Prodding the Kraken round two!

[Special Agent Sigvan]

That happened to me too, I exploded a rocket on accident and that happened

I think it's either a collision issue, or physics glitch or both.

[Space_Kraken]

Ehm... Are you trying to awaken the beast that the dev team fought almost to death?

Beware, kids. Kraken kills kerbals.

I eat kerbals alive. Not kill them. I'm not a monster.

[Special Agent Sigvan]

I eat kerbals alive. Not kill them. I'm not a monster.

Ah.

PROD HIM NAO.

[Special Agent Sigvan]

Guys, using stock parts, I discovered a new Kraken

With some tweaks I can make a KrakenDrive subassembly.

Edit: More info:

(I have Screenshots taken from Steam, if you can tell me how to post them)

After some edits, to only way for this to work is to leave it without engines, it appears the location of the center of thrust is the what makes this work, even losing 2 of the pylons will prevent this working.

It works the same as a regular Kraken Drive, but there is no way to stop the Gyro Phantom Forces from spinning this, and it seems the Gyro Forces are stronger than the Lifting Forces.

Edited April 30, 2014 by Special Agent Sigvan

[Fendleton]

I too have constructed a working (for a very liberal definition of the term) K-drive, using part clipping and a crudload of CLAW units. My one is somewhat less likely to be useful however.

The prototype is an absolute mess, but it locked its velocity at precisely 1119m/s on a sub-orbital trajectory, and stayed that that speed until it exploded when I tried to mess with the CLAW units to stop it. Then, oddly, it continued to continue at this speed despite only being the lander can at this point. Also I can't steer. Or time accelerate.*

I think perhaps this concept needs further development (I'll repeat the experiment in case it was just a glitch), but overlapping a whole bunch of CLAW units inside a structural fuselage (as I did) can definitely result in...interesting......results.

*The failure of time acceleration happened prior to the Great Kasplooie, as did the inability to steer. I basically made my prototype for ground tests, then noticed some interesting quirks that I thought *might* make a K-drive.....so I lobbed it into space on a rocket. When I got it up there and detached the last set of engines.....the fun began. Control inputs drain electricity, so the parts are WORKING......but the whole spacecraft has been locked in some kind of stasis. And then I blew it up by cycling the CLAWs too much.

Edit2: ok! My contraption is triggered by distance from kerbin when you launch it, and thus is probably finding the same "fun" problems that older K-drives had when you used them in the wrong place. Since my system can't really be turned off, the only way to test whter deep-space operations would work would be by savegame editing or hyperedit, neither of which I've done before.

Here's how it works:

1. On the ground, it will try shake itself apart. Activating the CLAW units locks them together and stops this (or turns their physics off, or something)

2. During launch it behaves normally, albiet the carrier rocket is absurdly powerful.

3. When passing ~80-85km AMSL the speeds for the rocket will stop updating: you move at your current direction and speed indefinitely, and cannot rotate in any axis. EVA becomes strange, and it takes a LOT of fuel to get back to your ship because your relative velocity simply doesn't change at the speed it should (you don't drift away quickly when you let go, but getting back has very slow acceleration). Also: no time acceleration except physwarp.

The Mk.2 was a bit optimised to only have the ""clip multiple CLAWs through a structural fuselage" stuff + the lander can

4. When passing 100km, the ship will explode, but the command pod will continue as before.

That's the Mk.1 (AKA first prototype.)

And there's the Mk.2. Note that the speed and attitude haven't changed since the last shot of the Mk.2.

5. I have no idea what happens when you leave the kerbin SOI as I'm only half way to the Mun's orbit on X4 warp. Time for some !!SCIENCE!!. Very slow Science.

All in all, it's useless. But maybe someone else can find something that this little bug can be used for?

Edited April 30, 2014 by Fendleton

[Special Agent Sigvan]

That's odd, I don't think that a K-Drive can be made from CLAW units, as with Ladders.

But'll try myself, anyone have any ideas how to help?

Oh and I have an Image

Why this works I have no idea, I need help with that too.

I'm gonna be honest and say that I want to reverse engineer this tech to make an FTL drive, but for now, I'll contribute to the matter at hand.

Edited April 30, 2014 by Special Agent Sigvan

[Fendleton]

My personal theory is that I have managed to lock the spacecraft to itself repeatedly, such that it cannot move before another part of it moves. Then, the grapnels in their confusion accidentally lock on to spacetime itself. Then the kraken gets annoyed and eats it.

I've updated my last post with some pictures of it. It's basically a MK.1 lander can with a structural fuselage attached to it....and with a bunch of action-grouped claw units attached so that they clip inside the two ends of said structural fuselage.

Edit: Oooooooh timewarp's working again. Sort of. I've come unstuck in time....I progress at the same speed in the same timeframe regardless of what timeframe everything ELSE is in. So in X100,000 warp, I am still seeing the altimeter go up at the same rate as at X1. Unless I use physwarp.

So I may actually have invented time travel. Except I haven't. Except I sorta have. I can at least change the subjective flow of time for a specific kerbal and their pod. They'll watch in awe as the universe flashes before their eyes as their little can flies through time and space at the rate of one second every 100,000 seconds.

So I haven't made a K-drive, alas. I've made something far, far stranger, which I think I'll leave well alone now keep playing with to torture my trapped crewmember who's been on his way to the Mun in a straight line at ~1700m/s for a little over 5 years now..

Final edit: Ok. Do not under any circumstances use this glitch. It's contagious within a save file when you switch vessels, and it explodes things. My poor, poor space station.

