Minmus and Gigantor Arrays - bug?

[LameLefty]

So has anyone else run across this? I was testing a design for a Minmus lander/driller/refinery vessel and realized I was never running out of electrical charge, even throughout the night. So I right-clicked one of the Gigantor arrays and it seems that Minmus is - evidently - transparent to sunlight. Now, I have a good number of mods installed so before I go uninstall them one by one to see if this persists, has anyone else run across anything similar and if so, did you determine what was causing it? Or is there some bug with Gigantor arrays and Minmus? 

 

[smjjames]

This is a REALLY old bug I think.

[moogoob]

I believe the answer is: Minmus conducts light.

/jk

[LameLefty]

8 minutes ago, smjjames said:

This is a REALLY old bug I think.

Huh. Now I need to do a general forum search, I guess. If so, this is a big one not to get patched, as it allows an incredibly easy hack/exploit of the stock resource system. 

EDITED TO ADD: 

Yep, you're right. This is a HUGE bug for it never to have been fixed, nor for anyone to have not noticed it and beaten it into the dirt during the 1.1 pre-release betas (yes, I searched the bug tracker before I posted but didn't see anything).

 

Edited May 3, 2016 by LameLefty

[bewing]

http://bugs.kerbalspaceprogram.com/issues/1129

Yup, 1129 is a very old bug report indeed. I just updated it, that it was still present.

Note: these bug reports say that it is only smallish patches of Minmus that are transparent. Which explains why the bug is not more commonly reported.

Edited May 3, 2016 by bewing

[LameLefty]

15 minutes ago, bewing said:

http://bugs.kerbalspaceprogram.com/issues/1129

Yup, 1129 is a very old bug report indeed. I just updated it, that it was still present.

Wow. I searched the tracker for Gigantor and Minmus and got s bunch of false hits that weren't relevant. 

Anyway, I'm amazed this one is still around, especially with all the semi-public bug squashing going in since late March. With stock resources now, this is a crazy powerful exploit. 

[bewing]

I'm not sure how powerful of an exploit it is? Certainly no more powerful than just switching focus away from the craft so that it continues running but stops consuming electricity.

[LameLefty]

10 minutes ago, bewing said:

I'm not sure how powerful of an exploit it is? Certainly no more powerful than just switching focus away from the craft so that it continues running but stops consuming electricity.

Admittedly, I am still determining how stock resources work. The last time I played around with ISRU stuff semi-seriously was with Kethane, probably back around the 0.23-0.25 days. But it seems to me that with all the thought put into attempting to balance power consumption, heat production, drilling and conversion efficiency and part mass, that obviating the need for most battery capacity and/or fuel cells and simply using a set of magic Gigantor arrays to power your driller/refinery makes craft design very simple - too simple probably. No need to worry about night time power at all, in fact. With so much thought RoverDude put into Karbonite and now the stock Ore system, I can't imagine this one would be something he'd consider just one of those things to ignore. 

[bewing]

True. If I were programming it, I'd keep a list of all the non-focused craft that had solar. Once a minute, I'd do a special scan of the list and do just the calculation of light incidence and solar panel output. Then nobody could complain that it wasn't realistic, and it wouldn't consume much in the way of computational resources.

[Terwin]

In my previous testing I generally found anything on a Minmus flat could get sunlight at night.

Might be related to an altitude of ~0, as I seem to remember something similar on another body as well(unless I am just mis-remembering my polar Mun Base with 4x sized solar panels, as that one was legitimately never fully in shadow))

[Alshain]

18 hours ago, moogoob said:

I believe the answer is: Minmus conducts light.

/jk

You joke but there could be some truth to that.  Assuming Minmus is a captured comet, we know that at least Comet Temple 1 was spongy with holes and that it was primarily ice.  The right application of light to a crystalline substance like ice could cause refraction of light that might be able to spread through the ice, the spongy holes at the nucleus would serve to both split and alter the direction of the light creating a refraction that could be chained through the entire surface.  Of course the light would be blocked by any dust that might lie on the surface, that dust could pile up to make large mountains, but where the ice peeks through the light could be transmitted from one side of the comet to the other.

Just, food for thought.

[DChurchill]

19 hours ago, LameLefty said:

So has anyone else run across this? I was testing a design for a Minmus lander/driller/refinery vessel and realized I was never running out of electrical charge, even throughout the night. So I right-clicked one of the Gigantor arrays and it seems that Minmus is - evidently - transparent to sunlight. Now, I have a good number of mods installed so before I go uninstall them one by one to see if this persists, has anyone else run across anything similar and if so, did you determine what was causing it? Or is there some bug with Gigantor arrays and Minmus?

Not just Gigantors. Had it happen to me last night with a 2X3.

[mrclucks]

I've run into this bug many times with various solar panels, but I have also had the solar panels act properly many times as well.  Since I always land on a flats biome, I think it just has to do with some random spots on minmus which make minmus see through

[Superfluous J]

On 5/3/2016 at 11:16 PM, bewing said:

True. If I were programming it, I'd keep a list of all the non-focused craft that had solar. Once a minute, I'd do a special scan of the list and do just the calculation of light incidence and solar panel output. Then nobody could complain that it wasn't realistic, and it wouldn't consume much in the way of computational resources.

That right there would be a mod I would install.