EPTi expect patches in the next 12-48 hours dealing with atmosphere anyway. I don't view that much KSP media but there are a lot of complaints out there
Kerbal Space Program - Page 34
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Cyro
United Kingdom20275 Posts
i expect patches in the next 12-48 hours dealing with atmosphere anyway. I don't view that much KSP media but there are a lot of complaints out there | ||
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Cyro
United Kingdom20275 Posts
i made a new craft quickly, the first thing that i immediately noticed was very low takeoff speed and very difficult to land again (like 0.9, you can just sort of awkwardly glide 500 meters off the ground at ~20-80 meters per second for like half an hour and the lift almost completely counteracts gravity while maintaining your speed) the second thing i noticed was that my little plane with a rapier plateu'd at mach 1. The drag increase when hitting it (paired with soupy atmosphere) prevented it from going faster which prevented the engine from revving up further which prevented it from going faster etcetc. Overall i still have pretty much exactly the same feeling here: "Wtf are you doing, revert to 1.0". Luckily that's quite easy to do, requiring only a minor edit to a config file you can revert it to the 1.0 aerodynamics until Squad patches it by going to the physics.cfg in the Ksp folder and replace the old numbers with these new ones dragMultiplier = 6.0 dragCubeMultiplier = 0.06 liftMultiplier = 0.038 bodyLiftMultiplier = 8 I feel that in the 1.0 atmosphere, air breathing engines are overpowered at 0-15km and underpowered for SSTO's due to that very aggressive height cap. I'd feel much better if they went back to 1.0 atmosphere, drastically reduced the thrust on the air engines (even by 1.5x) but let them fly at 1.5 - 2.5x higher altitude on the thrust dropoff curve. They can figure out a solution for heating and parachutes. It doesn't have to be perfect, just relevant sometimes and fun. | ||
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felisconcolori
United States6168 Posts
That would have been absolutely impossible (due to physics render range, among many other reasons) before now. This was amazing. + Show Spoiler + ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/RA7aeSP.png) ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/ZcJu3Ko.png) Highlight VOD of the shuttle deploy and landing - http://www.twitch.tv/ej_sa/v/4675536 | ||
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stenole
Norway868 Posts
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Cyro
United Kingdom20275 Posts
I think the impact of 1.02 is exaggerated. It was a small tradeoff in favour of rockets over space planes.It's probably not easy to balance realistic planes with capsules which are supposed to have trouble with heating when arriving from interplanetary travel. In real life things enter the atmosphere at much higher speeds than we deal with on Kerbin. I don't think it's over-exaggerated at all, a 44% increase in lift is huge and ridiculous. It was fine before and stuff behaved as it was supposed to at low speeds. I would argue that engine imbalance was the main reason for issues at high speeds. In favor of rockets? It fucked rockets too, it just screwed up planes more. The stall speed of my new Mach 3 cruiser is ~38m/s when pointed flat to the horizon. It's just too low, it looks and feels silly. I'm going to try it on 1.0 atmo now, to check how behavior is at high and low speed. @ felis - cool, any VOD? --- Checked my speeds, my max speed is a good 30-40% higher with 1.0 aero and i'm stalling out at higher speeds. I think a good test would be to do would be a glide duration test - that's the biggest difference in feel, stuff just glides forever in the thick atmo and you can tab out and forget you were even playing the game and then hear an explosion 15 minutes later when it finally slows down to 35m/s and stalls out. Takeoff speed is closer to 80m/s, while before it was ~50. --- Mach ~4.5 cruiser. I just ripped it in half by activating air brakes at mach 1.6  Brakes work at mach 1.3*. I'l say for safety, drop below mach 1 for use :D *AS LONG AS THE CRAFT IS STABLE, if it's already under a bit of shock and bouncing back and forth it can be ripped in half at lower speeds. Trust the g-force meter~ funny how top speed scales. The brakes stop it from getting fast enough for the engines to ramp up their thrust, so it's stuck at 1/8'th of its max speed when they're open. Good for re-entry, too. This thing re-enters like a dream, i think it'd be fine with heating enabled. Tested re-entry with 1.0 atmosphere, 100% heating and -1.35km/s vertical velocity. That's a steep descent and one of the more dangerous profiles i think. It barely heated a few degrees and fell in a stable way :D ..and then i accelerated through mach 3 and blew up my shock cone intakes. Oops :D edit: I'm not getting it to orbit. Haven't even tried yet without oxidizer taken out of the tanks, they're just sub-orbital trajectories done entirely with liquid fuel. When i originally started design, i wanted a supersonic atmospheric craft and kinda nudged it towards spaceplane capability.. but i'm not sure if it's good enough for that. The biggest design flaw i seem to have is too big cross section viewing from underneath. When i pitch against prograde, the air resistance slams the plane to a halt and it can stall it out (or worse, flip it momentarily out of control) | ||
