[1.11.+] ESLD Jump Beacons Revived (1.4.0)

[Commander Valhallion]

17 hours ago, wile1411 said:

I think it should work based on what you've mentioned- If you can make the 2 craft files available I'll troubleshoot it for you. 

how do I get the files to you? I'm also running other mods, you want the whole save file and mod list?

[cyberKerb]

5 hours ago, Commander Valhallion said:

how do I get the files to you? I'm also running other mods, you want the whole save file and mod list?

You can use dropbox or google drive or some other free file upload service.

As for "what" to send, just send the two .craft files of the ships you are using. They should be located in your saves directory

KSP_InstallDIR\saves\<savename>\Ships\VAB  or KSP_InstallDIR\saves\<savename>\Ships\SPH

[Commander Valhallion]

okay, here is both the save file and ships, do you want a lite of mods I'm using?

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ayb0kj6kcp3vzk1/AABDhZlxWmybzco3Fw0H1gQRa?dl=0

[cyberKerb]

On 6/1/2017 at 9:01 AM, Commander Valhallion said:

okay, here is both the save file and ships, do you want a lite of mods I'm using?

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ayb0kj6kcp3vzk1/AABDhZlxWmybzco3Fw0H1gQRa?dl=0

No need for the mod list or save file - I was only checking the craft you built and the two orbits you gave to ensure those parameters were fine. 

The craft around Kerbin you said was at 400k (altitude=400,000m) cannot initialise the beacon as it's too close to Kerbin. The LB15 needs at least 2,057km - ie altitude of 2,057,670m specifically with your craft (the one with the crew capsule) Having said that, you might of meant 4,000Km (4,000,000) which is roughly a third of a Mun orbit, then that should of been fine with a few caveats mentioned below.

I kind of assumed there was a third ship you are using for the transfer - from your message it sounded like you have an antenna and you were able to at least open the Beacon interface, but nothing was there.

Here's the items I usually troubleshoot when a beacon isn't showing up:

• Recheck you Kerbin beacon ship altitude - in the beacon Right-click interface, it should tell you the minimum altitude.
• Did you initialise ALL the beacons? Both the one around Kerbin AND the one around Minmus? - If not, beacon network wont work.
• If you DID initialise, recheck the Kerbin Beacon ship AGAIN. It might of turned off due to insufficient EC. (This one gets me from time to time due to lack of planning)

I find that if you're close to the Beacon altitude limit for Kerbin, (2,057,670m for your ship) you'll need to pay specific attention to the available EC to ensure you have enough EC to last through the night-side period and keep the beacon powered.

Note [1a] The more mass the Beacon ship has, the more EC it will need to stay on through the night.
Note [1b] The closer you are to the planet / moon / whatever, you'll need even MOAR!! EC to last the night period.
Note [1c] Karborundum is REALLY dense. Wiki reference
Note [2] I checked your Kerbin Beacon ship. With that design, if your Karborundum storage was over about ~50% , it DOES run out of charge and the beacon shuts down. If you are using Hyper Edit to test this, only give the tanks the minimum amount. Depending on the size of the ship being jumped, it should be way less than 2 Karborundum to jump from Kerbin to Minmus

• In the map view, check line of sight from the Minmus Beacon to the Kerbin Beacon. Are either Minmus or Kerbin blocking it? Or close to blocking it? (If ever a Beacon doesn't show up, this is usually the problem for me)

Note[] Just remember it's not just the planet that blocks the beacon, it's the gravity well. Best way to visualise that is to imagine if Kerbin took up the entire space of a 2,057K orbit - If the beacon goes behind THAT SOI then you're SOL until it becomes visible again on the other side of the orbit.

More detailed information on Gravity limits and Transfer Paths is in the wiki from the designer

Hope one of those items is the issue and helps.

Edited June 2, 2017 by wile1411

[Booots]

On 2017-05-30 at 4:47 PM, Commander Valhallion said:

I'm currently running 1.2.2 and I don't know if I'm just suffering from a kerbal level of idiotcy or if it is the mod itself.

