Generic fuel tanks

[Comwarrior]

I'm building another fuel station...

And im thinking, since i can alter the amount of fuel that the tank starts off with in the VAB / SPH then why can i not specify the fuel type too?

I understand that solid fuel might not be able to be put in a tank... but why can i not select a fuel take that has 100 units of space, right click then fully load it with 100 units of monoprop... or 50 units of liquid and 50 units of ox? or... 33 units of monoprop, 33 units of liquid and 34 units of ox?

And the same goes for the other fuels too like xenon... and the none stock fuels for example from interplanetary mod...

Would this not also improve performance as their would/could be less parts to load in and config files would be smaller?

Also, IF in the future, squad puts in life support stuff, could you then not have tanks that can be configured for the life support stuff on a per tank basis?

[KASASpace]

Well, when life support gets added (I think it will, eventually), you can make service modules for capsules that have monoprop, life support, and fuel for the engines.

So, I think this is good.

[Stargate525]

One problem that occurs to me is that the densities of the different fuel types is radically different (700 xenon in a space that barely fits 10 LF/O), so you would have to convert all the tanks from a simple fuel amount to an arbitrary volume metric. There would presumably need to be additional architecture in the parts list and tweakables to allow that kind of change, which means it would almost certainly break saves. The burn ratio for LF and Ox is a pain in the rear to mentally calculate (9 parts fuel to eleven ox), so if this happens I'd like that to be either changed to something more easy on the brain (1 to 2 or 1 to 1, 3 to 4 perhaps?) or we're given a tool to do the math for us.

On a more realistic note, the internal architecture would need to be significantly changed between xenon, liquid fuel, oxidizer, and monopropellant, even though the casing is the same. I don't know how you would represent the cost of that in the part, come the economics setup.

Edited April 9, 2014 by Stargate525

[MKI]

Realistically you can't just stuff different fuel into the same tanks. Beyond that there are already a decent amount of parts to make "versions" of other parts. There are some gaps, such as half sized or full sized liquid fuel only parts. But for the most part you wont ever need an orange tank size of RCS.

Tweakables already allow the two primary types of fuel to be used "efficiently".

The biggest issue i see with a total amount that can be tweaked is how much math is involved for the user. If you put 75 oxidizer and only 35 liquid fuel in a said tank, aren't you wasting a good portion of the weight to oxidizer? There's no real advantage of this over the current system of using tweakables to edit current tanks.

[astroknot]

Does something like this exist? A unit-based, configurable tank would be awesome.

[Wahgineer]

I think we should have fuel switching, too, but it should only be for LF+LOX. This would allow us to consolidate the airplane tanks. We could even add texture switching, so we can tell if a tank is LFO, LF, or LOX. Further more, if we implemented it like Necrobones FuelTanks Plus mod, we could give tanks different visual styles (Such as Shuttle ET orange, Delta blue, Soyuz green/orange pattern, and various NASA black/white checker/stripe patterns).

[Van Disaster]

Does something like this exist? A unit-based, configurable tank would be awesome.

There's several mods which do this already & have done for a couple of years - anything that uses FSFuelSwitch can change tank contents allowing for density ( and additionally the Firespitter DLL it depends on can switch texture at the same time ). RealFuels goes further & sets everything up depending on what engines you have on the craft.

I generally just use Procedural Tanks which comes preset with a bunch of content options or RealFuels as part of RO, but there's Modular FuelTanks also which I've not tested.

[MAFman]

One problem that occurs to me is that the densities of the different fuel types is radically different (700 xenon in a space that barely fits 10 LF/O), so you would have to convert all the tanks from a simple fuel amount to an arbitrary volume metric. There would presumably need to be additional architecture in the parts list and tweakables to allow that kind of change, which means it would almost certainly break saves. The burn ratio for LF and Ox is a pain in the rear to mentally calculate (9 parts fuel to eleven ox), so if this happens I'd like that to be either changed to something more easy on the brain (1 to 2 or 1 to 1, 3 to 4 perhaps?) or we're given a tool to do the math for us.

On a more realistic note, the internal architecture would need to be significantly changed between xenon, liquid fuel, oxidizer, and monopropellant, even though the casing is the same. I don't know how you would represent the cost of that in the part, come the economics setup.

This is one of the things that bugs the heck out of me with KSP - the resources' volumes and densities are not preserved when stuffing them into containers. Maybe I should collaborate to write a plugin that fixes this?