[PLUGIN, PART, 0.17] Bigtrak KSP Edition v.30 Liltrak

[Guest butt head]

umm i dont know if this is just my or not but none of the pick are showing? ???

[G Addict]

What engine are ya\'ll using on the cuttlefish when you build your own? I\'ve found the large Bertha from the NP pack is a bit...too powerful.

Any of the vanilla liquid rocket engines - the standard medium engine if the lander just has the Bigtrak or Kiwicycle, and the lower stages are powerful enough to lift it, the gimballed medium engine if I have something less cooperative (Bigtrak with other bits attatched, offsetting centre of mass) and the small engine if I intend to do a lot of low altitude flying for the longer life. The lander seems purpose designed for using them.

After remembering how awesome Thunderbirds was when I was four, and how much of a striking resemblance the Bigtrak with bulldozer addon has to the \'firefly\' machine from that show, I\'ve gone about making a thunderbird 2-ish carrier plane for it. Sadly not reusable as yet, and larger variants with the original\'s VTOL capabilities have proven entirely uncontrollable and way too heavy, but I can now deliver the Bigtrak to other continents in a matter of minutes, at about mach 1.6! (The attatched picture is of an older version - the new one uses only jet fuel because I think using rocket fuel in jets is silly.)

The carrier takes off on gear mounted to wing connectors for the required ground clearance, which I usually eject for easier flying, but I imagine it could be kept and though it\'d look silly while flying I could land with it for something a bit closer to the way TB2 actually works. I tried using Damned Robotics pistons to lift it off the ground, but they broke off.

[AeroPelican]

> For some reason the download isn’t working, when I click the link it says “service unavailable†with a white backround, and that is it. Mod looks awesome though! :\'(

[maltesh]

Any of the vanilla liquid rocket engines - the standard medium engine if the lander just has the Bigtrak or Kiwicycle, and the lower stages are powerful enough to lift it, the gimballed medium engine if I have something less cooperative (Bigtrak with other bits attatched, offsetting centre of mass) and the small engine if I intend to do a lot of low altitude flying for the longer life. The lander seems purpose designed for using them.

In fact, if you use the Cuttlefish Lander as your first stage, you can fly a BigTrak from KSC to a safe landing on the Mun or Minmus. Flying a BigTrak is tricky, and landing doubly so, but the current version of MechJeb can handle the off-center thrust.

Just remember to open the petals before jettisoning the stage, or the results will be...unpleasant.

[Blinkin]

Ooh nice Thunderbird you have there G Addict! Now all we need are lander legs like T2 and combine this with the Music Player plugin... hours of fun! ;D

[chickenplucker]

Wow, that is brilliant G Addict. That thing is great looking

Server had pooped itself, gave it a swift kick and she\'s off again so pics and download links are working again. Always seems to break when your not looking at it, like some type of attention tantrum or something. Oh well.

[Volt]

Dropping a Bigtrak from a plane is a lot of fun and makes you feel like a baller pilot. =P I stuck one slung under my plane, then came in really low so the wheels were just a little bit above the ground and dropped it at 90m/s. It actually worked. My only concern was that it would be deleted when taken on-rails because it was moving, but no, it just stopped.

[colmo]

Dropping a Bigtrak from a plane is a lot of fun and makes you feel like a baller pilot. =P

Try doing it from a hovering chopper....!

I have a huge jet in with split fuselage (BigTrak goes in between, so no ludicrous tall landing gear needed) in the works - atm I can do a Bigtrak parachute drop from it (you need to stay within 2.5km while the rover is still in the air!) and will eventually allow landing and driving away also.

[Volt]

I can\'t for the life of me get a chopper to hover, whether one designed by me or others. I hate how they currently behave in roll and also how the air over the wings leads to forward acceleration.

[colmo]

I can\'t for the life of me get a chopper to hover, whether one designed by me or others. I hate how they currently behave in roll and also how the air over the wings leads to forward acceleration.

Absolutely dead-stop hover is almost impossible - ASAS makes it nearly possible. A static landing, however, is. Come in with a tiny amount of forward velocity, kill your altitude, then heel backwards to kill horizontal velocity as you set down. The tail rotor in DA v2.0 will help a lot.

[NIN3]

Is it just me, or are the blade and forklift parts not fitting against the big track anymore?