I placed two ships in orbit, one around minimus at 17k and another around kerbin at 400K. I attached all the necessary parts and more than enough various fuels to power the beacons, but no matter what the beacons cannot be located in the drop down menu. Am I missing something or does it not work for 1.2.2?

This is something I have seen too. With the update for KSP 1.3, I'll be doing some fairly major work on this now that I have more experience with modding for KSP. Unfortunately, I'm in the process of moving across the country and so I don't have a ton of spare time right now. I'll see what I can do, but my estimate is about the end of June/early July before I get an update out.

Thanks for your patience!

[影之瑒]

May i ask that when this mod can support 1.3 version?

[cyberKerb]

2 hours ago, 影之瑒 said:

May i ask that when this mod can support 1.3 version?

Post right above yours says this.

[Booots]

Hi folks,

Sorry that this isn't an update for KSP 1.3, but it is an update! I've tried to fix the EC consumption issue and so far it's working for me. @wile1411, @Esquire42, @Jim Starluck if you guys are still on 1.2.2, would you mind letting me know if you're still encountering errors? The link to the release is below.

https://github.com/DBooots/ESLDBeacons/releases/tag/v0.9.1

For everyone else, thanks for your patience! Feel free to try this release with 1.3 and let me know if it works. Other than that, I should have time to update my dev build of KSP to 1.3 this weekend and try recompiling this for 1.3.

[cyberKerb]

11 hours ago, Booots said:

For everyone else, thanks for your patience! Feel free to try this release with 1.3 and let me know if it works. Other than that, I should have time to update my dev build of KSP to 1.3 this weekend and try recompiling this for 1.3.

I tested it anyway against a fresh install of KSP1.3 and ESLD, however I get a KSP crash. The error.log says it was mono.dll due to an access violation.

KSP 1.2.2 checked out fine - I think I see one change that might be new... (not 100% sure)
When trying to jump to an active beacon - if the path to the beacon intersects with a gravity SOI, the button to jump is greyed out/disabled for that beacon in the Beacon Interface.

 

If I click the greyed out button, I get a nice onscreen message saying the following for the two different situations:
"Cannot Warp: Path of transfer passed too close to Minmus" when I'm behind Minmus
    and
"Cannot Warp: Path of transfer intersect a high-gravity areas around Kerbin" when the destination beacon is behind Kerbin.

Also checked @Jim Starluck issue with trying to activate a LB-15 beacon at the edge of the Minmus SOI and that now works in 1.2.2 with the new update. I can activate a LB-15 Beacon right up to the SOI of Minmus,

Anything else to check?

Oh and small suggestion - is there any way for an onscreen message to be displayed when an unloaded ship with an active Beacon shuts down due to insufficient EC?

Edited June 8, 2017 by wile1411

[Booots]

Update for 1.3 is live!

On 6/8/2017 at 3:54 AM, wile1411 said:

I tested it anyway against a fresh install of KSP1.3 and ESLD, however I get a KSP crash. The error.log says it was mono.dll due to an access violation.

Ooh, this was so close to being 1.3 compatible. They changed a protection level for a method I was calling. I've commented out that line (since it was in a section I'm going to redo eventually anyway) and recompiled it against 1.3 now.

On 6/8/2017 at 3:54 AM, wile1411 said:

KSP 1.2.2 checked out fine - I think I see one change that might be new... (not 100% sure)
When trying to jump to an active beacon - if the path to the beacon intersects with a gravity SOI, the button to jump is greyed out/disabled for that beacon in the Beacon Interface.

That was supposed to be there before... Maybe the other bugs were making it not show. Regardless, I'm glad to hear it's working!

On 6/8/2017 at 3:54 AM, wile1411 said:

Oh and small suggestion - is there any way for an onscreen message to be displayed when an unloaded ship with an active Beacon shuts down due to insufficient EC?

In theory they shouldn't be able to shut down if the vessel is unloaded. The part module can only track and consume EC usage when loaded. I think the bug with unloaded beacons shutting down actually occurred because of the weird consumption issues that I think I've fixed making it think it run out as it was saving its state during the unloading process. Please let me know if unloaded beacons shut down still.

[cyberKerb]

14 hours ago, Booots said:

Update for 1.3 is live!

