parts [1.12.x] Sounding Rockets! Start small. Dream big!

[Black-Talon]

RoverDude,

I haven't given up on Sounding Rockets + FAR - however, I've hit a lot of snags and bugs. I think it's time for a dump of feedback.

FAR Module Manager Configs: The ones I linked previously work well enough if you want to include them (see below though)

Nosecone - This conflicts with FAR and appears specific to the Sounding Rocket Nosecone model - any ideas why it doesn't work? I highly suspect something with the model because if I add the entire Sounding Rocket Nosecone config to the Mk16 stock parachute (with appropriate changes to match the Mk16 model of course) FAR doesn't have any issue with it. For specifics, see this post - note however that Ferram's response really didn't seem specific to either of the two issues as both happens ALWAYS and the FAR Flight GUI won't even load with your part. Something is odd with it since no other part has this issue, including ones with identical modules...ideas on your end? Without this working, my conclusion is that Sounding Rockets is incompatible with FAR regardless of the configs - it can't be fixed in the configs. But I think you can fix it if it easily if we knew what the exact issue was.

Super minor - Note that your latest .zip erroneously includes the file "\UmbraSpaceIndustries\SoundingRockets\Parts\new 2.txt"

Nosecone drag - I think you want it to be less than your other parts (in stock). Currently, despite the nosecone being shaped like a bullet, it has more drag than the booster body with fins attached causing the booster to ride into the nosecone after separation. It looks weird if nothing else.

Parachute attachment point to Nosecone - I think the parachute attaches at the CoM which makes the part dangle funny if you don't have any other payload - since this isn't that big of a deal, is it easy enough to move the attachment point up a bit? It would just make it look better when falling on it's parachute.

USI_DropTank Module - Oh man has this thing been grinding my gears! I reported earlier that this does not work (separate) if the booster is the root part, turns out that's the least of it's issues! I don't mind that it separates from root. BUT, it works so inconsistently! There must be some fluke bug with it or perhaps you can enlighten me. In order to test the drag of many parts with the intent to compare them to the drag I was adding to Sounding Rockets (to balance it with others), I added the USI_Droptank module to the RT-10 Solid Booster. At first this worked wonderfully! I saw separations of payloads in a nice consistent manner. Every now and then it would fail and relaunching would see it work perfectly again so only a small amount of time wasted. I'm not certain, but perhaps the update to 0.1.1 (with the USI update in it) exacerbated this issue because suddenly I've launched rocket after rocket to just see separation fail and ruin the nice clean test cases I was trying to get. So I'd start over. Some times with no changes it would just begin to work. Other times it would never work again. Other times I would adjust the orientation of the rocket, then back to the same position, then launch and it would suddenly work. Sometimes it would work, then I'd save, launch again and never get it to work ever again. I'm so fed up right at the moment...can you take a peak at it and see if something might be causing the action to be missed randomly?

I hacked together a .dll to measure/display maximum surface velocity today in order to continue my testing that I realized was invalidated by the bug in KSP where Highest Speed Reached doesn't display anything over 750 m/s. It's working well enough but 75% of my test runs were blown up by the bug above. These other things are my observations through this testing time.

Nosecone - doesn't orient itself with airflow when the parachute is not deployed, but given it's shape it sure seems like it should. I was going to look into config changes to address this but didn't get through the baseline testing. It doesn't orient itself when the parachute is deployed either but I noted above that I believe the cause of that to be the attachment point of the parachute.

Fins - have you considered adding the stock parameters for winglets to the sounding rocket fins? Not control surfaces of course, but make them function like stock fins do by adding the smallest amount of lift. It's some aging stuff in the game but see the AV-T1 Winglet for an example. This is again something I was hoping to take for a spin and see how it play tested but didn't get to it. As you know the fins job is to provide stabilizing forces through drag and lift. And currently they stabilize but have no lift and have less drag than the Nosecone.

Booster TWR - did you get a chance to compare this to stock? I was going to take a peak but didn't get a chance.

Nosecone - while I love how tiny it is, the more I've played with it the more I think it might be slightly too light considering it's a tier 0 part and has a lot inside of it. Thoughts?

breaking forces - I wondered if adjusting the breaking force/torque on the Sounding Rocket parts would be a decent nerfing method to prevent them from being used to bring larger payloads to orbit. Given they're made of cardboard this seems to make sense and the description could be improved to tell the player to lower their expectations of what cardboard tubes can support. Had you already looked into this?

Booster fairings - I didn't get to test this but it appeared the fairing weight was higher than the booster's dry weight? I didn't test to see exactly how the fairing mass is applied...for all I know it isn't and thus doesn't matter.

Booster Isp - for what it's worth I think you should have atmospheric and vacuum at least a little different - for realism, for fit with the other boosters, and other reasons too.

