[1.9-1.10] Hangar

[M443556]

I've tried the box-fairing hangar and...
1. It creates multiple real debris when deploying, unlike stock fairings. Just to bother player to kill them all from tracking station every time? Or it has some hidden purpose, like attaching a probe-core to every side...
2. The force that pushes that debris is enough to make them leave Kerbin's SOI if you deploy at Minmus orbit.
3. Some force is still applied to both mothership and payload so their orbits change a bit on deploy. That bit can be significant at low gravity (eg. Minmus).
4. The control-part that remain at motherhip can't hibernate and shows a detach option that does nothing. Also the option to remove fairing from staging does nothing in both editor and in flight.
5. Despite all of the above it is still a great option to deliver some sensitive payloads. Like a scan-sat probe that have no spare side for decoupler and too many little sensors and antennas for partcount.

[allista]

4 hours ago, M443556 said:

It creates multiple real debris when deploying, unlike stock fairings. Just to bother player to kill them all from tracking station every time? Or it has some hidden purpose

The original propose was to allow their recycling into resources. I can add a self-destruction feature to them.

4 hours ago, M443556 said:

The force that pushes that debris is enough to make them leave Kerbin's SOI if you deploy at Minmus orbit.

Depends on their size. It has to be enough to push them away from the payload. But again, it is configurable; and I can change the way this force grows with the size, if you provide me with the data to build a curve.

4 hours ago, M443556 said:

Some force is still applied to both mothership and payload so their orbits change a bit on deploy.

That's Newton's laws for you.

4 hours ago, M443556 said:

The control-part that remain at motherhip can't hibernate and shows a detach option that does nothing. Also the option to remove fairing from staging does nothing in both editor and in flight.

That I'll look into, thanks.

4 hours ago, M443556 said:

Despite all of the above it is still a great option to deliver some sensitive payloads. Like a scan-sat probe that have no spare side for decoupler and too many little sensors and antennas for partcount.

Thanks. But for a satellite, why not the bullet-shaped aerodynamic variant? The box one was meant more for dropping payload from orbit.

[allista]

10 hours ago, M443556 said:

The control-part that remain at motherhip can't hibernate

Ok, that's fixed.

Quote

and shows a detach option that does nothing.

It does; it is a decoupler that is configured on the top node (the round one that is meant to be used to attach to a carrier). So when the fairings are ejected, this node disappears. The ModuleDecouple should probably be disabled as well...

Quote

Also the option to remove fairing from staging does nothing in both editor and in flight.

Hm, id does for me alright. Removes/adds the staging icon both in editor and in flight.

[M443556]

6 hours ago, allista said:

But for a satellite, why not the bullet-shaped aerodynamic variant?

It launches payload with additional speed, that's great for separating from motership but can be too much if you're tying to put engine-less probe exactly 500km above Minmus. Haven't tried it though... Maybe it's not so bad.

2 minutes ago, allista said:

Hm, id does for me alright. Removes/adds the staging icon both in editor and in flight.

Must be some other mod that "patches all command parts" breaks it...

[bcqJC]

@allista, I've been using the mod for a while now.  But this is my first time trying out the Ground VTOL Hangar.  I'm hoping to be able to use it in a Mun base I'm building.

I tried using it and found out the following things.

1. The dark square (landing pad) in the middle determines the size of the craft that the hangar will accomodate.  I was hoping to land my VTOL SSTOs on it.  As you can see below, I needed to size it up to 24 before I could fit my SSTO in it.
   • Is there a way to configure the ratio of the area of that landing pad with respect to the area of the top of the hangar?  Right now, it seems to be using 1/9 of the top area.
2. By increasing the size of the hangar, the height also changed significantly.
   • Is there a way to limit the change in height?  Maybe have the hangar burrow into the ground so that it doesn't stick up as much?
3. Related to #2, can you make the VTOL hangar similar to the Asteroid hangar in that mining will increase the useable volume of the hangar?

Thanks!

[allista]

15 minutes ago, bcqJC said:

@allista, I've been using the mod for a while now.  But this is my first time trying out the Ground VTOL Hangar.  I'm hoping to be able to use it in a Mun base I'm building.

I tried using it and found out the following things.

