Hovercraft Parts

[JMBuilder]

It's tough building boats in KSP, so instead of trudging slowly through the seas, why not skim quickly over them? I've got a few parts in mind to make proper amphibious vehicles a reality.

1. Hovercraft Balloon

A simple canvas balloon with a built-in propeller designed for ground-effect hovering. It would consume electricity at a relatively high rate. Integrated propellers could gimbal, allowing decent movement without the need for other engines. Unlike wheels, the hovercraft balloons would allow a vehicle to drift side to side (similar to RCS thrusters), giving it excellent maneuverability over both land and sea.

2. Electric Propeller

This has been suggested many times, and would have many useful applications, especially for hovercrafts and airships. While the hovercraft balloons could gimbal, propellers would provide some extra speed.

3. Turbine Generator

A device that uses movement through atmosphere to generate electricity. Its energy production would vary depending on the vehicle's speed. The faster the vehicle moves, the more electricity the turbine produces.

4. Emergency Inflatable

If your hovercraft balloons run out of power or you have a bit of a wreck at sea, you can deploy these devices to make sure you remain floating upright until you can recharge or until help arrives.

Hovercrafts, along with airships, would make missions to planets with extensive oceans much easier and much more interesting. What do you guys think?

[klgraham1013]

They could just fix the water. Then we could have boats.

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Also. Hovercrafts are cool.

[wasml]

Good idea - your not the first to suggest this. Unfortunately the processing power to do a proper sim would probably bring the game to a halt. This leaves something that looks and acts like a hover craft - the only thing I've seen is lo-fi's anti grav repulsors http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/84102. I've also seen fans around though I don't recall which mod(s) had them. For the inflatables - I think RoverDude had some at one point.

[TYRT]

Good idea but before hovercraft balloon, we need an airbag for recovery from sea(idk how to define it, hope you got it.)

[Orum]

I'm working on these--well, I started a little over a year ago on hovercraft parts, but real-life stuff took over so I haven't been back to KSP until the last few months. However, now that my fuel cells are released I'm going to get back to working on my hovercraft stuff, though not quite as you described. I tried the realistic "skirt" style hovercraft, but I honestly don't feel like that style belongs in a game that is renown for the uniqueness of user creations. So, I'll be doing things a little differently but I hope they'll be more fun and flexible to use as a result.

The plugin itself is actually mostly done, just the complicated stabilization is left (and this is non-trivial to do correctly). The models themselves I haven't started yet, but hopefully they won't take too long now that I'm getting familiar with blender.

[LitaAlto]

I second wasml's suggestion of the Kerbal Foundries anti-grav repulsors. It may not look hovercraft-y but it works really well for the task.

[smjjames]

2. Well, theres various propellers around that might not need fuel. One that I know of is the hover fan in Allistas hangar mod.

3. Allistas hangar mod also has a turboshaft generator which is supposed to generate electricity for a dynamo, but not sure about dependent on speed, haven't used it myself.