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[1.12.X] Tantares - Stockalike Soyuz and MIR [16.1][28.05.2024][Mars Expedition WIP]


Beale

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The new r7 has no gimbal? But why? The way the r7 family and atlas flew was with gimbals.

Vernier Thrusters. Get them. Either use stock radial engines (the rockomax ones), stock Vernor RCS, or use the Tantares 'Wayfarer' engines.

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It really does, and I'm not even that good at making things like that happen. Mine usually involve explosions!!!

Same :)

A good tip is to use offset to make it so the decoupler is at the top of the booster.

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You know, 1.875m ATV would allow 2.5m Ariane 5.... Hmmm!

Yess.......succumb to the smaller ATV.....you know you want to......

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...It's true, the LK is a little too big. I have looked into re-scaling it (but, not sure it would be worth it). ...
I have done some local testing, a scale between 65%-75% seems so be more real. The Capsule itself might need a 75 to not be too small (its a bit too long but at 75% it fits in a fairing that is smaller than 2.5 meter) The rest of the parts might look more realistic at around 65% but then might need re-modelling the areasthat need to match between the parts. Block-D could use a reduction to 90%. With 75% LK and 90% Block-D i got this LOK-Lookalike: screenshot058s3k.jpg Might be even better at a 75%/65% mixture with smaller tank/landing plattform (btw would be even nicer to have a "real" LK Landing Platform that could separate from the Tank structure.^^ Still, Tantares is my mod of choice it it comes to russian inspired hardware. It might be kerbalized much more than others but i really dig the cleaner and error-free modelling more than the clipping, flickering and inconsistent detail resolution other mods have. And the scaing decision is better suited in my opinion. So thanks for this mod :)
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Vernier Thrusters. Get them. Either use stock radial engines (the rockomax ones), stock Vernor RCS, or use the Tantares 'Wayfarer' engines.

Sorry chap, but as helpful as this is I believe I asked "why?" Not "what am I supposed to do now?"

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I mean really this was the only stock alike 1.25 lifter engine with gimbaling out there that I could think of. That's an important position to hold when squad botches the early game hard gives you no way to control a use full sized rocket forcing you to science scum the ksc to get enough science to just skip the first few nodes...

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Sorry chap, but as helpful as this is I believe I asked "why?" Not "what am I supposed to do now?"

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I mean really this was the only stock alike 1.25 lifter engine with gimbaling out there that I could think of. That's an important position to hold when squad botches the early game hard gives you no way to control a use full sized rocket forcing you to science scum the ksc to get enough science to just skip the first few nodes...

The R-7 rocket family has non gimballing main engines, and smaller, highly gimballing vernier engines on the core stages and boosters. Beale is going for realism on that, but he hasn't yet made the smaller rockets, so you have to use the stock verniers.

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The R-7 rocket family has non gimballing main engines, and smaller, highly gimballing vernier engines on the core stages and boosters. Beale is going for realism on that, but he hasn't yet made the smaller rockets, so you have to use the stock verniers.

Ah I was mistaken I could have sworn they had just spammed gimbaling on everything (new rocket, lots of big unknowns, best to just go for overkill, etc...) yes yes this makes much more sense now thank you. :wink:

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Ah I was mistaken I could have sworn they had just spammed gimbaling on everything (new rocket, lots of big unknowns, best to just go for overkill, etc...) yes yes this makes much more sense now thank you. :wink:

Gimbaling didn't really exist in the early days of rocketry - early rockets used fins angled into the combustion exhaust to "steer". The vernier engine 2-directional-gimbaling on the R-7 was a generational leap forward for it's time.

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Gimbaling didn't really exist in the early days of rocketry - early rockets used fins angled into the combustion exhaust to "steer". The vernier engine 2-directional-gimbaling on the R-7 was a generational leap forward for it's time.

thats true it did come before atlas afterall which was the rocket that really pioneered gimballing the main engines among other crazy ahead of their time ideas like balloon tanks and just dropping the engines... aaah aren't crash development programs great?

anyway yeah I messed up don't mind me... *innocent whistling*

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Beale, almighty bread, quick question:

What file do your r-7 engines, the Tavio CEM(B) and CEM(u), draw their textures from?