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Cyro
United Kingdom20275 Posts
LMAO Don't update software on a friday night! (: pitched nose down slightly too hard and air resistance took over (g-force meter starts to rise from 3 and jumps up to 9 then drops back again~ you can see quite clearly when i had control and when i didn't from looking at it) can't fall out of the sky like that in 0.9 and 1.0.2 atmosphere :D i was only ~300m above the surface so if i played perfectly i might have recovered but it would have been close | ||
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stenole
Norway868 Posts
--- After some prototyping cycles, I have created a successful SSTO cargo plane design: + Show Spoiler + ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/uBrHhm6.jpg) - It takes off like a dream - Gets up to orbit without any staging - Tested to bring 20t of cargo fitted in an Mk3 large cargo bay (for reference, the large orange tank weighs 36t) - Reenters LKO without burning up or breaking apart - Has turbojet engines to get itself back to KSC without needing too much fuel - Easily controllable and has enough lift to comfortably land at 100 m/s on return - Should be able to do everything with 10% liquid fuel left over and 5% oxidizer - Stalls at about 55 m/s - Weighs 60t and carries up to 65t of propellant Example payload: + Show Spoiler + ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/FyyVJeo.jpg) SSTOs are not dead in 1.02, but they sure are harder to make than in 0.90. | ||
Fecalfeast
Canada11355 Posts
Is flying like 100x harder now? I understand the heat mechanic actually exists and that's cool but it feels like when I'm trying to get a rocket into orbit I have to clear the entire atmosphere before angling my ship. What's the plan for getting a basic rocket to mun now? Use to be that I could pitch to 45º at 9000m and have a really easy trajectory for getting into orbit. Now if I can get 20º without my ship spiraling out of control I feel accomplished | ||
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Millitron
United States2611 Posts
On May 07 2015 09:02 Fecalfeast wrote: I played sandbox when like 0.2 or some early build was out until "campaign" came out (science mode or classic campaign in release version) and decided to stop playing until the game was released. Is flying like 100x harder now? I understand the heat mechanic actually exists and that's cool but it feels like when I'm trying to get a rocket into orbit I have to clear the entire atmosphere before angling my ship. What's the plan for getting a basic rocket to mun now? Use to be that I could pitch to 45º at 9000m and have a really easy trajectory for getting into orbit. Now if I can get 20º without my ship spiraling out of control I feel accomplished You want to smoothly pitch over while in the atmosphere. You can't pitch over all at once anymore, or aerodynamics makes you its bitch. What happens if you pitch too quickly, is that your pointing vector becomes too different from your velocity vector, and since rockets tend to have all their weight towards the bottom, it will tend to want to point the wrong way. As long as you don't get too far from your velocity vector, the aerodynamic forces that try to flip you stay small. The further from your velocity vector you get, the stronger those forces get, and the more likely you are to flip out of control. Start pitching basically as soon as you leave the pad, such that you reach 45º at around 10,000m. Once you're around 20,000m, aerodynamics won't screw you up anymore, so you don't have to be so careful. | ||
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stenole
Norway868 Posts
On May 07 2015 09:31 Millitron wrote: You want to smoothly pitch over while in the atmosphere. You can't pitch over all at once anymore, or aerodynamics makes you its bitch. What happens if you pitch too quickly, is that your pointing vector becomes too different from your velocity vector, and since rockets tend to have all their weight towards the bottom, it will tend to want to point the wrong way. As long as you don't get too far from your velocity vector, the aerodynamic forces that try to flip you stay small. The further from your velocity vector you get, the stronger those forces get, and the more likely you are to flip out of control. Start pitching basically as soon as you leave the pad, such that you reach 45º at around 10,000m. Once you're around 20,000m, aerodynamics won't screw you up anymore, so you don't have to be so careful. It could be helpful to press F12 to see the force vectors working on your rocket. It shows pretty well what is happening when your rocket flips. Fins can be helpful if keeping the rocket stable becomes a problem. It should also be noted that the air applies more forces on the rocket at mach 1 (around 350m/s when the cloudy streaks show up around exposed surfaces). Like Millitron says, point the rocket roughly in the direction it is going and manouver very gradually. If you need your rocket to go more towards the horizon than turning regularly will allow, you can throttle down a little bit. | ||
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felisconcolori
United States6168 Posts
