Pistons on a Ship

[SpazmaticAA]

I'm trying out something on a ship I'm working on. I have a piston and it's connected to a drill. Only issue is my ship becomes completely unstable when I extend the pistons and will not fly straight or remain upright. Anything I can do to fix this?

[TheVipersFang]

Pray to Klang.
You could try having a gyro setup to override movement.

[frag2k4]

This is a known sub grid issue, you have a few options including putting gyros on the sub grid and setting all to over ride so the ship will 'try' and try being the operative word here to remain in whatever position it was in when the override was engaged. you could also try and wrangle merge block arms so when fully extended the sub grid is merged back to the main ship.

But best bet is to avoid piston and rotor drill setups on ships, the phantom behaviour is unlikely to be fixed.

[Spaceman Spiff]

You're speaking of a drill ship that operates within a planet's gravity well, I presume. Yeah, that's a klang-trap waiting to happen. Dump the piston(s) and just have drills. I've designed many small-grid miners for both planets and space that use vanilla components and mine very well. (I stay away from large-grid miners for planets due to their limitations. Here are examples of first, second, and third-tier miners:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2018112424
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1927545182
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1951091497
Again, these are just examples of what you can do.

[Nesricon]

something I did to help with the wabble was put light armor blocks on all sides of the retracted piston, and having a connector attached to the side of the ship and the drill so it doesn't go crazy while flying

[Dan2D3D]

Hi, you may try by adding more mass on the main grid/ship to balance the grids because Drill on Piston + Gravity pushing on those gives the problem you noticed.

Also placing the piston under the ship and aligned with the center of mass of the main grid/ship can be more stable (vertical Drill).

[Raider Deci]

What the others said, just avoid pistons on ships. Whatever you conning the pistons to is always moving a little (which you can see with build vision-mod ex) which in turns makes Klang wanna visit your ship. It also sounds like your weight-distribution gets bad when the drills being extended.

[Beragon]

Lock the ship to ground with plate or landing gear before you extend the piston. Alternative is to use the tension sharing option. Mind the speed too.

[herrschaftg35]

pistons can work on a ship, the more mass the ship has the better. One of my ships has 4 pistons with 7/9 drills and works fine. If the ship is acting chaotically then is sounds like you have an issue with the collision boxes of the pistons.

[JP-7]

There is a similar situation with one of my current design attempts: A small grid ship has a series of a rotor and six pistons behind it (with conveyors in between to make turns) and is stable at that point. Whatever I try to put at the end of the last piston causes the entire "arm" to start shaking itself apart (e.g., another piston or tool), so I have to grind it off again ASAP.

Seeing the advice here, I guess I might as well experiment a little more before I scrap the idea entirely. Light a candle for Klang and hope for an eventual bugfix.

[herrschaftg35]

Originally posted by JP-7:

There is a similar situation with one of my current design attempts: A small grid ship has a series of a rotor and six pistons behind it (with conveyors in between to make turns) and is stable at that point. Whatever I try to put at the end of the last piston causes the entire "arm" to start shaking itself apart (e.g., another piston or tool), so I have to grind it off again ASAP.

Seeing the advice here, I guess I might as well experiment a little more before I scrap the idea entirely. Light a candle for Klang :winter2019tiredbulb: and hope for an eventual bugfix.

Leaving a 1 block space around the piston heads, including anything attached to the pistons, will solve the clang issues. Blast doors and half blocks can be directly adjacent to pistons, not sure if the flat armor blocks were given the proper collision boxes.

[SpazmaticAA]

I think I just decided to give up for now on the idea. Either way I don't have enough engines to lift the ship out of whatever tunnel I dig for mining. Maybe some other day

[JP-7]

Originally posted by herrschaftg35:

Leaving a 1 block space around the piston heads, including anything attached to the pistons, will solve the clang issues.

There must be a little more to it - the results of a quick test were rather spectacular. ;)

A simplified design for my hands-off, park-and-drill small grid ship (with only five pistons, an advanced rotor, and a drill) has been running for more than an hour without issues now. Works for me, even if it is not all I wanted. Thanks for all the advice!

[thorvindr]

I had a very similar issue on a ship I'm building. I have six pistons all lined up, and when they extend, they shake violently until I intervene (typically by erasing one in the middle). I solved the problem completely by checking the box for "Share Inertia Tensor." Not precisely sure how, but it seems to make long booms and arms MUCH less prone to violent wobbling.

[davidanttila1980]

Originally posted by SpazmaticAA:

I think I just decided to give up for now on the idea. Either way I don't have enough engines to lift the ship out of whatever tunnel I dig for mining. Maybe some other day

Don't give up.
If you are making what I think you are making.
I suggest you put a single block space between the head of the piston.
Make the main ship section be loaded down with Gyroscopes and plenty of thrust around both ends of the ship and do not neglect forward and reverse thrust.

Now for the drill end use two pistons working together to move the drill assembly forward and backward.
Do not exceed 6 to 8 drills.
You will have to slightly turn the pistons push and pull Force up but not movement speeds.

When using this build be careful on pushing the ship into the ground when drilling you could damage the drills.

I used the Laser modular thrusters on mine and a large nuclear reactor to avoid dealing with hydrogen in the design.

[Spaceman Spiff]

Pistons on a mining ship are like snakes on a plane...ready to bite you in the nether regions.