[1.4] SpaceY Heavy-Lifter Parts Pack v1.17.1 (2018-04-02)

[NecroBones]

BTW, working on the vacuum engines. This is the 3.75m version, and the larger ones will be clusters based on this. No texture yet.

[mellojoe]

Necro,

The work here is great. I've recently started using your mods and the quality is just outstanding.

Can I make a request? Or maybe if it already exists point me toward it?

Do you have a 3m to double 2.5m interstage thrust plate? The 3m thrust plates seem to only be for reducing size from 3m down to 2.5m. I like the look of your interstage adapters better than just putting a stock bi-coupler or tri-coupler and then having individual engine shrouds. Yours being a full shroud for the engine cluster is much cleaner. You have multi-engine clusters for your 5m parts (which are awesome), and I would just like to use something similar for 3m parts. Currently, I've just copied and scaled them down for my use. Hope you don't mind.

THANKS!

[Sacnoth]

Necro,

Great work on this mod so far. MRS and SpaceY have quickly become a standard in my KSP. I'm really loving it (especially the decoupler seperatrons! Genius!) And its becoming a nice alternative for KWrocketry which seems to have been abandoned by the developers.

I just have a small complaint about the SRB's, specifically the larger ones. The sound they make is really loud and grating to me and I have to turn down my audio volume when I launch a craft with them. I hope I'm not the only one experiencing this.

Is there any chance of maybe updating them with new and preferably softer audio? Would be much appreciated!

[NecroBones]

Necro,

The work here is great. I've recently started using your mods and the quality is just outstanding.

Can I make a request? Or maybe if it already exists point me toward it?

Do you have a 3m to double 2.5m interstage thrust plate? The 3m thrust plates seem to only be for reducing size from 3m down to 2.5m. I like the look of your interstage adapters better than just putting a stock bi-coupler or tri-coupler and then having individual engine shrouds. Yours being a full shroud for the engine cluster is much cleaner. You have multi-engine clusters for your 5m parts (which are awesome), and I would just like to use something similar for 3m parts. Currently, I've just copied and scaled them down for my use. Hope you don't mind.

THANKS!

[PickledTripod]

I second the 3.75m to 2x 2.5m adapter request, it could be quite useful even without interstage fairings like the 5m to 4x 2.5m adapter. A 5m to 2x 3.75m would be sweet too, I'd love to be able to put two of Nertea's Mars engines under a 5m tank without clipping...

And while we're on the subject of structural adapters, why are there two different versions of the 2.5 to 1.25m interstage adapter? Can't you make a single one with two bottom nodes for the short and long fairings, like for some of your engines?

Finally I agree that your custom sounds are pretty bad. Compare them with those in KW, they sound realistic and powerful but also high quality, yours sound like I'm listening to a tape record of a ICBM launch from the 1950's. No offense.

[Sacnoth]

Huh. It's possible it's not playing right on your hardware. It's more scratchy than the stock sounds, but it shouldn't be so overwhelming like that. One thing you can do is delete the "SpaceY_CustomSounds.cfg" file to revert everything back to using stock sounds.

How do the larger liquid fueled engines sound to you? The R5 and R7 specifically (and both modes on the R5)? They use the same sound files. It may be that your audio system is having some clipping issues when there are several of them running at once.

I'll be reworking the audio at some point anyway, but since I haven't seen it do this, my best suggestion for now is to just remove the custom sound config and use the stock sounds.

Thanks for the tips! I tried the other engines you mentioned, and the volume is better, I guess multiple engines playing the same file make it worse. but the sound of even a single engine is still pretty intense, so I'll play without the custom sounds for now.

And while we're on the topic of interstages, are you planning to add 1.25m to 2.5m, 2.5m to 3.75 and 3.75 to 5m fuel tanks to fuel tanks plus at any point?

[NecroBones]

I second the 3.75m to 2x 2.5m adapter request, it could be quite useful even without interstage fairings like the 5m to 4x 2.5m adapter. A 5m to 2x 3.75m would be sweet too, I'd love to be able to put two of Nertea's Mars engines under a 5m tank without clipping...

Cool, I'll think about those. I still like the idea of an interstage fairing, even with the odd shape. They might be kinda fun with a clamshell fairing design.

