Usefulness of Girders, Adapters and the Like

[frog]

Fellow Kerbonauts!

In all my (presently) 180hrs playing KSP, I have never found a use for the different struts, adaptors, etc. They all seem too small, and with the exception of rovers, seem to provide no real benefit to my crafts. Whenever I watch videos, I never see (or notice?) any of these parts being used. I've scanned the forums, wiki, and the greater internet but to no avail. However, both in vanilla and in the BTSM mod, these parts are unlocked fairly early, which makes me think they must offer some advantage that I'm not aware of.

What are your feelings on these parts? Do you use them often or ever, and if so, in what ways? Also, is there an in-game way to resize them that I've been too dumb to see?

I encourage photos!

[Hodo]

Some people use them as the base structure for larger craft, they will build a very intricate skeletal system for a craft then skin it with structural panels and wing parts.

But don't worry they don't have a lot of use unless you do a lot of odd small building.

[Boomerang]

The adapters are mostly aesthetic pieces anyway, but you can use those on almost anything. I use the flat ones an awful lot just to make joints between different sized parts smoother.

The girder and plates and such are more structural components for non-rocket things, so if you mostly build rocks, then no, you're not going to use them much. Personally I use the hollow girders left right and center for framing on rovers, immobile legs on base parts, and extension parts on stations. The big plates can be used as skins for crafts or sturdy bases for rovers and such.

The I-beams I don't personally have much use for, but if you're building heavy landers they can be strung together to make long, stiff landing legs, among other things.

[allmhuran]

Girders are extremely strong, the joints between them, and things connected to them, seem to have extra strength kerbal glue.

Ibeams and structural panels are similarly strong, but more flexible than girders.

Before the joints between parts were reinforced, which only happened in the last update as I recall, these high strength parts could be used to make a "thrust plate" that could be used to launch huge payloads that would otherwise buckle under their internal stresses. That's not so much of a problem anymore, in fact I think the stock joints are actually a little too strong now.

But I still use them pretty often. They make excellent backbones for craft that would otherwise be, if not fragile, then at least pretty wobbly.

[Alshain]

The adapters are useful if you have Ferram Aerospace Research installed. In that case you want the more tapered ones rather than the low profile ones. Presumably when KSP has a real aerodynamic package you will need them more. The same for the nose cones, they serve no purpose other than aesthetics in stock and actually make your craft worse if you use them (note: scroll down to the section title "Drag" in that linked article).

Edited July 9, 2014 by Alshain

[Frank_G]

This craft wouldnt have been possible without supporting structure. As soon, as your constructions go big, you will be glad you have them.

[Alshain]

This craft wouldnt have been possible without supporting structure. As soon, as your constructions go big, you will be glad you have them.

Just out of curiously, why do you have an empty Clamp-o-Tron Sr. there?

[Red Iron Crown]

I'd bet he jettisoned a tank like the other ones from there. Beautiful ship Frank_G, you make great stuff that appeals to my quasi-realistic spaceship aesthetic sensibilities.

[EdFred]

I use the small and large girders for pretty much anything interplanetary. My interplanetary engine core is usually a Rockomax-32 tank (or 2) with 4 girders mounted radially, and then another girder attached at 90º to each of those, with a nuke mounted off it fed with a fuel line. I go with that so I can keep "stacking" centrally underneath (lifting stage), or so I can drop empty tanks without losing the engines.

I also will use girders when I get a bit too wide at the base of my first stage for struts. A couple of the long girders, then connected with struts keeps the engines from torquing, and causing the rocket to roll.. And struts...while not as necessary as they used to be, if you have clamp-o-trons you probably need to strut the sections together. Especially my current Jool vessel that has 5 sets of science packs for my reusable lander.

[Frank_G]

Just out of curiously, why do you have an empty Clamp-o-Tron Sr. there?

Look at the other 2 rows of tanks. There are Decouplers right behind the tanks so they can be jettisoned by staging instead of manual decoupling or using action groups.

