Vector of length 1 that is in the same direction as the “look-up” of this Direction. SHIP:FACING:FOREVECTOR is the way the ship’s nose is aimed right now. When you LOCK STEERING to a direction, that direction’s FOREVECTOR is the vector the nose of the ship will orient to. Note that it is the same meaning as “what the Z axis of the universe would be rotated to if this rotation was applied to the basis axes of the universe”. Vector of length 1 that is in the same direction as the “look-at” of this Direction. There is little that can be done to change this as it’s the native way things are represented in the underlying Unity engine.Īlso, if you are going to manipulate directions a lot, it’s important to note how KSP‘s native coordinate system works.
What this means is that if you try to ROLL and YAW in the same tuple, like so: R(0,45,45), you’ll end up rolling first and then yawing, which might not be what you expected. If you are going to manipulate directions a lot, it’s important to note that the order in which the rotations occur is: So for example, a Direction pointing along the \(x\) axis might be represented as R(0,90,0), meaning the initial \(z\)-axis direction was rotated 90 degrees around the \(y\) axis. Direction objects represent a rotation starting from an initial point in KSP‘s coordinate system where the initial state was looking down the \(+z\) axis, with the camera “up” being the \(+y\) axis. You can initialize a Direction using a Vector or a Rotation. The Direction object exists primarily to enable automated steering. Using the negation operator - on a Direction does the same thing as using the :INVERSE suffix on it. This Direction’s starboard vector (z axis after rotation). This Direction’s top vector (y axis after rotation).
This Direction’s forward vector (z axis after rotation). If in real life, there was some incentive to make launch vehicles which were as light as possible rather than as cheap as possible they would also have a higher TWR.The suffixes of a Direction cannot be altered, so to get a new Direction you must construct a new one. Thus it is desirable to pile almost as much fuel onto the engine as it can lift to get maximum burn time out of the engine. Now, why is this the optimal TWR for making cost-effective rockets both in KSP and IRL? What it comes down to is rocket engines are expensive but fuel and tankage is cheap, relatively speaking. In KSP when you want to build a rocket which launches payload as cheaply as possible, often a launch TWR of around 1.25-1.3 is exactly what you want to use - at least for rockets which aren't using SRBs. At this time cost per tonne to orbit became a new and more legitimate metric for judging rocket performance. A little background: In KSP players who were optimizing for launcher weight would go for a TWR of 2.0 or higher, so players wishing bragging rights of "I launched 100t into orbit for only X tonnes of rocket" would go for a TWR of about 2.0 or even higher and this worked because a high TWR is extremely effective at mitigating gravity drag, a rocket with a TWR of 1.25 loses 80% of its thrust to gravity, while a rocket with a TWR of 2.0 loses only 50% of its thrust to gravity, a much greater fraction of the thrust is thus available for building velocity rather than fighting gravity and that makes the rocket significantly more efficient in terms of weight.īut as KSP development continued, career mode was released and the cost of rocket parts was balanced. It is no longer generally considered optimal to use a launch TWR of 1.5-3 in KSP.