Further, my TWR changes greatly during flight - in the SPH, it reads 1.5ish. On the runway, the same. Throttle up and fire the engines, it drops to 0.7. Then climbs above 1, but on pitch up it drops back below 1. A little frustrating, when it's got upwards of 8 rapiers - and that used to be a lot of thrust to weight. Like, yesterday. Also, when I turn on aerodynamic forces... my payload is causing a LOT of drag. From inside of the MK3 long cargo bay, with the door closed. It looks like the cargo bay is not occluding the air flow from the cargo, and it appears (from what I've seen and what I've seen on streams) that engines currently are also not occluded from airflow by the aircraft. On the plus side, I can go pretty fast under 1000m and not explode, or even heat up, for some time. I think there is some balancing still to go with the aerodynamic model. | ||
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Fecalfeast
Canada11355 Posts
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Jetaap
France4814 Posts
They get experience while doing missions in space (ex: orbiting the mun, minmus etc...) and when they level up they get new skills according to their class. Pilots can help stabilise your ship (works like SAS), but more interestingly he can also point it to the prograde/retrograde marker, or according to your manoeuver node. If you've used mechjeb in the past it works like SMARTASS. Engineers can repack chutes, repair parts (rover wheels i think?), scientist can improve the science you get and even reset parts like the goo container/lab when they are high level. Concerning the facilities you need to upgrade then otherwise you'll have restriction on how many parts your ship can have and how much it weight, you also need to upgrade to be able to EVA in orbit (upgrade to the kerbal recruitement facility), as well as see your trajectories and use manoeuver nodes (upgrade the radar facility), or get more contract active at the same time. edit: hum i can swear i saw a post asking about pilot skills :D | ||
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Fecalfeast
Canada11355 Posts
On May 07 2015 18:20 Jetaap wrote: edit: hum i can swear i saw a post asking about pilot skills :D yes I thought maybe my pilot wasn't going to be able to decouple all my radial decouplers at once. Turns out it was some weird bug or misstep on my part. That info is still useful ty | ||
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Cyro
United Kingdom20275 Posts
It looked more like it flipped because of being back heavy than it looked like a stall. Stalls happen because of lack of speed so that your wings stop giving sufficient lift and as a consequence stop responding to your controls. That looks like an unbalanced aircraft wanting to fly backwards. It stalled after the flip, dropped below the speed needed to comfortably glide and it would have fallen out of the sky no matter which way it was pointing. Maybe it's back heavy - i didn't really think about that causing flips, but i think it's the air resistance that pulls it out of my control as the flip is starting because of the other effects on the craft (when i do it at 300-400m/s, it loses a huge fraction of its speed almost instantly and faces huge structural stress). It has a lot of pitch control through reaction wheels and airbrakes, but the force that throws it up/down is quite large (9g's at 150m/s) once it gets caught for that design, it's actually balanced so the center of lift is perfectly inside the center of mass with that amount of fuel in too - and the center of thrust is perfectly lined up with them - so i'm not very worried about those causing issues. Overall it seems like a great plane aside from having to pitch up/down slowly because the nose then gets thrown up/down and it then stalls at low speed or gets ripped into many pieces at high speed Nice plane, i will try something like that and another idea i had recently~ been busy yesterday and will be for a while today --- It should also be noted that the air applies more forces on the rocket at mach 1 This is quite a significant effect - especially if you have plane engines. I added a big of drag to one of my planes and the max speed dropped from mach ~2.7 to below mach 1, even though it was a pretty small change - just because it couldn't get over that big air resistance bump that happens when you're very close to mach 1 (it goes away again afterwards AFAIK) Further, my TWR changes greatly during flight - in the SPH, it reads 1.5ish. On the runway, the same. Throttle up and fire the engines, it drops to 0.7. Then climbs above 1, but on pitch up it drops back below 1. A little frustrating, when it's got upwards of 8 rapiers - and that used to be a lot of thrust to weight. Like, yesterday. It will depend on your airspeed and your height. You can see airspeed by clicking on an intake, height is obvious but the drop off in thrust as you get to higher altitudes is craaaaazy. You're probably in same situation as me and just stuck below an air resistance bump because of the higher drag, so you can't go faster so engines can't increase their thrust so you can't go faster so engines can't increase their thrust etc. I'd suggest going back to 1.0 aero, but meanwhile a basic jet engine or two will probably give more thrust than a rapier when you're at mach 0.95. They have much less total thrust, but their curve is way more friendly towards low speeds. --- for the rocket talk, fins will stabilize you (and control surface fins help you angle