[1.12.x] - Modular Kolonization System (MKS)

[DStaal]

17 minutes ago, SlimJim89 said:

If I have a base with the Kerbitat and efficiency modules at a certain spot in a Mun crater, can I connect a "farm station" with it if I put the farm station ~5km away? Do I have to use a logistics module(s) in between to connect them? Will bases 5km away from eachother share resources?

Have I missed some feature?

You would need a logistics module at both ends, and to make sure you visit them in the correct order after long periods.  (As the one you visit first will do it's production first.)  They are far enough away that the only logistics that can connect them is Planetary Logistics.

[SlimJim89]

7 minutes ago, DStaal said:

You would need a logistics module at both ends, and to make sure you visit them in the correct order after long periods.  (As the one you visit first will do it's production first.)  They are far enough away that the only logistics that can connect them is Planetary Logistics.

Can they be connected with a single logistics module if I keep the 2 bases at a distance of 3.8km and put the the logistics module at 1.9km away from each base? Avoiding planetary logistics entirely? Logistics module range is 2000m afaik.

Edited March 9, 2017 by SlimJim89

[Kobymaru]

25 minutes ago, SlimJim89 said:

If I have a base with the Kerbitat and efficiency modules at a certain spot in a Mun crater, can I connect a "farm station" with it if I put the farm station ~5km away? Do I have to use a logistics module(s) in between to connect them? Will bases 5km away from eachother share resources?

Have I missed some feature?

5km is too far.

Scavenging works for everything with a logistics module up to 150m, with a Karibou and a pilot in it, this is increased to 2km. The KSP physics range is 2.3km, so everything outside of that will not even be loaded.

Theoretically, you could use planetary logistics for transport (no range limit), but this is a bit awkward, because you would have to focus your farm station periodically. Additionally, RoverDude has mentioned a desire to rework planetary logistics, so I doubt you can rely on the feature to stay in its current form.

[SlimJim89]

13 minutes ago, Kobymaru said:

5km is too far.

Scavenging works for everything with a logistics module up to 150m, with a Karibou and a pilot in it, this is increased to 2km. The KSP physics range is 2.3km, so everything outside of that will not even be loaded.

Theoretically, you could use planetary logistics for transport (no range limit), but this is a bit awkward, because you would have to focus your farm station periodically. Additionally, RoverDude has mentioned a desire to rework planetary logistics, so I doubt you can rely on the feature to stay in its current form.

Thanks for the answer!

[Tarheel1999]

2 hours ago, sh1pman said:

I agree, automated drills are massively overpowered right now. I think they need to be slightly better than normal drills when used without an engineer on board. Let's say, 10% efficiency of a standard drill sounds good enough. And of course, they shouldn't receive any geology bonuses, it just doesn't make any sense.

It makes no less sense than applying those bonuses to mannned activities. Planetary and scavenging logistics are an abstraction that assumes your kolonists are doing something useful when you are off doing other things and a playability concession to reduce excessive micro and reduce parts. Just because they are unmanned it doesn't mean your kolonists are periodically visiting them when you aren't looking.  Why wouldn't the kolonists' activities include increasing the efficiency of the automated drills in addition to manned drills? Yes, the kolonization bonus could be reduced but it should not be eliminated. 

Edited March 9, 2017 by Tarheel1999

[sh1pman]

Just now, Tarheel1999 said:

It makes no less sense than applying those bonuses to mannned activities. Planetary and scavenging logistics are an abstraction that assumes your kolonists are doing something useful when you are off doing other things and a playability concession to reduce excessive micro and reduce parts. Just because they are unmanned it doesn't mean your kolonists are periodically visiting them when you aren't looking.  Why wouldn't the kolonists' activities include increasing the efficiency of the automated drills in addition to manned drills? Yes, the kolonization bonus could be reduced but it should not be eliminated. 

To me it doesn't make much sense because automated drills are supposed to be fully robotic, without much room for improvement. So in case of normal drills, you can change its drilling head, tweak its speed and depth, etc; that's what there is an engineer for. In case of auto drills, you just pack them at KSC with factory default settings and send far away, never to be seen again. That's why IMO the colonization bonuses shouldn't apply to these drills at all. 

[goldenpsp]

11 minutes ago, sh1pman said:

To me it doesn't make much sense because automated drills are supposed to be fully robotic, without much room for improvement. So in case of normal drills, you can change its drilling head, tweak its speed and depth, etc; that's what there is an engineer for. In case of auto drills, you just pack them at KSC with factory default settings and send far away, never to be seen again. That's why IMO the colonization bonuses shouldn't apply to these drills at all. 

Because you couldn't have fully automatic drills that could accept remote commands from afar to adjust their speed, or even have a way to swap the drilling head?  Or even have the intelligence programmed in to adjust on the fly based on data inputs?