Anyway, I've been having fun with Sounding Rockets (I think) but I seem to have gotten caught up in improving it in a small way only to discover so many things that probably need to be improved as well! I'd just like to get unstuck by finding how to get FAR to not blow up on the NoseCone and the DropTank module to work more reliably!

Thanks for reading and the fun mods!

-Talon

[RoverDude]

Thanks for the info - going over it, and some bits I have already worked.

FYI - do you have KJR? That apparently is what causes droptank wierdness.

Nose cone is being separated into a few bits. An aerodynamic bit, the probe core itself, and the parachute. That should help, and also lets me upgrade the probe core later on (since I have some plans for 0.35m parts)

[Zeenobit]

I'm using this mod with FAR, and I don't have any issues with the way the rockets actually function/fly. And I'm absolutely loving it. Creates a much better starting experience.

Though one issue I noticed with FAR + Sounding Rockets is that the FAR Flight UI doesn't show up. Similar to how it doesn't show up when you have a cockpit with intakes on it. Not sure if this is a FAR bug or Sounding Rockets bug.

Also, I noticed that the rockets don't count towards altitude missions (e.g. "Reach and altitude of 5,000 meters!"). But they do count for "Escape the Atmosphere!" and "Launch a New Vessel!" missions.

[RoverDude]

The altitude ones require a manned pod. And RE the FAR UI: It's FAR I'll try to help out by breaking apart some of the multi use parts. It's not like part count is an issue with these

[Black-Talon]

FYI - do you have KJR? That apparently is what causes droptank wierdness.

I'm afraid that isn't it for me. In the tests I am using the StockBugFixModules, Kerbal Engineer.,Editor Extensions, Module Manager to apply tweaks, and my own .dll to remember max surface velocity. I suppose StockBugFixModules has a fix to ejection force decouplers... Let me know if you want any of these tested (though I'm a little tested out!). The erratic decoupling happens both before and after I add FAR to this mix. It can work several times in a row with these mods installed but it just isn't reliable. I tried like crazy to narrow it done to a specific configuration of parts or build order or launch profile but nothing correlated.

Sounds like you might already have some ideas on what causes FAR to flip out about that Nosecone - have you been able to eliminate that with your new parts? Or any ideas what is causing it about that darn Nosecone?! I've come to far not to know more hehe. :-)

-Talon

[TheDamDog]

Sounding rockets work fine for me with FAR and RSS. Four in on each stage got me up to over 100,000 meters.

There was a dodgy moment where the nosecone almost exploded due to going a bit fast, but it worked out alright.

[linuxgurugamer]

Sounding rockets work fine for me with FAR and RSS. Four in on each stage got me up to over 100,000 meters.

There was a dodgy moment where the nosecone almost exploded due to going a bit fast, but it worked out alright.

Use the thrust limiter to reduce the thrust to 80%. or less, play with it.

[Damaske]

I AM sure this has been mentioned before but I have recently got the sounding rockets sticking and not releasing like they should be. Also the lower stage suddenly trying to ram though the nosecone and science package section. Also I've been having times were the nose cone and science package have hit too hard and i lose the mission, this is with a single science package.

I've also added back in very very limited SAS and Torque into it just to keep it going straight, I realy like it!

[zxczxczbfg]

My sounding rockets seem to be having issues with jettisoning themselves. The stages don't detach properly when the fuel runs out.

[RoverDude]

With or without FAR?

With or without KJR?

I've done most of my early career with FAR (no KJR) using sounding rockets.

[zxczxczbfg]

Without FAR

With KJR

EDIT: Ah, frigglenuggets. Just reread the previous page, it seems KJR is what's causing my issues. I might just have to use a really tiny decoupler.

Edited December 29, 2014 by zxczxczbfg

[RoverDude]

Ferram4 has a fix in the KJR dev build already

[DivisionByZero]

Regarding drag, etc. I thought I'd report some recent results in my career game on 6.4x Kerbin.

Parts are very nicely balanced for what I believe to be their intention.

on a 6.4x kerbin, you can reach shore and water biome on the 2 smaller boosters. To reach grasslands, you have to use the larger booster and this is a tricky proposition as it doesn't slow down all that quickly so you have to time your chute opening to be pretty close to the ground (a nice rush induced by DRE ripping up chutes if they open above Mach 1 or so).

At any rate, you can access 3 biomes low and high altitude and landed so this gets you up the bottom of the tech tree without enabling you to keep exploiting the parts and clearing out Kerbin too quickly. I like it.

One note, I was able to use the large fins to get extra stability on an SRB test instead of waiting to unlock the stability tech node. I don't know if that was intended, but they worked just fine.

Nice mod!

[Wisq]

Is it normal that I can't right-click any of the survey packages to do experiments, nor do the experiments via action groups?