where you want even more) but the aerodynamic forces that cause your rocket to flip will still happen with the fins there, they're just controlled. If you're practicing an efficient flight, you should be very aware of those forces to the point where you're able to fly without fins, and just use the fins for a little bit of extra control - so you're not flying the wrong way into the airstream and wasting a ton of delta-v. If you're -not- trying to be efficient, just fly further up. You only have to go 3.5-10km further up before turning - that way you have only ~50-15% of the air resistance on your rocket trying to flip you when you turn too aggressively. Don't just jam the nose 45 degrees over (that never made sense unless you have an aero model which doesn't actually model drag anywhere near correctly) and it shouldn't be hard. It's mostly the bad habits from pre-1.0 getting people stuck, i think. Rockets are much easier to fly now - you can get up there with 70% of the delta-v that used to be required. You can basically use 1.4 - 1.45x more fuel than needed because you flew a completely awful terrible ascent profile and you'll still be better off than 0.9 - but if you turn too slowly, you might actually only use ~5-10% more fuel, not 45% more Another thing to take into account is that the most fuel efficient TWR to use is way higher than it used to be in 0.9 and earlier. In 1.0.2 it's not as high, but in 1.0 atmosphere i'l be using 2 - 2.5 TWR on my rockets if possible. I don't have much play time with 1.0 rockets TBH, been focusing on planes AFAIK, Drag is proportional to the cross section of your rocket seen from prograde - making your rocket twice as long while pointing perfectly at prograde won't increase your drag at all, but adding 2 big boosters on the side might more than double it. You can see that with Kerbal Engineer mod. | ||
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stenole
Norway868 Posts
If placed right, the forces counteract each other and you won't flip and you'll be able to steer (even if the fins aren't control surfaces). Put them further back than that will make your rocket very stable and hardly steerable. Since fuel drain and staging moves the center of mass, the optimal fin placement isn't constant. Fins are not needed as long as your engine and reaction wheels are able to provide enough torque. | ||
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felisconcolori
United States6168 Posts
On May 07 2015 20:53 Cyro wrote: It will depend on your airspeed and your height. You can see airspeed by clicking on an intake, height is obvious but the drop off in thrust as you get to higher altitudes is craaaaazy. You're probably in same situation as me and just stuck below an air resistance bump because of the higher drag, so you can't go faster so engines can't increase their thrust so you can't go faster so engines can't increase their thrust etc. I'd suggest going back to 1.0 aero, but meanwhile a basic jet engine or two will probably give more thrust than a rapier when you're at mach 0.95. They have much less total thrust, but their curve is way more friendly towards low speeds. ... All of the above changes I've seen between 1-5000m of altitude. I would understand it better if the thrust of the engines was changing, also, when I wasn't standing on my tail after taking off from the runway and flying straight up and watching my TWR change from "can accelerate straight up" to "falling down". I'll still need to work at it. But the biggest problem I have with what I saw in the aerodynamic forces is the drag from occluded parts. (A cargo bay should be the same as a fairing, right?) | ||
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stenole
Norway868 Posts
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felisconcolori
United States6168 Posts
+ Show Spoiler + ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/2gofHCo.png) The engine cluster is 9 rapier engines. It seems that the TWR seems to vary largely as a function of speed. I tried to see how it looked after jettisoning the payload, but when the rear fuel tank is mostly full and the cargo bay is empty, it just won't fly. (Too much weight to the rear of the center of lift.) | ||
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Cyro
United Kingdom20275 Posts
... All of the above changes I've seen between 1-5000m of altitude. I would understand it better if the thrust of the engines was changing, also, when I wasn't standing on my tail after taking off from the runway and flying straight up and watching my TWR change from "can accelerate straight up" to "falling down". I'll still need to work at it. But the biggest problem I have with what I saw in the aerodynamic forces is the drag from occluded parts. (A cargo bay should be the same as a fairing, right?) Make sure that your engine exhaust is not hitting anything. My TWR increases by like 8x by varying my speed with rapiers. I've seen it over 25 on the plane in videos above, yet i don't think it's more than ~2.5ish with engines at full power when it's not moving. TWR will vary wildly with altitude too. Even at 1km vs 5km you might see it drop by a quarter or more, i think. I don't have the exact numbers but it's a pretty disgusting drop-off rate. I actually fly just as fast in the lower atmosphere even though the drag is WAY higher | ||
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