[1.9-1.10] Throttle Controlled Avionics

[allista]

OK so I'm still having some issues with TCA... when I turn TCA on, my throttle goes to full blast and I can't stop it with throttle inputs. This is new in 2.3.x - I just push "Y" or click ENABLE and it ... does this. Until I check and uncheck "throttle controls vertical speed". Then it kind of goes back to normal although the upper-right button continues to say "vertical velocity control." More puzzling is that when I actually have the "throttle controls vertical speed" *checked*... it doesn't. Doesn't seem to respond to the throttle at all in this mode. So the only way I can get TCA to do anything useful is to enable it, then check and uncheck vertical speed control, then it mostly kinda sorta acts like it did before 2.3 - albeit it IS a bit more stable now.

It should be noted that I'm using thermal turbojet engines (fully upgraded) from the KSP Interstellar Extended mod. It does seem to work better with the engines in closed cycle mode, but they respond quicker in general in that mode so that's likely why. I'm not sure if there's any specific compatibility issues between TCA and KSPIE's engines, but I thought I'd mention it just in case.

What exact version are you using?

And btw, could you test TCA with other engines? With stock, with others from KSPIE? Because I'm unable to reproduce it, so it should be either KSPIE, or some other peculiarities of your particular setting.

[smjjames]

It seems to be having a bit more trouble than usual with the ducted fans that I used earlier. Since those are badly in need of balancing, I'm going to make one that is rocket (or maybe jet) powered to test it's response times better.

[allista]

It seems to be having a bit more trouble than usual with the ducted fans that I used earlier. Since those are badly in need of balancing, I'm going to make one that is rocket (or maybe jet) powered to test it's response times better.

What kind of trouble? Slow response, or something else?

[smjjames]

What kind of trouble? Slow response, or something else?

Slow response I think, and it wasn't really maintaining the altitude very well. I did crash, but only because MJ SmartASS decided to flip upside down (nothing to do with TCA) and even though I was able to rotate back upright, it couldn't get enough speed to stop from crashing.

Edit: I just realized something, it would probably help better with testing if the engine info was shown.

Still having trouble with rough terrain. Tried to do this craft with those vertical engines as balanced and shortly after it started going over rough terrain, it started diving for some reason.

This one is before I set those engines as balanced thrust engines, it still has trouble dealing with rough terrain. Ignore the fact that the thermal overlay is on, I had noticed an unrelated heating anomaly.

These two are the ones with engine as balanced thrust. I'm not the one pushing downwards, I was trying to fight it and nose back up.

Edited July 30, 2015 by smjjames

[allista]

Slow response I think, and it wasn't really maintaining the altitude very well. I did crash, but only because MJ SmartASS decided to flip upside down (nothing to do with TCA) and even though I was able to rotate back upright, it couldn't get enough speed to stop from crashing.

Edit: I just realized something, it would probably help better with testing if the engine info was shown.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v214/smjjames/screenshot140_zpstr3k5zcx.png

Still having trouble with rough terrain. Tried to do this craft with those vertical engines as balanced and shortly after it started going over rough terrain, it started diving for some reason.

This one is before I set those engines as balanced thrust engines, it still has trouble dealing with rough terrain. Ignore the fact that the thermal overlay is on, I had noticed an unrelated heating anomaly.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v214/smjjames/screenshot142_zps9xtaqv5q.png

These two are the ones with engine as balanced thrust. I'm not the one pushing downwards, I was trying to fight it and nose back up.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v214/smjjames/screenshot143_zpsuykmvph7.png

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v214/smjjames/screenshot144_zpsesvmpycf.png

Hm... these pictures made me think: how much TWR your hover engines provide? Because if it's less than 1.5 it may be just too low to accelerate fast enough. Also, to balance your horizontal thrusters (its them that are trying to pitch down the craft; they're in Manual mode, right), TCA needs to decrease thrust of the aft hover engines which lowers the overall TWR.

