[1.12.x] Freight Transport Technologies [v0.6.0]

[Jim Starluck]

Dunno if you've noticed this/had this reported yet, Roverdude, but the RocketParts variant of the basic 2.m hexagonal Kontainer costs -- and more importantly, can be recovered for -- more than 4 million in cash, even when empty. Vastly more than any other variant of the same Kontainer, and certainly more than the RocketParts it takes to build it with EPL.

[RoverDude]

Yep, but if you want to make sure there's a specific github issue out that makes it a bit easier for me to fix.

[goldenpsp]

Dunno if you've noticed this/had this reported yet, Roverdude, but the RocketParts variant of the basic 2.m hexagonal Kontainer costs -- and more importantly, can be recovered for -- more than 4 million in cash, even when empty. Vastly more than any other variant of the same Kontainer, and certainly more than the RocketParts it takes to build it with EPL.

At least in this case it seems partially if not fully caused by EPL having a different cost for rocketparts vs CRP.

[MarcAFK]

At least in this case it seems partially if not fully caused by EPL having a different cost for rocketparts vs CRP.

It's the typo in the kontainer 1 file, it says 4,500,090 instead of 45,000.

I thought it was already logged on github, but regardless they're bring depreciated soon anyway in exchange for the .... new cubic kontainers, though I still think they should stay since kontainers 2 and 3 custom fit the cargo rack, and no matter what anyone else says, hexagons are awesome.

[RoverDude]

There will be some welded parts to account for some of the configs that FTT needs.

[Patrick Kerbivan]

I was just playing around in sandbox making a small quadrotor with the smallest model of ducted fan and tried out the hover mode with unfortunate consequences. The craft was basically just a probe core, a battery, a bunch of heavy RNGs from Near Future Electrical, and the fans. I don't know what was happening "behind the scenes" but as soon as I hit the action group to turn on hover mode all four fans shot up in temperature and exploded in under a second. Without using hover mode the same craft can fly at max throttle for several minutes before anything overheats to the point of exploding, and it's the probe core that two of the fans are attached to in that case.

[MarcAFK]

I suppose all the usi fans need lower heat production considering the changes to stock heat mechanics, they all produce more heat than a lv 45 so will heat up to 1000 degrees in 1-2 minutes.

It's not a problem with liquid fuel engines because you're attaching them to a tank of fuel with high thermal mass, and you typically only burn for a few minute at most. Where as a radially attached fan is far from any heat absorbing tanks, and is needed to run for 10 or more minutes at a time. Unusually in stock the mainsail was nerfed and now makes less than an lv 45.

Considering the air flowing through the fans they shouldn't overheat much at all. I'll do some experiments and see what good numbers for those parts would be, but I think the larger fans should probably use the radiators that are coming soon? The micro one though definitely shouldn't require any extra cooling. Also probe cores have a low 1200 degree temperature resistance, if you throttle the micros to 85% or less they won't go much above 1000. You could also put something between the probe core and the fan, that will drop the temperature 200 degrees unless you leave it running long enough.

Edited June 8, 2015 by MarcAFK

[Captain Sierra]

I was just playing around in sandbox making a small quadrotor with the smallest model of ducted fan and tried out the hover mode with unfortunate consequences. The craft was basically just a probe core, a battery, a bunch of heavy RNGs from Near Future Electrical, and the fans. I don't know what was happening "behind the scenes" but as soon as I hit the action group to turn on hover mode all four fans shot up in temperature and exploded in under a second. Without using hover mode the same craft can fly at max throttle for several minutes before anything overheats to the point of exploding, and it's the probe core that two of the fans are attached to in that case.

Glitch in Firespitter. Update that dependency to fix.

[RoverDude]

I need to look on the FS end - tbh I rarely use the FS hover mode and just fly manually.

Side note - looks like I will be doing some twitch streaming on the various USI mods pretty soon, I'll see about doing some VTOL demos as part of that.

[Captain Sierra]

I need to look on the FS end - tbh I rarely use the FS hover mode and just fly manually.

Side note - looks like I will be doing some twitch streaming on the various USI mods pretty soon, I'll see about doing some VTOL demos as part of that.

Cant watch right now, NASA's doing the LDSD test flight.

[goldenpsp]

I need to look on the FS end - tbh I rarely use the FS hover mode and just fly manually.

Side note - looks like I will be doing some twitch streaming on the various USI mods pretty soon, I'll see about doing some VTOL demos as part of that.

Oh snap! Very cool. I am literally assembling my new rig which will give me the horsepower to stream again. but your streaming would be way better than mine.

[smjjames]

I need to look on the FS end - tbh I rarely use the FS hover mode and just fly manually.

Side note - looks like I will be doing some twitch streaming on the various USI mods pretty soon, I'll see about doing some VTOL demos as part of that.

Soon being when?

[RoverDude]

Within two weeks. I'll be posting details in advance. It will likely be very boring.

[Patrick Kerbivan]

Glitch in Firespitter. Update that dependency to fix.

I'm on the latest version of FS (that I can find - 7.1.3 hopefully).

[MarcAFK]

I've downscaled those micro fans into nanofans, even with 2 thrust each it's amazing how agile you can make something that only weighs half a ton. Adorable screenshots incoming.

Mixed up the USI threads :s

While I'm here, I have that hover bug too, but I'm on 64 bit so I'll just go sit in the corner like the naughty boy that I am..