Edited April 30, 2014 by Fendleton

[Special Agent Sigvan]

That's accurate, but I have my own theory:

The ship grapples onto itself, and the engine (confused) makes it undergo immense force, the ship catches up with itself and breaks apart, because of the collisions the CLAWs cause.

You can use this as a K-Drive if you can stop it from exploding, and make it visually appealing.

Edit: Still no progress on how to make my Drive work?

[Special Agent Sigvan]

It doesn't seem to work with any other vessel.

[Fendleton]

That's accurate, but I have my own theory:

The ship grapples onto itself, and the engine (confused) makes it undergo immense force, the ship catches up with itself and breaks apart, because of the collisions the CLAWs cause.

You can use this as a K-Drive if you can stop it from exploding, and make it visually appealing.

Edit: Still no progress on how to make my Drive work?

Hmm. Might be worth trying some more CLAW research then. Although the time-dilation problem is quite serious. I'll do some more experiments in a new savefile once I've got my uni work out of the way for the week.

[Vostok]

Something I might suggest...

If you can grab a kerbal by his helmet with the claw, and then get him to ragdoll... Then push him downwards (away from the claw) by his body with landing legs, the rubber bandy-ness of the ragdoll might become a source of propulsion.

Not to mention a fitting sacrifice for the space kraken.

[Special Agent Sigvan]

Hmm. Might be worth trying some more CLAW research then. Although the time-dilation problem is quite serious. I'll do some more experiments in a new savefile once I've got my uni work out of the way for the week.

You could try to build up speed slowly and use it as a Hyperspeed warp.

Something I might suggest...

If you can grab a kerbal by his helmet with the claw, and then get him to ragdoll... Then push him downwards (away from the claw) by his body with landing legs, the rubber bandy-ness of the ragdoll might become a source of propulsion.

Not to mention a fitting sacrifice for the space kraken.

I'm all for sacrifices for the greater good, but we could do it with a probe core.

Edit: Tried to CLAW a Kerbal and use him as a propulsion drive, it failed miserably.

Edited April 30, 2014 by Special Agent Sigvan

[Fendleton]

You could try to build up speed slowly and use it as a Hyperspeed warp.

The problem is that my drive doesn't exactly accelerate a ship as "lock" its velocity at a fixed value and angle. As such it's only creating whatever phantom acceleration is neccessary to stay at that given speed. So if CLAW physics can be exploited, that specific setup of bugs needs to be avoided unless you want to bring a bunch of fuel around for initial sub-orbital stuff and the braking burns. Plus the timewarp and explosion issues. Certainly it can create an acceleration....I'm just not sure if it's a good idea.

I'm working on a new prototype to see what happens with a smaller number of CLAWs, as well as investigating decoupling and the physics bugs. Unfortunately I don't have much time in between uni stuff.

[Special Agent Sigvan]

If you can stop it from "Locking" then you could use the speed it locked at and release it. I'm more afraid of it being exploded mid-warp than it well, exploding.

We'll find a way to avoid that certain setup of bugs, does it work with probe cores? If so save the original ship and mess with the design a little, we'll try and see test the result.

If we can get Impulse Engines on it we can use them in place of the drive, if the drive doesn't tear the ship apart.

If you can, try and put up the craft file, I'll try it for myself and see what happens.

Edited May 1, 2014 by Special Agent Sigvan

[Comrade Jenkens]

I've managed to create some really severe gyro forces with docking ports but no acceleration yet. May be onto something here though.

I can also simply turn it off by undocking.

[Special Agent Sigvan]

I've managed to create some really severe gyro forces with docking ports but no acceleration yet. May be onto something here though.

I can also simply turn it off by undocking.

Convert those gyro forces into well, acceleration and you have some awesome cheese.

[astecarmyman]

I've managed to create EXTREMELY Severe gyro forces from "Kraken Plasma"

Sometimes if you are lucky, two clouds of rapidly rotating clouds of debris will form after detonation.

Unfortunately it crashes the game shortly after use. It may or may not have been intended to be used as a weapon.

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[Special Agent Sigvan]

Hmm, as useful that will be it's still not the desired result.

Though it's a good basis (Proving the Kraken has the ability to move things).

[Comrade Jenkens]

I've had no luck at all the the K-Drive All my old designs no longer work and I've barley been able to leave the ground before the new ones break.

[MysticPing]

That weapon looks cool, how does it work?

[Special Agent Sigvan]

I've had no luck at all the the K-Drive All my old designs no longer work and I've barley been able to leave the ground before the new ones break.

This is my situation, my previous "K-Drive" doesn't work at all.

Hmm if we want to ACTUALLY exploit KSP's physics to make a fuel efficient craft powered by phantom forces we need to look at the code and how KSP handles things, and how we can use loopholes in the code to make the desired effect.

[andrew123]

If we found those bugs, and released the data, the developers would take notice and patch it. Unless there's some fundamental flaw in KSP's code, this will be an update by update endeavor.

[Special Agent Sigvan]

If we found those bugs, and released the data, the developers would take notice and patch it. Unless there's some fundamental flaw in KSP's code, this will be an update by update endeavor.

True, but we don't have to share it publicly.

Also, they aren't really bugs, similar to how floating point errors work, they would be issues with how KSP handles things. SQUAD can't fix that.

[andrew123]

WTF

I think I may have found a physics exploit.

[Special Agent Sigvan]

I won't question what you were building, but I think that's similar to Danny2462's shockwave bug.