[1.0.4]Intake Build Aid (obsolete for 1.0.5)

[LordFjord]

!!! Important !!!

With KSP 1.0.5, the air flow rules have changed, making the mod obsolete.

Here is a great thread about 1.0.5 and intakes.

If you have 'enough' intakes you won't get asymmetric flameouts, because the engines will flame out together due to the flow multiplier being too low, a good bit before the air intakes cease being able to shove enough units at you. If you don't have enough intakes you'll hit that problem above. ...

So, simply worded: slap one or two intakes per engine on your vessel and you won't get asymetric flame-outs.

I am happy that Squad finally took care of this.

Thanks a lot for the help and support so I could create this mod.

Intake Build Aid 0.6 for KSP 1.0.4

What is this all about? What does it do?

It changes no parts and no game behaviour. What it does is rearranging the parts of your airbreather engine powered rocket, plane or SSTO. So it basically just reorders the parts of your vessel.

But why? Because of Kasuha's wonderful work on resource flows, specifically the intakes and jet engines part of it.

When you usually build a jet powered vessel, you are more focussed on the design and funcionality and not on the order of placing the parts.

When flying on the edge to space, where the air gets thin, this often ends in an asymmetric flameout of your airbreather engines, resulting in the dreaded "spin of death". When placing intakes and engines in a specific order, this can be prevented almost completely, resulting in less crashes, more dV in orbit and whatnot.

So a typical example of:

- engine

- engine

- intake

- intake

becomes:

- intake

- engine

- intake

- engine

I still do not understand what this mod does

You build your airbreather engine powered vessel like usual, then you hit the magic key (see below) and your vessel will be able to fly at higher altitudes before a flameout of the engine happens. If you also match intake and engine numbers, chances are good that when a flameout happens at high altitude, then on all engines and at the same time.

This is not cheating, just applying some building tricks that people smarter than me found out.

Usage

The mod can do these things:

- point at a intake or airbreather engine and hit F6 -> the respecitvely assigned intakes and engines will be highlighted ( intakes blue, engines red ). Hit F6 when pointing somewhere else to remove the highlighting.

- hit F7 -> the mod rebuilds the engine/intakes in an optimized order, it will attempt to distribute the intake area equally to all engines. This will give a short text feedback on how it reorganized stuff.

- manual assignment of intakes to engines. To do this, point at an intake and hit F8, then the next intake and F8, and so on. The next engine that you point at and hit F8 will get all the previously marked intakes assigned to.

- "IBA" toolbar button toggles that shows the current airbreather engines and their intakes, also the sum of intake area for each engine.

important: un-highlight before launching or colors will "stick" and you'll need to restart KSP to get rid of it.

No pics no clicks

0.5 pics

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0.4 pics

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Settings

Settings.cfg in the mod folder. You can reassign the 3 Keys and choose between the custom highlight shader seen in the pics or the default KSP highlight mechanics with different colors.

Version History

0.6 (2015.05.14)

----------------

TheDog made a compatbility patch for KSP 1.0.2. This is now integrated into the mod. Thanks a lot!

edit: also works for KSP 1.0.4

0.5 (2015.02.12)

----------------

Added toolbar button to toggle the GUI

GUI with a button that does the same as pressing F7 -> autobalance engines and intakes

GUI lists all engines with their total assigned intake area and the specific intakes which feed them

Modded engines that are engines and intakes in one are now supported - as long as they use the stock IntakeAir resource - for example KAX D-25 Radial Engines or Karbonite KLF-150R Radial Jet Engines

Lots of code cleanup

0.4 (2014.12.19) 1st public release for xmas

----------------

Updated for KSP version 0.90

- Renamed mod from SyncedJetFlameouts to IntakeBuildAid

- 3 modes: intake/engine highlighting, intake/engine balancing, manual assignment of intakes to engines

- Changed default key settings to F6, F7 and F8

- Key settings can be changed via editing the settings.cfg file.

- Alternative (default KSP) part highlighting method I found randomly. The useCustomShader setting can change if the highlighting is done via default KSP methods or a custom, more visible shader.

- Fixes in logic to find intakes of engines

0.3 (2014.11.26)

----------------

New algorithm based on distributing intakes based on their intake area. Biggest intakes are distributed first, smaller ones after this. The engine with the least amount of assigned intake area will get the next intake assigned.

A message will be displayed after hitting alt-F showing what the mod did. Either nothing (no intakes or airbreather engine) or a list of assigned intakes to engines with the total intake area assigned to the engine.

I find that this algorithm works very well. I would like to have more feedback on this from YOU

0.2 (2014.11.22)

----------------

Improved intake detection via resources, improved engine detection via propellant (intakeair + liquidfuel required).

Intakes are now assigned by type. Algorithm works best with matching intakes per type to engines, for example 4 shock cores, 2 radial intakes for 2 RAPIERS.

0.1 (2014.11.21)

----------------

Proof of concept, only shock cone intakes and turbojet engines are handled, don't try with RAPIER or basic jets (will come soon, don't worry)

Limitations / known issues

- make sure to un-highlight engines/intakes before launching the vessel. It will make the highlighting "stuck" on the parts - a KSP restart fixes this. I couldn't track down the bug yet.

- Staging and turning engines/intakes on / off manually can change the airflow significantly. The mod won't recognize these.

