How do I cover up this cluster of 4?

[Bman1296]

Hi everyone. If you look at the picture:

The cluster of 4 engines is not covered over entirely. However, the engines are.

How do i fix this? how can I make it so it is all covered and smooth?

Thanks!

Bman1296

[Starman4308]

Procedural Fairings should work. Slap down an interstage fairing ring and extend down (or up) until it covers everything, or sandwich the cluster between two regular fairing bases facing opposite directions.

[peachoftree]

You Cannot cover them in the stock game, however I severely doubt that you want to go back to a 3.5m stack after you go back down (I may be mistaken), but if that is the case than you should use a 3.75m - 2.5 m adapter on the bottom of the tanks and continue a 2.5m stack above them than it will appear to be in-line and wont stick out nearly as much.

[ExavierMacbeth]

Procedural Fairings is your best bet. This gives you two options....

1) A pair of the normal fairing bases (one above & inverted, one below) will build a fairing cover for everything in between.

2) Use the Interstage Fairing above & inverted which gives you a hollow space you can fill with stuff and makes the fairing walls the actual structural support so blowing the fairings acts as a decoupler.

Personally for what you are doing I would recommend #2... Even though you have "reversed" a quad mount the physics will only be connected to 1 of the 4 nodes, not all 4 of them. So if you don't strut that beast up just so the thing will flail miserably at some point. Using the Interstage you can fill the inside like you would a cargo bay and it controls both the upper & lower nodes so you don't have to try and shrink it back down. When you blow the fairings it will auto decouple whatever was attached only to the fairings but still retains the structural stability of a single column stack. By inverting the interstage you are essentially dangling the quad stack inside it (so use some struts to stabilize) but it has no direct connection to whats below that.

[Claw]

If you prefer stock,you can also use structural panels as a sort of makeshift fairing. Some examples:

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/43086-Open-Source-Construction-Techniques-for-Craft-Aesthetics?p=718412&viewfull=1#post718412

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/43086-Open-Source-Construction-Techniques-for-Craft-Aesthetics?p=973749&viewfull=1#post973749

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/43086-Open-Source-Construction-Techniques-for-Craft-Aesthetics?p=970847&viewfull=1#post970847

Also, in case you didn't already know, a quad-to-single adapter won't actually connect to all four of those engine stacks. Assuming you built from the top down, all four FL-T800s will be connected to the top quad adapter. However, on the engine end, only one of the four decouplers will connect to the bottom quad adapter. This is because Unity uses a part "tree" structure where your build can "branch out" but can never rejoin with itself in a closed loop.

The closest you can get is by strapping down the three loose ends with struts. Or some people use clamp-o-trons on the quad adapter and on the decouplers attached to the engines. When you build it, only 1 docking port will actually be attached. However, when you launch the vessel, the other three docking ports will magnetize and hold a bit more firmly.

Welcome to the forums!

~Claw

[phunk]

Also, in case you didn't already know, a quad-to-single adapter won't actually connect to all four of those engine stacks. Assuming you built from the top down, all four FL-T800s will be connected to the top quad adapter. However, on the engine end, only one of the four decouplers will connect to the bottom quad adapter. This is because Unity uses a part "tree" structure where your build can "branch out" but can never rejoin with itself in a closed loop.

I recently found out that this is no longer the case, and all 4 connections can connect on both ends.

[Red Iron Crown]

I recently found out that this is no longer the case, and all 4 connections can connect on both ends.

Do you have some evidence of this? That would be a big change, one that would be documented in the changelog. There was a discussion about it in a recent thread here: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/98622

[phunk]

Do you have some evidence of this? That would be a big change, one that would be documented in the changelog. There was a discussion about it in a recent thread here: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/98622

I don't have any evidence at hand since I'm at work currently, but I did test and confirm it myself.

[Red Iron Crown]

How did you test it? Did you examine the craft file?

[Kerbart]

No it doesn't. I just created a simple craft with a quad adapter, four t-800 tanks, and another quad adapter at the bottom. When you look at the craft file you will see that only ONE tank has a link to the quad adapter, and the bottom quad adapter links to only ONE tank as well (the same one that has the quad adapter listed as a link).

[Jovus]

That said, it looks like it connects, and the only ill effects are reduced structural integrity (fixable by struts or by making this a temporary situtation) and the tendency for your unattached decouplers to blow up prettily when you stage and they slam into the lower debris really fast.

[Claw]

I recently found out that this is no longer the case, and all 4 connections can connect on both ends.

I'm uncertain where this tidbit of information started, but I have verified that stock KSP does not act this way. It's possible that joint connections were stiffened a bit more in 0.25 (unverified), and maybe that has led to the belief that vessels are no longer "trees."

Rather than explain how the save files are structured, and how the code progresses through each vessel, it might be easier to show this picture. In it, you can see that only one engine is given a shroud. That's because the other three engines are not connected to the adapter.

In the OP, it "appears" as if they are connected because there are decouplers attached to the engines. The decouplers are single node entities (on each side anyway) which do actually connect, and there's four of them in symmetry. The adapter is only connecting to one the decouplers, but there's no visible evidence because the engines already have shrouds. The picture above shows that the adapter is only connecting on one node.

Cheers,

~Claw

[Alshain]

Yeah, if Squad made a change that obsoleted struts (which is what that would be), there wouldn't be any question... we would know about it.

[Kerbart]

Yeah, if Squad made a change that obsoleted struts (which is what that would be), there wouldn't be any question... we would know about it.

Well they'd only be obsolete in that scenario. And I doubt that Squad would make a move that would make all struts obsolete. What would be next? Boosters?

[kerbiloid]

Probably, you can't. But here is something similar.

Mmm. That's if you want to create a cluster of satellites.

Looks, that you mean a cluster of engines.

Edited December 6, 2014 by kerbiloid