1. The dark square (landing pad) in the middle determines the size of the craft that the hangar will accomodate.  I was hoping to land my VTOL SSTOs on it.  As you can see below, I needed to size it up to 24 before I could fit my SSTO in it.
   • Is there a way to configure the ratio of the area of that landing pad with respect to the area of the top of the hangar?  Right now, it seems to be using 1/9 of the top area.
2. By increasing the size of the hangar, the height also changed significantly.
   • Is there a way to limit the change in height?  Maybe have the hangar burrow into the ground so that it doesn't stick up as much?
3. Related to #2, can you make the VTOL hangar similar to the Asteroid hangar in that mining will increase the useable volume of the hangar?

Thanks!

1. There's no way aside from making another model. The reason for this ratio is the supposed mechanism by which the ship is stored inside -- the platform was envisioned as an elevator; and so the space beneath it shouldn't be used as storage. Making it larger would "result" in less effective storage space.

2. This is a matter of configuration. You can set the "sizeOnly = false" in AnisotropicPartResizer node in the SmallVTOLHangar.cfg and get separate sliders for size and aspect. Since there's no animation, it should be fine, if not pretty.

3. Now that is a completely different matter. An asteroid can be mined; but the land of a planetary body? More than once I have thought of how to approach this. So let's say it's on a TODO list...

[bcqJC]

It actually looks prettier now that I'm able to play with the aspect.  Size=30, Aspect=0.2 is looking nice.  It's not a "thin-crust-pizza" but it's not too high to be prohibitive.

Will have to look for a nice flat crater now and start my Mun base :D

[allista]

6 hours ago, bcqJC said:

It actually looks prettier now that I'm able to play with the aspect.  Size=30, Aspect=0.2 is looking nice.  It's not a "thin-crust-pizza" but it's not too high to be prohibitive.

Will have to look for a nice flat crater now and start my Mun base

I'll correct the config for the next release.

[jaunco325]

first time I use it, I have some questions:
1: I recovered a hangar with parts inside, but the parts did not appear on the recovery report. parts recovered? what about science and kerbals inside the hangar?
2: how do I re-drop a ship that I put inside a hangar?
3: can you put many loose pieces inside a hangar? is there a limit to this?

[allista]

5 hours ago, jaunco325 said:

first time I use it, I have some questions:
1: I recovered a hangar with parts inside, but the parts did not appear on the recovery report. parts recovered? what about science and kerbals inside the hangar?
2: how do I re-drop a ship that I put inside a hangar?
3: can you put many loose pieces inside a hangar? is there a limit to this?

1. Parts are recovered in the form of their combined cost and mass, so you won't loose funds. Stored science is recovered as is. Kerbals are not stored at all, but are transferred to the crewable parts of the carrier ship, so not only they are recovered, but they can also go EVA and do anything a Kerbal does on a ship.

2. Open the main UI (toolbar button with white gates icon), select the vessel to launch from the list of stored, activate the Hangar, open it's gates, press Launch button.

3. There are several types of hangars. Some of them support only a single vessel, but most support as many as can physically fit inside. That is decided by making a lot of complex computations: linear dimensions, convex hull of the vessel and it's volume, the geometry of the Hangar and that of the already stored vessels; all are considered. So you won't know how many of the ships you can store in a particular Hangar unless you try it in Editor or in flight.

[jaunco325]

thanks

[M443556]

Why can't single fairing-hangar hold and launch simultaneously more than one vessel? Launching multiple satellites using resonant orbits is a common task, but using stack adapters and stock fairings can be very laggy... Like 3x 90parts satellites and a 3 stage launcher gives me ~500 parts (not to mention it becomes already laggy  when you put 3x 90parts satellites on a tri-coupler in editor). Fairing-hangars could be a great solution to it, but taking a separate fairing for each satellite gives too much overhead in both weight & size!

Edited June 19, 2020 by M443556

[0111narwhalz]

7 hours ago, M443556 said:

Why can't single fairing-hangar hold and launch simultaneously more than one vessel? Launching multiple satellites using resonant orbits is a common task, but using stack adapters and stock fairings can be very laggy... Like 3x 90parts satellites and a 3 stage launcher gives me ~500 parts (not to mention it becomes already laggy  when you put 3x 90parts satellites on a tri-coupler in editor). Fairing-hangars could be a great solution to it, but taking a separate fairing for each satellite gives too much overhead in both weight & size!

Consider a satellite bus. Place your satellites on a bus, then put the bus in the hangar.

Also how exactly do you get more than 200 parts in a three-stage lifter? Are you doing structural part interstages or something?