- Engines that are both intakes and engines are not supported (for example KAX radial engines).

- Modded intake resources are not recognized (for example Karbonite intakeair).

Download

KerbalStuff

Dropbox

Source

GitHub

License

Beerware, just cause

Edited November 16, 2015 by LordFjord
KSP 1.0.5 makes this obsolete

[RainDreamer]

This sounds interesting. I usually just manually close intake/switch to rocket before flame out to avoid uneven flame out, but this may help squeezing those last few useful deltav of jet engine before orbital insertion.

[BigNose]

Very useful tool, until now I had to rebuild it in the correct order myself, which is quite a pain.

[Lindy]

Gaaa!... Where has this been all my Kerbal life?! Thank you... First round's on me.

[Okie Rocket]

Sweet! Seeing things like this makes me wish I had any programming chops to speak of.

[Beetlecat]

Cool. So this basically deals with a game engine process when allocating air resource to the engines -- because it works down a list of parts, rather than the physical position/order on the craft? Genius! This will help with getting SSTOs to orbit, for sure.

[hawkwing]

This plugin is fantastic. An absolute godsend for building spaceplanes that rely on more than one jet engine.

[Pondafarr]

indeed, love this plugin!

[Thahat]

can we get this nominated for always on in stock XD? cause that would rock.

[LordFjord]

Thanks a lot folks

Regarding stockification: nope, I definately do not see this as stock stuff. I'd rather have Squad change/simplify the intake resource rules so this mod could become obsolete.

[Vectura]

Awesome mod, thanks for this!

[Aedile]

Awesome. Funny though people keep calling kasuha kashua

[LordFjord]

Awesome. Funny though people keep calling kasuha kashua

Whops, fixed.

[SAI Peregrinus]

The only problem I have is forgetting what the hotkeys are. I'm sure that won't be an issue with time, or if squad fixes the intake rules.

[LordFjord]

I am planning to replace the keys anyway with a toolbar button and a small GUI.

[FleshJeb]

Very nice! Bookmarking for later!

[CaelReader]

Spawns duplicate engines when I try to use f7 with the KAX radial engines. Breaks the editor upon loading the craft afterwards, requiring a game restart.

[LordFjord]

I've looked up that KEX radial engine, it is both an airbreather engine AND an air intake at the same time.

The duplicate issue is explainable, as it is both added as an engine and an intake. The mod unfortunately doesn't check for that.

Thanks for reporting though, I'll see if I can fix it.

[Alshain]

I just found this and if it works as it is described it will be my next must have mod. This is brilliant.

[GrihanOs]

Hi,

Thanks for this plugin, it is very useful.

However, after some attempts, a specific type of intakes becomes permanently colored, until game restart.

Once it was shock cone intakes, and the other time the radial ones.

[Alshain]

Hi,

Thanks for this plugin, it is very useful.

However, after some attempts, a specific type of intakes becomes permanently colored, until game restart.

Once it was shock cone intakes, and the other time the radial ones.

I've had the same issue. Also sometimes I have trouble using F8 until I remove all the intakes and engines (they don't want to color at all).

It's a little finicky but it works when it works.

[LordFjord]

Thanks for the bugreport, I think I had that issue once but I have no idea how to reproduce it. Must be something with applying/removing the shaders to/from the parts.

I have some more info on where this mod is going over here in the dev thread.

[ultrasquid]

I've looked up that KEX radial engine, it is both an airbreather engine AND an air intake at the same time.

The duplicate issue is explainable, as it is both added as an engine and an intake. The mod unfortunately doesn't check for that.

Thanks for reporting though, I'll see if I can fix it.

I've encountered the same problem with other self-contained jets (that include both air intake and engine on the same part).

[LordFjord]

Intake Build Aid 0.5 is now released, I just uploaded it to Kerbalstuff.

In case you had 0.4, just overwrite all files.

Changes:

0.5 (2015.02.12)

----------------

* Added toolbar button to toggle the GUI

* GUI with a button that does the same as pressing F7 -> autobalance engines and intakes

* GUI lists all engines with their total assigned intake area and the specific intakes which feed them

* Removed shabby onscreen message after autobalance of engines and intakes

* Modded engines that are engines and intakes in one are now supported - as long as they use the stock IntakeAir resource - for example KAX D-25 Radial Engines or Karbonite KLF-150R Radial Jet Engines

* Lots of code cleanup

A few words to the release:

There is a known issue that causes the part coloring to stay until you restart KSP. It happens when a part is highlighted via shader and when you remove that part. I could reproduce it but couldn't fix it yet.

Mod support: so far only stock resource using stuff is supported. Combined intake/engine parts work now, as long as they use stock resources.

For example Karbonite IntakeAtm will not work for now (as in: will be ignored by the mod). But this will be supported "soon".

I am trying to get some more mod support in, but in some cases (interstellar) its complicated to do so without a dependency to the mod.

Enjoy, build some cool stuff with it. Let me know if there are issues with IBA.

I'll upload some more pics to show in a bit.

[Fenyx]

Very Very needed tool! But work is not clear enough. Auto reassign function works weak. Not affected sometimes. Manual assign is not work if the engines attached symmetricaly (all intakes connected to one jet and F8 don't select intakes!). Jets and intakes MUST be added individually - not symmetricaly. But this tool only allow to balanse intakes and jets.