ratios over to a new size, and you are good to go, all that's lefts is to actually make it fly straight... enough.

 

Rune. Looking good is what happens next, and usually what takes much longer, at least for me.

Wow this is so awesome, thanks for sharing this, it is going into my KSP how to folder as we type , I plan to be your wing-man one day 

[Rune]

56 minutes ago, castille7 said:

Wow this is so awesome, thanks for sharing this, it is going into my KSP how to folder as we type , I plan to be your wing-man one day 

Then let me polish that a bit.

 

Rune. Retrospective is amazing.

Edited April 2, 2016 by Rune

[Majorjim!]

6 hours ago, Azimech said:

Raw and untuned test build. At least we know now stock turboshaft engines work in 1.1. Blowers: 18. Blades: 48. Part count: 246. Thrust/rpm: unknown at this tim

Nice man, you must be happy they fixed the infinite heat bug.

How the hell do you remove IMGUR albums from replies..?

5 hours ago, Columbia said:

 

..How the hell?

 

 

It's his specialty! A bearing with fins or plates that are spun by the force of jet engines.

Edited April 2, 2016 by Majorjim

[Castille7]

2 hours ago, Rune said:

Then let me polish that a bit.

 

Rune. Retrospective is amazing.

This sounds great, Thank you!!

Edited April 2, 2016 by castille7

[Majorjim!]

5 hours ago, castille7 said:

Ok here is my first craft build for 1.1, and I wanted it to be a little more dramatic then previous craft. After working with @Rune I now have an SSTO fever. My first experience with an SSTO was the K-Prize Challenge and I made that one by the skin of my teeth. That's when I realized SSTO craft are a very challenging craft to build. After my first go at being a Test Pilot with Rune's SSTO Beast Arrow I learned how much I didn't know about these majestic beast. After hours of engine swapping, mode changing, fuel balancing, electrical adjusting, takeoff exploding and most of all in the clutches of Kerbin's unforgiving gravity fight near 28k I am almost there, a few more test flights and no more tweaking I hope and this will be my second SSTO and one of my greatest achievements to date in KSP. I tell you with the weight of this craft slowly peeling off the runway it is so exciting and a cool experience. 

I wanted to name the craft persistent, something to that effect but decided to stick with Star Hunter

The first picture is Star Hunter now, the other pictures are where I was starting and how close I am to an Orbit so far.

Weight 68.8t

Star Hunter

 

 

I'm not sure it has enough RTGs man.

[Azimech]

Just now, Majorjim said:

I'm not sure it has enough RTGs man.

Ten characters.

[Majorjim!]

6 hours ago, Azimech said:

Jet engines running inside a fairing!

 

 

_{But I wonder if it will actually help with the drag.}

Pure awesomeness! I wet myself when I remembered they fixed that 'feature'!