And while we're on the subject of structural adapters, why are there two different versions of the 2.5 to 1.25m interstage adapter? Can't you make a single one with two bottom nodes for the short and long fairings, like for some of your engines?

Originally they were just one part, and I ended up having to split them up. The problem is that the VAB editor favors bottom nodes (they're more "sticky"), so the adapter became unusable with certain lengths of engines. I couldn't find a good length for the fairing that allowed easy use of all of the stock engines, and all of the SpaceY engines at the same time. The engines would stick preferentially to the bottom node instead of at the top, if they had the right length. With KSP 1.0+, node orientation is being enforced, but the "snap-to" still attempts to connect to nodes that are facing the wrong way. When/if that gets corrected, we can look at re-consolidating those two parts.

Finally I agree that your custom sounds are pretty bad. Compare them with those in KW, they sound realistic and powerful but also high quality, yours sound like I'm listening to a tape record of a ICBM launch from the 1950's. No offense.

No worries, I wasn't 100% happy with them. I'm tempted to disable them until I can get something better. I did some editing of recordings from a NASA collection. It's hard to get clear, non-clipped recordings of rocket launches up close, with no environmental distortion effects.

- - - Updated - - -

Thanks for the tips! I tried the other engines you mentioned, and the volume is better, I guess multiple engines playing the same file make it worse. but the sound of even a single engine is still pretty intense, so I'll play without the custom sounds for now.

OK great. That helps me figure out what's going on. The other engines play around with the volume and pitch levels a bit. But I'm guessing some of it has to do with the quality of the recordings I worked from, which were already heavily "clipped". For some one of the variants, I layered the sound with two copies played out of sequence, which probably helped. But on one of them I added some "hiss" which probably just made it sound like an '80s era tape recording.

As I said above, I may disable them altogether until I can find something better.

And while we're on the topic of interstages, are you planning to add 1.25m to 2.5m, 2.5m to 3.75 and 3.75 to 5m fuel tanks to fuel tanks plus at any point?

Probably, yes. Now that the "great consolidation project" is done, I won't feel so bad about adding a few more tank types. I was cautious about that before, since the part list was starting to get long. Adapter tanks would be great, now.

[SmashBrown]

Your a very patient man Necro. Thanks for all your work.

[NecroBones]

Your a very patient man Necro. Thanks for all your work.

My pleasure.

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The "Penguin" vacuum engine:

This is the "single" version, with a 3.75m base. The larger ones will be based off of clusters of this. This is for SpaceY Expanded.

[PickledTripod]

That's very nice looking, I have no need for 7.5m tanks and engines but I'll probably end up taking several of the more reasonable parts from SpaceY extended, like that engine.

[mikegarrison]

That's very nice looking, I have no need for 7.5m tanks and engines but I'll probably end up taking several of the more reasonable parts from SpaceY extended, like that engine.

I have no need for dark chocolate bars with sea salt, but because they exist, I buy them.

[Vahal]

For a mothership also being a refueler this 3.75m would be VERY useful. NERVA only use LF, this one LFO so no dead weight fuel and it has a great vacuum ISP.

[mellojoe]

Necro,

I just today discovered the "recoverable booster landing legs" .... aka: the Space-X look-alike fold-away landing legs. Dude, they are awesome. How have we had KSP this long and never had those before?

Just wanted to drop a note and say Thanks for the work on this. Really fun stuff.

[NecroBones]

Necro,

I just today discovered the "recoverable booster landing legs" .... aka: the Space-X look-alike fold-away landing legs. Dude, they are awesome. How have we had KSP this long and never had those before?

Just wanted to drop a note and say Thanks for the work on this. Really fun stuff.

Hey, glad you're enjoying it! My pleasure.

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Alright, 5m version of the vacuum engine, the dual-penguin:

[NecroBones]

And the 7.5m variant, Quad Penguin:

[Michaelo90]

I haven't checked this mod in a while and wow! So many new cool big things!

I feel like the 7.5m launcher clusters needs a bigger base engine though, a 3.75m single nozzle launch engine would be nice.

