The primary test rocket, flew horribly before the change, flew perfectly after. So my question is, why is this not the standard fuel flow for all engines? It behaves more like real rockets, keeping the CoM roughly where it should be, and better balanced forward than current flow, more closely simulates a single large tank draining instead of multiple stacked small tanks, and overall seems to make rockets behave more intuitively like rockets. Then tap B on the tank you want to transfer from/to. I proceeded to test on several other rockets I've designed that work under normal fuel flow rules, and they all make it to space just fine, if not even slightly better than they did previously. Tap B on the tank you want to transfer to/from, then click on the top right corner to keep that window up.
I put the same fuel flow rules on all my rocket engines, and tested the exact same craft that flipped out of control, and it flew perfectly. On a plane this is usually just all tanks, which is fine, it's how you want your plane to behave. A few updates ago a new fuel flow mode was added for jet engines, which allows them to drain evenly from all tanks in a stage. I had an idea to test something that I've considered before but never bothered to test until now. However, that's neither intuitive for new players nor is it very practical on larger or radially staged rockets.
One simple method to balance CoM in rockets is to transfer it forward as the rocket get higher, moving the CoM back ahead of the CoD and helping to keep the rocket stable. Even rockety looking rockets can have issues if not balanced correctly, and someone just getting into the game can have frustrating issues getting things to work on otherwise perfect looking rockets.Īfter looking at the rockets he was building, and designing a few of my own in a similar manner, I had a thought about fuel flow. A friend of mine recently started playing KSP and the biggest single issue he seems to be having is balancing rockets during ascent so they don't flip out and crash.