I don't need hover anyway, a well balanced craft and Throttle Controlled Avionics is all I need.

Edited June 10, 2015 by MarcAFK

[asgkatz]

Any updates on the hover bug? I posted in firespitter thread as well. Another thing I mentioned there was that the "normal throttle/hover throttle/cargo throttle" controls seem to only change the sounds and not the actual thrust being generated.

Side note, on those original release pics for FTT, looking at the Honeybadger with 4 VTOL fans, what are those landing legs? They didn't look stock and I can't seem to find them.

[RoverDude]

A bit busy but will circle back when I have time.

[asgkatz]

Awesome man. And what about that landing leg part from your early FTT pics?

[RoverDude]

Those are karbonite legs, grab em there

[FeliusKerNes]

Playing around with a atmospheric vtol heavy duty Honeybadger and I'm having some issues with all the parts overheating without anything in particular coming to attention. It runs on 6 atmospheric vtol engines plus 4 scaled up (2x 2.5m 2x 1.25m) nose electric propeller from Firespitter for TCA, classed as maneuver engines (it was either that or a ridiculous amount of RCS parts), capable of lifting 75000 units of Karbonite, powered by a honeybadger nuclear reactor.

The problem I've encountered is that flying around, every part (except I think the engines) start to overheat, glowing red and having that little bar about heating up. I can't say if it would stop there or not though, as that's also about the time my game tends to crash (I'm assuming the overheating parts are causing my computer to run out of RAM).

Also, in a related subject, a couple suggestions about atmospheric honeybadgers: There really need to be a electric+air stronger RCS or some engine capable of quickly responding to changes of thrust (assuming TCA is also being used) to make it feasible without having go rather "Frankensteinish" in the design of the craft.

Edit: And on another possible thing of note: It might be interesting to enable the honeybadger cargo tanks to be able to also carry Karborundom as well as Karbonite and other resources, specially given how that's the one that actually needs to be carried around the most.

Edit2: Yes, I've tried those fan propellers that theoretically have some RCS as well but for some reason the RCS part doesn't seem to work at all.

Edit3: Hmmm, it seems that the heating issues are actually a vanilla issue, so nevermind that part I guess.

Edited June 13, 2015 by FeliusKerNes

[MarcAFK]

I've said it before, the fans make about as much heat as a rocket, but since they aren't attached to a big heavy fuel tank you lose the heat sink effect. Make sure the part the fan is attached to has a high heat tolerance, and either attach that part to something heavy, or to something with a high resistance and add some heat sinks(winglets or whatever) also heat takes a while to spread through multiple parts, you might be able to get away with merely putting a few layers of structural panels between whatever is bit and whatever is exploding because of heat.

Btw I was just going to post that I've discovered how amazingly good the large fans are as launch RCS, at least before you leave thicker atmosphere. You need rcsfx to set them as full powered RCS though.

Edit: the whole craft is overheating? You're not flying at 500 m/s at ground level or anything?

Edited June 14, 2015 by MarcAFK

[FeliusKerNes]

I've said it before, the fans make about as much heat as a rocket, but since they aren't attached to a big heavy fuel tank you lose the heat sink effect. Make sure the part the fan is attached to has a high heat tolerance, and either attach that part to something heavy, or to something with a high resistance and add some heat sinks(winglets or whatever) also heat takes a while to spread through multiple parts, you might be able to get away with merely putting a few layers of structural panels between whatever is bit and whatever is exploding because of heat.

Btw I was just going to post that I've discovered how amazingly good the large fans are as launch RCS, at least before you leave thicker atmosphere. You need rcsfx to set them as full powered RCS though.

Gonna have test that, although I don't seem to find how enable rcsfx and google doesn't seem to be of a great help right now.

Edit: the whole craft is overheating? You're not flying at 500 m/s at ground level or anything?

At around 100m/s-150m/s somewhere between 500m to 3000m depending of the region, although after disabling the heat gauges with F10 it seems that the heat don't actuall go over a certain level, at least in the half hour or so that I flew around at most at any one time (because vtoling around is rather boring to be honest, even with mechjeb SmartASS for heading control, and those were just test flights ). Since disabling said gauges with F10 also removed the memory issues that would cause the game to crash, which was what was previously stopping me, it does seem to be working well enough, even if it does get a very mild red glow after a while.

Edit: It still might be the fans though actually, the craft does have a rather symmetrical layout with a lot of fans that nearly every other part is at most 1 connection away from a fan, if not connected directly to one. Karbonite is damn heavy.

Edited June 14, 2015 by FeliusKerNes

[MarcAFK]

Rcsfx is a mod that let's you change any engine to providing RCS control, it's a dependency for the USI exploration pack which has much smaller ducted fan engines, which I've been playing around with.

Edited June 14, 2015 by MarcAFK

[FeliusKerNes]

Rcsfx is a mod that let's you change any engine to providing RCS control, it's a dependency for the USI exploration pack which has much smaller ducted fan engines, which I've been playing around with.

Hmmm, weird, I do have the exploration pack installed but it doesn't seem to make the RCS in the ducted fans to work.

[smjjames]

Hmmm, weird, I do have the exploration pack installed but it doesn't seem to make the RCS in the ducted fans to work.

You may need the updated version of it: https://github.com/NathanKell/ModuleRCSFX/releases