[1.1.3] Procedural Parts - Parts the way you want 'em - v1.2.5 July 3

[Northstar1989]

I was reading the whole debate about the fuel tank scaling before, and was amazed that nobody mentioned that fuel tanks are pressure vessels- and therefore the ratio between wall mass and volume remains constant as they scale.

So, for instance, a cylindrical tank with 2x the radius and height would have only 4x the surface area (and 8x the volume)- but its walls would also need to be twice as thick, because the stresses on a pressure vessel scale linearly with total volume (that is, the total stresses with 8x the volume are 8x as high, and thus require 8x the total tank mass to withstand- regardless of tank shape or size...)

Things like insulation don't scale linearly with volume, however- so if you have an insulated tank with 2x the radius and height, it would not require 8x the total insulation mass, as the insulation thickness would not need to be any greater...

However, this is just the tank thickness needed to contain the stresses for the pressure differential (zero on the launchpad, but 1 atmosphere by the time you climb high enough that background pressure becomes negligible...) and could be reduced by pressurizing tank contents less (as rocket fuels can be kept liquid at lower pressures if temperature is also reduced).

Structural mass (mass needed to hold up the weight of the rocket under thrust) requirements increase as well with larger rockets- a factor completely seperate from mass requirements to maintain the pressure differential...  However the same mass can be used to resist vertical loads (from the mass of rocket above a tank well section) and horizontal loads (from the pressure differential)- and in fact placing a wall under both types of load simultaneously increases its ability to resist horizontal loads- so only very tall/slender, large rockets placed under a lot of g's would require additional wall thickness beyond what is already needed to resist pressure stresses...

The main increases in structural mass requirements come at joints beween different elements (interstages, internal struts, etc)- but these increases are at least somewhat offset by decreases in insulation requirements, and enter a more complex picture also including things like plumbing requirements, anti-slosh systems, fuel pumps and stirrers, and control systems..

 

 

In short, the system currently in use is a very reasonable first approximation of mass-scaling for most reasonable rocket shapes and sizes, as the real equations are usually dominated by pressure vessel mass-requirements which maintain a linear relation between tank mass and volume.  Only with truly enormous, extremely tall rockets or very small ones with a lot of insulation do these scaling equations really start to break down...

 

Regards,

Northstar

[Northstar1989]

Also, as well as a recompile for 1.2, is there any chance we could get some adjustments to the cost-scaling to match the stock parts?  In particular, procedural versions of the fuel tanks tend to be much more expensive than stock tanks that hold the same units of fuel (annoying if I wish to uninstall the stock tanks and just use procedural ones to save on RAM, but tend to only play Career).  Also, the stock tanks get cheaper relative to their capacity the larger their size- and it would be nice to see economies of scale like this with the Procedural Parts tanks as well...

 

Regards,

Northstar

Edited December 27, 2016 by Northstar1989

[Spheniscine]

21 hours ago, Northstar1989 said:

Also, as well as a recompile for 1.2, is there any chance we could get some adjustments to the cost-scaling to match the stock parts?  In particular, procedural versions of the fuel tanks tend to be much more expensive than stock tanks that hold the same units of fuel (annoying if I wish to uninstall the stock tanks and just use procedural ones to save on RAM, but tend to only play Career).  Also, the stock tanks get cheaper relative to their capacity the larger their size- and it would be nice to see economies of scale like this with the Procedural Parts tanks as well...

 

Regards,

Northstar

In particular procedural SRBs are *much* more expensive than stock ones. Just gives me an excuse to use StageRecovery though

[Brainpop14]

Can someone update this to 1.2.2?

[RobertJPowell]

9 hours ago, Brainpop14 said:

Can someone update this to 1.2.2?

It is working fine with 1.2.2 -just needs a simple version file update to stop avc complaining!

[Azimech]

14 minutes ago, RobertJPowell said:

It is working fine with 1.2.2 -just needs a simple version file update to stop avc complaining!

I haven't read the last 5 pages or so but ... is it normal when reverting flight or undo, the game seems to be doing ... nothing?

 

[RobertJPowell]

1 minute ago, Azimech said:

I haven't read the last 5 pages or so but ... is it normal when reverting flight or undo, the game seems to be doing ... nothing?

 

That seems like odd behaviour - I wouldn't know as i don't use reverts on my playthroughs

[Azimech]

Messing around with PP again. A ... different kind of wings. They're modified structural fuselages. Sure, real wings or procedural wings are efficient. These are not.

Anyway ... if I can find the time, I might give my Procedural Parts Extended a rebirth.

 

[Enceos]

@Azimech Did you add ModuleLiftingSurface to their config?

[Liquid5n0w]

I've been using PP with Engineering Tech Tree in a career save.  I am confused about unlocking of upgrades for the procedural parts.  Would it be possible to have placeholder parts in the tech tree that denote what node unlocks what tech like they have done with the upgrades in KSP Interstellar?  The parts basically just tell you unlocking this node will upgrade a part you already have, but they have no cost and are not available to use.

Also, is there anyway to figure out what unlocks what for procedural parts with ETT?

