How much mass can Pistons push? Need building advice

[Scorcher24]

I want to build a launch Platform for going into Space, Kerbal style. So I want to build a ship with atmospheric thrusters to land on a platform and then launch from there with the Hydrogen thrusters like a regular Rocket. For that, I want to push the platform into a 45-70° angle.

How many pistons should I use for that and can you even do that in that angle?
I guess I would need to use rotors?

[The Big Brzezinski]

A rotor might do it, depending on how much mass you plan to stack on your platform. My concern with pistons would be the contact point between the lifting piston and the platform. Too much force applied at once would likely cause Clang to smite the piston head. Using wheels for the actual contact surfaces might help, though.

However, planets are stationary and there's no orbitting in the game. You don't need to do a gravity turn. The fastest route to space is straight up. But that's a reason you don't have to do something, not a reason to not do something.

[Scorcher24]

Originally posted by The Big Brzezinski:

A rotor might do it, depending on how much mass you plan to stack on your platform. My concern with pistons would be the contact point between the lifting piston and the platform. Too much force applied at once would likely cause Clang to smite the piston head. Using wheels for the actual contact surfaces might help, though.

However, planets are stationary and there's no orbitting in the game. You don't need to do a gravity turn. The fastest route to space is straight up. But that's a reason you don't have to do something, not a reason to not do something.

Yeah, I just want to do it for the fun of it, not because I have to. I know I could just go up a bit and then launch the Hydros from there.
Anyway, a full Space capable ship can easily go over 40-100T without ores, so I am concerned if the pistons can do that. Probably have to test this in creative mode first.

[The Big Brzezinski]

Is that 40-100T in 1x or 10x?

[Scorcher24]

Originally posted by The Big Brzezinski:

Is that 40-100T in 1x or 10x?

What do you mean?

[ZombieHunter]

Don't use pistons. Use the old fashioned rotor combination b/c although uglier they work in almost any situation and they won't magically explode and destroy your base or ship.

[The Big Brzezinski]

In effect, 10x cargo settings causes cargo in grid inventories to have 1/10 the mass and volume as they would in a 1x world. World settings can be adjusted to effect the size of inventories in your game. For instance, a large grid large cargo container has a 1x capacity of 421,875 liters. A full load of platinum ingots (the densest cargo iirc) will add 8,859,375kg of mass. If you were to change the settings to 10x, the fully loaded LCC would carry ten times as much platinum, and for the same mass as 1x.

I think I stated that correctly, anyway

[The Big Brzezinski]

Here's my thruster cheat sheet. Helps me make sure I can get a ship off the ground without over-engine-ing it. Might help you out.

Earth Gravity 9.8m/s^2
Moon Gravity 2.45m/s^2

LHT(L) thrust in N 6000000
LHT(S) 400000
SHT(L) 900000
SHT(S) 82000
LAT(L) 5400000
LAT(S) 408000
SAT(L) 420000
SAT(S) 80000
LIT(L) 3600000
LIT(S) 144000
SIT(L) 288000
SIT(S) 12000

Mass (kg) * gravity (m/s^2) = weight (N)

I basically add up the downward thrust in Newtons, and divide the total by gravity acceleration. The resulting number is how many kilograms the ship's thrusters can theoretically keep in the air.

[plaYer2k]

Pistons apply "infinite force". The two parts simply love away from each other or towards each other.

As for the jerk applied when suddenly moving/accelerating, just make it a slow acceleration.

So the setup could look like a triangle where two sides are fixed (ramp and ground) while the third has a piston inbetween and at each corner sits at least one rotor.

The only weakpoints in such a setups are the havok constraints inbetween the base and top part of the rotors and pistons. They however are strong enough for a few tons of mass at 1 g unless you impact them onto the structure at high velocities.

[Scorcher24]

Thanks for all the answers, however, my plans are postponed. Every time I go to Space, the game is allocating so much memory, it crashes my whole PC. It locks up and then I need to hard reset. Not even the 16 GB allocated swap file help, apparently (system managed). Can't do anything but wait for a fix. On a planet it uses barely 2GB, but in Space it rapidly ramps up. Not having this issue in Empyrion and the graphics are comparable.

[Tom7i]

Originally posted by Scorcher24:

Not having this issue in Empyrion and the graphics are comparable.

That's becouse graphics in this case don't mean much. The difference between the games in this case is becouse the playfields in Empyrion are segmented while in SE they are one continous huge playfield which eats up a lot more memory than individual smaller maps.

When you travel from the planet surface to space in EGS, there's a slight "jump" when the planet map ends and the space map loads and when you land on the moon, you actually load in to a third individual map.
In SE, everything you can see is loaded from the get-go and remains loaded all the time; i'm guessing that the lag you encounter comes from the asteroids & enviroment being set to unlimited in the settings.

Try to change asteroid generation in the game settings to something smaller than unlimited and keep decreasing the number until your PC can handle the amount of generated stuff in space.

[Scorcher24]

What I ran into here, is a bug. Has nothing to do with the power the game needs.
I changed grass density to 0.1 and reduced the view range to 7km and boom, no more spike to 20 GB RAM usage when trying to launch into Space and no more locking up. It now sits comfortably at 1.5 GB RAM at all times. I didn't make a new map.

[Jakaya]

Piston dosent push. you push it.

[The Big Brzezinski]

Originally posted by Jakaya:

Piston dosent push. you push it.

You will push the piston harder than it pushes back.

I nearly bought Empyrion until I saw the inventory system. Never appreciated conveyors that much before I saw the alternative. Hopefully both games will be fleshed-out and shaped-up enough to justify their purchase prices.

[Scorcher24]

While I love the conveyor system to death, I think the inventory system in SE could use an overhaul or big improvements. Way too much to scroll through in large stations. I am especially missing a setting where you can access a single inventory and also proper sorting without scripts without blocking off your access from somewhere else.

I use sorting blocks, but this can get quite messy if you still want to be able to take things out of a box somewhere else on your station.

[ZombieHunter]

I stopped playing Empyrion b/c the assembler was a micro managing nightmare. Much prefer SE's over it. Plus I had no desire to put in the time required to do anything. I don't know SE's sandbox is already waiting for you to build and explore and it is pretty simple. I don't feel like SE unnecessarily holds me back from building this or that. The only limit in SE is what you mine and how much of it you mine. For me SE is better b/c if you put work into mining you will be rewarded with being able to build everything. They don't have gimmicky you can only build X with this assembler and Y with this assembler but if you want Z you build this assembler. I hate that garbage. SE doesn't do that. What you see is what you get. As long as you can find the materials you can build it in SE.

SE is a fantastic concept and it has a great gameplay loop. Sadly what is lacking at the moment is any type of quality control. Sure it is early access but constantly releasing broken features and/or breaking existing features with patches makes one wonder are they capable of a quality release? In my experience you don't want to just release anything, even in Early Access, lest people get a bad taste in their mouth concerning your game. Then they will tell 5 others who tell 10 others who tell 20 others, etc, etc. SE needs more quality control, a less aggressive release schedule (even monthly would be more than most EA titles) and time to fine tune and polish existing features. I know KSH doesn't want to follow in the footsteps of other EA titles that go months on end with no releases but a monthly schedule would be nice. They could announce what they are working on the first of the month and then at the end of the month release it. This would certainly reduce technical debt in their codebase, keep the players happy and ultimately result in higher quality polished and less gimmicky releases. Some of the recent releases you just want to scratch your head about. Also what good does it do for me to submit a bug on a feature that use to work but now no longer does b/c of an update? That is chasing your tail and you never get to the finish line doing that.