[1.0.1/1.1.3][Semi-Retired, Semi-Revived] Zero-Point Inline Fairings v1.0.2 (2016-04-28)

[NecroBones]

Howdy Necrobones:

First off, this is a brilliant idea, using the existing fairings, and they look great, too.

However, I'm having 2 distinct problems with them in the game, which has made me quit using them for the time being.

First off, I'm just using fairings for cosmetics. I don't have FAR or DRE installed at the moment. I've got a bunch of other mods, however, but I've been able to isolate these problems to Zero Point.

1. REALLY Long Ships

What happens is, when you drop the booster that takes the fairing base with it, KSP still thinks the 2 elements (booster and payload) are connected. Thus, as the booster falls behind, the ship's effective length can quickly become many kilometers. Because the camera always locks on the CoM, as the booster falls behind the payload, the payload quickly disappears off the edge of the screen, and there's no way to see it again until the booster dies. If the booster isn't going to reenter, you have to go to the TC and terminate it before you can get the camera back on the payload.

A few updates ago, DRE had this same problem. You migth want to ask NathanKell what he did to fix it.

2. Fairings Destroying Payload

This one here seems related to the ongoing decoupler issues introduced in 0.24 I think. What happens is when I decouple the fairing, the top ends of the side pieces tip inboard and wipe off all small, fragile, protruding parts on the sides of the payload. Solar panels, SCANsat antenna, etc. This happens whether or not the rocket is under thrust at the time. And because the fairing parts are stock engine fairings, they don't all you to radially attack Sepratrons or whatever to them to make them fly away cleanly. This is IMHO the more serious problem of the 2 because.

Yeah, I totally understand.

For #1: Wow, I never saw that in any of the testing. There has to either be a new KSP bug that's getting triggered, or it's an interaction with another mod. As long as the payload actually decoupled from the booster, this shouldn't happen, and as far as I know it doesn't when using a "clean" KSP install (that is, without plugins). But I haven't done any testing with it in 0.90 yet, though. This highly sounds like a bad mod interaction to me, especially since there's nothing special about these parts or how they interact with decouplers.

For #2, yeah there's not much I can do about how the stock panel decoupling works. It seems to ignore the settings you give it for ejection force and direction, and just go wherever it wants. The only thing I can really suggest here is maybe spinning the rocket first to get a centrifugal effect to fling the panels outward.

Edited December 21, 2014 by NecroBones

[Geschosskopf]

For #1: Wow, I never saw that in any of the testing. There has to either be a new KSP bug that's getting triggered, or it's an interaction with another mod. As long as the payload actually decoupled from the booster, this shouldn't happen, and as far as I know it doesn't when using a "clean" KSP install (that is, without plugins). But I haven't done any testing with it in 0.90 yet, though. This highly sounds like a bad mod interaction to me, especially since there's nothing special about these parts or how they interact with decouplers.

Well, I do know that TweakScale at present is HORRIBLY bugged (seriously, do not use it until it gets another update or 2). That caused me a lot of problems but getting rid of TS solved them all. Things like landed ships that you left there appear spewing effecdts out every exhaust (but aligned 90^ from the exhaust axis) and then falling completely apart. But by the time I figured out it was TS doing that, I'd areadly removed 0PF for the #2 problem.

But as to decoupler stuff, when DRE had this same "stretchy rocket" problem, it was with its decouplers (both heat shield and regular). I'm pretty sure this is a decoupler issue.

For #2, yeah there's not much I can do about how the stock panel decoupling works. It seems to ignore the settings you give it for ejection force and direction, and just go wherever it wants. The only thing I can really suggest here is maybe spinning the rocket first to get a centrifugal effect to fling the panels outward.

Hmm, spinning the ship... Good idea. I'll try that next time I install this. But I really hope Squad fixes the various decoupler problems. They're WAY aggravating.

[NecroBones]

Yeah, decouplers have so many problems these days, I wouldn't be surprised if the stretchy ship thing is a new 0.90 bug. I just haven't played enough 0.90 to know what it breaks. I've had my node down in Blender mostly these few weeks.

But decouplers in general are sometimes buggy in other ways, too. Such as the radial decoupler bug that makes ejected boosters crash inward. Ugh.

[NecroBones]

0.9.1 is out for the full version (Lite version stays at 0.9):

0.9.1 (2014-12-22) - Minor tweaks
 - Added DRE support, by including a wildcard heat-shield config for the nose-cones (full version only)

[SmashBrown]

Thanks for this, goin to give it a try.