Downloaded and opened up KSP 1.3 with the [1.3.0] Version 0.9.1a installed and it works now! 

14 hours ago, Booots said:

That was supposed to be there before... Maybe the other bugs were making it not show. Regardless, I'm glad to hear it's working!

That was probably just me looking at thing closely now - Another example: I never remember there being a post-jump predicted Orbit showing up in Map mode (I never thought to check) - but now I'm in the mode of "looking for issues" with the updated release, I finding all sorts of useful things this mod has that I never noticed.

14 hours ago, Booots said:

In theory they shouldn't be able to shut down if the vessel is unloaded. The part module can only track and consume EC usage when loaded. I think the bug with unloaded beacons shutting down actually occurred because of the weird consumption issues that I think I've fixed making it think it run out as it was saving its state during the unloading process. Please let me know if unloaded beacons shut down still.

I checked this again in 1.3 and yep - The Beacon didn't shutdown when unloaded - even if they "should" shut down (I gave it a tiny amount of EC on the dark side of Kerbin and quickly switched out to the jump ship at Minmus)  - The minimum powered beacon stayed active and available in the jump interface all through the night side of Kerbin even though it technically couldn't have if it was the focused/loaded vessel.

Oh, while I'm at it - the "Initialize Beacon" button is still giving the confusing message "Electric Charge depleted. Beacon has shut down" when you try to initiate a beacon with plenty of EC and have no Karborundum.

Would it be possible to have a catch for that situation and better descriptive message about no Karborundum? 

Edited June 11, 2017 by wile1411

[cyberKerb]

Just a question / suggestion to other users of this mod: I find the cost of the various techboxes a little "low", in that by the time I get to having the funds for a Beacon network, I really don't care about the cost of the various techboxes as I usually slap one of each of the techboxes on a Beacon relay without any real regards to cost.

Does anyone else feel the techboxes are a bit cheap and don't really limit what you end up putting on a ship in a career game? 

I'm tempted to try out a little MM file to mod my cfg files with an extra one (maybe two) zeros on the cost of each of the techbox add-ons. My rationale is that if they were so cheap, why bother having them as separate parts if there is no thought of putting 1 or all techboxs together with a beacon?

Just wondering what people thought of the idea...

Current Mod part costs:
AM004-A Alignment Matrix (Velocity match) - 80,000 
GMU44 Gravitational Mitigator (Lower in Gravity Well) - 50,000
Heisenkerb Compensator (Crew Transport) - 75,000
SCA-1 Superconducting Coil Array (Reduced jump cost) - 50,000

For reference here's the current costs of the existing beacon units:
LB-10 - 250,000
LB-15 - 1,150,000
LB-100 - 2,200,000

Edited June 11, 2017 by wile1411

[Booots]

15 hours ago, wile1411 said:

Just a question / suggestion to other users of this mod: I find the cost of the various techboxes a little "low", in that by the time I get to having the funds for a Beacon network, I really don't care about the cost of the various techboxes as I usually slap one of each of the techboxes on a Beacon relay without any real regards to cost.

Does anyone else feel the techboxes are a bit cheap and don't really limit what you end up putting on a ship in a career game? 

I'm tempted to try out a little MM file to mod my cfg files with an extra one (maybe two) zeros on the cost of each of the techbox add-ons. My rationale is that if they were so cheap, why bother having them as separate parts if there is no thought of putting 1 or all techboxs together with a beacon?

Just wondering what people thought of the idea...

Current Mod part costs:
AM004-A Alignment Matrix (Velocity match) - 80,000 
GMU44 Gravitational Mitigator (Lower in Gravity Well) - 50,000
Heisenkerb Compensator (Crew Transport) - 75,000
SCA-1 Superconducting Coil Array (Reduced jump cost) - 50,000

For reference here's the current costs of the existing beacon units:
LB-10 - 250,000
LB-15 - 1,150,000
LB-100 - 2,200,000

You do raise a good point. I, likewise, never send up a beacon without all of the techboxes. I'm open to raising the price of them (or having a few MM files with different difficulties included as an optional download).

