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Everything posted by RocketSquid

  1. I'm excited to use this mod, but is it possible to disable death by old age?
  2. Interlude: After-action report: "Okay, wait, why am I in here again?" asked Malong Kerman "We have reason to believe your most recent mission may have had something to do with the Event," replied the black-suited kerbal across the table from her. "Oh, okay, well, it all started on the old airfield." "We were all scheduled to test the new Buffalo Polar Explorer, and what better way to do that than by exploring the polar ice caps!" "I kept saying a normal plane would probably be fine for this, but the other guy, uh, Sheldon? said the thing we were looking for was on unexplored terrain and we needed to be ready for anything." "I didn't think we were looking for anything, but you know how those KPF guys can be sometimes." "Anyways, the Buffalo Polar Explorer was this cool VTOL plane rover, uh, thingy, and it was my job to fly it." "Oh! I just remembered! There was this weird orb!" "Weird orb, you say?" "Yeah, it followed us the whole time. Kinda creepy. Anyways, I did a great job of taking us off, and then I flipped one pair of engines to forward mode so we could get going." "Then eventually we got enough speed to put them all in forward, and we were off!" "Zoom!" "Now, this was when, uh, Shelbert? started getting really weird. He insisted we shut down all communications except navigation." "That was really confusing, but I did it anyways since he was technically in charge and all that junk." "Pretty soon we were over land, and the fuel light began to blink after that, so I started to land the plane." "But, uh, Shelder? got mad at that and tried to wrestle the controls away from me!" "And when I say tried to I mean did, pretty immediately. I'm not very good at wrestling." "He said something about refueling jets, and landing being bad, and probably some other things too, but I was trying to spot the orb. It probably went underneath of us or something." "Hey, the refueling jet pilots probably saw the orb!" "We'll be sure to bring them in next. Please continue." "Oh, well, anyways, blah blah blah, flying stuff, and then suddenly, BAM, north pole!" "Well, technically not the north pole, just the ice cap, and it looked really zigzaggy and fake. Just between you and me..." "What?" "I think it probably wasn't rendering in right." "Oh god, not another one." "What was that?" "Nothing. Please just continue with the story." "Oh, okay. After we got there, we swerved east. Magdun, our scientist, said the scans showed two anomalies on the ice cap." "We were supposed to go look closer with the fancy scanner. There was also some weird science stuff in the back, but I didn't know what any of that was for." "Lemme tell ya, the ice cap is not very interesting to fly over. Anyways, once we were almost there, she told us to turn around. Something about 'just a randolith' and 'waste of time'" "It was really boring, but we got to where the other one was supposed to be, and wouldn't you know it, there's some hills in the way!" "Obviously we needed to land, which is lame, because flying is the coolest way to travel." "But I did it anyways, and before you knew it we were all on the ground." "Then, uh, Shellim? started driving, on account of I don't actually have a driver's license because cars suck and aren't as cool as planes or rockets or even boats." "When we finally got to the hills, I saw something extraordinary! There was some sort of weird shiny thing in the ice!" "Oh, that was also when I got food poisoning. I think. Technically it takes like, days for it to develop, so really it was probably the pre-flight snacks or something." "Anyways, as we got closer to the weird thing, I saw that it was a crashed alien UFO! Except it was clearly a flying saucer, and it wasn't flying. So I guess just a crashed alien O? The mechanic guy, Dudnie, was thrilled, since he'd been talking about aliens the whole time. Said he got abducted and taken out past minmus, which I thought was very silly, but he seemed to know what he was talking about so I just went with it." "Now, we couldn't actually get up to it because the wheels were too weak, but then I had the genius idea to turn on the compressed air thrusters!" "We shoved ourselves valiantly towards it, and managed to set our wing down on top of it for support!" "Then Magdun turned on all the weird science stuff, and also I had to go out to barf because we ran out of bags." "I decided to climb on the flying saucer, just for fun, but Magdun yelled at me for it so I got off. And that's when rescue came?" "Rescue?" "Oh, yeah, apparently when I'd started looking sick earlier the engineer guy, uh, Samnard? called for rescue. He expected like, a drone with some tummy meds, but instead we got a dashingly handsome kerbal coming in on a snowmobile to carry me home, and it's not like you can say no to a free snowmobile ride, can you?" "Now, back up, when you say 'weird science stuff', does that include the K2 "Kray-Kray" supercomputer? It would look like three black boxes in a white metal frame." "Hmm, I definitely saw something like that on the plane, and come to think of it, it did have a lot of blinky lights on it, so it sure looked on." "Thank you. You're free to leave. Please, try to keep quiet about all this." As she left, the black-suited kerman turned, and pulled out a radio. A clunky old model, it was more than capable of surviving the Event, even as most others on Kerbin had been fried. "It's as we've feared. When we reached out, something answered. Probably multiple somethings." A muffled voice came through the earpiece. "Yes, sir, I understand. I'll put my best agents on the task."
