"Sticky" Engines

[travis575757]

Sticky engines are basically easier ways to make engine clusters. Lets say you have a 3.75 meter tank but you want to put 4 or 5 mainsails on it. Sticky engines is the answer to this. Basically what happens is first you put down the sticky adapter which has a size adaption for all tanks (.5-1, 1-2.5, 2.5 - 3.75). For this it would be a 3.75 to 2.5 then what happens is that it gives you 4-5 places to put your engines. If you put 4 engines you can use the middle for a decopuler to allow another bottoms stage or you could put a 5th engine there. The thing is when you put your 4 engines together they form a engine cluster where the edges are rounded to be like 1 3.75 m part. The only thing is if you take 1 engine off it reverts. Adding a 5th middle engine will just have it clip in there with extra power. Also right clicking any engine will allow you to disable this feature. I thought this idea would be great for ship builders and modders alike for a more modular way to add your engines Does anybody else think this could have any use because i really could for building my rockets.

[Sirrobert]

What, like this

http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/TVR-400L_Stack_Quad-Adapter ?

[Kasuha]

Something like this?

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[GusTurbo]

It sounds like this feature would automatically create a fairing around the base of engine clusters to make them look more integrated into the rocket. I like the idea.

[travis575757]

It sounds like this feature would automatically create a fairing around the base of engine clusters to make them look more integrated into the rocket. I like the idea.

Yes that is what im talking about, in the posts above people are using the methods currently available, the thing is it doesn't really look nice with the 1 to quad adapter and using little struts doesn't look all that great too. What im saying is when you put the 4 engines on this special plate they will round off on the engines and form what looks like to be a engine cluster but it will seem to be more like 1 part instead of 4. Once you place the 4th engine it automatically undergoes this transformation.

[cantab]

Nice idea, but more something for a mod I'd say.

[phoenix_ca]

I'm pretty sure Procedural Fairings added just such a device (called a "thrust plate" or something like that) in it's recent 3.0 update.

[rkman]

Alternatively, surface attach could be enabled on engines.

5 Mainsails don't actually fit under a 3.75 tank without engines sticking out the sides, so getting fairings around those would be tricky. Otoh if an engine cluster does fit flush with the sides of a tank then the ends of the fairing only need to fit the bottom of the tank to which the cluster is mounted, and the top of a properly sized decoupler below the cluster. That's not all that different from the automagic fairings of the stock engines, except that it would have to be a function of stack decouplers instead of engines.

[RedPine]

The OP is awkwardly worded but I get what he's saying. We wand an adapter part that looks like a plus sign, with a 2.5m attachment spot on the top and bottom of the middle of the plus sign, AND on the top and bottom near the ends of each arm of the plus sign.

This probably belongs as a mod, and would be best if it were procedural in that the size and number of arms would be decided by the player, similar to how procedural fairings can be arbitrarily large and procedural wings arbitrarily long.