[sh1pman]

Just now, goldenpsp said:

Because you couldn't have fully automatic drills that could accept remote commands from afar to adjust their speed, or even have a way to swap the drilling head?  Or even have the intelligence programmed in to adjust on the fly based on data inputs?

So they're just strictly better than normal drills, because for them you need an engineer to do all of these things.

[voicey99]

[didn't notice the page had turned over, derp]

Edited March 9, 2017 by voicey99

[Tarheel1999]

1 hour ago, sh1pman said:

So they're just strictly better than normal drills, because for them you need an engineer to do all of these things.

Except for the part where they are/should be/will be less efficient and may receive less bonuses. Sure.

You also seem to have completely ignored my earlier post. In practice, scavenging and logistics happen auto-magically. In theory, they are simulating your kolonists doing using things like transferring resources between your bases. Why is it unrealistic to assume this would also include increasing the efficiency of parts (manned or unmanned)?

If you don't like the parts or mechanics don't use them, use less of them, or modify them. Bonuses to unmanned drills make no less sense than scavenging or logistics. They are simply abstractions to increase playability. 

[sh1pman]

17 minutes ago, Tarheel1999 said:

Except for the part where they are/should be/will be less efficient and may receive less bonuses. Sure.

You also seem to have completely ignored my earlier post. In practice, scavenging and logistics happen auto-magically. In theory, they are simulating your kolonists doing using things like transferring resources between your bases. Why is it unrealistic to assume this would also include increasing the efficiency of parts (manned or unmanned)?

If you don't like the parts or mechanics don't use them, use less of them, or modify them. Bonuses to unmanned drills make no less sense than scavenging or logistics. They are simply abstractions to increase playability. 

Yeah, now I get it. In that sense, it's probably possible for them to receive some benefit from the colonization bonuses. I'd also like to see them balanced with MPUs, because it takes ages for those to produce any significant amount of materials, while auto-drills can dig up thousands of resources per day.

[voicey99]

I'm guessing the geology rating is supposed to represent the kolonists learning more about the local mineral deposits, where the best ones are and the optimum depths, drill rates, bits to use etc. to mine them, in which case it feels appropriate to apply to remote drills as well. For me, to balance the drills, the automated drill should have 10x the production of its vanilla crewed counterpart with no engineer on board (slightly more than the latter with a 1-star engineer), and both auto and vanilla drills should benefit from Geology bonuses (I could have a go at doing that...).

[Nog76]

Please pardon my potentially lame question here. I am using KSP 1.2.2 with all of RoverDudes mods (minus life support) installed and I finding a behavior is not desirable. I just don't know if it is a bug or something I am doing wrong (I assume that latter.) I am using 0.50.17.0 of USI/MKS.

 

With the MKS Tundra Habitation Ring:

1) In the VAB, the ring expands but I can't change the config to anything other than greenhouse

2) In Flight (or anywhere outside the editor (VAB, etc.) the ring does NOT expand and only the greenhouse functionality works.

 

Is this normal, or is there some other craft item that must be present for the proper use of the hab ring?

 

This is for craft that are not intended to be landed, BTW. To troubleshoot this, I uninstalled all mods, then installed just MKS/USI mods and the issue persists. I installed the mods via CKAN in this case.

[voicey99]

37 minutes ago, Nog76 said:

Please pardon my potentially lame question here. I am using KSP 1.2.2 with all of RoverDudes mods (minus life support) installed and I finding a behavior is not desirable. I just don't know if it is a bug or something I am doing wrong (I assume that latter.) I am using 0.50.17.0 of USI/MKS.

 

With the MKS Tundra Habitation Ring:

1) In the VAB, the ring expands but I can't change the config to anything other than greenhouse

2) In Flight (or anywhere outside the editor (VAB, etc.) the ring does NOT expand and only the greenhouse functionality works.

The other mode the habring has is Habitation mode, which requires LS. Even Greenhouse is useless without LS, as the resources it boosts production of (Supplies and Organics) only have uses within LS-it's just bling without LS, really.

If you insist on using it, you will need 4K EC and 46K materialkits on your vessel to expand it in flight.

Edited March 9, 2017 by voicey99

[Gilph]

2 hours ago, Tarheel1999 said:

Except for the part where they are/should be/will be less efficient and may receive less bonuses. Sure.

You also seem to have completely ignored my earlier post. In practice, scavenging and logistics happen auto-magically. In theory, they are simulating your kolonists doing using things like transferring resources between your bases. Why is it unrealistic to assume this would also include increasing the efficiency of parts (manned or unmanned)?

If you don't like the parts or mechanics don't use them, use less of them, or modify them. Bonuses to unmanned drills make no less sense than scavenging or logistics. They are simply abstractions to increase playability. 

