[1.3.0] Kerbalism v1.2.9

[AVaughan]

To me 2 (ability to extend antennas even if there is no control/connection) makes the most sense.  If there is enough demand you could make that ability configurable in settings.

[AVaughan]

3 hours ago, ShotgunNinja said:

Maybe I can extend all antennas in existing vessels when Kerbalism is added to a new savegame. Is a bit involved, but can technically be done.

If you go with 2, then any there shouldn't be any major problems for any inflight craft if someone adds Kerbalism to an existing save, assuming those craft have suitable antennas.  (And trying to automatically extend existing antennas won't help that case anyway).  

Not sure what happens to kerbals on existing ships if someone adds Kerbalism with kerbals already in flight, but adding/changing life support mods with kerbals in flight sounds like a "Bad Idea" anyway.

[Karamon]

i have 2 questions

 

1. I use sigma dimensions, does antenna range scale with the system scale or i have to do it manually? if so where i can find the settings ? (i play on x10 scale)

2. is there a plan for integration with the MKS/OKS ?  Currently it looks like both mods use different set of resources

 

 

And small suggestion, imo extendable antenas should work at close range when retracted. Similar to stock commnet works  . Currently when they are retracted there is no signal at all , in stock you need to extend them when you are in space . I find it a bit annoying to place more and more antenas just to take of from a planet

[kikill]

On 14/05/2016 at 8:56 PM, ShotgunNinja said:

@panarchist It may sound a bit contrivied, but you can implement some kind of waste heat management right now by (ab)using the rules framework:

• create a 'negative waste heat' pseudo-resource
• create a rule that consume this negative waste heat per-kerbal
• the kerbals will start to degenerate when the negative waste heat level reach zero
• add a ModuleGenerator to the radiators, that slowly produce 'negative waste heat'

In 0.9.9.9, I'm going to add a 'poisoning' flag to Rule that will degenerate the per-kerbal property at resource saturation, instead of depletion.
And the above may be even simplified to this:

• create a 'waste heat' pseudo-resource
• create a rule that consume a negative amount of waste heat per-kerbal (thus producing it)
• set poisoning=true in the rule
• the kerbals will start to degenerate when the waste heat level reach 100%
• add a ModuleGenerator to the radiators, that slowly consume the 'waste heat'

@ShotgunNinja i'd like to add this heat management, so the radiators have a much life-like use. Is your procedure still valid for your current version (latest beta for now) ?

[ShotgunNinja]

@kikill The overall concept should still hold. Note that I never implemented generic 'poisoning', but only ad-hoc co2 poisoning. In place of the ModuleGenerator mentioned, you could use the new Process system. I am very interested in what you may come up with, and if you need some clarification in how the new rule system work do not esitate to ask (the documentation is still a bit lacking...).

[APlayer]

 

15 hours ago, ShotgunNinja said:

[...] It is possible to do it already, the functionality is in every manned pod or probe core (in every part that has an HardDrive module). You click on 'Transfer data here' in the part RMB ui. If the button is not visible, that mean the data is already in that part. [...]

Ah, never had a vessel with two controllable parts since I tried Kerbalism. Good to know, thanks!

 

15 hours ago, ShotgunNinja said:

[...] The data collection over time has been posponed to a later version. Any data that is not transmissible is considered 'samples'. There is no conceptual difference between a GeigerCounter and the other 'sensor-like' experiments, nor it will be in later versions. [...]

I must have missed this, then. Sorry.

I was confused since I found that my experiments return no science (Thermometer and Barometer) but the Geiger Counter did. So I thought the former two had to be used differently. However, I just remembered that I did these two already, so it's my bad. Thanks.

 

One thing I'd ask for, though, is when you repeat an experiment during transmission of itself, then the full data gets restored (1) and (2), I am unsure, but I seem to recall that the science reward gets restored too. Could you prevent repeating an experiment if it's there already, no matter if (2) is correct? I think it would make more sense anyway.

[jbetten]

Asked and answered

Edited December 13, 2016 by jbetten
...

[ThRodrigues]

Damn day they invented the google translator, now it made me want to babble in writing in languages I do not know:

I'm new to the mod, but I was very interested and did some testing with the latest version (1.1.5 pre 5) using some mods and without any also having the same results, I did an analysis in the view of a mere player that did not Understands nothing of modding:

 Balance:

* Signal and Science

The best high-gain antenna (RA-100 Relay Antenna) at its best performance transmits data at 64kb / s (512 Kbps) if, for example, I was orbiting Mun and experiment with the GRAVMAX Negative Graviolli Detector which is the largest From data in stock (864Mb), transmitting your data to Kerbin would take 4 hours and 25 minutes, ie more than 70% of a Kerbin day (which has 6 hours) to transmit a single experiment, and if it were to transmit Eelo (14kb / s) the same experiment would take almost 3 days Kerbin. I wonder if it's really slow in real life, and if not, I kindly suggest a rebalancing in experiment size or speed of transmission, since other popular science models like Dmagic or SEP have equipment with even larger data sizes (I've seen One of 1.6Gb) and in addition to adding several new pieces of science. The implementation of more antennas with more advanced data transmission technology could solve the problem, such as the laser antenna (which exists in real life), putting it at the end of the technology tree, of course.