[Hund]

How will this mod install to a career save that's unlocked up to the last tier of the tech tree? Dose it break anything? I haven't used mods except Kerbal Alarmclock and RCS build aid. Trying to do an Apollo style with LEM lander and trying to use stock for faring's but not being too successful at it. Thanks

[NecroBones]

How will this mod install to a career save that's unlocked up to the last tier of the tech tree? Dose it break anything? I haven't used mods except Kerbal Alarmclock and RCS build aid. Trying to do an Apollo style with LEM lander and trying to use stock for faring's but not being too successful at it. Thanks

It'll install seamlessly. What will happen is that the parts will all just show up in the tech tree in their appropriate places. If your career is set up to require you to pay for unlocking each part, then you'll need to go in and spend the funds to do so. Otherwise, they'll show up for use right away.

[Hund]

OK thanks I think I'll give it a try then.

[NecroBones]

BTW, with regards to 1.0, HarvestR posted a blog update about cargo bays and aerodynamic shielding.

I have no idea what this means for auto-shroud fairings like this, since the stock "ModuleJettison" shrouds were originally meant only for engines, and not payloads.

Depending on how things go, I may need to completely rework this mod, or retire it altogether. It's also possible that the changes needed will be minor. I just don't know yet. In any case, the updates for this mod probably won't come out right away since I'll need to figure out the needed changes are once 1.0 is actually available for us to play with.

But because of this, I'll hold off on making other changes to this mod until we have 1.0.

One possible planned change was to go ahead and fully consolidate the remaining fairing bases, so we no longer have two at each size/diameter, but only one. Each one would have all four of the possible lengths. To do that, I'd need to remove the decoupler node from the fairing itself, and shift that to the nose cones (and otherwise require people to use upside-down decouplers or separators if the fairing is used inline, which is kinda needed now anyway). That's a significant enough change that it's game-breaking, so that's a good one to save for a major overhaul anyway.

So we'll see how it goes.

[NecroBones]

I didn't notice it before, but here's a video review of this mod, made back in September. This is before the base-consolidation effort I did a while back, but it's still a great overview/tutorial for using these fairings, so I'm adding it to the OP.

[Hund]

Hes reviewed several of your mods. Thats how I learned about them. I have kind of a dumb question. What if my payload is too short to fill up the space inside the fairing? Am I supposed to fill in the gap with cube struts or something or is the bottom connection strong enough to hold the payload. Thanks.

[NecroBones]

Hes reviewed several of your mods. Thats how I learned about them. I have kind of a dumb question. What if my payload is too short to fill up the space inside the fairing? Am I supposed to fill in the gap with cube struts or something or is the bottom connection strong enough to hold the payload. Thanks.

You can try to strut it, sure. It might be a little tricky though, since the fairings will be in place when everything else is attached. Theoretically the payload can bend through, but depending on what you build, that might not be a problem.

The attachment nodes are based on the inside match what's on the ends, so the joint strength should be similar to having put a fuel tank inline instead of the fairing base, so it should work pretty much as you expect.

[NecroBones]

After the latest dev note, I suspect this mod will need to be retired. It was nice to have a more stock-like alternative to some of the other fairing systems out there, but now that "stock-like" will mean "procedural", I'm not sure if this mod will be of use anymore. Plus, at least right now, it's not certain if these will shield anything inside them, with the new aerodynamic system. I would probably need to do something hacky with trigger-colliders to "enclose" the panels.

Anyway, nothing is set in stone, but it looks like fairings will no longer be a "gap" in the stock game.

The dev note is here: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/111668-Devnote-Tuesday-Fairing-well

[Cydonian Monk]

Both happy and sad about it, but stock fairings have been "needed" for a loooong time. (At least having the stock solution will let me retire ProcFairings and its troublesome KAE requirement.) I'd still drop in one of these Zed-Points from time to time, and I think I've still got a couple things in orbit with one of these fairing bases on them. Probably one of the "best" reasons to retire a mod is to have it obsoleted by stock though.

I do wonder what will become of the "auto fairings" for engines and the like with the new stock system. I can't imagine they'd go away, and if they're still around then surely there's some mechanism mods such as yours could exploit.

Guess we'll see what happens. Not much point in speculating until it's really in our hands.

[NecroBones]

Guess we'll see what happens. Not much point in speculating until it's really in our hands.

