any mods for ship balance?

[Gough]

I find it very hard to get my ships into orbit when trying to send science equipment. I beleave it is becouse my ship isnt balanced (as i have more success without carrying them) Im looking for a mod to make sure my ship isnt flipping round (find it happens alot when at around 6000 feet)

any and all advide is apreciated I am new to this and only managed to get into orbit 4 or 5 times which results in my kerbal being stuck in orbit with no way to return and this means i have no chance of getting into the moon orbit

[Immanis]

IDK if it's stock, but in my game fuel consumption is balanced throughout the plane so the COM never really move.

In any case, TAC fuel balancer might be the thing you need.

And make sure the center of lift is slightly behind the center of mass, oftenly the case of rocket/aircraft flippin'. Also do your balancing wet and dry, you'll experience CoM's movement depending on the repartition of the dry mass as well which will come into play when the craft get lighter with fuel consumption, per exemple, if you have a MK2 cabin + crew cabin + cargo bay, then have all your fuel tanks at the rear, you'll experience a heavy shift of the center of mass to the front as your tanks are emptying.

Hope i've been clear and you'll succeed in your next tries

see the link for a nice tutorial about how to make aircraft in KSP, with pictures

http://i.imgur.com/GqLQktX.jpg

[Gough]

thats very helpful but i dont have the equipment to try out planes at the minute and find they are alot harder then rockets lol i seen there is a mod to balance out fual and i think that could be one of the problems.

I think the game is very hard for the start of the game it should be alot easyier to get into orbit to allow players to try to change direction to get into the moons orbit

[Immanis]

There are (badly done I concur) tutorial for those, getting into orbit without understanding jack about what you are doing is a great deal, yeah.

They plan to improve those tutorials for 1.1 of KSP.

Also planes are a lot harder to master than rockets, you will most likely fail all your attempts until you've played around some more with rockets and simple planes (leave spaceplanes for later, like once you got to Mun and Minmus.

Spaceplane have a specific ascent profile depending on various factor, while KSP is a game and it allow for errors (hopefully) so it won't be varying too much,

Basically you need to climb above 15 000m,
Build a lot of speed between 20 and 25 000m (get somewhere around 1200 m/s with an AoA of 10° to 15° depending the lift you can get out of your wings, you want a level flight to build up speed)
Once speed reached or temperature raising dangerously, set your AoA to 30-45° to raise your apoasis above 70 000m and then circularize once you reach it.

at some point when raising your apoasis you'll need to fire rocket engine or toggle RAPIER closed cycle.

Before the need to balance fuel in flight, you really need to understand the center of mass, center of lift, center of thrust, drag, TWR, delta/V, and more words I can throw at you but I won't because I don't remember them all right now lol. It'll be a game of trial for the first 50 hours, and will stay a game of trial even after 400hours ;)

It's not that the game is especially hard, it's just the learning curve is so steep and stuff are so badly explained in the game, that it can be daunting.

[sssst]

Try RCS Build Aid. It gives some some information not only about rcs but also about your engines. It will tell you if the ship is not balanced. But since you are flipping so close to the ground i suspect that is not the problem. The problem probably is that your ship is not aerodanamically stable. try addind fins to the back of your ship and make the top pointy. Also your Thrust to weight ratio might be too low.

[Immanis]

btw SQUAD's team is currently working on a wiki with a lot of information, you should try :

http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Main_Page

[Gough]

yeh so far i have 26 hours into the game. even though i keep failing i am determined to make progress. I think the thrust to weight was a problem at times and most deffently the aerodynamics will be off. I have downloaded a mod last night that gives the information for delta/v when building ships so i am going to make sure thats high when i try making some more rockets later today.

I even tried putting the massive solid boosters onto my rocket thinking of ship balance by putting 4 on and that will pull my rocket off course but i think the thrust is the only thing stopping it from flipping.

I have found putting fins on the rocket dosnt make alot of differance even with fighting the controls it still goes off course and if im lucky to make it out of the atmosphear it takes me a long time to get the craft pointing the way i want and results in my loosing alot of my speed.

[Immanis]

Rocket/Planes that goes off course have a slight offset in their center of mass or aerodynamics

if it's a plane veering off course on the landway, then your landing gears are misaligned
if it's a rocket, then you have something that offset the mass toward the side it's veering

if you fight controls to stay on a straight course, your design have flaws and you should try to find and correct them ;)

if you're not sure about what you need to correct, post a VAB screen of your rocket/ship showing the yellow and blue ball of the COM/COL as the whole design and experienced players will gladly help

[doughnut001]

Try to keep as much of the weight as possible towards the top of the rocket and as much drag towards the back. put your fins as low down as possible.

If you are putting experiments on the side of the rocket, do it in pairs on opposite sides so the rocket stays balanced.

Turn your mystery goo canisters to vertical so they have less drag.

Your biggest problem with keeping stabe will come as you go through the sound barrier at low altitude (340 m/s). It sounds like this is what is happening at 6000m for you.
To minimise aerodynamic effects at this point try to make sure you are facing exactly along the prograde marker.
If you are going straight up at that point you will be much more stable because you will keep going straight up. Going at an angle will slowly drag your prograde marker towards the horizon.

Don't make violent maeuvers. Press caps lock to turn on fine control and slowly nurse your rocket into the gravity turn.

[Gough]

again very good advice. im going on now goign to start a brand new game and fingers crossed ill make progress

[doughnut001]

Originally posted by Gough:

yeh so far i have 26 hours into the game. even though i keep failing i am determined to make progress. I think the thrust to weight was a problem at times and most deffently the aerodynamics will be off. I have downloaded a mod last night that gives the information for delta/v when building ships so i am going to make sure thats high when i try making some more rockets later today.

I even tried putting the massive solid boosters onto my rocket thinking of ship balance by putting 4 on and that will pull my rocket off course but i think the thrust is the only thing stopping it from flipping.

I have found putting fins on the rocket dosnt make alot of differance even with fighting the controls it still goes off course and if im lucky to make it out of the atmosphear it takes me a long time to get the craft pointing the way i want and results in my loosing alot of my speed.

Sounds like you dont have much control available. The first fins you get aren't control surfaces and are only used to keep the rocket going in the same direction and the reliant engine doesn't have steering either. make sure you are using the swivel engine. In the engine descriptions it will tell you if they have steering because it will say gimbal and give an angle of how much they can turn off centre to steer you.

[Gough]

i dont use the swivel that often. ill make sure i use it on my first orbit attempt on my new game

[Immanis]

Originally posted by doughnut001:

If you are putting experiments on the side of the rocket, do it in pairs on opposite sides so the rocket stays balanced.

except maybe the first Career rocket made out Flea SRB, you unlock the service bay really fast, if he's playing sandbox or science (which is definitly more newb friendly than career) he shouldn't have anything except boosters on the side of his rocket (at least not until fairing is unlocked). A lot of parts has been added to the stock game so streamlined designs free of stuff on the sides can be made early

about gravity turn, it's something like this :

0 -> 10km : stay straight
10->25km : AoA to 75°
25-> 35km : AoA to 45° then follow prograde marker until apoasis reach 70km+
wait until you are 30seconds away from Apoasis then burn prograde to circularize, et voila, you're in orbit.

Of course it's a simple and not very efficient way to get into orbit, but you'll learn to do real gravity turn (without the need for input) as you play through error and trials :)

[Gough]

thanks for the advice :)