Mobile Processing Lab does data analysis at 18Mb / h (It would take 7 days Kerbin to make the 800Mb of SC-9001 Science Jr. data transmissible), which is acceptable for realism, but makes no difference if it has 1 or 2 scientists on board Or if they are veterans or novices, it would be interesting to increase or slow down according to these factors.

* Life support and electricity

.The greenhouse takes 250 days to generate 500 food units which equals 80 days more food if 1 kerbal is on board, which makes the player almost totally dependent on food containers shipped from Kerbin.
Each Big Supply Conteiner (the largest) has one year and twenty-five days of food for 1 kerbal. A rebalancing is welcome.
In EVA, the oxygen lasts for 15 minutes and even less electrically when the scruber is activated, it is little, since in real life it can last for hours (7h for example).

Building a well-crafted and active station will require more than usual due to the added needs that expend energy, such as scrubbers, antennas, Greenhouse, Laboratory, Gravity Ring and especially Active Shield, recommend mods that offer alternative shapes and more Energy is essential, case Otherwise moments on dark sides will be fatal if you do not have much EletricCharge.

* ISRU

Chemical Plant, Convert-O-Tron 125 and 250 even with different prices and masses their conversion processes have the same capacity, this would not be bad if Convert-O-Tron had not lost the ability to transform Ore into fuels with Kerbalism Installed this is no longer possible and I do not understand since the two Drill-O-Matic can extract ore and water, but the ore can only be converted into oxygen by the MRE process. It is only possible to produce LiquidFuel, Oxidizer and Monopropelente by converting other resources that can not be extracted as Ore was (hydrogen, oxygen, ammonia, oxidizer and carbon dioxide). My suggestion is to make it possible to convert ore into fuels again.

* Reliability

It's basic plus it's already cool, so anything that is added is profit as long as it does not slow down the FPS as Dangit does for me. Ideas - Parts that can be repaired by any profession should require a higher level of experience for non-engineers

 Errors:

Grenhouse does not produce oxygen, as it is reported in the VAB, it seems to do the opposite by consuming oxygen.

The piece of Spectro-Variometer Science (Stock) of Atmospheric Fluid does not get scientific credits, it just looks at the percentage of CO2 in the environment (I do not know if it's a bug).

Fixing problems in parts in the VAB with Geiger Counter, Active Shield has the same problem, but in reverse. Watch:
Https://s23.postimg.org/rkmdqq1qj/bug.png

 Other Suggestions:

Decrease the speed that CO2 (WastWatmosphere) increases, because the kerbal die in 15 minutes with scrubber off, or make the speed depend on the size of the vessel and / or how many kerbals you have on board.
Add extra stations and a main station to keep contact with the probe antennas and manned rockets as is done in the CommNet system.
Make EL able to apply shielding and nitrogeio on vessels built by its construction system, as it is already done with water, oxygen and food.
Add capacity to crews in Gravit Rings.
Allow the production of nitrogen as is already done with ammonia and hydrogen, as it will end one day in bases / permanent stations.
Try to maintain support for colonization mods (MKS / OKS, KBPS, Pathifinder) and also for other popular mod types that may be affected by changes brought about by Kerbalism.
Do a tutorial on antenna combination (which is not simple for me).

If I quoted some wrong information or something that was not yet implemented completely I'm sorry.

Edited December 14, 2016 by ThRodrigues

[jlcarneiro]

It's great to have this mod getting near release!

I haven't tried its new version yet, because I've been having problems IRL and couldn't get free time to play KSP.

I've run it once, though and have two basic questions:

1. how do I change the Magnetic fields color? I'm using nVidia GeForce GT 730M and it shows "pinkish"...
2. how do I show the window shown in the Tracking Station? I hid it and now I can't show it again...

[ShotgunNinja]

9 hours ago, APlayer said:

One thing I'd ask for, though, is when you repeat an experiment during transmission of itself, then the full data gets restored (1) and (2), I am unsure, but I seem to recall that the science reward gets restored too. Could you prevent repeating an experiment if it's there already, no matter if (2) is correct? I think it would make more sense anyway.

The limit of science credits you can obtain from an experiment/situation is never violated.

If I prevent collecting and transmitting data when you already transmitted that experiment, then all 'collect science from here' contracts will be impossible to do after you collect all there is to collect in that situation/body.
 

2 hours ago, jlcarneiro said:

how do I change the Magnetic fields color? I'm using nVidia GeForce GT 730M and it shows "pinkish"...

What you are seeing is the 'shader placeholder' of Unity, it is used when one shader is not found, or it doesn't compile. Questions:

• Was it happening in pre3? Can you try the last prerelease and see if that's still happening?
• Are you running in DX11/OpenGL mode? Are you on Linux/OSX?

2 hours ago, jlcarneiro said:

1. how do I show the window shown in the Tracking Station? I hid it and now I can't show it again...