[Vahal]

Oh my... I'm already dreaming of 7.5m diam mothership, exploring Kerbol system in a single trip. even without refueling

[sam1133]

Hi, just come back to ksp..got a wee prob..loading game hangs when getting to decouplers and engines when loading this mods parts...i deleted them one by one but just hung up on next in list...i have very few mods running, and no other rocket parts mods at all...any help please...thank you..sam

oops sorry..ksp not updated..sorry ..now fixed

Edited August 25, 2015 by sam1133
problem solved

[NecroBones]

SpaceY Lifters updated:

1.0.2 (2015-08-26) - Tweaks.
 - Custom sounds disabled by default, until better ones can be located.
    - To re-enable, rename "SpaceY_CustomSounds.txt" back to "SpaceY_CustomSounds.cfg" (note the ".cfg" suffix).
 - Added new "Massive Structure" tech node (when not using Community Tech Tree).
    - Moved all 5m structural/interstage adapters, docking port, and stack decouplers to this new node.
 - Moved all 5m structural/interstage adapters, docking port, and stack decouplers to "Experimental Rocketry" in CTT.
 - Cleaned up some of the Community Tech Tree configuration (organizing).
 - Added the longest 3.75m SRB to the Gigantic Rocketry node in CTT, where it should have been.
 - Added the longest 3.75m SRB to the Massive Rocketry node in non-CTT tech tree, where it should have been.

[KillAshley]

Keep up the good work, NecroBones! This pack is now a must have in all my games. Can't wait to get a hold of those 7m parts

[NecroBones]

So I posted a screenshot of all three vacuum engines (below) to reddit, and someone requested making the tank-cap part of it removable (as a tweakable). This was a great idea! However, that created some problems with attachment nodes, and the like, so I ended up shoving the whole assembly for the 3.75m engine up into the housing, and made the housing tweakable if you have Firespitter or Interstellar Fuel Switch installed (second screenshot shows both modes). Now I need to decide if I want to do something similar with the larger models.

Keep up the good work, NecroBones! This pack is now a must have in all my games. Can't wait to get a hold of those 7m parts

Thanks, glad you like it!

[Gaarst]

I was wondering if anyone has a solution to the structural weakness of thrust plates "fairings" ?

The thing is, as I'm playing with Real Fuels and RSS, my current lunar rocket design uses the same stage for lunar insertion and circularising at the Moon. The trip is a few days long, so I'm using hypergolics, but 5m engines do not support hypergolic fuels, therefore, I have to use a thrust plate with smaller engines but this is the weak part of my rocket, making it bend 90° whenever I try to rotate it during ascent.

I tried sticking struts inside the plate's fairing, but I have to play with the camera to get weird angles so that I can see inside the fairing.

So, if anyone knows a part-count cheap solution or anything, I'd be glad to hear it !

Or, maybe make them more sturdy and less wobbly...

Anyway, really looking forward these 7.5m parts to reshape my biggest (and currently very ugly) rockets, and to make them single core !

[NecroBones]

Yeah, unfortunately I don't think there's a part-specific setting that can be added to make things flex less. I cranked up the joint and torque strengths on the parts to some pretty large numbers, which keeps things from simply snapping, but the wet-noodle thing really can't be stopped without strutting things up. That is, unless you install Kerbal Joint Reinforcement. I'd probably just do that.

[Falcon Coupe]

I was wondering if anyone has a solution to the structural weakness of thrust plates "fairings" ?

The thing is, as I'm playing with Real Fuels and RSS, my current lunar rocket design uses the same stage for lunar insertion and circularising at the Moon. The trip is a few days long, so I'm using hypergolics, but 5m engines do not support hypergolic fuels, therefore, I have to use a thrust plate with smaller engines but this is the weak part of my rocket, making it bend 90° whenever I try to rotate it during ascent.

I tried sticking struts inside the plate's fairing, but I have to play with the camera to get weird angles so that I can see inside the fairing.

So, if anyone knows a part-count cheap solution or anything, I'd be glad to hear it !

Or, maybe make them more sturdy and less wobbly...

Anyway, really looking forward these 7.5m parts to reshape my biggest (and currently very ugly) rockets, and to make them single core !

Procedural Parts (or procedural fairings, cant remember) has a procedural thrust plate that can be made to any diameter with any number of nodes. Then Procedural Fairings (I think) has a procedural interstage fairing adapter that can be used to create a strong fairing over your engine cluster.

That's what I use along with KJR and it works brilliantly!

[Vahal]

Does the engine without plate cover the fuel tank? Cause I'm using them as heatshield when reentry and would not be pleased to see my fuel tanks starting to melt and blow up