[Dani-Sang]

Chickenplucker, I\'ve a question regarding the lights and how you created them. You just added them in Unity or the 3d Program and do some test and got good results?

Edit: Nvm! I figured it out!

[AeroPelican]

I cannot get the blade and forklift parts to work either! I took the cuttlefish to minmus, deployed the fork, which then pushed into the ground, and nearly put me into orbit! I have probably just mounted it wrong, but how do you? ???

[G Addict]

You have to rotate the accessories so the plate they\'re mounted on lies flat against the front of the Bigtrak, with the equipment in the \'up position\'. Then when you press the landing gear key they\'ll move into a usable position. Took me ages to work that out, too.

[chickenplucker]

Yeah, I need to fix that. I\'m not sure what screwed up the orientation on those things.

Dani-Sang, or anybody else for that matter, would it be helpful if I put a zip with the Bigtrak blender file on the front page? Or even the Kiwi Cycle. That way you could use it to see how Cart stuff is setup or tinker with it. The attachment files are a mess so I may not include those, that is if anyone is interested.

I\'ve been meaning to work on more goodies and finish the quad/trike versions of the Kiwi, but its summer and close to an awesome game changing KSP patch which has made my motivation wander to projects I have out in the barn

[Russian Flame]

this mod help some much with landings i cann\'t thank this mod enough 8)

[puzzler300]

its seems that something about this glitches out my game. i suddenly lose my veiw of my rocket. it looks awesome and i wish it worked.

[Menecroth]

Dani-Sang, or anybody else for that matter, would it be helpful if I put a zip with the Bigtrak blender file on the front page? Or even the Kiwi Cycle. That way you could use it to see how Cart stuff is setup or tinker with it. The attachment files are a mess so I may not include those, that is if anyone is interested.

Are you kidding? Yeah! That\'d be very helpful.

Also, I wanted to comment on this mod. It\'s very well done. The Big Trak works great on the Munar surface and I love the Cuttlefish.

(Kind of off topic here) I was also surprised to see this mod as it was only recently that I found my old Big Trak and threw some batteries in it to see if it still worked. It does, but I need to fix an axle \'cause one of the wheels fell off.

[maltesh]

Driving alongside a standard Cart with the Kiwi was ridiculously difficult, but the BigTrak was much easier to match.

In previous runs, the BigTrak kept going until a mountain flipped it, 46 km from KSC.

[Hyratel]

next thing that needs to happen is the Bigtrak itself as a command module. and/or the other Cart vehicles

[6677]

next thing that needs to happen is the Bigtrak itself as a command module. and/or the other Cart vehicles

Well, bigtak uses the cart plugin so thats more a carts feature, but I\'m a step ahead.

The cart plug-in is open source. There is a line somewhere that reads something like 'Class Cart : Part'

Changed to 'Class Cart : CommandPod' and sure enough the carts become command pods while still working as actual carts.

[Hyratel]

Well, bigtak uses the cart plugin so thats more a carts feature, but I\'m a step ahead.

The cart plug-in is open source. There is a line somewhere that reads something like 'Class Cart : Part'

Changed to 'Class Cart : CommandPod' and sure enough the carts become command pods while still working as actual carts.

Most EXCELLENT

Edit: would you mind providing a copy of your modded version, for those of us who have no idea how to build a plugin dll? [/narb]

[chickenplucker]

Wow, that\'s pretty cool 6677! I was starting to fret on how the next update was going to pretty much break the ability to hide the command pod in the Bigtrak and with Kerbals now running about and what the best fix for that would be. Kind of hard to escape your pod if its locked in a collision box . But that takes care of the problem all together, very awesome. Like Hyratel said, I would love to have a copy of that as well .

Just so everyone knows I have not bailed on the mod, just taking a break of sorts while I catch up on projects around the garage. Once I get my xr75 painted and my old Buick back together I\'ll jump right back in. Its hard to stay inside on a computer in the middle of summer I will try to get the blender files up so you can start playing with them soon though.

[Kreuzung]

There is a post by harv about the pod being in the BigTrak collider... He said that you\'ll probably get out, but there might be problems getting in again...

Anyway, you could use multiple simple colliders in Unity to have a collider-free tunnel in the BigTrak that leads to the hatch...

[6677]

Just give me 5 minutes and I\'ll find where I left the sources and recompile them for you