ALT+N will toggle that window. Also Keypad 0/1/2/3 will toggle the field rendering.
 

@ThRodrigues Some good feedback, thank you.

6 hours ago, ThRodrigues said:

I wonder if it's really slow in real life

I looked at sizes of data transmitted in various real missions (such as curiosity or voyager). Transmission rates are also based on real missions (but were tweaked a bit). 

6 hours ago, ThRodrigues said:

Mobile Processing Lab does data analysis at 18Mb / h (It would take 7 days Kerbin to make the 800Mb of SC-9001 Science Jr. data transmissible), which is acceptable for realism, but makes no difference if it has 1 or 2 scientists on board Or if they are veterans or novices, it would be interesting to increase or slow down according to these factors.

Maybe the scientist experience could speed up lab analysis.

6 hours ago, ThRodrigues said:

The greenhouse takes 250 days to generate 500 food units which equals 80 days more food if 1 kerbal is on board, which makes the player almost totally dependent on food containers shipped from Kerbin.
Each Big Supply Conteiner (the largest) has one year and twenty-five days of food for 1 kerbal. A rebalancing is welcome.

Oh yeah you are absolutely right. I will increase food produced by the greenhouse.

6 hours ago, ThRodrigues said:

Chemical Plant, Convert-O-Tron 125 and 250 even with different prices and masses their conversion processes have the same capacity

The smaller one has capacity '1', the Convert-O-Tron 125 has capacity '3.33' and the Convert-O-Tron 250 has capacity '5' (and also 2 slots, so we can say the overall capacity is '10').

6 hours ago, ThRodrigues said:

had not lost the ability to transform Ore into fuels with Kerbalism Installed this is no longer possible and I do not understand since the two Drill-O-Matic can extract ore and water, but the ore can only be converted into oxygen by the MRE process. It is only possible to produce LiquidFuel, Oxidizer and Monopropelente by converting other resources that can not be extracted as Ore was (hydrogen, oxygen, ammonia, oxidizer and carbon dioxide). My suggestion is to make it possible to convert ore into fuels again.

The whole point of these chains of processes is to make things more interesting, and more realistic. If you want the stock 'ore => fuel', you can use the Classic profile.

6 hours ago, ThRodrigues said:

The piece of Spectro-Variometer Science (Stock) of Atmospheric Fluid does not get scientific credits, it just looks at the percentage of CO2 in the environment (I do not know if it's a bug).

The Spectro-Variometer experiment is not available when landed, only in atmospheric flight. It is something from older versions, maybe I should revert it to stock behaviour.

6 hours ago, ThRodrigues said:

Decrease the speed that CO2 (WastWatmosphere) increases, because the kerbal die in 15 minutes with scrubber off, or make the speed depend on the size of the vessel and / or how many kerbals you have on board.

It does already depend on habitat volume, and how many kerbals are producing WasteAtmosphere. I'm looking into ways of improving the user experience about that.

6 hours ago, ThRodrigues said:

Allow the production of nitrogen as is already done with ammonia and hydrogen, as it will end one day in bases / permanent stations.

Nitrogen can be extracted by some atmospheres. But I agree a chemical reaction producing nitrogen would be a good thing to have.

6 hours ago, ThRodrigues said:

Try to maintain support for colonization mods (MKS / OKS, KBPS, Pathifinder) and also for other popular mod types that may be affected by changes brought about by Kerbalism.
Do a tutorial on antenna combination (which is not simple for me).

I'll write some documentation on the modules (and all the rest) when the stable version is released.

[jlcarneiro]

13 minutes ago, ShotgunNinja said:

What you are seeing is the 'shader placeholder' of Unity, it is used when one shader is not found, or it doesn't compile. Questions:

• Was it happening in pre3? Can you try the last prerelease and see if that's still happening?
• Are you running in DX11/OpenGL mode? Are you on Linux/OSX?

I didn't try pre3, I've just found out about pre5!

I'm on Linux, forgot to inform it, sorry!

13 minutes ago, ShotgunNinja said:

ALT+N will toggle that window. Also Keypad 0/1/2/3 will toggle the field rendering.

Notebook here, no keypad 0/1/2/3... I'll try ALT-N, though.

EDIT: Tried on pre3, pink mesh there too. ALT-N on Linux seems to be changed to LALT+RSHIFT+N?! 8O

Edited December 14, 2016 by jlcarneiro

[ShotgunNinja]

6 minutes ago, jlcarneiro said:

I'm on Linux, forgot to inform it, sorry!

Ah ok. I didn't include the asset bundle for Linux (oops).

[jlcarneiro]

1 hour ago, ShotgunNinja said:

Ah ok. I didn't include the asset bundle for Linux (oops).

Ninja'ed!

Oh! And Module Manager 1.7.5 found 20 errors on Gamedata/Kerbalism/System/habitat.cfg...

[ShotgunNinja]

1 hour ago, jlcarneiro said:

ALT-N on Linux seems to be changed to LALT+RSHIFT+N?! 8O

I'm just checking the Unity keycode for LeftAlt/RightAlt, no idea why it should be different on linux...