[allista]

8 hours ago, M443556 said:

Why can't single fairing-hangar hold and launch simultaneously more than one vessel? Launching multiple satellites using resonant orbits is a common task

For that I encourage you to use regular inline hangars with full functionality. They're perfect for that - I have deployed several satellite groups that way.

The bus method suggested by @0111narwhalz is also a great solution!

As to why - when the fairings are jettisoned, they simply "reveal" what "was" inside. And that have to be a single object fixed to the carrier, or you wouldn't have reached orbit at all.

There's also a technical limitation: launched vessels are spawned at particular point in the hangar's reference frame. Spawning multiple vessels would mean to have multiple spawn points and to somehow place them inside hangar space do that the spawned ships would not collide/intersect when they're materialized. Note also that spawning is a very complex process spanning many subsequent frames.

[M443556]

9 hours ago, 0111narwhalz said:

Also how exactly do you get more than 200 parts in a three-stage lifter? Are you doing structural part interstages or something?

8 solid boosters, each with 2 control surfaces, 4 separation boosters, a nosecone, some structural plate to offset, a radial decoupler and a launch support gives 88 parts for last stage only... Add at least 16 struts to hold that stack together. And to get 300+ tonnes to serious orbit I still have to use TweakScale'd boosters there.

Edited June 20, 2020 by M443556

[M443556]

Now I tried non-box fairing hangar and it disassembles my colony pod (17x10x10 meters, 100+parts, almost 300 tonnes, 33 kerbal space...) on deploy, without explosions but to almost elemental pieces. Stock fairings launch it ok, but slow. Will try box-fairing next... Also, how do I put kerbals inside payload before deploying?

Edited June 23, 2020 by M443556

[M443556]

5 hours ago, M443556 said:

Will try box-fairing next...

This time with explosions. Bottom part of payload (inflatable 10m heatshield) collides with mothership, while hangar interface shows all green...

[allista]

7 hours ago, M443556 said:

Now I tried non-box fairing hangar and it disassembles my colony pod (17x10x10 meters, 100+parts, almost 300 tonnes, 33 kerbal space...) on deploy, without explosions but to almost elemental pieces. Stock fairings launch it ok, but slow. Will try box-fairing next... Also, how do I put kerbals inside payload before deploying?

 

2 hours ago, M443556 said:

This time with explosions. Bottom part of payload (inflatable 10m heatshield) collides with mothership, while hangar interface shows all green...

Ouch 

Never tried it with such a heavy payload. This looks like a problem with the VesselSpawner and KSP's physics. Not even sure it could be worked around...

But first I need to reproduce it.

[allista]

51 minutes ago, allista said:

Ouch 

Never tried it with such a heavy payload. This looks like a problem with the VesselSpawner and KSP's physics. Not even sure it could be worked around...

But first I need to reproduce it.

@M443556 yes, I see the problem. At least in my case the debris mess everything up.

 

[M443556]

7 hours ago, allista said:

This looks like a problem with the VesselSpawner and KSP's physics.

Since I had a very similar problem with spawning heavy objects using Extraplanetary Launchpads, it's quite possible. Wonder if Kerbal Joint Reinforcement mod can fix it by reinforcing vessels...

upd: I've tried increasing box-fairing's size a bit and it doesn't work.

Edited June 23, 2020 by M443556

[allista]

1 hour ago, M443556 said:

Since I had a very similar problem with spawning heavy objects using Extraplanetary Launchpads, it's quite possible. Wonder if Kerbal Joint Reinforcement mod can fix it by reinforcing vessels...

upd: I've tried increasing box-fairing's size a bit and it doesn't work.

I've tried myself: the only thing that does work is to change the box model (!!! so that the top debris were one with the left/right walls; and thus didn't landed down onto the payload) and increase jettison force (so that the debris quickly flew away).

But in any case Unity's physics doesn't allow a regular mesh collider (the floor of the box) to act as ground. The payload (450t in my case) simply passes through it to the actual Mun ground; and the box floor explodes afterwards.

[M443556]

15 minutes ago, allista said:

I've tried myself: the only thing that does work is to change the box model (!!! so that the top debris were one with the left/right walls; and thus didn't landed down onto the payload) and increase jettison force (so that the debris quickly flew away).

But in any case Unity's physics doesn't allow a regular mesh collider (the floor of the box) to act as ground. The payload (450t in my case) simply passes through it to the actual Mun ground; and the box floor explodes afterwards.

But in my case payload explodes in orbit, where gravity shouldn't be the problem (at east it shouldn't push debris towards payload). 