As all parts of this craft were pushed into orbit bit by bit by realistic rocket launches (meaning no asparagus launchers, only one rocket and up to 4 SRBs or 2 LRBs) and then assembled by docking em together,

i needed a solution that fits within regular rocket fairings, is dockable and stageable. This system met all the requirements. The only flaw is, that it leaves 6 sr. clamp-o-trons extra debris floating around.

You can take a look at the full mission here: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/84993-Grand-Tour-to-Jool

[edit] Before one asks... I launched one rocket with a payload the weight of the shield and then hyper-edited the shield into orbit. It was the first part, so i pretended it was constructed in orbit or being an inflatable shield. As it weighs only 5 tons it would have been quite easy to push it to orbit, but i hate those unrealistic launches a lot. [/edit]

Edited July 9, 2014 by Frank_G

[Red Iron Crown]

Just FYI Frank_G, if you use the TweakableEverything mod you can make docking ports stageable, which would save the mass and part count of the decouplers.

[Frank_G]

Thanks for pointing that out, but i had some serious troubles with tweakable everything interfering with some parts (for example the standard inline clamp-o-tron became unattachable). I threw out the mod a few months ago and did not keep track of newer versions. I guess, i´ll give it another try.

[Claw]

Here is one example of the usefulness of some of those parts. Although this particular example probably doesn't help with the early game.

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[Frank_G]

I'd bet he jettisoned a tank like the other ones from there. Beautiful ship Frank_G, you make great stuff that appeals to my quasi-realistic spaceship aesthetic sensibilities.

And thanks!

[Oafman]

The cubic octagonal strut is a wonderful thing, which enables you to attach anything anywhere, more or less. If there was one part which I absolutely could not do without, I think it would be the COS

[mpink]

I found the Girder Segment very handy in career mode. on my 1st mission i added extra parachutes using them as mounts. On my 2nd mission i used them to connect 6 engines to an X200-8 fuel tank producing an expensive and dangerous version of a mainsail.

The Girder Segment has a very strange fuel flow that only works in one direction when using surface attachment so it can be very handy for making drive sections.

[Skorpychan]

The girders are GREAT for my nuclear space tugs. Since I pull my payloads, I can use them to space the engines out a bit. Or a lot. They're also good for stations, so the docking ports are well away from the solar panels.

Adapters are mostly aesthetic, but I like smooth lines rather than sharp transitions.

The I-beam girders I've found useful on rovers, but not much else. And even then, only to give a small rover some more ground clearance and a bit of extra weight.

[Rus-Evo]

I find the girder beams work well on aircraft to be extenders to put winglets further forwards and further aft.

Structural fuselage is good to make a strong central structural core of a very very very big lifter.

[MockKnizzle]

While working on a family of Centaur-inspired upper stages, I came up with a neat little interstage bracket system made of girders. It lets me have a dual-engine upper stage without a silly I-beam running down between the engine bells, and moves the decouplers outwards so there's no chance of explosions during stage sep.

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There's a small and large size, I just stuck the 1m decoupler in between.

[Cerberus738]

Girders have a ground impact tolerance of 80m/s which means you can land really hard on them before your ship breaks. they are heavier than landing legs though.

[cantab]

The cubic octagonal strut basically serves as "glue" to let you stick parts together how you want them.

The larger girders are mainly used for basic structure. For example one of my transfer stages has a four LV-N cluster with a long girder down the middle, so the launcher can mount below that girder. I've also used girderwork for mounting awkward payloads, such as those with the root node in an unhelpful place, to my launchers.

[I.T Marcus]

If you ever want to see their usefulness try making a bunch of differant sized probes in sandbox and see what you use to make some really cool and intricate ones. I know that I usually use the girders for my large rovers as a 4-symmetry support peams to house all electrics in a very stable and shielded core Also they are indispensible when using infernal/damned robotics!