13 minutes ago, jlcarneiro said:

Oh! And Module Manager 1.7.5 found 20 errors on Gamedata/Kerbalism/System/habitat.cfg...

Can you send me the log with these errors?

[panarchist]

19 hours ago, kikill said:

@ShotgunNinja i'd like to add this heat management, so the radiators have a much life-like use. Is your procedure still valid for your current version (latest beta for now) ?

Whoa - that one was a blast from the past, and I think I'd forgotten that @ShotgunNinja had replied to that.  I think I'm going to try actually implementing that this time around.  Thanks for bringing it back up!

[ShotgunNinja]

Version: 1.1.5-pre6
Require: KSP 1.2.1+, ModuleManager 2.7.5+
Download: github

 

 

 

 

 

Changelog (from 1.1.5-pre5):

- signal: antenna can be extended/retracted when vessel has no connection
- signal: support 'triggered' data
- signal: 'compress' data that is not transmitted in background
- signal: use new IContractObjectiveModule for Antenna
- reliability: extra cost/mass is specified in proportion of part cost/mass
- science: more solid support for malformed subject id and missing experiment definitions
- timewarp is stopped instantaneously, and will be stopped during warp to next morning
- balance: tweaked data size of stock/dmagic science experiments, don't touch the rest
- balance: atmo analysis experiment can be done on surface, not biome-dependent anymore
- balance: tweaked reliability extra cost/mass
- balance: decreased MTBF bonus on high-quality components
- balance: increased chance of critical failure
- balance: greenhouse food production increased, enough for a crew of 3
- balance: increased amount of oxygen on EVA
- fix: do not cache vessel position anymore
- fix: wrong signal warnings on scene changes and on prelaunch
- fix: include shader bundles for linux and osx
- fix: wrong densities for Atmo and WasteAtmo resources, adapted related processes rates
- fix: drive swapping on undocking

Spoiler

Changelog (from 1.1.5-pre4):

• fix: Nvidia rendering issue (for real this time! thanks to all the testers )
• fix: extreme slowdown on scene changes (oops)
• fix: spurious signal warning messages on scene change
• caches are only cleared when a new savegame is loaded
• destroyed/recovered/terminated vessels are purged from the cache
• identify savegame by unique id

Changelog (from 1.1.5-pre3):

• fix: Nvidia rendering issue (hopefully, need confirmation from an Nvidia user)
• fix: avoid confirm popup getting stuck when the science dialog is closed by game events
• fix: do not render signal lines when Signal is disabled
• fix: do not render anything in space center view, irregardless of MapView.MapIsEnabled value
• fix: force refresh of VAB UI when quality is changed on a Reliability module
• fix: force refresh of VAB UI when setups change on a Configure module
• balance: reduced atmosphere leak rate
• balance: slightly increased pressure control capacity
• balance: 1.25m lander pod now get 2 ECLSS module slots
• balance: reduced processing capacity of big ISRU chemical plant

Changelog (from 1.1.5-pre2):

• fix: missing resources in parts that are using Configure module
• fix: exceptions thrown by Reliability module in some circumstances

Changelog (from 1.1.5-pre1):

• data UI show experiment body/biome/situation
• data recorded is now clamped to max available for that experiment situation
• scaled down experiment data size a bit, randomized the values
• hijack data from any science container, not just ModuleScienceExperiment
• use buffering in data transmission to avoid triggering OnScienceReceived event too much
• fix: combinatory explosion in Configure module symmetry handling
• fix: resource duplication in Configure module
• fix: support multiple pages in science dialog
• fix: analytical sunlight issue during timewarp blending
• fix: remove drive on PartDie, instead of PartDestroyed

