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[GreatWyrmGold]

1. What is this Part Welder thing?

2. How, exactly, do you land at a specific set of coordinates, accounting for rotation, without having MechJeb's landing autopilot?

[Sean Mirrsen]

2. How, exactly, do you land at a specific set of coordinates, accounting for rotation, without having MechJeb's landing autopilot?

Eyeballing, experience, and trial and error.

[forsaken1111]

2. How, exactly, do you land at a specific set of coordinates, accounting for rotation, without having MechJeb's landing autopilot?

Eyeballing, experience, and trial and error.

Luck as well. Also extra deltav

[alway]

2. How, exactly, do you land at a specific set of coordinates, accounting for rotation, without having MechJeb's landing autopilot?

Eyeballing, experience, and trial and error.

Luck as well. Also extra deltav

Yup. Having enough deltav to deorbit to 0 at a whim makes it quite easy.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Well, I've got plenty of Δv, but I have a track record of landing dozens of kilometers off-target.
The problem is less fuel and more frustration.

[alway]

Updated my Interstellar Quest mods for .23.5 (sans infernal robotics). Decided I needed to figure out how to launch some massive stations and such. Specifically, I was trying to launch some simple modular hangar bays. Testing for hours gave explodey results from launching 1 at a time; it was built primarily with wings and so FAR won't let it fly straight. So I tried launching 2, rotated against one another to counteract the aerodynamic instability. It got off the pad, accelerated to 200m/s, and promptly flipped over due to aerodynamic drag on the front of the rocket.

So I created a monstrosity. The rocket used to launch it is built pod-racer style, with the engines up front and payload behind. Here's what it looks like in the construction hangar:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And in a 200km orbit:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Works quite well with this mod setup; and could probably be reused to launch all sorts of other highly aerodynamically unstable payloads.

[GreatWyrmGold]

I'd again like to ask what the Part Welder people were gushing over that was used to make the Borg Cube is. Sounds like something that could be used to make big craft without insane partcount.

Also, why is the title complaining about being too long now?

[Sean Mirrsen]

I'd again like to ask what the Part Welder people were gushing over that was used to make the Borg Cube is. Sounds like something that could be used to make big craft without insane partcount.

Also, why is the title complaining about being too long now?

Part Welder - UbioZur Welding Ltd. - is literally what it says on the tin. It allows to weld parts - well, subassemblies - into a single part, so that the physics engine treats it all as one part, thus reducing the part count and speeding up your game.

[MarcAFK]

The mod is "[0.22] UbioZur Welding Ltd. 2.0" http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/38577-0-22-UbioZur-Welding-Ltd-2-0-Playtest-5-Now-In-Game-Tool
It says .22 so I would be dubious on if it works properly on 23.5, but it seems to be allright.
The way it works is similar to how sub-assemblies work, you grab a stack of parts and drag it over to the icon which says "Weld it" and then after a minute a window pops up asking what you want to name it and what category you want it placed in.
A few things I have noticed;
A) Welded parts can only be placed from their center, they lose edge connection capability - Careful placement of girders or whatever may be required to get large pieces attached where you want them.
B) Welded parts only attach at the center, the edges stay unconnected to whatever you shove them onto - Judicious use of struts and extra panels will be required to maintain rigidity of the complete craft.
C) Attempting to weld together parts that have already been welded may result in incorrect orientation of parts - Plan carefully ahead on what parts you will be welding, you only have one shot.
D) Welding breaks fuel lines and struts - Add them after the weld
F) Welding breaks most complicated components - i haven't tested them all, but I have found the following to not work properly after welding:
-Fuel tanks
-Solar panels
-Control surfaces
However when I welded that 747 I linked to earlier in the thread, I found the engines still worked, and the Part still had a cockpit, reaction wheel, etc.
G) Welded part appears indestructable - every crash test shows the complete craft disassembling at the struts and connecting girders, whilst the panels just tumble wildly and settle to the ground.
H) The part retains all preexisting connection nodes - For instance my panels still had the node in the center of each 2x2 it was made from; 121 per side
I) The game seems to treat the part entirely as one object for purposes of physics - There was no noticable lag when using over 700 welded parts, usually a craft of a few hundred causes massive lag for my pc.
J) The part may have stability issues during timewarp - In one test the cube exploded at x2 warp whilst at full throttle in atmosphere, however It was fine at very high time warp while in space; further testing is needed.
K) Attachments to welded parts may be weaker than you expect - I had engines and fuel tanks falling off the cube when attached using large docking ports, a couple of struts held them in place.