  3. Against all odds, I've managed to get the save up to the latest version. I have no idea how well it will work in the long term, and I already had to shut off the commnet because it stopped working, but it's functioning again and I should have a chapter up sometime next week, and possibly one or two more later in the month.
  4. The problem seems to be capitalization. The ones in the files were capitalized, and if I substituted it for the new one but didn't change the capitalization it didn't work. If I change it to lowercase, it works fine.
  5. Err, sorry, not the craft files. Craft in the save act like the part doesn't exist. Specifically they say that they're missing "Castor.Control.1.P". If there's a new equivalent I can probably just edit it in.
  6. For whatever reason old vessels with the Castor 1P core don't properly load, even though the part is kept in as a legacy part. Is there any way to fix this?
  7. I'm so hyped I'm having a hard time breathing.
  8. Here:
  9. I updated my heavily modded install to 1.7, and rockets have notably started buckling. Additionally, large rockets seem to sink into launch clamps. This happens in spite of autostruts, physical struts, and rigid attachments being on. The buckling seems limited to certain parts (I've observed it most prominently with the 3.75m docking ports from DSEV, but can't tell if it's just them, just docking ports, or would happen with any similarly-shaped part. I have a screenshot of my mods folder below:
  10. A while back, I realized that the structural tubes from Making History were the perfect size to serve as ducts for electric props. While this does not seem to confer the huge thrust increase it does in real life, it does provide a durability increase, as well as making propellers much easier to construct: slap one rotor onto the top internal node, another on the bottom internal node, add some blades, and you have an instant counter-rotating propeller which, as a bonus, can be easily mounted on a servo or have things mounted on it. I immediately made some standardized ones and went to work. I'm going to list these by vehicle type, though some don't fit evenly. Coleopters: Coleoplanes Tiltrotor Airplanes [Coming Soon]
  11. When I try to use an action group, I get told the part cannot be locked because it's moving. If I try to do it manually, I have to click it multiple times to get it to work, and even then it isn't fully secure and will start flailing at higher speeds. I have not tried autostrutting, but unless that can be done through an action group it may be difficult to properly toggle during flight.
  12. I’ve tried to make a tiltrotor plane, but inevitably the rotors end up tilting mid-flight, which sends the craft into an inescapable spin. Locking the servos helps somewhat, but is very difficult to do while the craft is flying. The only solution I’ve found is to use same-vessel docking, but that means it can’t switch back into VTOL to land. Is there any good way to solve this problem?
  13. Oh, right, I should probably be adjusting my prop pitch and not just leaving it at a constant value.
  14. You don't have to set the thrust manually. Just bind the RPM limit to the main throttle axis group, and the "activate rotor" action to the stage action group, and it will behave like any other engine.
  15. In trying to reinforce the engine connections on a tiltrotor plane (the engines kept flailing themselves into VTOL mode during normal flight) I came to the idea of using docking ports. It works perfectly except for one problem: neither action groups nor the KAL-1000 controller can make the ports undock. The only way to do so is through the PAW. I'm wondering whether this is a bug with the game, or something I'm doing wrong.