Changelog (from 1.1.4):
* this is a summary of the changes  
  Rule framework
    - multiple profiles can cohexist in the same installation, only one is enabled from user settings
    - Process: vessel-wide resource consumer/producers driven by modifiers        
    - split Supply out of Rule, for additional flexibility
    - can use resource amount as a modifier
    - many new modifiers, to leverage the information provided by habitat
  Features framework
    - user specified features are set by a flag in settings
    - other features are detected automatically from the modifiers used in the active profile    
    - inject MM patches during loading screen, before MM is executed
    - third parties can check for specific features or profiles by using NEEDS[]
    - parts are enabled/disabled automatically depending on features used    
  Resource cache
    - new 'exact, order-agnostic' algorithm for consumption/production chains at arbitrary timesteps
    - consider interval-based outputs in depletion estimates    
  Configure
    - new module Configure: can select between setups in the VAB or in flight
    - setups can specify resources and/or modules
    - setups can include extra cost and mass
    - setups can be unlocked with technologies
    - configuration UI, that show info on modules and resources for a setup    
  Habitat
    - new module Habitat: replace CLS internal spaces
    - used to calculate internal volume in m^3, and surface in m^2    
    - can be disabled/enabled even in flight to configure the internal space as required
    - support inflatable habitats
    - can be pressurized/depressurized
    - can keep track of level of CO2 in the internal atmosphere
    - can be added to parts with no crew capacity
  Greenhouse
    - improved module: Greenhouse
    - lamps intensity is determined automatically, and is expressed in W/m^2
    - can have radiation and pressure thresholds for growth
    - can require an arbitrary set of input resources
    - can produce an arbitrary set of by-product resources
    - growth will degenerate if lighting/radiation/pressure conditions aren't met      
  ISRU
    - planetary resource definitions based on real data
    - new module Harvester: for crustal/atmospheric resource extraction, use abundance/pressure thresholds    
  Wet workshops
    - some stock tanks can now be configured as either fuel tanks or habitats, even in flight    
  QualityOfLife
    - new module Comfort: replace Entertainment and provide a specific bonus, added to some stock parts
    - modified module GravityRing: now provide firm-ground bonus
    - living space is calculated from volume per-capita    
  Radiation
    - shielding required is now determined by habitat surface, and map to millimeters of Pb
    - rtg emit a small amount of ratiation
  Planner
    - single page layout, with panel selection
    - show consumers/producers of a resource in tooltip
    - improved/redesigned most panels
    - redundancy analysis for Reliability panel    
  Reliability
    - improved subsystem: Reliability
    - support arbitrary third party modules
    - components are now disabled when they fail
    - two types of failures: malfunctions (can be repaired) and critical failures (can't be repaired)
    - safemode: there is a chance of remote repairs for unmanned vessels
    - components can be assigned to redundancy groups
    - an optional redundancy incentive is provided: when a component fail, all others in the same redundancy group delay their next failure
    - removed 'manufacturing quality'
    - can select quality per-component in the vab, high quality means higher cost and/or mass but longer MTBF    
  Signal
    - improved: focus on data transmission rates and differences between low-gain and high-gain antennas    
    - high-gain antennas: can communicate only with DSN
    - low-gain antennas: can communicate with DSN and with other vessels
    - low-gain antennas: can be flagged as 'relay' to receive data from other vessels
    - can choose what level of control to lose without a connection:
      . 'none' (lose all control),
      . 'limited' (same as CommNet limited control) and
      . 'full' (only disable data transmission)
    - easy parameters for antenna definitions
    - simple data rate attenuation model
    - render data transmission particles during data transmission
    - disable CommNet automatically when enabled
    - connection status is obtained by CommNet or RemoteTech when signal is disabled
    - new signal panel in vessel info window, show data rates, destination and file being transmitted    
  Science
    - new subsystem: Science, improve on data storage, transmission and analysis
    - transmit data over time, even in background
    - analyze data over time, even in background
    - the background data transmission work with Signal, CommNet or RemoteTech.
    - new module: HardDrive, replace stock data container, can flag files for transmission and lab analysis
    - new module: Laboratory, can analyze samples and produce transmissible data    
    - work with all science experiment modules, both stock and third-party, by hijacking the science result dialog
    - data storage: can store multiple results of same experiment type, can transfer to other parts without requiring EVA
    - data storage: can still be stored on EVA kerbals, and EVA kerbals can take/store data from/to pods
    - data UI: show files and samples per-vessel, can flag for transmission or analysis, can delete files or samples
    - properly credit the science over time
    - do not break science collection contracts       
  Automation
    - removed the Console and command interpreter    
    - new scripting system: not text-based anymore
    - new component control and script editing UI
    - script editor UI highlight parts for ease of use    
  Misc
    - ported to KSP 1.2.1    
    - consistent part naming scheme
    - rebalanced mass/cost of all parts
    - improved part descriptions
    - do not change stock EC producers/consumers anymore
    - adapted all support patches, removed the ones not necessary anymore    
    - shaders are loaded from asset bundle
    - removed workarounds for old SCANsat versions
    - some Settings added, others removed
    - action group support for all modules
    - properly support multiple modules of the same type in the same part
    - optimized how animations in modules are managed
    - can optionally use the stock message system instead of our own
    - can optionally simulate the effect of tracking pivots on solar panels orientability
    - removed helmet handling for EVA kerbals
    - doesn't require CRP anymore, but it will still work along it
    - improved how crew requirements are specified in modules
    - show limited body info window when Sun is selected, instead of nothing
    - new contract: analyze sample in space
    - new contract: cross the heliopause
    - rebalanced ec consumers/producers    
    - show tooltips in vessel info
    - use common style for all part info tooltips    
    - AtomicAge engines emit radiation (ThePsion5)  
    - more love for VenStockRevamp patch (YaarPodshipnik)        
  Profile: 'Default'
    - rewritten from scratch
    - balanced consumption rates from real data
    - balanced container capacity from real data
    - water
    - co2 poisoning
    - pressurization: influence quality of life
    - configurable ECLSS in pods: scrubber, water recycler, pressure control, waste processing
    - configurable supply containers: can store Food, Water, Waste
    - configurable pressurized tanks: can store Oxygen, Nitrogen, Hydrogen, Ammonia
    - greenhouse: require Ammonia and Water, produce Oxygen and WasteWater as by-product, need to be pressurized, has radiation threshold    
    - stock ISRU plants can be configured with one among a set of reality-inspired chemical processes
    - stock drills can be configured with a specific resource harvester
    - stock atmo experiment is also used as configurable atmospheric harvester
    - stock fuel cells act like real fuel cells
    - new part: Chemical Plant, can execute reality-inspired chemical processes, unlocked early in the tech tree    
  Profile: 'Classic'
    - this profile mimick the old default profile, without the new stuff  
  Profile: 'None'
    - choose this if you want to play with third-party life support mods
  Bugs fixed
    - fix: nasty problem with interaction between cache and analytical sunlight estimation        
    - fix: radiation body definitions were not loaded in some cases    
    - fix: planner, stock laboratory EC consumption wasn't considered
    - fix: planner, solar panel flux estimation was considering atmo factor even in space
    - fix: planner, correctly skip disabled modules    
    - fix: spurious signal loss message when undocking    
    - fix: maintain notes and scripts even after docking/undocking    
    - fix: highlighting of malfunction components in pods
    - fix: in monitor UI signal icon, show all relays in the chain
    - fix: bug with killing eva kerbals while iterating the list of crew    
    - fix: exception when loading dead eva kerbals
    - fix: module index mismatch when loading dead eva kerbals

