The S3-KS-25x4 Engine Cluster Should Gimbal Roll.

[Steambirds]

I have been thinking about this for a while, and after reading the wiki, I found out that all of the engines in line with the roll axis (as they usually are) cannot gimbal in that direction. This is acceptable, as they are all single nozzle designs, unlike our friend the S3-KS-25x4 Engine Cluster (which shall be called "Henry" from now on, "S3-KS-25x4 Engine Cluster" is a mouthful.). Although I am unsure whether or not this is possible within the engine, I am fairly certain creating a new gimbal animation for Henry is not going to be too difficult.

[prophet_01]

True, Henry (point taken) should be able to roll using gimbal. With the upcoming aerodynamics that might be pretty important. FAR taught me that gimbal is a nice thing to have, especially with heavy lifters. Control surfaces dont work that well at low speeds and a 500t rocket tends to be rather slow right after launch

[Captain Sierra]

There's a problem with this. The stock gimbal does not support roll, period.

There are a multitude of gimbal plugins which exist to add this capability (tweakable-everything includes one). Its not as simple as a config edit. The devs would have to do a decent amount of reworking on the gimbal module, not that I don't think they should.

I support the idea, but the stock gimbal needs to be reworked then to support a) gimbal roll authority, and independent gimbal on multi-nozzle engines.

[BudgetHedgehog]

Does... does it not? It should do... The gimbal code does indeed model roll (test the RAPIER at the end of a normal fuel tank. It rolls. Test it on the end of the spacepants - one pitches up, the other pitches down) so it's weird that Henry doesn't.

Edited January 8, 2015 by ObsessedWithKSP

[kujuman]

Yeah, that engine cluster totes rolls. Gimbals controlling roll is relatively new, maybe a .25 or .24 addition.

It doesn't look like it rolls because the gimbal angle is so small.

- - - Updated - - -

From the 0.25 Changelog

* Parts:

- Added new "Vernor Engine", a very powerful RCS module powered by Liquid Fuel + Oxidizer.

- Added new O-10 Maneuvering Engine, a low-thrust main engine powered by Monopropellant.

- Gimballing Engines now respond to roll input.

- 4x Engine Cluster and RAPIER Engine have gimbal roll authority even if stacked over the centerline (due to multiple nozzles).