[smjjames]

Hm... these pictures made me think: how much TWR your hover engines provide? Because if it's less than 1.5 it may be just too low to accelerate fast enough. Also, to balance your horizontal thrusters (its them that are trying to pitch down the craft; they're in Manual mode, right), TCA needs to decrease thrust of the aft hover engines which lowers the overall TWR.

For the ducted fan one, while the MJ deltaV window doesn't show anything, the vessel info claims a surface TWR of 1.21 in the VAB, doesn't show anything in flight.

I don't have that second configuration anymore, but I believe it was less than 1.5.

[allista]

For the ducted fan one, while the MJ deltaV window doesn't show anything, the vessel info claims a surface TWR of 1.21 in the VAB, doesn't show anything in flight.

I don't have that second configuration anymore, but I believe it was less than 1.5.

So your maximum vertical acceleration is (TWR-1)g, which is ~2m/s2 in the first case. Lets say you are flying at 250m/s with zero vertical speed at 200m over the slope of 10deg. This is equivalent to the relative vertical speed of -250*tan(10)=-44m/s (i.e. the ground is approaching your craft at that speed). To counter that speed you have 200/44=4.55secs; but even if your engines react instantly you will only gain 2*4.55=9.1m/s.

[smjjames]

So your maximum vertical acceleration is (TWR-1)g, which is ~2m/s2 in the first case. Lets say you are flying at 250m/s with zero vertical speed at 200m over the slope of 10deg. This is equivalent to the relative vertical speed of -250*tan(10)=-44m/s (i.e. the ground is approaching your craft at that speed). To counter that speed you have 200/44=4.55secs; but even if your engines react instantly you will only gain 2*4.55=9.1m/s.

Anyways, yeah, I made one with a surface TWR of 2 and it worked a whole lot better.

Edit: The kill horizontial speed using RCS works nicely with non-atmospheric worlds. Only tried minmus so far though.

Edited July 31, 2015 by smjjames

[Gargamel]

Got my plane to work. Turned out with a full fuel load, it was too heavy for VTO, but worked great in a STO mode. So it wasn't a lack of gimbal as the issue, but an overwieght plane that made it pivot on the front wheel, and then crash. VL worked great after burning off some fuel. Made a functional bomber out of it too! Latest version carries 8 - 100 unit LF bombs, plus 2 100 unit LF drop tanks. After doing a STO, and then using Hyper edit to simulate an air to air refueling, plenty of fuel to fly over to the peninsula due East of KSP at high Mach, drop the bombs in the "combat zone" and fly back, landing vertically in front of the SPH. It does tend to tip over a bit at the last moment, but I got that under control too. If anybody wants, I'll post up the craft file, I THINK the only mod's required would be MRS. I do use MJ, but that would be optional, and the main engines are the high temp variations of the stock, but other things explode first, so I'll swap them out for the stock.

So, thanks for a very cool mod!

[Comwarrior]

I have a suggestion for improvement but first i'd like to say I love TCA and it has saved many kerbals from certain death due to various launch disasters.

I have a suggestion for an additional mode for the engines.

Recently I launched my heaviest ship live on stream... 1.2 Mega ton SSTO Space Station.

Due to low frame-rate... Mechjeb was used for ascent. The ascent was fine until it came to circularisation... Mechjeb shut the throttle down and thus the manuver engines did not respond and the thing did not turn over.

That being said... i've just noticed a beta version that i'm now downloading...

So, I'd like to see and additional mode 'RCS mode' when the engines always operate at 100% regardless of throttle and they only respond to rotation / translation request and NOT attempt to thrust balance. Basically, for those of us that routinely launch 100Kt ships and entire space stations in one go we can then make our own RCS quads with engines. Unless i'm doing something wrong... manuver engines don't respond to translation control requests.

Edited August 3, 2015 by Comwarrior

[allista]

I have a suggestion for improvement but first i'd like to say I love TCA and it has saved many kerbals from certain death due to various launch disasters.