 

Some of the changes deserve a bit of explanation.

• Antenna can be extended/retracted when the vessel is not controllable.

• Timewarp is now stopped instantaneously, it seem that orbits are not messed up anymore by that.

• Realized that vessel position can't be cached: this was probably the cause of some subtle bugs in the past

• Rebalanced transmission rates, costs and data size: I didn't reduce the time to transmit too much, it is supposed to take time

• Rebalanced reliability: High quality components cost more, and have reduced benefits. Higher chance of critical failures.

• I've added support for the 'triggered' data transmissions. However, it can't be simulated in background because I have to assume all the respective stock/mods expect the vessel to be loaded when the data is received (and their callback executed). So no background data transmission for: orbital survey, orbital survey plus, and any other mod that use 'triggered' data

• Found out there was a mistake: the Atmo and WasteAtmo densities were 1000 times smaller that they should have been. No wonder the CO2 level was rising that fast!

[AVaughan]

5 hours ago, ShotgunNinja said:

ALT+N will toggle that window

Just a heads up, that you might want to make that configurable.  @DMagic 's Maneuver Node Evolved also uses that key, and is also listening for it in map view.  Other than both mods responding to the same keystroke, it didn't seem to cause any errors, but I did have some navball rendering issues that last play session, and ksp crashed when I tried to quit from the main menu to the desktop.  (I did save the logs, and have removed maneuver node evolved temporarily as I try to see whether the navball rendering issues happen without it).

28 minutes ago, ShotgunNinja said:

balance: greenhouse food production increased, enough for a crew of 3

Personally I think that might be a little too much. Maybe 1 greenhouse to feed 0.8-0.9 kerbals is about the right spot? That way a 3 kerbal mission to Duna would need 4 greenhouses, which seems reasonable.  I do think that the amount of food you could grow is a greenhouse in pre5 was probably realistic, but between the large number of greenhouses needed, and their power requirements, it was probably easier to just ship food, unless you had another mod that added a nuclear generator for constant power. (But easy to change anyway).

On the subject of greenhouses, I've been wondering whether having the darkness degeneration and pressure control/climatisation degeneration rate at the same value makes sense.  Plants are reasonably well adapted to moderate periods of darkness, so it doesn't make sense to me that your crop shrinks faster than it grows just from a short period of darkness.  Maybe use separate darkness and climatization/radiation/pressure degeneration rates.  

Possibly also add a button and automation controls to enable players to disable the greenhouse lights (but keep the pressure/climatization running) so a ship/station/base in orbit or landed on another planet can use the greenhouse to grow food without running the greenhouse lights during the dark period of it's orbit.  (At the moment the power consumption of a greenhouse is such that it is probably impractical to even consider farming on a Minmus base, unless you have another mod that provides a nuclear reactor for power generation).

9 minutes ago, ShotgunNinja said:

Realized that vessel position can't be cached: this was probably the cause of some subtle bugs in the past

Last session (in pre5) I encountered a bug where the Kerbalism's summary panel insisted my Kerbal station was in darkness, even when it wasn't.  If I switched to it, then I could see that it's solar panels were generating power, and but if I switched away from the vessel then Kerbalism's background processing would cause the batteries to drain.  (I do have a save, screenshots and saved the logs, but the bug doesn't reproduce upon loading the save).  Before I write it up properly @ShotgunNinja , do you think that the above was probably caused by caching vessel position?   Image : http://i.imgur.com/4P6UVQF.jpg

Also I still haven't been offered a single stock satelite/station mission.  I don't have anything installed that I expect would be changing contracts, except possibly Kerbalism.  Did Kerbalism disable those contracts?

[ShotgunNinja]

4 minutes ago, AVaughan said:

Maneuver Node Evolved also uses that key, and is also listening for it in map view

Ouch, well N for Node make sense. I'll find another key.