Because there are way too many ways to buff performance.  In the last few months, we had:

1. 90% ish nerf on hab EC
2. 500% increase in factory output
3. Kolonization bonuses
4. Unmanned MPLs that output at 1000%

None of the things you mention are unrealistic, there is just too many of them. And, they cause things to break when they increase too much. I've been reducing all my factories down to 100-150%, not only to prevent meltdown, but because I just dont need all that much. I also turned all my efficiency parts to Materialkits.  It would be nice to reduce the inflation.

Edited March 9, 2017 by Gilph

[voicey99]

Just now, Gilph said:

Because there are way too many ways to buff performance.  In the last few months, we had:

1. 90% ish nerf on hab EC
2. 500% increase in factory output
3. Kolonization bonuses

Now, unmanned parts exceeding manned parts. None of the things you mention are unrealistic, there is just too many of them. And, they cause things to break when they increase too much. I've been reducing all my factories down to 100-150%, not only to prevent meltdown, but because I just dont need all that much. I also turned all my efficiency parts to Materialkits.  It would be nice to reduce the inflation.

When did the converter bonuses become geology rating²? I don't remember them being so ludicrous before, unless I simply haven't experienced the full force of runaway efficiency (except in 0.50.12) before.

[Nog76]

3 hours ago, voicey99 said:

The other mode the habring has is Habitation mode, which requires LS. Even Greenhouse is useless without LS, as the resources it boosts production of (Supplies and Organics) only have uses within LS-it's just bling without LS, really.

If you insist on using it, you will need 4K EC and 46K materialkits on your vessel to expand it in flight.

 

Thanks voicey99! I have installed LS and I will test this out.

[Kotagi]

Hey everyone, I have a question. When I right click these parts in the vab so see what they do, the menu disappears and the part selects rather than make the menu stationary so I can scroll. It seems to be only these parts. Anyone else ran into that?

[Perringo]

Hello friends! I have made a spreadsheet that can predict the outputs of drilling ore and MKS resources, the electric charge it will take and the storage you will need. You choose the resource and drill type, and enter the local availability, the level of the best specialist aboard and the Geology bonus and voilá. The spreadsheet also contains a tool to predict the Geology bonus and how it will vary over time, although this one I'm not so confident about. The spreadsheet is completely editable and I have added instructions and the formulas used, so people can see how things work.

Although new changes are coming soon, I though I might share this with the community and with @RoverDude himself, as it may serve as a little help to his balance works, being very easy to see how outputs vary changing a few values. I have made a few tests and I think it works all right, please tell me if it doesn't.

Have to say that it would have been impossible to do it for me without help form the people of this forum and @TauPhraim's app, available here: https://spacedock.info/mod/1253/MKS Explainer

I'm not very used to sharing files online, hope it works fine. There goes the link:

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/q6zsfydn7lzchzf/Drilling1.0 MKS 0.50.17.xlsx?dl=0

Edited March 10, 2017 by Perringo

[Asilar]

Hi.

Thanks a lot for all this work !!

Is there any chance we can disable the lastest version feature :

• Replaced the Astronaut Complex code with an implementation of TheReadPanda's Hiring mod (Thanks for letting me use this!)

 

The hiring costs are too low compared to the stock game and I don't want to "ruin" the economy curve.

Thanks a lot again for all the work !

[Gilph]

13 minutes ago, Asilar said:

Hi.

Thanks a lot for all this work !!

Is there any chance we can disable the lastest version feature :

• Replaced the Astronaut Complex code with an implementation of TheReadPanda's Hiring mod (Thanks for letting me use this!)

 

The hiring costs are too low compared to the stock game and I don't want to "ruin" the economy curve.

Thanks a lot again for all the work !

It's been discussed at length...I don't foresee any significant changes.  The costs are set that way for good reasons

[Asilar]

Ok, thanks for this first quick answer ! I was wondering because it dropped the cost of my next hiring from 65k$ to 28k$

And I like the idea to get "randomised stats" kerbals

 

[RoverDude]

@Asilar - the reason the costs are low is because of the large number of Kerbals used by MKS, hence why I only include it with MKS not USI Tools.  No aversion to making it configurable if someone logs a github issue

[Asilar]

Ok, I am very new to kerbal mods and to you amazing work. So I'll trust you about the economic curve

If I understand how to do, I'll try to log a github issue for a "randomise kerbonautes" option, with your built in economical hiring curve  

Again, thanks a lot !

[Noobton]

In the wiki there are 2 numbers for supply consumption (0.00075 and 0.0005):

https://github.com/BobPalmer/MKS/wiki/Kore-Design

https://github.com/BobPalmer/MKS/wiki/Life-Support

Do you know which one is correct or when can I see this numbers in game?

Thank you.