Bigger landing legs

[Twreed87]

Simple suggestion, bigger, longer, sturdier landing legs. I'm thinking like the legs on the Falcon 9-R. Long enough to allow a mainsail to sit underneath with some room.

[kmagnum]

place some I-beams that point outward near your mainsail, then, at the end of those beams, place some more that aim down, and put some L2 landing struts on the bottom of those. That should give you enough height and a wide base so you can land on an angled surface. Have fun.

[SlimeCrusher]

place some I-beams that point outward near your mainsail, then, at the end of those beams, place some more that aim down, and put some L2 landing struts on the bottom of those. That should give you enough height and a wide base so you can land on an angled surface. Have fun.

Yeeeaaa but that looks ugly...

Seeing that we have HUMONGOUS rover wheels, why not have HUMONGOUS landing legs?

[Twreed87]

place some I-beams that point outward near your mainsail, then, at the end of those beams, place some more that aim down, and put some L2 landing struts on the bottom of those. That should give you enough height and a wide base so you can land on an angled surface. Have fun.

I'm aware they can be fashioned together, most things can be cobbled together with I-beams and trusses. It would just be nice if there were some nice-looking, STOCK, foldable landing legs.

[Laie]

I'm aware they can be fashioned together, most things can be cobbled together with I-beams and trusses. It would just be nice if there were some nice-looking, STOCK, foldable landing legs.

If you only need a bigger copy of an existing part, that's easy: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/31641-How-To-Part-resizing-basics

Eventually there's supposed to be many more parts in stock. But while the game's still under development, the part list is being kept short on purpose: less stuff to be adapted when something in the background changes (or not even in the background; if I understand it correctly, someone is setting prices for all parts right now. Sure sounds like a lot of fun).

[MKI]

I personally feel larger landing legs aren't needed. Instead heavier duty legs are.

There really isn't a need for longer legs, as if your landing with a mainsail your doing something odd anyways. (one of the perks of using a smaller dedicated landing engine)

The game needs something along the lines of the B9 Heavy duty legs. Which fold out at a 90 degree angle from where they are placed. This would offer a very stable and strong landing area for large crafts and base type structures. Especially with the new suspension system a large support landing gear would be designed more for bases rather than landers. In a similar way the largest wheels are designed for mobile bases, rather than rovers and buggies.

[Pulstar]

There really isn't a need for longer legs, as if your landing with a mainsail your doing something odd anyways. (one of the perks of using a smaller dedicated landing engine)

I'm not sure I agree with this, landing heavier things on Tylo would no doubt require a skipper which is more or less as big as a mainsail. Then there's the issue of recovering stages SpaceX style, you can use the ARM pack's HUGE size parts to build fairly good and simple SSTO lifters, only issue is working around the limitations for landing leg length.

[Blaarkies]

On 7/6/2014 at 7:21 AM, MKI said:

The game needs something along the lines of the B9 Heavy duty legs. Which fold out at a 90 degree angle from where they are placed. This would offer a very stable and strong landing area for large crafts and base type structures. Especially with the new suspension system a large support landing gear would be designed more for bases rather than landers. In a similar way the largest wheels are designed for mobile bases, rather than rovers and buggies.

The 90 degree angle landing legs is a good idea, not only for b9 mothership landers, but also for the existing contracts asking for bases and such. But @Pulstar has a good point about bigger engines needing longer landing legs. In general it seems that stock KSP parts tries to emulate their real life counter parts(at least visually)...and since yesterday's successful launch and landing, i'd say those massive Falcon9 legs should become stock.

It makes just as much sense as the NASA Saturn V fuel tanks, or the fact that theres 4 sizes of rover wheels...but only 3 sizes of landing legs (they should handle the 3.75m tanks at their max limit at least)

Edited December 24, 2015 by Blaarkies

[pandaman]

I'd say yes to this.  Something at least a bit aerodynamic when surface attached would be good.

[Wjolcz]

Not sure if we really need any bigger landing gear, but the biggest one could be slightly redone to look like the ones on the Falcon. Would have nothing against that.

[Pthigrivi]

Porkjet's been so careful ironing out the landing gear I would love to see a pass at the legs and wheels both. Larger/heavier legs should def be part of that, as well as making an aerodynamic leg in the middle. The rover wheels need work too, allowing the S2 and M1 to deflate/fold up for better packing and adding something sensible between the TR-2L and the XL3. I'd actually prefer to see the XL3 redesigned as a heavy duty track. The fact that anyone sends that thing to space as is unfathomable to me. 

[klgraham1013]

After watching the Space X landing, I'd definitely be down for more landing legs.  As @Pthigrivi said, I'd love for PorkJet to make an art pass on the legs and wheels both.

[Snark]

Definitely need some love for the landing legs.  We got all those different spaceplane landing gear sets, and are getting still more in 1.1... why no  love for rockets?

(Restraining self, with difficulty, from going on a lengthy rant about the scads and scads of attention that's been given to spaceplane parts again and again over the past half-dozen patches without giving similar attention to actual rocket ships.)

My personal favorite one-size-up landing legs that I've seen thus far are the jumbo legs from RoverDude's Karbonite mod.  Nicely designed, look great, have a distinctive style (not just a sized-up clone of what we already have), and do the job well.  Would love to see those in stock.  Hint, hint, @SQUAD. 

Edited December 25, 2015 by Snark

[Pthigrivi]

They did say they're working on a big rocket pass for 1.2 (squadcast? devnotes?)