[bcqJC]

Another option, which I use a lot, is using the RadialHangar.  In gravity environments, it doesn't have the issue of payloads passing through.  However, it sounds like you're set on using a disposable hangar, hence the fairings.

Does your payload appear to shake when it is spawned after fairing is deployed?  If so, read on...

Spoiler

Maybe the problem during the spawn is due to the autostruts of the parts of the payload.  I had similar problems when I was in my Asteroid Harvesting and Asteroid Base stage.  I had to initially ferry heavy payloads, my AsteroidCatcher ship, and later, harvesting and base components.

Short story...  If the payload is massive, try setting the autostrut of the parts furthest from the CoM to autostrut=Heaviest.  For my builds, I stick by the following principles - the long story:

1. Root must not autostrut.
2. Everything else must be autostrut=Grandparent.  I use FullAutoStrut to enforce #1 and #2.  However, FAS always set anything attached to root as autostrut=Disabled.  I have to remember to set those to autostrut=Grandparent.
3. My guess is #1 and #2 works for me by minimizing the wobble of parts during spawning (and also docking).
4. For extra support, I have Recoupler and QuantumStruts.  I use Recoupler when I can, to "recouple" the stack nodes of parts that are at 3 levels away - 1 further than Grandparent.  That way, I reduce part usage by minimizing strut parts.  But if that is not possible, then I use QuantumStruts, again, to a part 1 further than the Grandparent - stock struts are limited by distance.
5. Because of #1, #2, #3, #4, I've never had the need to use rigid autostruts.  The joints need a bit of a give to dampen the forces exerted on the joint.  Using autostruts with Recoupler and QuantumStruts means that the forces are spread out amongst the joint itself, the Grandparent (via autostrut), the GreatGrandparents (via Recoupler and/or QuantumStruts).
6. If all else fails, especially when you see the parts farthest from the CoM being whipped around, then use autostrut=Heaviest.
7. Reason I stay away from autostrut=Root and Heaviest is because when docking, KSP re-roots the combined ship, and recalculates the CoM.  This will cause stuff to shift and will cause a wave of movement to spread out from CoM outwards.  This is just the result of the engine having to calculate stuff in sequence.  When a part gets overstressed, it will explode.  That explosion will propagate and you'll have a cascade.  Which is why distributing the stresses is key.  So how to counteract the stresses on the docking port (I realize this is digressing already)...  QuantumStruts to the rescue.  Use the toggle function of QS.  Set up QS nodes in at least 1 of the ships so that the QS, when toggled, will attach to a portion of the other ship.  That will spread the stresses across both docked ships.

Back to your case, similar events happen when spawning a payload.  The root is already known, but the CoM still has to be determined, as if the ship appeared 1 part at a time starting from the root.  That's why in addition to the above, I try to mitigate the effects of this CoM recalculation by having similar amount of parts branching out from a ship's root.  If I can do that and make the root as close to the CoM too, then the ship is really in a good place.  This means either re-rooting a ship while in Editor; or starting a build with a drone core and making sure the part subtrees are as even as I can make them.

BTW, on the subject of ship roots... Don't classify any of your ships as Base or Station, even if you intend them to be a Base or Station.  That way, before docking ships, you can designate the minor ship as a probe, and the major ship, the one which you want to be the root, as a Base or Station.  There's a whole hornet's nest on re-rooting, but that was my takeaway after reading stuff and watching YouTube videos.

 

[bcqJC]

After I saw the GC requirements for my Munbase in the Editor (2.6M Sp + 2.6M MK), I decided to take some shortcuts since I already have a working harvesting and manufacturing facility in the RockArch crater where I will situate the base - I used VesselMover to spawn my base on the Mun

Some pics...

Spoiler

Night landing approach

Landed... I forgot to activate the VTOL hangar, which was good because it gave me a chance to take a screenshot

Daytime approach

Hover and landing

Takeoff prep.  Base is oriented along the polar axis.  Control tower is North.  So this deployment position lines me up east.

 

[allista]

15 hours ago, bcqJC said:

(2.6M Sp + 2.6M MK)

Always wondered how the real mass-balance would work with career game; or even with the sandbox, considering stock harvesting and conversion rates.

15 hours ago, bcqJC said:

Some pics...

I always considered the VTOL hangar to be one of the ugliest models. But in this setting it looks kinda cool 

I still wonder if I should make all the ground-based hangars also mouse-grey...