I'm trying to whip up a quick "orange, black, and grey" texture alternative and i cannot figure out where these engines are getting their textures from so I can edit it. The LFTs were no problem but i can't seem to wrap my head around the engines themselves.

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Vernier thrusters are being modelled no worries. :)

I have done some local testing, a scale between 65%-75% seems so be more real. The Capsule itself might need a 75 to not be too small (its a bit too long but at 75% it fits in a fairing that is smaller than 2.5 meter) The rest of the parts might look more realistic at around 65% but then might need re-modelling the areasthat need to match between the parts. Block-D could use a reduction to 90%. With 75% LK and 90% Block-D i got this LOK-Lookalike: http://abload.de/thumb/screenshot058s3k.jpg Might be even better at a 75%/65% mixture with smaller tank/landing plattform (btw would be even nicer to have a "real" LK Landing Platform that could separate from the Tank structure.^^ Still, Tantares is my mod of choice it it comes to russian inspired hardware. It might be kerbalized much more than others but i really dig the cleaner and error-free modelling more than the clipping, flickering and inconsistent detail resolution other mods have. And the scaing decision is better suited in my opinion. So thanks for this mod :)

Very interesting! Thanks for putting this together!

0.9375m Lk fits quite snug.

Beale, almighty bread, quick question:

What file do your r-7 engines, the Tavio CEM(B) and CEM(u), draw their textures from?

I'm trying to whip up a quick "orange, black, and grey" texture alternative and i cannot figure out where these engines are getting their textures from so I can edit it. The LFTs were no problem but i can't seem to wrap my head around the engines themselves.

TLV_Engine_A.DDS :)

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Weird,

Other than TLV_Engine_A_psd.dds, which appears to be a semi transparent file for what i imagine is heating body effects, i cannot find that file either in your download, your previous TLV downloads, or anywhere on my harddrive...

AND YET... the textures show up clear as day in game...

I'm going to blame Linux for now and keep snooping around. Thank you almighty bread.

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Weird,

Other than TLV_Engine_A_psd.dds, which appears to be a semi transparent file for what i imagine is heating body effects, i cannot find that file either in your download, your previous TLV downloads, or anywhere on my harddrive...

AND YET... the textures show up clear as day in game...

I'm going to blame Linux for now and keep snooping around. Thank you almighty bread.

Blech!

Sorry, I made a stupid mistake,

TLV_Engine_A_psd.dds is the correct texture, it appears transparent because it has an alpha layer, you need open it with explicit alpha rather than transparency (This is easy if you have Photoshop with a DDS plugin, if you're on Linux you might have mixed success with WINE, but GIMP can probably do this native anyway).

Hope this helps, sorry for confusion :)

It should look like this when open correctly.

674a662a3f.jpg

Edited by Beale
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Weird,

Other than TLV_Engine_A_psd.dds, which appears to be a semi transparent file for what i imagine is heating body effects, i cannot find that file either in your download, your previous TLV downloads, or anywhere on my harddrive...

AND YET... the textures show up clear as day in game...

I'm going to blame Linux for now and keep snooping around. Thank you almighty bread.

that's probably the right file most of beals textures end in psd for some reason(I think it has to do with photoshop) the transparency you see is the specular map the more transparent something is the more diffuse the shine is in game by varying the shininess you can make an efficient substitute for a normal map and save loads of ram.

EDIT: ninja'd by a loaf of bread... :P

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Sorry chap, but as helpful as this is I believe I asked "why?" Not "what am I supposed to do now?"

- - - Updated - - -

I mean really this was the only stock alike 1.25 lifter engine with gimbaling out there that I could think of. That's an important position to hold when squad botches the early game hard gives you no way to control a use full sized rocket forcing you to science scum the ksc to get enough science to just skip the first few nodes...