It's not RemoteTech, since a) I added the RT config mentioned earlier in the thread, and I even tried removing RemoteTech entirely.

I'm wondering if it's one of the other action-related mods I have installed, like Actions Everywhere or TweakableEverything or something. I'm gonna try removing those when I get back, but gotta go for now. Just wondering if I'm using this completely wrong or something.

[NihilRex]

Actions Everywhere was throwing log errors and play errors on my still, so I removed it and some other things. Just an opinion, no real evidence

[Wisq]

Hm, nope, still can't do anything even with Actions Everywhere uninstalled. All that happens is I lose the only right-clickable option I had, which was to toggle crossfeed.

[RoverDude]

@Wisq - it means you have a bad install. I'm not sure what is broke, but start with something clean and try SR by itself then re-add mods.

Universal Storage is a good bet if you have the older non-Regolith version. So try re-downloading just USI_Tools from the catalog page in my sig and see if that fixes it.

[Wisq]

Okay, cool, will do. I just got everything from CKAN  Sounding Rockets 0.1.1, Universal Storage 1.0.0. The sounding rockets part configs all look okay (they define an experiment, the experiment is defined in the ScienceDefs.cfg) but I'll go ahead and reinstall stuff by hand I guess.

Edit: Seems to be a conflict with CrowdSourcedScience. Trying my old config now, minus that mod.

Edit: Yup, all good here. I never really needed that mod anyway, just sounded interesting.

Edited December 30, 2014 by Wisq

[Damaske]

I AM sure this has been mentioned before but I have recently got the sounding rockets sticking and not releasing like they should be. Also the lower stage suddenly trying to ram though the nosecone and science package section. Also I've been having times were the nose cone and science package have hit too hard and i lose the mission, this is with a single science package.

I've also added back in very very limited SAS and Torque into it just to keep it going straight, I realy like it!

32 bit KSP 0.90 yep

Far/near nope

KJR yep

From what I have gathered it is a KJR bug and it is fixed in the dev part, right?

But what is making the nose cone and science part have more drag and stuff than the solid booster with fins?

Edit: Updated to KJR 3.0.1 and still having the solid boosters not letting go of each other. I Am currently streaming on my twitch if you would like to see it live as what is going on and help try to unstick them.

Edited December 30, 2014 by Damaske

[Black-Talon]

Sounding rockets work fine for me with FAR and RSS. Four in on each stage got me up to over 100,000 meters.

There was a dodgy moment where the nosecone almost exploded due to going a bit fast, but it worked out alright.

When you say it "works fine with FAR" I feel obligated to point out that you must not be attempting to open the FAR Flight GUI when the Nosecone is equipped. In addition it must not be a problem for you that the Nosecone has Zero atmospheric drag applied to it which causes it, or parts it is attached to, to accelerate through the atmosphere at ridiculous rates.

These issues have been acknowledged but "works fine with FAR" is misleading imo. Sounding rockets plus FAR have known, FAR/Game breaking issues. It would be like saying it works but my rockets never run out of fuel and IVA view is unavailable.

Just my two-cents...as I don't think we should mislead people about what works and what doesn't.

[Wisq]

When you say it "works fine with FAR" I feel obligated to point out that you must not be attempting to open the FAR Flight GUI when the Nosecone is equipped.

Yeah, I noticed this didn't work either.

In addition it must not be a problem for you that the Nosecone has Zero atmospheric drag applied to it which causes it, or parts it is attached to, to accelerate through the atmosphere at ridiculous rates.

It does seem weird to me that it has 0.0 drag. I mean, the thing is physically similar in dimensions to a Mk1 command pod, just a bit thinner and waaaaay lighter, which suggests it has a low density and should actually have high drag.

[DivisionByZero]

I've been using the rockets with the nose-cone attached to the science package. I guess that's been providing the drag...

[Tellion]

For anyone who is wondering why something does not work, Crowd Sourced Science breaks the science functionality of this mod (makes the option to record data disappear) and the latest version of KJR (3.0.1) breaks the automatic decoupling on the two largers srbs. Also the missing drag model from the nosecone makes FAR quite unhappy.

[Wisq]

I've been using the rockets with the nose-cone attached to the science package. I guess that's been providing the drag...

Yeah, if you try just a nosecone with no package, I think it's almost impossible to parachute. Really, the package should be providing the mass and the nosecone should be providing the drag, not the other way around.

Also, I miiiiight be abusing this a bit.

Four launches in one!

[Damaske]

Yeah, if you try just a nosecone with no package, I think it's almost impossible to parachute. Really, the package should be providing the mass and the nosecone should be providing the drag, not the other way around.

Also, I miiiiight be abusing this a bit.

http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0053/2882/products/2014-12-30_00002-20141230-104530.jpg

Four launches in one!

NIIIICE, but um how do?