Serino

Mine was about a year ago. I had just finished docking my lander module to my main transport around Laythe. I had decided to hit every moon in the Jool system at once and was carrying a massive payload of science with me. Unfortunately a fuel tank I had jettisoned previously swung back around and obliterated everything except the command capsule, which fortunately had all the science stored in it, and the lander module. This meant I had to spend the time to try and figure out how to use what fuel I had left in the lander to slingshot everything around a couple of the moons and still retain enough to hit Kerbin atmo. After working out all the math and getting on my way I realized that I only had enough life support to return 1 of my 3 Kerbals since I had lost my main system in the accident. I had a bit of spare life support if I only returned 1 Kerbal so I waited until we were securely in solar orbit and then my Kerbals drew straws to see who got to live and the others chose to take a permanent space walk among the stars. Seeing them drift away from the ship with smiles on their faces was probably the saddest thing I ever witnessed in KSP.

RoverDude is the main author and I do believe Helaeon is credited as co-author. I helped Helaeon with creating the secondary mode on the drive but as far as licencing is concerned I believe you only need to credit RoverDude and Helaeon since they are the official authors.

There is a lot of speculation on how Alcubierre drive would work. Mostly what is currently being tested in reality is more of a booster version similar to the original way this drive works but instead of just jumping you up to 15c it would instead multiply your true velocity to create an apparent velocity. Simple answer is that if we can make it then more than likely it will be a drive that makes it so you appear to move 100x faster than what you actually are. What I am currently working on is one proposed outcome that just makes you go X speed but conserves all your energy so when you exit the bubble then the universe punches you in the gut with a reality check. This is a less common idea of how it would work since we aren't sure how things would behave. As for my model of this idea as I said it will be Soon since KSP doesn't like complex math, nor some of it's own variable strangely, and krakensbane makes using vectors a pain in the ass, especially with how many I would need to use.

I am currently trying to make the equations more accurate for this so that the fact that you can use it to do some very unrealistic things, though you would have to purposely try to do them, will be gone. Just a few more kinks to work out and I will have helaeon test it and get it up if it works on his machine. So look forward to a little more realism in it some time Soon

For the people asking for experimental actuators to be required for orbital construction that then forces everyone with IR to get it before they can use any of the orbital construction stuff or if they don't have IR it would force them to research an empty node both of those options are bad cause it would very restrictive. Edit: Will there be a way to get to the ultra high energy physics if we don't have anything that requires anitmatter? None of the mods I use have anti-matter reactors or anything like that, unless Nertea plans to add some in his mods, but I do use Rover's warpdrive.

in general from when Helaeon and I were working on a new feature for it the CheckBubbleDeployment was what was used to see if the bubble was deployed ie warping or not, and in editor to display the guide bubble. It would toss an exception if something went wrong but that should be all it does so if you are seeing an error then maybe something is interfering with the module checking for warp and its tossing out and exception.

The best thing to do currently is balance it around what the USI drive does now, in case Rover wants to leave it as is, or to write an MM to go with yours that balances the USI drive down to yours. I personally think balancing it against the way USI is now is the better option because then it makes it easier to change later if USI gets rebalanced.

So helaeon the ZZZ drive is meant more of an in system drive? I don't see much reason to use it over the USI one since it has a smaller bubble and can't be run as long. Is it lighter and cheaper with more connection points? Sorry I just don't understand from the numbers you gave why anyone would want to use those over the USI ones.

Remember the drive was originally designed behind stock Kerbol system, I think, so it doesn't have a massive fuel range. Rover is working on a 5m version but I don't know how far he has gotten or what the EC and EM usage would be on it nor the storage. The question is which did you run out of EM or Zenon? If it was EM then that's solvable by using a powerful enough generator to charge while in flight, which is a bad idea normally, or to just drop out and recharge if it was zenon then pack more on. I think that a limit on how far you go is a good idea to keep a bit of challenge in it, in this case building a warp ship and the infrastructure so that it can go anywhere. My solar system mod is kind of outdated but with enough zenon stored and a large enough reactor I can make it across the gulf. As for the ideas on how to set up the drives I recommend balancing your pros and cons like how the USI stuff does. The warp is a big pro so it's balanced by it's limited bubble size and long charge time but a more efficient drive doesn't necessarily balance out the cons of smaller bubble, longer charge time AND more power use.

Well maybe instead of a smaller warp bubble instead make it larger since it is using more power, and make it use more EM, kind of like it's slightly unstable and a barely controlled drive. This would give you a pro and some cons maybe even make it charge slightly faster to emphasize the lower safety measures.

Helaeon if you are going to make the converted ones as a lighter version, which makes sense since those things look flimsy as hell, why not do something like 1.5 the electrical cost to run while it only holds about 1/2 the fuel. This would make up for the flimsy design since there would be less space for the EM and more energy needed to keep the EM from just tearing the whole thing apart. My only thing I think could be a problem would be the fact that if you have the USI ones which are better why use the flimsy ones, also was under the impression people wanted the new model as a full replacement of the USI ones.

If you go with both the breaking and the needing kerbal mechanics being implemented then maybe a time frame thing something like after 30 days without supplies they start breaking things every 15 days for the next 90 days, so at 30, 45, 60, 75 and 90, then on day 90 right after they break the item they go from on strike to unconscious and require a living fed kerbal to bring them back up at which point the ransack the rescue ship for food. This would give you a bit of leeway if you make a mistake but would start punishing you harder and harder the longer you went to prevent people from abusing it. This would also make it better for people who like to pull things with roleplaying out a scenario where with TAC you could technically under feed your kerbals and still complete a mission but the moment they passed that specific mark they are dead and no need for rescue. While this made for some interesting things, in my case kicking one of my kerbals out of the airlock on the way back from Jool so that the other could survive long enough to get the science home, it still made rescue missions impossible for far flung ships since by the time you realized you weren't going to have enough food they were too far out for you to get anything to them. I think I got off topic there so the TL;DR version is a good idea is to have them start breaking things after X days until X days have passed at which point you would need a living kerbal to come revive them.

So getting more and more excited as I read this I am left with a question. Will supplies, mulch and organics be transportable with your logistics module, the thing that allows you to send things within the SOI, or will they be locked out like Karborundum is? I can imagine dropping automated bases down that would allow you to just fly over drop the mulch and chill in orbit while organics are made if they are able to be transported with it.

Are you sure cause the way it is worded is that the buildings will have a different mulch to organics ratio. It wouldn't make sense to have different supplies to mulch ratio per building nor does it make sense in the fact that you can stick extra supplies and mulch storage on something when only the few things mentioned would be able to create mulch.

I have played with TAC-LS since it first came out and love the crap out of it. This is the first time another LS mod has actually got me interested, maybe cause I use so much USI stuff that having a mod for it is exciting. One thing that gets me is that you have made it so an orbital colony can never be 100% self sufficient. Personally I feel that very late in the tech tree, like an end node or something, Kerbals would have found a way to be 100% self-sufficient since we as humans already have an idea on it. I do have a legitimate question though. Is the conversion of supplies to mulch going to be 1 to 1 or will it be less forcing us to still make supply runs, albeit super infrequently?