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toric5

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    Spacecraft Engineer
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  1. im really looking forward to non-laggy, backgrounded colonies, and playing with nearteas parts in stock.
  2. Given that konstruction seems to be cooking up a replacement to Ground Construction, would it be possible to break off the construction ports (not neccesarily the depreciated models, just the code and MM patch) into a standalone mod, for those of us that use konstruction without the resource chain of MKS?
  3. Is it possible to hide stock buttons? Id like to hide the KSPedia and transfer calculator buttons, free up some vertical space.
  4. To be fair, I can totally imagine jeb going across the munar landscape at 120 kph...
  5. I dont like either idea. I like the idea of parts that cant be stored in eva inventory, but not parts that cant be stored in ANY inventory. In short, as long as you have volume/mass limits, I dont see a reason to restrict parts from the system.
  6. isnt temp directly proportional reactor power/exaust cooling? (assuming heat capacity is insignificant...)
  7. fair point. throttle would control propellant flow, meaning thrust would stabilize at the throttle level under automatic control but would take a while to respond to throttle changes, and would be at the proper throttle level under manual as long as the proper temp was maintained, but you might be right, maybe too decoupled. out of curiosity, how is thrust calced now? ive mostly been concerned with ISP, but is thrust not decoupled from throttle currently, due to the reactor taking time to increase power?
  8. sorry, thats more or less what I meant, wasnt communicated clearly. So, having not worked with unity/ksp modding at all (my small background is in scientific computing, not game dev), take what Im saying with a massive pile of salt... but what if the ISP depended on the core temp, core temp was regulated by system heat the normal way (via reactor power and radiator+exhaust cooling, though some engines might have a fraction of waste heat that can only be cooled by radiators, not exhaust), and the thrust was dependent on ISP and mass flow (all via the equations we already have/can find on atomic rockets.) Then we have a PID (or other lightweight control algo, I've only hacked around with controls) manage the reactor power to maintain the rated/desired reactor temp by adjusting the reactor power? Obv. the player could manually control this for situations where they have opted to use radiators for a faster throttle response, but the 'automatic control' would be determined by the above control system. I think this could lead to interesting game play. The player might even choose to manually control their reactors dangerously hot to get some extra thrust and ISP, at the expense of their reactors core health. again, I have no clue if you've already thought of this and its infesable to implement, and unfortunately I cant be much help outside psudocode and configs, as unity .NET seems an absolute pain of a dev environment to set up on linux, and I have yet to do it successfully.
  9. reactor power and mass flow determine thrust, yes, but the core temp should be what determines ISP. http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/enginelist2.php#id--Nuclear_Thermal
  10. just tested that, and the ISP definitly depends on the reactor power setting, rather than the reatctors core temp. heres it at full throttle, I let the temp stabilize. and at roughly half throttle, same reactor temp. I also messed around with manual reactor control a bit, and confirmed that the ISP indeed depended on the reactor power setting. I put some radiators on to absorb the waste heat, and set the throttle to a low setting, and messed with the reactor power setting. At full power, full ISP was achived. at half power, you get roughtly half ISP. Note that the temperature is roughly constant. @Nertea, is this intended behavor? I like the slow response of the reactor W.R.T. thrust, and I think the mechanic could be really fun if fleshed out. Think of it this way: If you want to save mass by forgoing radiators (and its significant savings!), you need to be gentle with the throttle. Throttle up to rapidly and you quench your engine, bringing the temperature crashing down and ruining your ISP until the reactor powers up and the thermal mass of the reactor heats back up. Throttle down too quickly, and, as you have forgone radiators, the reactor cant SCRAM fast enough, and you severely overheat your core, possibly stranding you with a broken engine. On the other hand, you can take a big hit to Dv and/or TWR by packing enough radiators and getting that instant throttle response needed for precision maneuvers and landing. The only thing that feels out of place with the current system is the ISP depending on reactor power, not core (and therefore presumably propellant) temperature, meaning that half-throttle gets you half-ISP...
  11. Shouldn't the ISP of the engine rely on the core temperature, rather than the throttle? Ive noticed that if Im at anything less than full throttle, my ISP is limited even if the reactor has fully 'caught up' to my throttle position and the core temp is where it should be. I like that I need to adjust the throttle slowly so I don't quench the reactor cold or burn it up, but it doesn't feel right to be getting half ISP at lower throttle/thrust limiter. (At least, I don't think that's how it works, and definitely not with any other engines in KSP.)
  12. does the ISP of the engine depend at all on the reactor power? am I 'wasting' propellant while throttling up and down?
  13. will the nuclear transfer improvements be available for parts not covered by systemHeat? I currently use the old NFE system to let my engineers do things like transfer solid fuel/refurbish ablator, wondering if I will be able to switch this over to the new system.
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