I have a suggestion for an additional mode for the engines.

Recently I launched my heaviest ship live on stream... 1.2 Mega ton SSTO Space Station.

Due to low frame-rate... Mechjeb was used for ascent. The ascent was fine until it came to circularisation... Mechjeb shut the throttle down and thus the manuver engines did not respond and the thing did not turn over.

That being said... i've just noticed a beta version that i'm now downloading...

So, I'd like to see and additional mode 'RCS mode' when the engines always operate at 100% regardless of throttle and they only respond to rotation / translation request and NOT attempt to thrust balance. Basically, for those of us that routinely launch 100Kt ships and entire space stations in one go we can then make our own RCS quads with engines. Unless i'm doing something wrong... manuver engines don't respond to translation control requests.

http://i1244.photobucket.com/albums/gg573/comwarrior69/screenshot16.png

http://i1244.photobucket.com/albums/gg573/comwarrior69/screenshot21_1.png

I'm afraid this is not possible: each ModuleEngine responds to the mainThrottle independently, so if it's set to 0, no matter the thrust limit, engine won't fire. That's why RCS is there. One plausible option for such beasts is to have custom-made (or TweakScale-d) RCS thrusters with big enough thrusting power.

*BTW, in the next beta which I'm currently testing maneuver engines will respond to translation controls.

Edited August 3, 2015 by allista

[includao]

I love this mod <3

[Cucumbor]

just tusted this mod with my moon lander can with thrusters. It is awesome! Youre genius! áÿðüтñþ ÷ð þтûøчýыù üþô.

[ss8913]

I'm still having trouble with certain engines, and a general problem with all engines... the general problem is if I just push Y to enable it and don't do anything else, it simply throttles all the engines to 0. This is new in the current version (non-beta) as it didn't do this before. I have to check and uncheck the 'throttle controls vertical speed' - but it stays stuck in 'vertical speed' mode according to the upper-right button on the TCA window until i revert to launch. If I do this, then it works like before (toggle on then off) even though it says it's stuck in vertical speed mode.. and it seems to work pretty well except with the KAX jumpjet engines, which it seems to set a hard limit of 42% on no matter how well balanced they are (ie, I can turn off TCA and take off vertically with only minimal RCS compensation, but turn on TCA and it limits the thrust to 42% on each engine and I go nowhere).

Those engines are underpowered anyway, though, so I'm really more concerned about the first thing I mentioned. Or is this a case of me needing to install the beta and try to reproduce it with that?

[allista]

I'm still having trouble with certain engines, and a general problem with all engines... the general problem is if I just push Y to enable it and don't do anything else, it simply throttles all the engines to 0. This is new in the current version (non-beta) as it didn't do this before. I have to check and uncheck the 'throttle controls vertical speed' - but it stays stuck in 'vertical speed' mode according to the upper-right button on the TCA window until i revert to launch. If I do this, then it works like before (toggle on then off) even though it says it's stuck in vertical speed mode.. and it seems to work pretty well except with the KAX jumpjet engines, which it seems to set a hard limit of 42% on no matter how well balanced they are (ie, I can turn off TCA and take off vertically with only minimal RCS compensation, but turn on TCA and it limits the thrust to 42% on each engine and I go nowhere).

Those engines are underpowered anyway, though, so I'm really more concerned about the first thing I mentioned. Or is this a case of me needing to install the beta and try to reproduce it with that?

I'll check the thing with KAX.

As for the first problem, what exact version do you use? v2.3.0 or v2.3.0.1?

EDIT: KAX Jum Jets' configuration of ModuleEngines is not converted to KSP-1.0 format. Until they update their configs, I cannot provide any support; nor can TCA work with them properly.

Edited August 6, 2015 by allista

[Cucumbor]

It doesnt work on minmus - always throttle, regartless of vertical speed.

[allista]

It doesnt work on minmus - always throttle, regartless of vertical speed.

"It"? Could you please be more descriptive?

