Sun Tracker

[a1104477]

Basically a toggle button that tells your satellite/spaceships command module to track the sun.

Making it so that the nose of the space ship is point towards the sun using SAS or if enabled RCS at all times.

I would like this to be active during time warp AND while not focused on a ship thus allowing ships to maintain Optimum solar power charge even while unsupervised and whilst using fixed solar panels that can't rotate early game.

I apologise if this has been suggested I went through the list and didn't see anything like it there.

Thanks.

[FanaticalFighter]

Currently, no physics based stuff can happen during time warp (AFAIK), so no rotation to track sun during time warp is possible.

[technicalfool]

Whilst there is no physics during non-physical time warp, simple rotation (and even translation) doesn't necessarily need physics enabled.

I think this would be an interesting idea, whether it's an extra part, or something built into command pods and probe cores. Perhaps make it available after a little research.

[LordOfTheOrbits]

Whilst there is no physics during non-physical time warp, simple rotation (and even translation) doesn't necessarily need physics enabled.

Sure, but rotation without physics may be abused as a way of turning huge ships faster than they actually can.

[allmappedout]

Plus, if you stick it in the tech tree...where's it going to go? After you get the normal panels, but before you get the 1x6/2x3 panels? As soon as you get the OX-STAT panels, there's really no limit on power - you can just stick more on. If you're time warping, there's not much you'd need the power for (ie: if you probe is dying from not enough light, you probably need to have a better designed probe so it can receive light from more directions anyway, rather than adding an extra part).

[JimmyAgent007]

Id like to be able to set it so it could track anything, not just the sun. So a com sat might always be pointed down at the planet its orbiting.

[a1104477]

Plus, if you stick it in the tech tree...where's it going to go? After you get the normal panels, but before you get the 1x6/2x3 panels? As soon as you get the OX-STAT panels, there's really no limit on power - you can just stick more on. If you're time warping, there's not much you'd need the power for (ie: if you probe is dying from not enough light, you probably need to have a better designed probe so it can receive light from more directions anyway, rather than adding an extra part).

At some point they are going to add PRICES to every thing in the game at that point I would like to be able to get by with the cheapest vehicles I can build, With the Sun Tracker part you wouldn't need heaps of solar panels pointing in all different directions, and the ACTUAL reason I wanted this part/toggle is that I am playing with the Kethane mod at the moment which involves scanning planets/moons over long periods so it isn't a matter of adding more batteries especially early on the thing would be stupid big and If you don't want to be adjusting the angle of the probe every few minutes then something like this would be VERY useful... also JimmyAgent007s' comment about being able to keep communications satellites pointed at a planet is a valid one, It annoys me no end as well when they point in the wrong direction every half orbit.

[coolitic]

Sure, but rotation without physics may be abused as a way of turning huge ships faster than they actually can.

Agreed. Especially a problem for large ships and docking.

[Joonatan1998]

Make it turn the ship very slowly? Even the lowest possible sun orbit doesn't require very fast turning.

[allmappedout]

At some point they are going to add PRICES to every thing in the game at that point I would like to be able to get by with the cheapest vehicles I can build, With the Sun Tracker part you wouldn't need heaps of solar panels pointing in all different directions, and the ACTUAL reason I wanted this part/toggle is that I am playing with the Kethane mod at the moment which involves scanning planets/moons over long periods so it isn't a matter of adding more batteries especially early on the thing would be stupid big and If you don't want to be adjusting the angle of the probe every few minutes then something like this would be VERY useful... also JimmyAgent007s' comment about being able to keep communications satellites pointed at a planet is a valid one, It annoys me no end as well when they point in the wrong direction every half orbit.

As others have mentioned, the abuse possible from having ship input without physics makes this a no-go anyway (regardless of having to rewrite the physics methodology...), but are you telling me it's going to be cheaper to stick electronics onto my ship that control torque based on precise tracking of another celestial object, or have their own moving parts (a la Infernal Robotics) to accomplish this, than to put another couple of solar panels on? Solar panels are cheap and reliable, that's why they're used in space.

Now, don't get me wrong, I totally understand why you want it, and for that purpose I think that it would be great to have it, but since physicsless calculations aren't, under the current system, possible, and kethane is a mod, there's no real reason to import this kind of functionality into the stock game.

[guest91111]

Would be lovely, but if my biggest space station (still in build, but at the moment 700+ parts) would have this, I would continuously have to run my game at 8 FPS, so I'm not sure how they're going to do this. Of course if they are going to do this with when the station is only inside of the 2.3-2.5 km, I hope they won't tear the space station apart, because my space stations are sometimes particularly long, and so they are somewhat wobbly!