[cyberKerb]

23 hours ago, Booots said:

You do raise a good point. I, likewise, never send up a beacon without all of the techboxes. I'm open to raising the price of them (or having a few MM files with different difficulties included as an optional download).

I just MM'ed an extra zero to the techbox costs which meant that I actually have to work hard on contracts to get enough funds for a fully kitted out Beacon. Might be too much for other people games though. I am using the USI suite of mods (minus the Alcubierre Drive) and trying to get some funding bases going.

AMU - 800,000
HCU - 750,000
GMU - 500,000
SCU - 500,000

This cost level means I'm REALLY having to save up funds for a decent network and in return it gives me a goal to aim for with having a Beacon at the usual suspects such as the OPM planets, also including having one around the Sun at that "special altitude" for when I want to grab more Karborundum in bulk. It also forces me to use the network for unmanned mission for a little bit. (Not that long as you'll see below)

Also: I stuffed up the Beacon costs before as I meant to give the costs without Karborundum. I posted in the MKS thread asking if there is a way to stop myself filling up on the Karborundum in the VAB. Once the Beacons are unlocked in my games, I find it very hard not to put a little bit in the tanks for a few initial important jumps. (I plead guilty )

LB-10 - 50,000
LB-15 - 150,000
LB-100 - 200,000
IB-1- 250,000

 

EDIT: Yay!  I got a MM patch from DStaal in the MKS thread that I can use to prevent getting easy-to-source Karborundum from the VAB

@RESOURCE_DEFINITION[Karborundum]
{
	@isTweakable = false
}

 

Edited June 12, 2017 by wile1411

[ave369]

Could you please make all beacons, no matter what the distance, communicate to each other? If the beacons are put to their intended use, namely interstellar transport (rather than cheaty interplanetary transport), the problem is that the far side has no commnet communication to the Kerbol side.

 

Also, very large interstellar distances (such as in the Valentine system mod) make this mod glitch out and demand exorbitant (in hundreds of thousands EC) costs to activate the beacons. Could this also be fixed?

[Booots]

On 2017-06-26 at 3:40 PM, ave369 said:

Could you please make all beacons, no matter what the distance, communicate to each other? If the beacons are put to their intended use, namely interstellar transport (rather than cheaty interplanetary transport), the problem is that the far side has no commnet communication to the Kerbol side.

Oh that's a really great idea! I'll see what I can do. I wonder if I can hook into RemoteTech's API and not only provide support for RT too but make beacons communicating with each other not incur speed-of-light delay...

On 2017-06-26 at 3:40 PM, ave369 said:

Also, very large interstellar distances (such as in the Valentine system mod) make this mod glitch out and demand exorbitant (in hundreds of thousands EC) costs to activate the beacons. Could this also be fixed?

It most likely can. But I'll need to look into what's causing it. Can you post a link to the mod that causes this and an example situation that I can try testing with?

[ave369]

On 05.07.2017 at 3:36 AM, Booots said:

Oh that's a really great idea! I'll see what I can do. I wonder if I can hook into RemoteTech's API and not only provide support for RT too but make beacons communicating with each other not incur speed-of-light delay...

I mean the stock comm system, not RemoteTech.

[LordKael]

I just installed the mod, and only seem to have the 3 Karborundum tanks and the IB-1 in my parts menu ingame. I downloaded from Space Dock

[Booots]

On 2017-07-18 at 5:33 PM, LordKael said:

I just installed the mod, and only seem to have the 3 Karborundum tanks and the IB-1 in my parts menu ingame. I downloaded from Space Dock

Interesting... I just checked and the SpaceDock download does have all the beacons and techboxes in it.

If you're looking for ways of mining Karborundum, you'll either need to modify the stock drills to mine it or download and use parts of K+. This mod only adds the jump beacons and doesn't actually support mining Karborundum.

 

[LordKael]

On 7/21/2017 at 10:41 AM, Booots said:

Interesting... I just checked and the SpaceDock download does have all the beacons and techboxes in it.

If you're looking for ways of mining Karborundum, you'll either need to modify the stock drills to mine it or download and use parts of K+. This mod only adds the jump beacons and doesn't actually support mining Karborundum.