5 minutes ago, AVaughan said:

and ksp crashed when I tried to quit from the main menu to the desktop

KSP crash to desktop a lot, even on stock. Most of the crashes seem to be at loading time, or when switching to desktop with ALT+tab. Who knows why, my bet is on concurrency issues.

8 minutes ago, AVaughan said:

Personally I think that might be a little too much. Maybe 1 greenhouse to feed 0.8-0.9 kerbals is about the right spot? That way a 3 kerbal mission to Duna would need 4 greenhouses, which seems reasonable.  I do think that the amount of food you could grow is a greenhouse in pre5 was probably realistic, but between the large number of greenhouses needed, and their power requirements, it was probably easier to just ship food,

I agree with this. A greenhouse that small can't possibly feed 3 people. But I want people to use it when mission times are high enough to make the tradeoff against carring the food worthwile. What if we compromise to 2 crew, so let's say 3000 food per-harvest.

12 minutes ago, AVaughan said:

Possibly also add a button and automation controls to enable players to disable the greenhouse lights (but keep the pressure/climatization running) so a ship/station/base in orbit or landed on another planet can use the greenhouse to grow food without running the greenhouse lights during the dark period of it's orbit.  (At the moment the power consumption of a greenhouse is such that it is probably impractical to even consider farming on a Minmus base, unless you have another mod that provides a nuclear reactor for power generation).

The lamps are now 'automatic': they adjust and consume in proportion of the deficit between lighting required and natural lighting. I changed it in this way so that the harvest time is now deterministic. That is, if there is enough EC (in general, if all lighting/pressure/radiation/input-resource conditions are met).

But I can totally reduce the EC consumption of the lamps, if that's too high.

17 minutes ago, AVaughan said:

Last session (in pre5) I encountered a bug where the Kerbalism's summary panel insisted my Kerbal station was in darkness, even when it wasn't.  If I switched to it, then I could see that it's solar panels were generating power, and but if I switched away from the vessel then Kerbalism's background processing would cause the batteries to drain.  (I do have a save, screenshots and saved the logs, but the bug doesn't reproduce upon loading the save).  Before I write it up properly @ShotgunNinja , do you think that the above was probably caused by caching vessel position?   Image : http://i.imgur.com/4P6UVQF.jpg

Could be, but send me the savegame anyway so I'll investigate. The issues with cached vessel position happened when the overall frame of reference of vessel/bodies position changed.  Technically it change constantly in flight, but the error was not noticeable. During scene changes instead the frame of reference changes abruptly and subtle issues manifested for a very short time (until all the cache entries were recomputed).

24 minutes ago, AVaughan said:

Also I still haven't been offered a single stock satelite/station mission.  I don't have anything installed that I expect would be changing contracts, except possibly Kerbalism.  Did Kerbalism disable those contracts?

This should be fixed, as the Antenna module now implement IContractObjectiveModule. Please confirm if that's the case, as I went mostly on speculation on this one.

[APlayer]

9 hours ago, ShotgunNinja said:

[...] If I prevent collecting and transmitting data when you already transmitted that experiment, then all 'collect science from here' contracts will be impossible to do after you collect all there is to collect in that situation/body. [...]

Not quite what I mean... I mean to prevent collecting science when you currently have that same experiment and situation on board already. Or at lest do not restore the first one to full data amount, but rather add another (Rename it with numbers at the end, for example, if you need unique names).

9 hours ago, ShotgunNinja said:

[...] Nitrogen can be extracted by some atmospheres. But I agree a chemical reaction producing nitrogen would be a good thing to have. [...]

What about allowing to process Monopropellant (UDMH??) into N2, H2 and EC (Simulate a power plant generating electricity from the heat) and allow the same in reverse (EC + H2 + N2 -> Monopropellant).

It would make a more or less realistic solution and still an improvement over having nothing.

[ShotgunNinja]

1 hour ago, AVaughan said:

Possibly also add a button and automation controls to enable players to disable the greenhouse lights (but keep the pressure/climatization running) so a ship/station/base in orbit or landed on another planet can use the greenhouse to grow food without running the greenhouse lights during the dark period of it's orbit.  (At the moment the power consumption of a greenhouse is such that it is probably impractical to even consider farming on a Minmus base, unless you have another mod that provides a nuclear reactor for power generation).

Another thing just came in mind... is possible to use Automation to help you in that situation: in 'sunlight' script set the greenhouse to On, in 'shadow' script set the greenhouse to Off 

 

27 minutes ago, APlayer said:

What about allowing to process Monopropellant (UDMH??) into N2, H2 and EC (Simulate a power plant generating electricity from the heat) and allow the same in reverse (EC + H2 + N2 -> Monopropellant).

It would make a more or less realistic solution and still an improvement over having nothing.

Nitrogen is already in the atmosphere of Kerbin, Duna, Eve and Laythe. So for now we are okay.

There is also already a Monoprop production path:

Ammonia + Oxydizer [Hydrogen Peroxide] => Monoprop [Hydrazine]

 

[AVaughan]

2 hours ago, ShotgunNinja said:

KSP crash to desktop a lot, even on stock. Most of the crashes seem to be at loading time, or when switching to desktop with ALT+tab. Who knows why, my bet is on concurrency issues.