[problemecium]

I myself have been thinking that KSP could use a feature like the one in Space Engine where you can tell a ship to point prograde, etc. and it will remain pointed prograde rather than slowly spinning relative to its orbit. It doesn't have to be a physics thing... in fact it doesn't even have to simulate outside the render distance, ships can simply be loaded with a rotation according to what setting you left them with.

[weissel]

What is being abused --- big time, especially with ungainly slow turning ships and/or tight RCS and electrical power budgets --- is: your rotation immediately and completely and perfectly stops for free when you speed up time (and thus drop out of physics).

skycooler is working on "Timewarp Rotation Fix" (thread here), which --- while not bugfree --- stops that annoyance, and to keep orientation via SAS while warping it'll eat some RCS (if on) and/or electricity (for reaction wheels, if present). With SAS off --- well, you'll freely drift slowly, as per your last rotation before time accelleration.

So we can keep a rotation. A 30 minute orbit, pointing always downwards is 12° per minute, a 6 minute orbit would be 1°/s (it'd take 3 whole minutes to put the rear end to where the nose is now) --- I think we can agree that that speed won't rip apart remotely sane vessels. Now, how do we tell where to point? Select a target (and have a checkbox "target SOI center", since you can't target that directly, IIRC). You'd need to use something like kOS (thread) when not pointing directly at a body or vessel but "32° prograde and 5km to the right side of THAT probe" (or something similar), or at a "fixed" point in space.

What about changing the rotation speed? As long as we keep it at what the vessel manages at 10% RCS throttle/10% reaction wheels (and use monoprop/electricity in relation to their use) in each dimension, we're safe (changing even between -1°/s to +1°/s doesn't need much force). And it should be possible to find out what the vessel can, worst case by a short blast of RCS/reaction wheels in each axis and watching the rotational change, if you can't simulate it without showing it on the screen. (Yep that could be off if you use a sizeable amount of RCS fuel (versus complete vessel mass) in a time warp to lock a rotation, but it would just cause you to use some more RCS fuel and turn slower than you should during that time warp.)

So you'd be forced to point the vessel in the right direction and stabilize it to stay on target, then tell SAS (or Timewarp Rotation Fix) "instead of straight I want to keep pointing at X" and then go into time warp. And you couldn't turn faster nor change/start/stop a rotation faster in "on rails" mode than your vessels attitude control systems would allow in normal time/physics on, in fact, if you want to change your attitude quickly, you'd need to drop into normal time due to the 10% and 1°/s limits.

PS: as a short term fix for "Kethane scanning": use kOS. Let it do something like:

1. point downward (to the planet/moon)
   
2. repeat:
   
   1. 
      
   2. wait until pointed (a bit harder)/for some seconds (easy).
      
   3. time warp to say 100x. (kOS can change the time warp)
      
   4. wait till xxx kerbal universe seconds have passed (easy)/facing is almost bad (a bit harder).
      
   5. time warp to 1x. (at this point physics is back on and kOS will start pointing you down again).
      
      
      

[KvickFlygarn87]

Whilst there is no physics during non-physical time warp, simple rotation (and even translation) doesn't necessarily need physics enabled.

Why yes, yes it does.

[technicalfool]

Why yes, yes it does.

No, no it doesn't. At least, it doesn't require collision, mass, inertia or any of the other events and forces that are normally calculated. It's a matrix operation - take the part, rotate by x/y/x around origin point ox/oy/oz. If you notice, the sun-tracking solar panels and (if you have the mod) the medium Kethane scanner all track the sun during non-physical time warp.

To abuse this in order to make a large ship rotate faster, you would have to have a ship that cannot rotate as fast as the planet it orbits around. This could be worked around in any case by calculating an RPM figure for the given construction and making sure it doesn't track the sun faster than that.

[allmappedout]

No, no it doesn't. At least, it doesn't require collision, mass, inertia or any of the other events and forces that are normally calculated. It's a matrix operation - take the part, rotate by x/y/x around origin point ox/oy/oz. If you notice, the sun-tracking solar panels and (if you have the mod) the medium Kethane scanner all track the sun during non-physical time warp.

To abuse this in order to make a large ship rotate faster, you would have to have a ship that cannot rotate as fast as the planet it orbits around. This could be worked around in any case by calculating an RPM figure for the given construction and making sure it doesn't track the sun faster than that.

Agree that a perfect rotation should not change your orbital energy, but translation most certainly would, since translation is a change from one orbit to another, and thus requires a delta V expenditure.

[Kasuha]

I used to think that the fact that all rotation ceases as soon as you enter time warp is a bug and should be fixed.

Now I think it is a good countermeasure for other bugs which make your ship rotate in random directions when you don't want it to rotate.

So yes I am totally for fixing it, but these fixes need to come in the correct order.