TLDR; Use the mod to join large structural or cosmetic parts, then build the rest of your rocket around it

Edit: My next test will involve daisy chaining several cubes together to see what's necessary to join very large items successfully.
Eidit: Actually it is possible to edit the part by opening it's config file and altering it's properties, you should be able to get it's edge connection working again and most of it's other properties too, but I had no success when i tried, the forum might help.

[BFEL]

So, since I joined DERPA, I decided to mess around with the ARM stuff.

Basically, new engines are orgasmic, asteroids are stupid and can go die

To elaborate, normally I have the issue of "The stage I expected to be my "get me to space" stage tends to not do that, so the stage that I intend as "circularize me" has to do extra lifting, and so on and so forth.

This time, I had exactly the opposite happen, the stage I expected to get me to space did that, continued till I was at about 100 km, and still had fuel left to get the circularization halfway done. Note that I have no idea how to gravity turn, so my orbits are naturally inefficient.

As for that bastardroid () it was an E class, naturally, and it was difficult getting myself in the correct inclination to catch up to the bastard, which was unfortunately not at its periapse as I intended, when I finally rendezvoused with the damn thing I had about half my fuel left, so I thought I would be fine.
Nope. Turns out, its basically impossible to get a point near the center of mass of that thing while still pointing retrograde in its orbit. Which meant that every time I thought I had the thing "Lined up" so to speak, IT WOULD START ROTATING. I kept trying to use the klaw's pivot to correct for this, but no dice, its pretty much a lost cause.

Note that I had no RCS too, so all this was using the engine.

[Sean Mirrsen]

So, since I joined DERPA, I decided to mess around with the ARM stuff.

Basically, new engines are orgasmic, asteroids are stupid and can go die

To elaborate, normally I have the issue of "The stage I expected to be my "get me to space" stage tends to not do that, so the stage that I intend as "circularize me" has to do extra lifting, and so on and so forth.

This time, I had exactly the opposite happen, the stage I expected to get me to space did that, continued till I was at about 100 km, and still had fuel left to get the circularization halfway done. Note that I have no idea how to gravity turn, so my orbits are naturally inefficient.

As for that bastardroid () it was an E class, naturally, and it was difficult getting myself in the correct inclination to catch up to the bastard, which was unfortunately not at its periapse as I intended, when I finally rendezvoused with the damn thing I had about half my fuel left, so I thought I would be fine.
Nope. Turns out, its basically impossible to get a point near the center of mass of that thing while still pointing retrograde in its orbit. Which meant that every time I thought I had the thing "Lined up" so to speak, IT WOULD START ROTATING. I kept trying to use the klaw's pivot to correct for this, but no dice, its pretty much a lost cause.

Note that I had no RCS too, so all this was using the engine.

You could have just attached at whichever point you could, facing its center of mass, and then rotated it... if your rocket has any length then your thrust-vectored engines would make a perfect lever to turn even an E class.

[miauw62]

@Marc

Warping in atmosphere is bad and will generally cause explosions for any craft.

[Sean Mirrsen]

@Marc

Warping in atmosphere is bad and will generally cause explosions for any craft.

I physwarp my reentering SSTOs all the time. With the new joints there is hardly any deformation, and the biggest problem is the inaccurate SAS response, so the plane dips down or may intermittently wobble and alter heading.

[miauw62]

Oh, alright
Haven't played the newest version yet.

[Eotyrannus]

Nearly got into a Mun orbit for the first time. I accidentally went past it. Jeb is now lost in space.