 

 

[Geredis]

Where's the button for the procedural adjustment interface? It's saying in the tooltip for the procedural control surfaces and wings to change them up by pressing "J" or hitting the B9 tab button thing in the corner of the screen. But I have no B9 button, and hitting "J" doesn't work. Anyone got any solutions to this? It's making building aircraft impossible since the mod also seems to disable all of the default/vanilla flaps and the like.

[Rafael acevedo]

are you referring to proccedural parts or b9 procedural wings which is a different mod?

Edited January 6, 2017 by Rafael acevedo

[dlrk]

nevermind

Edited January 9, 2017 by dlrk
wrong thread

[XOC2008]

Will there be any plans to add something like a procedural oblong shape to the mix? I like the Firespitter shape but for some purposes it's too skinny, and doubling up to make it wider doesn't suit me since I like as few parts as possible, so the ability to scale one, make it a little wider or even skinnier, would just be perfect.

[TK421d]

can someone try to replicate a bug for me that i think is PP related?

 

in 1.2.2 in a brand new save, first launch:  make a rocket with 2 or more LFO tanks at max length.   Launch, to 80km-ish, then see if anything funky happens when you try to circularize.

 

Spoiler

when i start to burn the 2nd time my ships just go crazy, the PP parts start uncontrollable vibrations and/or the ships start spinning at incredible speeds until rapid-disassembly.

this is a heavily modded ksp, but i keep removing as many mods as i can but it keeps happening.

most relevant mods:  seti tech tree, and novapunch2 ~ thats the only LFO engine available for that first launch.

Edit: sorry, its 2nd launch, need that first tech node for the PP tank

Edited January 11, 2017 by TK421d

[DoubleUU]

On 12/30/2016 at 1:10 AM, RobertJPowell said:

It is working fine with 1.2.2 -just needs a simple version file update to stop avc complaining!

I think I must be missing something silly.  When I try and load 1.2.2 with the latest version of the plugin KSP complains (not AVC, which also notifies me, but base KSP is popping up the dialog) saying it's not compatible.  It doesn't seem to be working in game either.  I'm new at this so I'm probably doing something wrong.  Any help would be appreciated.

Edited January 12, 2017 by DoubleUU

[Rafael acevedo]

12 hours ago, DoubleUU said:

I think I must be missing something silly.  When I try and load 1.2.2 with the latest version of the plugin KSP complains (not AVC, which also notifies me, but base KSP is popping up the dialog) saying it's not compatible.  It doesn't seem to be working in game either.  I'm new at this so I'm probably doing something wrong.  Any help would be appreciated.

It should work, can you post the log, so we can take a look at it

[TK421d]

its not AVC, its KSP throwing the warning, this is the notification he's talking about.

  it still works in-game for me (but is acting strangely)

[Dermeister]

Does this work in 1.2? is it still being maintained? if not does any one know of an alternative?

[Rafael acevedo]

it works in 1.2

[Dermeister]

1 hour ago, Rafael acevedo said:

it works in 1.2

YAy

[Tyko]

4 hours ago, Rafael acevedo said:

it works in 1.2

Any idea if this will be maintained going forward?

[Rafael acevedo]

1 hour ago, Tyko said:

Any idea if this will be maintained going forward?

As far as I know it is being maintained, but not regurlaly. Suggest you go into github and send a couple of messages

[Starwaster]

6 hours ago, TK421d said:

its not AVC, its KSP throwing the warning, this is the notification he's talking about.

  it still works in-game for me (but is acting strangely)

Technically it's not 'KSP' that's responsible for that error. The mod itself uses a version checker which is widely used by a variety of mods and it only compares KSP (and optionally, Unity) versions to the version it has been configured as being compatible with. Some mods just check major and minor version changes. Others (like PP) include revision as well. Updates that involve revision only are usually safe but YMMV depending both on what specifically was in the update and how heavily the mod depends on KSP classes and functions. 

I've looked over the code a bit troubleshooting a DRE compatibility issue and it seems safe to use as is though for safety's sake it should at least have a recompile against the current KSP binaries. (that was just a cursory inspection so if I'm wrong, please don't shoot me!)

Edited January 12, 2017 by Starwaster

[DoubleUU]

2 hours ago, Starwaster said:

Technically it's not 'KSP' that's responsible for that error. The mod itself uses a version checker which is widely used by a variety of mods and it only compares KSP (and optionally, Unity) versions to the version it has been configured as being compatible with. Some mods just check major and minor version changes. Others (like PP) include revision as well. Updates that involve revision only are usually safe but YMMV depending both on what specifically was in the update and how heavily the mod depends on KSP classes and functions. 

I've looked over the code a bit troubleshooting a DRE compatibility issue and it seems safe to use as is though for safety's sake it should at least have a recompile against the current KSP binaries. (that was just a cursory inspection so if I'm wrong, please don't shoot me!)

At least I'm feeling a bit less like it must be just me.  I'm a Java developer but I'm familiar enough with VS and C# that I could probably get this to recompile and see if that sorts my issue.  Just seems like a lot of work.  I think I'd change that particular bit of code and make the version checker use the version file so it could at least be updated for minor version changes without requiring a recompile.  Maybe that's shortsighted though.

Edited January 13, 2017 by DoubleUU
Clarity