Yeah, it's not over "until the fat lady sings", so we'll see. We just don't know how the engine-style auto fairings will work in the new aero. But you're absolutely right, having it become redundant with stock is one of the best reasons for a mod to be retired!

[NecroBones]

Yeah, it's not over "until the fat lady sings", so we'll see. We just don't know how the engine-style auto fairings will work in the new aero. But you're absolutely right, having it become redundant with stock is one of the best reasons for a mod to be retired!

For now I'm going to consider this mod "retired". The stock fairing system is very flexible, and it's not clear whether these will work at all with the new aerodynamics.

[vangel]

First, this mod looks very good, if it would work for me...

stock 1.0 fairings are fine, but they are not inline.

Problem is:

I can't attach any parts to the bottom of the inline fairings. Everything slip through and do not glue to the bottom anchor point.

I just feel the urge to build an Apollo kind mission and can't construct the landing-crafts fairing without your wonderful mod.

[NecroBones]

First, this mod looks very good, if it would work for me...

stock 1.0 fairings are fine, but they are not inline.

Problem is:

I can't attach any parts to the bottom of the inline fairings. Everything slip through and do not glue to the bottom anchor point.

I just feel the urge to build an Apollo kind mission and can't construct the landing-crafts fairing without your wonderful mod.

I may revive it at some point. Right now I'm just not sure if they're compatible with the new aerodynamics. I'll have to experiment with them a bit. But yeah, the lack of inline options in stock does open up a potential niche here.

[Kerbas_ad_astra]

I'm pretty sure that I saw a demonstration in some stream that stock fairings can be made inline -- I don't think they can be "structural" (i.e. there has to be a continuous stack up the middle), but they can be made to close around any part in the stack above them.

[damerell]

It's easy enough to fix the bottom attachment nodes, but it definitely doesn't seem to work with new aero. Necro, if you've retired it, any objection if I try and fix the issues and do a maintenance release?

[NecroBones]

It's easy enough to fix the bottom attachment nodes, but it definitely doesn't seem to work with new aero. Necro, if you've retired it, any objection if I try and fix the issues and do a maintenance release?

Sure thing, feel free to play with it. Right now my suspicion is that it's not an easy fix. The fairings would at least need the ModuleCargoBay module added, but I don't think that will be enough, since the current fairing panels and open ends don't have colliders for it to detect a threshold for whether an object is contained or not. So while they should still work with FAR/NEAR, I'm not sure if there's an easy fix for the new stock aero.

[damerell]

So while they should still work with FAR/NEAR, I'm not sure if there's an easy fix for the new stock aero.

I care more about FAR, to be honest, but I could definitely blow up a befairinged capsule in a nuFAR/DRE world, as if the fairing wasn't there.

[NecroBones]

I care more about FAR, to be honest, but I could definitely blow up a befairinged capsule in a nuFAR/DRE world, as if the fairing wasn't there.

Yeah, I can't speak to how well (or not) it actually worked in practice, with any given version of NEAR/FAR. At one point they weren't shielding contents at all, and Ferram said he was fixing that bug already, at the time.

This pack wasn't that hard to throw together, but it got tedious to continue to work on, since each fairing-base model ended up having something like 16 panels in it (4 for each length it supported), with each base only being re-used a few times (scaling, and different combinations of activated panels). To have something similar for the future, it would almost be better to start over, and design the fairings to come apart in halves, rather than quarters.

Unfortunately, the VAB/SPH menu bug that was keeping us from having more than two lengths per base was still there as of 0.90. I'll have to test that in 1.0.2.

[cantab]

I feel there's definitely a place for Zero-Point fairings in 1.0. They offer a combination of simplicity of use and constrained dimensions that no other fairing mod I've found has. Procedural Fairings offer comparable simplicity but will go round anything, KW offers nice fixed sized fairings but they're fiddly to use, and stock makes you do a lot of manual work and has few limitations.

And I too wouldn't be too bothered by a FAR-only release.

[NecroBones]

I feel there's definitely a place for Zero-Point fairings in 1.0. They offer a combination of simplicity of use and constrained dimensions that no other fairing mod I've found has. Procedural Fairings offer comparable simplicity but will go round anything, KW offers nice fixed sized fairings but they're fiddly to use, and stock makes you do a lot of manual work and has few limitations.

And I too wouldn't be too bothered by a FAR-only release.

Cool, cool. Yeah, that might be the thing to do, just get a FAR-required release going.