RCS thrust

[dharak1]

So, I've been playing for a couple of years and haven't figured this out yet. Does RCS get throttled automatically? What I mean is if i have two thrusters at the front of a craft and two at the backbut the CoM is closer to the front will the rear thrusters be throttled so that the center of thrust is on the CoM or will I just spin out of control? I'm asking because I'm building a spaceplane and it would be hard to get four thrusters around the CoM

Edited September 2, 2014 by dharak1

[Kasuha]

In normal mode they won't and your ship will start rotating unless you have enough reaction wheels to compensate for it. Of course as soon as you release the button, SAS function will take over RCS thrusters and use them to compensate for the rotation too so it is possible to translate even with very unbalanced RCS and no torque if you let SAS work in between translation burns.

In precision mode (using Caps Lock key), they're supposed to do that, i.e. no (or very little) torque should be needed. That may mean, though, that in case of extremely unbalanced RCS you will get no thrust out of them.

Edited September 2, 2014 by Kasuha

[dharak1]

Ok, thanks. I guess I'll play around with it a bit and see if I can get something to work.

[Wanderfound]

Get yourself the RCS Build Aid mod. It's immensely helpful when designing aircraft.

As well as making it simple to balance RCS (especially if you use linear thrusters instead of the four-way blocks), it also allows you to view fuelled vs unfuelled CoM at the same time and measure any torque induced by off-centre engine thrust.