 

I have everything in my file directory, and checked both download locations... in game, however, I only have the ability to make the impetus drive. I'm playing in sandbox, so i should have all parts accessible.

[Jaffiss]

On 7/4/2017 at 7:36 PM, Booots said:

On 6/26/2017 at 3:40 PM, ave369 said:

Also, very large interstellar distances (such as in the Valentine system mod) make this mod glitch out and demand exorbitant (in hundreds of thousands EC) costs to activate the beacons. Could this also be fixed?

It most likely can. But I'll need to look into what's causing it. Can you post a link to the mod that causes this and an example situation that I can try testing with?

A hard cap on the EC usage to initiate would be nice just in general.

I've got a LB-100 ship in the stock system orbiting Kerbol at around 5Mm that takes 490,000 EC to turn on.   I actually have a separate 'Jump Start' ship that docks with it that is mostly the 30 tons of batteries it needs to initialize.   I figured that was just part of the mod.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Edited July 29, 2017 by Jaffiss

[Booots]

On 7/7/2017 at 3:47 AM, ave369 said:

I mean the stock comm system, not RemoteTech.

Yes it can be done for the stock system, and this will be in the next version of ESLD. It just led me down a rabbit hole of modifying CommNet, realizing that people could only have a single mod that overrides CommNet installed at a time, and then engaging all the other modders of CommNet in a new project for them all to play nicely together. Work on that framework is coming along really well. This also means that when I add this, it will be compatible with the upcoming version of RemoteTech (which is built off of CommNet).

I have a proof of concept working now and I've got beacons connecting to each other regardless of distance with no signal degradation between them, so I just need to get the CommNets-play-nicely mod polished up and I'll be set to send out a new release of ESLD that has that.

On 6/11/2017 at 1:30 AM, wile1411 said:

Oh, while I'm at it - the "Initialize Beacon" button is still giving the confusing message "Electric Charge depleted. Beacon has shut down" when you try to initiate a beacon with plenty of EC and have no Karborundum.

So, this one confused me for a long time. The code that sends that error message is in only one place - when it checks the charge consumption for that time step, not when the beacon initializes. But it turns out that if the charge for a timestep is zero - like during loading or right on initialization - it asks for zero EC but because it receives zero EC it fires that message and shuts down. I've got this fixed now and depending what I hear from the other modders on timelines for point number 1 I'll either do a patch or just include it in the next release.

9 hours ago, Jaffiss said:

A hard cap on the EC usage to initiate would be nice just in general.

I've got a LB-100 ship in the stock system orbiting Kerbol at around 5Mm that takes 490,000 EC to turn on.   I actually have a separate 'Jump Start' ship that docks with it that is mostly the 30 tons of batteries it needs to initialize.   I figured that was just part of the mod.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I love that you have a jump start ship. In a way, the crazy EC consumption is part of the mod. I mean, if you're getting to jump from one planet to another instantaneously, what's a little 30-ton ship full of batteries? But I get what people are saying. I'll take a look at the balance of things. @wile1411, you were balancing things earlier. Thoughts?

[cyberKerb]

On 7/30/2017 at 2:17 PM, Booots said:

I love that you have a jump start ship. In a way, the crazy EC consumption is part of the mod. I mean, if you're getting to jump from one planet to another instantaneously, what's a little 30-ton ship full of batteries? But I get what people are saying. I'll take a look at the balance of things. @wile1411, you were balancing things earlier. Thoughts?

I'll give it a look this weekend

[cyberKerb]

Ok @Booots - I did a quick test - at (5,000Mm) (around Moho solar orbit) - I had a small 13tonne satellite with an LB100 needing only 2117EC to initiate. After that it uses 4.23 EC/s

I moved that dinky little satellite into it's gravity-well limit and the EC to start up was about 5000EC and 10EC/s to function.
I made a copy of the same sat and stuck it around Sarnus (from OPM mod) which had the same EC start up and usage costs as I had it close to the Gravity well limit. 

The final piece was to see what the cost of a jump from well inside Moho solar orbit to Sarnus (23,400km) would cost - total Karborundum cost: 59.2.