Personally, now that ksp 64bit is available, I find crashes to be fairly rare, unless I have a lot of mods installed (and I don't have many atm).  I think that was the only crash I've had in about 3-4 weeks, playing ksp a couple of hours/day on average.  

 

2 hours ago, ShotgunNinja said:

But I can totally reduce the EC consumption of the lamps, if that's too high.

Consider a 3 kerbal station with 2 greenhouses 2 hitchhiker hab modules, a lab and a return capsule in an 15 km equatorial orbit of Minmus. It is in the dark for about 15 mins per orbit. According to the planner in the dark it uses about 15 EC/s.  So you need a stack of about 15 1.25m Z-1k batteries just to survive the night.  More if you want a reasonable margin.  Two thirds of that power is needed to power the greenhouses.  That is why I suggested being able to turn the lamps off automatically.  

Given Minmus's inclined orbit I'm not sure how often you will eclipsed by Kerbin.  But if you do get eclipsed, then at a quick and dirty estimate it will last up to a little over an hr.  At the Mun I think you can expect to get eclipsed pretty regularly.  There an eclipse should last around 38 minutes, so if the eclipse starts just as you would normally be experiencing sunrise you might be darkness for around an hr.  That would mean a stack of 60x1.25m diameter batteries

53 minutes ago, ShotgunNinja said:

is possible to use Automation to help you in that situation: in 'sunlight' script set the greenhouse to On, in 'shadow' script set the greenhouse to Off 

I already have my farm in Kerbin orbit setup to use automation.  It turns off when the power reaches 15%, and then back on automatically.  I thought when I designed it that it had enough batteries to get through the night and through periodic Mun eclipses.  But battery levels keeps dropping to 15%, even when there is no eclipse.  Not sure whether this is simply because some of the solar panels are shadowing the other solar panels as the reference frame rotates, or because Kerbalism's background processing is thinking it is in shadow when it isn't.  (Indeed I only noticed that situation because I saw the script firing message whilst piloting another ship back from the Mun, and switched vessels to check on it, and noticed that it was in sunlight, even though Kerbalism's status panel thought that it was in the dark).

The problem with using automation to turn the greenhouse off using darkness is that the degeneration rate from being off in darkness is 8.33 times higher than the growth rate during the day, so anything that is in low orbit and experiencing regular day and night cycles actually shrinks over time, hence my suggestion above to have a separate darkness degeneration rate and a pressure/temp control/radiation level degeneration rate, and let players turn the greenhouses lights, but not temp/pressure controls off. 

I can't see where the bonus for having access to soil is defined, so not sure how big that is.  Possibly anything in a greenhouse that is landed on a planet will also shrink over time, unless it has constant lighting.  The planner says landed on the Mun/Minmus/Duna is the same as in orbit.  And that the greenhous doesn't produce anything when landed at Kerbin, though it still consume EC during the night.

2 hours ago, ShotgunNinja said:

but send me the savegame anyway so I'll investigate

I'll zip it up with the logs and the screenshots and pm you a link in a little while.

 

53 minutes ago, ShotgunNinja said:

Nitrogen is already in the atmosphere of Kerbin, Duna, Eve and Laythe. So for now we are okay.

Maybe add a config to the Atmospheric Fluid Spectro-Variometer to extract it.  An ammonia extraction setup might also be useful.

 

Edited December 14, 2016 by AVaughan

[DMagic]

2 hours ago, ShotgunNinja said:

Ouch, well N for Node make sense. I'll find another key.

I tried Alt + M first, but that didn't turn out too well. 

It's possible to change the keyboard shortcut for Maneuver Node Evolved, but you have to do it in the settings file, since the stock setting panel doesn't offer any method to assign keys.

[jlcarneiro]

10 hours ago, ShotgunNinja said:

I'm just checking the Unity keycode for LeftAlt/RightAlt, no idea why it should be different on linux...

Can you send me the log with these errors?

Thanks!

Here you go: https://ufile.io/4d5181 (filedropper is not working for me now...)

[AVaughan]

8 minutes ago, DMagic said:

It's possible to change the keyboard shortcut for Maneuver Node Evolved, but you have to do it in the settings file, since the stock setting panel doesn't offer any method to assign keys.

@Dmagic I went to look for the settings file.  Unfortunately I didn't find it.  GameData/ManeuverNodeEvolved/PluginData/ is an empty directory.  I installed Maneuver Node Evolved through ckan.

[DMagic]

10 hours ago, ShotgunNinja said:

I'm just checking the Unity keycode for LeftAlt/RightAlt, no idea why it should be different on linux...

Are you directly checking Alt, or are you using the Modifier key?

GameSettings.MODIFIER_KEY.GetKey(false)

@AVaughan The settings file is only generated when it's saved by KSP, which only happens if you turn on the "Use As Default" option when changing the settings from the stock panel. That way new downloads won't override any existing settings files, it also has the unfortunate side effect of hiding the only way to change the key shortcut.

Edited December 14, 2016 by DMagic