[Blaarkies]

SpaceX barge landing

Do you see now how important bigger landing legs are?! If Elon had some big sturdy stock landing legs to build his rockets, that would have landed...and stayed landed . But no he had to rely on modded landing legs.

All jokes aside, it was amazing that it stopped so gently but sad that it was for but a moment.

Back on topic: Does anyone know how the stock landing legs react(their animations specifically), when their part.cfg file is edited to have a bigger scale?(I plan on making a simple ModuleManager config file, which would make a copy of a part, and modify the copy's scale,price,mass,etc.)

...

(I want to tell a "forgot to click on the Lock Suspension button" joke, but it's too soon)

[Frozen_Heart]

On ‎25‎/‎12‎/‎2015 at 8:17 PM, Pthigrivi said:

They did say they're working on a big rocket pass for 1.2 (squadcast? devnotes?)

I think the next several updates are going to be rocket part overhaul. Already started with the Aerospike, Thud, and Vector.

 

Some new proper rocket sized landing legs would be nice, especially if they looked as good as the SpaceX ones.

[Red Iron Crown]

@Blaarkies Animations are part of the model itself, if you rescale the model then you rescale the animations, too.

[Blaarkies]

There you go! Bigger landing legs homegrown from stock parts!

It's a Module Manager script that creates a copy of the LT-2 Landing Legs, and then rescales them to double size(and increase their cost, mass, etc.)

+PART[landingLeg1-2]
{
	@name = landingLeg3
	@rescaleFactor *= 2
	@node_attach = 0.0, -0.05577543, -0.1288447, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 2
	@entryCost *= 2
	@cost *= 2
	@title = LT-3 Landing Strut
	@description = The LT-3 Landing Strut was designed after a mishap when a towering rocket landed(for a moment) at sea. Blame was thrown left and right, but in the end a brave engineer decided to simply double the size of the landing legs and hope they still fit inside the landing zone.
	@mass *= 2
	
	@MODULE[ModuleLandingLeg]
	{
		@impactTolerance *= 2
		@suspensionSpring *= 1
		@suspensionDamper *= 1
	}
}

So if you don't know what Module Manager is, then i suggest having a look at this(Module Manager).

TL;DR :Get yourself "ModuleManager.2.6.17.dll" (or a newer version), copy that into your "GameData" folder

Also,

1. Open up notepad, copy this script into notepad.
2. "Save As" SaturnVLlegs.cfg into your GameData folder.(make sure the extension is ".cfg" ,the icon should change)
3. TADA! New legs in the same techgroup as the old big legs.

All credit goes to Squad for the pre-existing parts, and also sarbian for making the awesome MM mod (and some credit to Red Iron Crown for advice).

This script was quickly put together, so please criticize the kerbal hell out of it...I want to know whether or not the doubling of mass, cost, etc. is balanced for it's size and capabilities.

P.S. I have a MM script that creates lots of cool parts out of stock ones like this...it also modifies existing parts slightly to make them useful(I'm looking at you, Mk2 Lander Can ...weighing more than 4 times that of the Mk1 Lander Can). Anyway, if anyone is interested in taking a look at that script, just PM me

Edited January 28, 2016 by Blaarkies

[Stoney3K]

On 24-12-2015 at 6:24 AM, Blaarkies said:

The 90 degree angle landing legs is a good idea, not only for b9 mothership landers, but also for the existing contracts asking for bases and such. But @Pulstar has a good point about bigger engines needing longer landing legs. In general it seems that stock KSP parts tries to emulate their real life counter parts(at least visually)...and since yesterday's successful launch and landing, i'd say those massive Falcon9 legs should become stock.

It makes just as much sense as the NASA Saturn V fuel tanks, or the fact that theres 4 sizes of rover wheels...but only 3 sizes of landing legs (they should handle the 3.75m tanks at their max limit at least)

90 degrees? Why not just make the amount of leg extension and the folding angle tweakable in the VAB?

That way it doesn't matter if you strap them to a rocket or put them into an inverted cargo bay for your VTOL craft.

[Jimbodiah]

Install tweakscale and you can scale up the stock legs. But, yeah, I never got why all the legs are so short. Adding I-beams is just adding to part counts and introducing lag. Not to mention it looks awful.

[moogoob]

Heavy landing pads (like on the Nostromo from Alien) would be good too - flat, low-clearance but perfect for underside of larger bases and other heavy things.

[Waxing_Kibbous]

Not stock, but there's a mod for that http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/117527-105-wipalpha-lithobrake-exploration-technologies-031-2016-01-11/

[Frozen_Heart]

Yes guys we know there are mods. We could go install them very easily if we wanted.

We're making suggestions for things to be added to the stock game.

[KerbonautInTraining]

On Wednesday, January 20, 2016 at 7:57 AM, Jimbodiah said:

Install tweakscale and you can scale up the stock legs. But, yeah, I never got why all the legs are so short. Adding I-beams is just adding to part counts and introducing lag. Not to mention it looks awful.

I remember trying that in 1.0.0 and the legs turned into wet cardboard. I'd be surprised if that wasn't fixed by now.

E: "that" meaning tweakscale

Edited January 22, 2016 by KerbonautInTraining

[Jimbodiah]

No issues with tweakscale on stock parts that I have noticed. I tend to use it on the legs, solar panels etc. Some mods act funky with it, but most work fine and even support it.