You could also do what I plan on doing. Copy over they old TLV parts and ether run them next to the new ones or just replace them. It's probably to far along in dev for my input to count for much but here it is. Unless you make the gimbaled nozzles part of the main engine (and therefor turn it into a one use part), you unnecessarily increase the part count of all TLV derivatives by 12! Couldn't you instead make the gimbal module on the engine unlock further up the tech tree? You could do it just like the integrated probe antenna from RT. Also for those wanting a perfect, functional replica of the R-7 that works just like the real thing in every way, part count be damned, whats stopping you from right clicking the engine in the VAB and clicking disable gimbal?

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Wow i am having a REALLY weird time and i'm not ashamed to admit it, bread.

So i doubted my Linux first, Then i doubted my entire installation. I flushed my whole KSP and installed it fresh on a windows computer.

The ONLY mod installed is (not even tantares lv, JUST: ) the r-7 lv mod.

I then deleted the TLV_Engine_A_psd.dds entirely from the harddrive (this was the result of many confused attempts to change the texture culminating in this), and the engines STILL have textures in game. Fresh new game, tried a fresh install without ever starting, instantly delete the texture and start the game, i have tried... many things.

I still BELIEVE it is my computer but i cannot figure out if i'm going crazy or if there's a step to this that i'm still missing.

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Wow i am having a REALLY weird time and i'm not ashamed to admit it, bread.

So i doubted my Linux first, Then i doubted my entire installation. I flushed my whole KSP and installed it fresh on a windows computer.

The ONLY mod installed is (not even tantares lv, JUST: ) the r-7 lv mod.

I then deleted the TLV_Engine_A_psd.dds entirely from the harddrive (this was the result of many confused attempts to change the texture culminating in this), and the engines STILL have textures in game. Fresh new game, tried a fresh install without ever starting, instantly delete the texture and start the game, i have tried... many things.

I still BELIEVE it is my computer but i cannot figure out if i'm going crazy or if there's a step to this that i'm still missing.

You are not crazy, there is something else I overlooked.

There is also contained with the textures TLV_Engine_A_psd.mbm, which is the raw exported texture from Unity. This is what needs to be converted to DDS (but, I seem to have forgotten!).

Again, your PC is fine :wink:

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Hi Beale. Haven't been using your mod for some time due to memory constraints, but now that I upgraded that part of my PC I want to return to Tantares parts. I have a question though: is release of new version near? If it is then I will wait a bit more so that I can start clean with tantares parts without any fear that some of my crafts could be broken when updating.

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Hiya! Sorry for disappearing. There was a huge amount of events going on, first of all, one of the moderator team went here to visit Russia, then I was visiting a large aerospace expo. :)

Beale, if you would like to make some day more stuff (after finishing existing one :P ), I'd consider looking into Chinese space program, it has some interesting stuff. I made some photos of their mockups and posters, hope it would be useful. :)

I love the direction where R-7 and the overall overhaul is going, though I really embrace the idea of a "light version" of the mod, and my choice would be having there Soyuz descent capsule, orbital module, one 1.25m four-nozzled TLV engine and radial tanks, N-1/L3 parts (including the lander capsule itself), 0.625m LES and TKS parts (except for solar panels and docking ports). Probably ATV can left too, but still not sure. It will leave only the most essential parts, which can't be replaced by any other and will not be that huge (which is not a bad thing, but since this mod is designed to be stockalike it doesn't really need to be redundant to some extent).

Here are the photos (not only mine).

Cheers!

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Hiya! Sorry for disappearing. There was a huge amount of events going on, first of all, one of the moderator team went here to visit Russia, then I was visiting a large aerospace expo. :)

Beale, if you would like to make some day more stuff (after finishing existing one :P ), I'd consider looking into Chinese space program, it has some interesting stuff. I made some photos of their mockups and posters, hope it would be useful. :)

I love the direction where R-7 and the overall overhaul is going, though I really embrace the idea of a "light version" of the mod, and my choice would be having there Soyuz descent capsule, orbital module, one 1.25m four-nozzled TLV engine and radial tanks, N-1/L3 parts (including the lander capsule itself), 0.625m LES and TKS parts (except for solar panels and docking ports). Probably ATV can left too, but still not sure. It will leave only the most essential parts, which can't be replaced by any other and will not be that huge (which is not a bad thing, but since this mod is designed to be stockalike it doesn't really need to be redundant to some extent).