  16. I wanted to see what the smallest helicopter I could make was. As it turns out, you can make some pretty dang small helicopters. Jeb here has graciously agreed to test it. Power comes from a single RTG. Control is wholly provided by two reaction wheels, and while there is some clipping involved, it was mostly to avoid having to redo the frame. I'll probably release a clipping-free version later. The first, most important question: can it take off? Yes Next, less important question: Can it land? Indeed it can! Jeb has survived every test with it, and I can assure you that the helicopter blades did eventually come down. Final, most important question: Where can I get me one of these bad boys? Right here:
  17. I'm fairly sure that was the case, but the problem was that I couldn't access the play mode selector because the game wouldn't let me to the title screen.
  18. For some reason, this mod is making B9 part switch throw a fatal exception while loading, claiming it can't find water tanks. I've checked and verified that there is a water tank template.
  19. So, after realizing that struts can have their angular and linear strengths adjusted independently, I realized that a strut with linear but no angular strength could be useful for piston engines, robotic linkages, and the like. I then realized that a strut with angular strength but no linear strength would pair exceptionally well with a piston. I threw together some quick module manager patches to create both, then opened the game and began testing. Note: all robotic parts were operating with ten times their normal force, simply because I forgot to remove an earlier patch. 0 angular, 150 linear (like the tie rods in a car or train): Remarkably difficult to use. Unless you're extremely good at eyeballing the relative positions of the strut endpoints, you're probably going to end up with some unwanted linear force, causing your mechanism to grind to a halt. The offset tool can help, but in all likelihood you'd need some sort of alignment indicator addon to figure out precisely where the thing is free to rotate and where it isn't. I might try lowering the linear strength a bit, but sooner or later there's no real point. 0 linear, 150 angular (Like a telescoping piston): This one turned out somewhat better, although this might just have to do with the robotic parts rather than the actual struts. When tested with a piston, it could extend, albeit with some resistance. When tested with a hinge, it could barely even wiggle. Have a few screenshots here. This one is a bit more niche than the other one, but would be good to cut down on wobbliness in a piston. Again, alignment is an issue. If there was a way to get both ends of the strut to angle snap it would be a lot less of an issue for this part. Next steps: Try to find the ideal linear strength for the tie rod part, so as to get more freedom of motion without compromising function too much. Try to create a shock absorber part See if there's a use for these in legs See what happens if I extend one beyond its maximum length See if it's possible to create some sort of fancy end bit that will give them limits to their range of motion See if it's possible to use an extremely short version of the tie rod as a weird hinge
  20. Trying to make a nice giant spider mech, and it's going... fine... yes, perfectly fine. Has not exploded or anything. I might want to change up the hinges, they're the cause of most of the problems. I've heard servos are a bit stronger.
  21. I believe they're planning on using one for the gateway. They're currently using one on the ISS. The difference, of course, is that their designs use specialized fixtures on the station, and mine uses giant robotic claws that would almost certainly poke holes in all the important bits of the spacecraft.
  22. On realizing that my spider-mech could not actually lift itself from the ground due to the limits of hinges and pistons, I decided to take matters into my own hands and make a module manager patch to increase the motor strengths of all robotic parts. My discoveries: 1. Hinges are very weak compared to pistons, even when increased beyond all reasonable limits. 2. At 10x the normal force, a piston can lift as much as the part itself can handle. Pistons lifted every load, right up until the ones that could force the piston through the foot and into the ground 3. Geometry is very, very important. While a vertically oriented piston can lift an enormous amount, one at an angle can have a hard time extending at all. 4. If a part clips into a piston, it will very likely stop the piston from working, regardless of the actual force of the piston. 5. Since power draw scales with absolute force, not force percent, it gets very intense. Easily seeing draw in the high hundreds for some of the heavy lift test. Tomorrow, I'm going to test with some even higher levels. There's a very good chance that all of them will just instantly destroy whatever they're attached to. I'll also see if it's possible to lash a bunch of pistons together with struts to serve as larger ones.
  23. Okay, by looking at the main log, I've found that the culprit is... TAC-LS First step is a clean reinstall. If that doesn't work, either I'm looking around for a fix or I'm lobotomizing the mod.