Anyone made a Claw krakendrive?

[Captain Sierra]

I just destroyed a ship, violently. The cause: clipped claw.

The catch: acceleration spiked at 102.5 G's before disintegrating. Hmmm, sounds like Krakendrive material!

Question must be asked then, has anyone successfully (and semi-safely) harnessed the power of a clipped claw? Or is it guaranteed to evaporate your craft before any meaningful change in velocity can be extracted?

[Comrade Jenkens]

That's quite interesting. I've managed to cause rotation with docking ports but never acceleration. I'll play around with the claw to see whether I can cause acceleration when I'm on KSP next.

[vexx32]

AFAIK, only if your goal is to stop the craft completely, relative to the universal reference frame defined in KSP's code.

Every change in velocity that I've seen due to the Claw's interference has had the effect of suspending the claw stationary in space whilst the rest of the ship kept moving. Often with very amusing effects.

[r4pt0r]

AFAIK, only if your goal is to stop the craft completely, relative to the universal reference frame defined in KSP's code.

Every change in velocity that I've seen due to the Claw's interference has had the effect of suspending the claw stationary in space whilst the rest of the ship kept moving. Often with very amusing effects.

Just a few days ago I sent up a claw to attach an antenna I forgotten to a probe. Mission was salvaged, but when i next loaded it did that exact thing

I was so mad i haven't played since.

Edited January 9, 2015 by r4pt0r

[Captain Sierra]

AFAIK, only if your goal is to stop the craft completely, relative to the universal reference frame defined in KSP's code.

Every change in velocity that I've seen due to the Claw's interference has had the effect of suspending the claw stationary in space whilst the rest of the ship kept moving. Often with very amusing effects.

Well that would explain the rapid unplanned disassembly. Now let the theorycrafting begin on how we can abuse this!

[Engineer of Stuff]

Well, I hope the Klaw does work as a K-Drive. It has some powerful forces in it. I tried using it when it first came out, but gave up after much frustration.

Can someone explain to me the best and most reliable ways to create a Kraken Drive?

[Captain Sierra]

Well, I hope the Klaw does work as a K-Drive. It has some powerful forces in it. I tried using it when it first came out, but gave up after much frustration.

Can someone explain to me the best and most reliable ways to create a Kraken Drive?

THe base concept of the kraken drive is that part A pushes against part B with force and instead of tearing the ship apart or doing nothing (as would be realistic) it actually applies an intravehicular force with no equal and opposite force, thus producing measurable, and in some cases extreme, acceleration.

Landing legs work because landing leg feet will collide with parts of your craft when deployed and because the suspension animation is spring loaded and applies force when compressed to return to an uncompressed state. The greater the distance of compression (and the more legs compressed), the greater the force applied.

Claws have similar phenomena but also have a lot of bugs relating to reference frame (as mentioned by Vexx32 above) which can result in them 'migrating' (I posted a support request about this but I guess its just native bugginess in the claw code). Additionally, its possible to have claws 'detach' from your ship and clip (causing explosions). Lastly, two claws grabbing the same object destroys PQS (I reference

).

There's lots of glitch potential in claws and as I discovered, there is also potential for very high G-forces. A k-drive may yet be possible.

[problemecium]

I wonder what I did to my KSP to make my Klaws behave so nicely......

I did have one bug out on me once, but shortly thereafter came up with a theory on what exactly had happened and how to reproduce or avoid it. For the record, this was the "planet destroyer" bug recently made popular by Danny2462 and I discovered it first ;P

Otherwise they've never given me any trouble at all o_O

[Stratzenblitz75]

I've produced the "klaw stops all relative motion" bug, but this isn't all that useful. However, I have produced a possibly useful bug with the Klaw, something I like to call the "the klaw warp drive". Basically, the Klaw somehow "locks" your relative motion, so you're essentially translating through space; gravity or any other force has no effect on the craft. I did this by attaching multiple klaws to one part and time-warping. Take a look at these pictures to see what I mean:

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As you can see, I was able to lock my motion relative to Kerbin and basically translate straight upwards.

There's certainly potential here for a stock warp-drive. However, I've yet to figure out how to turn the Klaw warp drive off...

[RocketPilot573]

AFAIK, only if your goal is to stop the craft completely, relative to the universal reference frame defined in KSP's code.

Every change in velocity that I've seen due to the Claw's interference has had the effect of suspending the claw stationary in space whilst the rest of the ship kept moving. Often with very amusing effects.

Pretty much this. The claw is completely broken, and will only stop your craft violently. Probably followed by this:

[MGCJerry]

video link

This is my favorite danny video.!

[LordFerret]

... Lastly, two claws grabbing the same object destroys PQS ...

Does this mean that if I sent two ships, each with a claw, and they both grabbed the same asteroid - it would go poof?... or the ship(s) would?

[Renegrade]

THe base concept of the kraken drive is that part A pushes against part B with force and instead of tearing the ship apart or doing nothing (as would be realistic) it actually applies an intravehicular force with no equal and opposite force, thus producing measurable, and in some cases extreme, acceleration.

By the way, this happens naturally in KSP even with non-docked, non-landing-legged, non-clawed, non-or-at-least-very-low-clipped designs.

It's usually a very small acceleration, but it can put a station onto a ground-collision course easily around Minmus.

It also causes torque - which people often blame on orbital factors, but orbital factors should not be able to cause any actual rotation relative to the fixed background stars, and the rotation should most definitely NOT accelerate.

I figure it's because in the case of a solid ship, part A and B are pushing against each other, but due to some error in the order of operations (or similar; floats are nasty beasts that only pretend to be real numbers, and offer the programmer many, many ways to shoot themselves in the foot, mathematically speaking), force A and B are not perfectly equal, creating the same sort of intravehicular force you describe, just on a much smaller scale.

(I've had cases of upwards of 0.3 m/s^2 average accel, with some fairly violent torque)

[merendel]

Does this mean that if I sent two ships, each with a claw, and they both grabbed the same asteroid - it would go poof?... or the ship(s) would?

Not immediately. Its generally safe enough to claw any number of ships on to the same asteroid as long as the whole combined structure remains physics loaded. On the other hand every time you swap to a distant ship or go back to the space center and return theres a chance the whole thing will suffer rapid dissassembly once physics loads up agian. Basically roll a 1d6 for each claw latched onto something. if any of them come up a 1 you've got a kaboom.

Whats really unsafe however is haveing a claw on an unfocused craft grab something. dont ever fly a ship into an active claw on a different ship, bad things happen when you do (this is what danny is doing with the planet destroyer)

[LordFerret]

Not immediately. Its generally safe enough to claw any number of ships on to the same asteroid as long as the whole combined structure remains physics loaded. On the other hand every time you swap to a distant ship or go back to the space center and return theres a chance the whole thing will suffer rapid dissassembly once physics loads up agian. Basically roll a 1d6 for each claw latched onto something. if any of them come up a 1 you've got a kaboom.

Whats really unsafe however is haveing a claw on an unfocused craft grab something. dont ever fly a ship into an active claw on a different ship, bad things happen when you do (this is what danny is doing with the planet destroyer)

Ok, thank you, adding that to my notes.