Here are the photos (not only mine).

Cheers!

I dunno about putting tks in a light pack with .09m parts. Replicas would not be a priority and the gemini and spektr pods would have you covered for 1.875m pods if the size is kept at all. Personally I feel that a light pack should name cuts liberally at first only keeping parts that have no stock counterpart and then adding some borderline parts back as cases for them are made.

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I dunno about putting tks in a light pack with .09m parts. Replicas would not be a priority and the gemini and spektr pods would have you covered for 1.875m pods if the size is kept at all. Personally I feel that a light pack should name cuts liberally at first only keeping parts that have no stock counterpart and then adding some borderline parts back as cases for them are made.

Well, the shape of the TKS docking part is really unique, as well as the radial tanks (which can have radiator capabilities). But basically yes, you can go without them, though I'd still like to have radial monoprop engines and 1,875m tank for Orion/PPTS service module.

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Well, the shape of the TKS docking part is really unique, as well as the radial tanks (which can have radiator capabilities). But basically yes, you can go without them, though I'd still like to have radial monoprop engines and 1,875m tank for Orion/PPTS service module.

Well I meant no counter part in function mostly(I don't see what tks's docking part accomplishes in ksp out side of replicas) so for example there would be no point in including the vast array of docking ports and antenna but there would be a point in including the Soyuz pod. As for unique sizes like .09m and 1.875m in my opinion it all depends on if a complete package could be offered there is probably enough 1.875m parts but there is definitely not enough .09m parts. also assuming replica is not a priority certain other comprises that were made for looks could be done away with like the decoupler in the gemini service module.

From there parts that were excluded could be resized or restated for more defined roles if needed because we don't need to worry about how it all looks so much. So for example the original tks pod decent engine could be scaled up or down to a standard size because a nose engine would be super useful.

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Hi Beale. Haven't been using your mod for some time due to memory constraints, but now that I upgraded that part of my PC I want to return to Tantares parts. I have a question though: is release of new version near? If it is then I will wait a bit more so that I can start clean with tantares parts without any fear that some of my crafts could be broken when updating.

Hello!

The R-7 is quite close.

But, it will break existing Soyuz rockets, so you may want to hold off :)

(Then again if you are using the R7 Beta you will be safe from update).

Hiya! Sorry for disappearing. There was a huge amount of events going on, first of all, one of the moderator team went here to visit Russia, then I was visiting a large aerospace expo. :)

Beale, if you would like to make some day more stuff (after finishing existing one :P ), I'd consider looking into Chinese space program, it has some interesting stuff. I made some photos of their mockups and posters, hope it would be useful. :)

I love the direction where R-7 and the overall overhaul is going, though I really embrace the idea of a "light version" of the mod, and my choice would be having there Soyuz descent capsule, orbital module, one 1.25m four-nozzled TLV engine and radial tanks, N-1/L3 parts (including the lander capsule itself), 0.625m LES and TKS parts (except for solar panels and docking ports). Probably ATV can left too, but still not sure. It will leave only the most essential parts, which can't be replaced by any other and will not be that huge (which is not a bad thing, but since this mod is designed to be stockalike it doesn't really need to be redundant to some extent).

Here are the photos (not only mine).

Cheers!

Good to hear from you! (And nice photo set! :D The Chinese stuff is very interesting, and tempting... )

Many thanks on R-7 too!

On Tantares-Lite, I quite like the idea, but it will be difficult to narrow down the parts exactly.

My first thought would be only the R-7 and Soyuz alone, but then may want the Progress, then for Progress may want the station parts, then for station parts may want Proton, then...

It will spiral out of necessity quickly. :P

Nice! :cool:

This part?

3c30a57448.jpg

WIP

7UVkASn.png

Edited by Beale
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My first thought would be only the R-7 and Soyuz alone, but then may want the Progress, then for Progress may want the station parts, then for station parts may want Proton, then...

It will spiral out of necessity quickly. :P

And that will end in Tantares "Light" that is identical to Tantares.
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