Something wrong with my new ship.

[daonebest]

My new atmospheric fighter cannot fly without falling, at first i reduced weight and added more thrusters (both hydrogen and atmospheric). This helped a little, but not much. Eventually it seemed like the atmospheric thrusters simply weren't doing their thing. I had originally built it in space before, so i rep;aced all the Atmospheric thrusters in atmosphere, they seem to be doing their thing now, Visually. However the craft continues to fall slightly if i just leave it, it makes no sense as i have not given it any heavy armour yet, and the thrust should be enough. I am beginning to think it is a glitch to do with the retractable landing gear i gave it ( although it is completely vanilla)

[Gorbadon]

Dampeners don't take the mass of subgrids into account (they used to do in the past), if that retractable landing gear is on a piston, hinge or rotor it is most likely the reason for your ship slowly loosing altitute.

[daonebest]

Originally posted by Gorbadon:

Dampeners don't take the mass of subgrids into account (they used to do in the past), if that retractable landing gear is on a piston, hinge or rotor it is most likely the reason for your ship slowly loosing altitute.

Dam. Thanks, the landing gear is on hindges. That's a dumb feature, i'm suprised i haven't come across it before. All my ships that used hinges, rotors and pistons on doors had no problem. Any suggestions on how i could fix this? or will i have to forget about retractable landing gear?

[Gorbadon]

Originally posted by daonebest:

Dam. Thanks, the landing gear is on hindges. That's a dumb feature, i'm suprised i haven't come across it before. All my ships that used hinges, rotors and pistons on doors had no problem. Any suggestions on how i could fix this? or will i have to forget about retractable landing gear?

As said dampeners used to take subgrids into account, for me that stoped working with the frostbite update.
Something that the devs did caused the calculation to not get the correct mass of subgrids or something of that sort.

I don't think it is intentional but they have not fixed it since either, probably not very high up on their priority list.

You can try to add thrusters to your subgrids, those should hold up the extra weight, on a landing gear that is probably not that easy without taking up extra space or some weird workarounds though.

Edit:
An other thing you could try is to lock your landing gear to the ship with merge blocks when it is retracted, but given how big vanilla small grid merge blocks are that would require quite a bit of space as well.

[Tregrenos]

What about something like this? In this design the landing gears and base of the piston are connected to the main ship, but the dome "covering" is not. When you want to show the landing gears the covering is actually pulled toward the ship with the doors open, then when you want to conceal them the coverings are pushed away before the doors close.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2328972212
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2328972247
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2328972278
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2328972318
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2328972333

The black blocks shown above are your main ships grid. Due to the landing gears being connected to the ship and not on a subgrid it greatly increases their stability as landing gears on subgrids can get kinda Clang-y.

[Dan2D3D]

Hi, not all concepts will work but there are working ones to find where it only need a Engineer trying different.


Just Blueprint your creation first to be sure you will not lose it.

+

Test, on a copy, by deleting one subgrid at a time till you find the one causing the "falling" problem.

++

Paste a new Bp, delete the "Buggged" one and Redo new different concepts till you find a stable one.

>> Meaning > If not working = Bad concept so just redo different till solution found :
Example : Mess with piston settings, change the values in the block options, etch...


OR

Share your creation here so all can give it a try at finding the stable concept for you.

>> Just publish on the Workshop and share the item link here.

[daonebest]

Thanks for all your responses. As for the green dome-piston landing gear, that won't work for this particular ship, simply because it it built too compact around the original landing gear design. Merge blocks could work because i have a mod for 1x1x1 small ship merge blocks, however it is still a matter of fitting it in but also i'm not sure how i would sink it with the hinges so it would probably be a separate command. I will continue testing, if i don't get a result, i will just finish off the ship otherwise, upload and bring it here. It contains two mods but they're completely irrelevant to the landing gear and propulsion, so just ignore them for now.

[Dan2D3D]

Some concepts are to avoid in this game so you should just delete it if you can't find a working stable concept.

[Gorbadon]

Originally posted by daonebest:

Thanks for all your responses. As for the green dome-piston landing gear, that won't work for this particular ship, simply because it it built too compact around the original landing gear design. Merge blocks could work because i have a mod for 1x1x1 small ship merge blocks, however it is still a matter of fitting it in but also i'm not sure how i would sink it with the hinges so it would probably be a separate command. I will continue testing, if i don't get a result, i will just finish off the ship otherwise, upload and bring it here. It contains two mods but they're completely irrelevant to the landing gear and propulsion, so just ignore them for now.

One more thing to be aware of if using merge blocks and hinges, you will need to add an additional hinge or rotor to merge your gears to the ship.
The game does not like it if both parts (base and head) of a hinge, rotor or piston are part of the same grid.
Here is a video that should help you figuring out a working merge block concept:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aw6L8cEWO6g&t=60s

[daonebest]

Here's the production model:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2329844178

note that the prototype i was working on when i started the discussion didn't have folding wings. ignore the mods for now, they're irrelevant to the gear

[Spaceman Spiff]

I've never successfully built an atmospheric ship that could hover motionless if subgrids were attached (i.e., a rotor, hinge, piston, or other small craft via a connector). That's just been my experience.

[daonebest]

Originally posted by Spaceman Spiff:

I've never successfully built an atmospheric ship that could hover motionless if subgrids were attached (i.e., a rotor, hinge, piston, or other small craft via a connector). That's just been my experience.

well, i have a dropship with two sliding doors on pistons and a rear ramp on a hinge, that worked fine

[M.Red]

ive done some wingpads with hinges ( merged ) and didnt noticed any problems besides the small pushes as i move the wings ( fold up and down ) floating is fine

[daonebest]

i think it's just a case of reconstructing it until it works. perhaps it had something to do with building it in space to begin with

[daonebest]

Ok, after a lot of test and evaluation i couldn't solve my problem until i strapped a massive battery to my ship. Turned out the atmospheric thrusters simply didn't have enough power. I feel stupid now.

[M.Red]

Originally posted by daonebest:

Ok, after a lot of test and evaluation i couldn't solve my problem until i strapped a massive battery to my ship. Turned out the atmospheric thrusters simply didn't have enough power. I feel stupid now.

no need to feel that way - we all had out personal nemesis in se
just move on or as Dan would say here: "XP gained"