I repeated the same test to Cercani (Other Worlds Mod) with the LB100 at 2,258Mm orbit (close to Troni solar orbit)
Beacon startup cost = 1784EC
usage was 3.57EC/s

Jump from Sun orbit to Cercani (2,258,000km) cost 96.14 Karborundum - but I was shooting off at escape velocities due to no velocity matching.

Note: None of the Beacon enhancements were active for any of the above calculations.

 

For a final test, I did the last jump from sun to Cercani again with all Enhancements active:
Grav-well limit was 2,810Mm
startup was 6,424EC
Usage was 85EC/s
jump was 112 Karborundum - and that jump match velocities with the destination beacon.

All up - all costs in EC and Karborundum seemed quite reasonable to me, but that's just my fast and loose testing. If you want, I can test something specific if you like.

What have to got that needs almost half a million EC to start? Is there an d-class asteroid attached to that ship?

 

To be honest, I was expecting the Karborundum Jump cost would be a bit higher for the much longer Cercani jump and not just double the cost to Sarnus. I'll have to do a proper check with something more likely is a career save and use a 200 tonne ship and see what it would cost to jump that the same distances. 

13 tonne tiny Satellite from Sun Orbit (5,000Mm) to:
Sarnus (23,400km) - 59.2 Karborundum
Cercani (2,258,000km) - 96.14 Karborundum

 

Just thinking mod-ability - a suggested change to the mod would be to have the ability to change Karborundum jump cost calculations via a config file or setting page? Somehow be able to cusotm the jump cost calc formula to have more bias on weight or distance or (heh) adding a funds fee - whatever combination that goes into those calcs that someone might want to tweak.

 

Follow up - any more thoughts on the gameplay elements of the techboxes and trying to get around not always using ALL of them the moment they are unlocked? 

Random thought - maybe have the option to make the techboxes into part "upgrades" that are available via contracts and have to be serviced in situ via external vessel. That would mean the first few jumps would be hairy and unmanned having to cope with the lack of velocity matching.

EDIT:

OK - thought about the above idea a bit more and on second review it's not too bad. The proposed option would be so a Beacon could only be upgraded from a right-click context menu button that can only be seen when accessed from a ship that is not part of the Beacon. eg (*Install MGU*)

To avoid the simple hack (of the above idea) by decoupling an existing ship that was launched with the beacon; the upgrade button would only be available when a contract drops for the upgrade that also has a contract requirement parameter that the ship doing the upgrade is newly launched.

 All the above is just an idea that might be an optional how to make the of ESLD techbox functionality engaging, rather than slapping all of boxes on every beacon launch. With the techtree able to be unlocked fairly quickly, you'd have all the techboxes in no time, so why launch a beacon without any of them?

The upside would be that you've be able to utilize contract parameters to govern when / how a beacon got upgraded. Hey, you would even go the Kerbal Academy route where contracts are available all the time, but a player has to spend funds to take the contract. It would prompt both the beacon use as well as upgrade beacon functionality in an incremental / stepped fashion as I think might of been the original intention of the mod.

Having it as an option configurable setting, like what I've seen other mod makers do via the game difficulty setting (eg, DMagic mods), would still give those people that want to play with the parts their way available and not be forced to use the mod with all the good toys locked behind the proposed contract "pay-wall". 

Edited August 9, 2017 by wile1411
additional random thoughts

[cyberKerb]

@Booots - I found the mod that include the Valentine system (listed below) - but I couldn't replicate the EC glitch that @ave369 had.

Karborumdum (Kb) costs look fine (at least to me) for the few large solar systems mods I tested:
From Kerbol Orbit to:

 

Planet Pack mod	50ton	100ton	200ton
Plock (outer planet in OPM)	325	683	1583
Cercani (star in Other Worlds)	460	971	2255
Prima (furthest planet in Other Worlds)	461	972	2256
Valentine (star in ExtraSolar)	1111	2344	5453

For me, with ALL the above mods installed at once - Beacon EC start up and running costs never jumped over what seemed reasonable - at least never over a few thousand EC - and definitely not 10s or 100s of thousands of EC. 

 

Edited August 12, 2017 by wile1411