[ss8913]

I'll check the thing with KAX.

As for the first problem, what exact version do you use? v2.3.0 or v2.3.0.1?

EDIT: KAX Jum Jets' configuration of ModuleEngines is not converted to KSP-1.0 format. Until they update their configs, I cannot provide any support; nor can TCA work with them properly.

OK, fair enough. as for the more serious issue, though, I appear to be using 2.3.0 - I suppose I incorrectly assumed that CKAN would pull down the latest for me - if the CKAN metadata isn't going to be fixed for a while, I can just get the 2.3.0.1 update from here and install by hand, if you think that will fix it (?)

[Cucumbor]

"It"? Could you please be more descriptive?

Sorry for hebrew below

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[allista]

OK, fair enough. as for the more serious issue, though, I appear to be using 2.3.0 - I suppose I incorrectly assumed that CKAN would pull down the latest for me - if the CKAN metadata isn't going to be fixed for a while, I can just get the 2.3.0.1 update from here and install by hand, if you think that will fix it (?)

Yep, that should fix the issue.

I'll check the problem with the CKAN. Again

- - - Updated - - -

Sorry for hebrew below

Ã’ þñщõü ÿрø ÿþÿытúõ òыÑÂтðòøть ûюñþõ þтрøцðтõûьýþõ øûø ÿþûþöøтõûьýþõ уÑÂúþрõýøõ ôòøóðтõûø ýðчøýðют рðñþтðть ýð üøýøüðûьýую üþщýþÑÂÑ‚ÑŒ ò ýõ÷ðòøÑÂøüþÑÂтø þт тõúущõóþ уÑÂúþрõýøÑÂ, ýðÿрøüõр, ÑÂтþю ýð üøýüуÑÂõ, òыñøрðю уÑÂúþрýøõ 9 ü\c, ôòøóðтõûø ñыÑÂтрþ ýðñøрðют ÑÂтþ ÷ýðчõýøõ, ð ÿþтþü ýðчøýðют ÿþÑÂтþÑÂýýþ рðñþтðть ýð üøýøüðûьýþù Ñ‚ÑÂóõ, ò ýõ÷ðòøÑÂøüþÑÂтø þт тõúущõóþ ÷ýðчõýøѠуÑÂúþрõýøÑÂ.

ÒõрÑÂøѠúðúðÑÂ? ÃËœ úðúøõ ôòøóðтõûø? Òþþñщõ, хþрþшþ ñы ÑÂúрøýшþтþò.

*ü/c -- ÑÂтþ ÑÂúþрþÑÂÑ‚ÑŒ

[bloodbird]

i don't understand, i have no button for TCA in the applauncher, in the toolbar the button show in the list of button i can set to be visible, but it never is in the toolbar itself so i can't open it and "Y" certaintly doesn't do anything at all.

Does this need to be install in a different way then other mods?

[allista]

i don't understand, i have no button for TCA in the applauncher, in the toolbar the button show in the list of button i can set to be visible, but it never is in the toolbar itself so i can't open it and "Y" certaintly doesn't do anything at all.

Does this need to be install in a different way then other mods?

Are you playing in the career mod?

[bloodbird]

Are you playing in the career mod?

yes i am

[Tarheel1999]

yes i am

From the first post:

Instructions

TCA availability and interface:

TCA becomes available if two conditions are met: the vessel has engines (excluding RCS thrusters) and, in career mode, the "Throttle Controlled Avionics Subsystem" is purchased in the R&D bulding.

Note, that TCA is a software, so you don't need any special part to be installed on a vessel: all vessels with engines are upgraded automatically with TCA.

[includao]

I'm going to use TCA to create my own Grasshopper-like reusable rocket to make vertical takeoffs and vertical landings. Is there any limitation to the system when using one rocket/egine or I must include additional ones for optimal solution?

EDIT: it seems to work better or more balanced with more than one engine (I've added radial engines to my single-rocket solution).

Edited August 9, 2015 by includao