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

[Alshain]

3 minutes ago, notthebobo said:

Two considerations, @Alshain.

First, MKS Logistics allow you to share resources between modules without them being physically connected. No more Kerbitrail mazes inviting the kraken to visit.

Second, Ground Construction DIY kits (now bundled with MKS) can really help setup a base.  Build a full base on Kerbin, box it in a DIY kit, send it up with some material kits (or make them in situ), and the whole thing is built right where you want it.

Yeah, but building with KIS is fun!

I was aware of the logistics function, but not the DIY thing.  I'll look at it, but I like KIS a lot (if I haven't made that obviously apparent already lol)

[DStaal]

8 minutes ago, Alshain said:

I haven't tried Tundra yet, but KIS has a "team lift" function.  The more Kerbals you have in close proximity, the more tonnage you can lift (1 ton per Kerbal specifically).  So it's really just the same as building small stuff, only with more Kerbals.  The Tundra 2.5m colonization module is 4tons, so 4 Kerbals can lift it into place and bolt it on with an engineer.  The only difference is a Tundra would have to be shipped on it's own, where as most of the Ranger parts fit in a KIS container (because they are inflatable).  In the end it simply makes surface construction tolerable.

As to the landing, that isn't a concern for me, I've been playing this game a very long time now.

On that note - the forklift, crane, magnetic grappler, etc also count as Kerbals who can help 'lift' with KIS.  They can lift quite a bit more than 1 ton each. 

[voicey99]

18 minutes ago, Alshain said:

I haven't tried Tundra yet, but KIS has a "team lift" function.  The more Kerbals you have in close proximity, the more tonnage you can lift (1 ton per Kerbal specifically).  So it's really just the same as building small stuff, only with more Kerbals.  The Tundra 2.5m colonization module is 4tons, so 4 Kerbals can lift it into place and bolt it on with an engineer.  The only difference is a Tundra would have to be shipped on its own, where as most of the Ranger parts fit in a KIS container (because they are inflatable).  In the end it simply makes surface construction tolerable.

As to the landing, that isn't a concern for me, I've been playing this game a very long time now.

Tundra parts are anything up to 15t, so KIS is basically out of the question when it comes to the really heavy stuff. Lift capacity should (as in, I think it ought to be a feature) take into account local g, so you would need less kerbs to lift something particularly weighty on a low-g planet and more on a higher-g one.

I've also been playing for exactly one year as of today, so I (usually) know what I'm talking about as well. It's still easier to be able to be able to cut the engine and maneuver during the landing though (or maybe I need to use a proper VTOL for this).

12 minutes ago, Alshain said:

I was aware of the logistics function, but not the DIY thing.  I'll look at it, but I like KIS a lot (if I haven't made that obviously apparent already lol)

The DIYKit thing is from Ground Construction, a custom version of which comes bundled with MKS. You assign a ship model to a kit in the VAB, ship it over, add materialkits, wait a bit and *pop*, out comes a shiny new ship in its place-at least, that's what I understand of it.

Edited July 4, 2017 by voicey99

[Alshain]

1 minute ago, voicey99 said:

Tundra parts are anything up to 15t, so KIS is basically out of the question when it comes to the really heavy stuff. Lift capacity should take into account local g, so you need less kerbs to lift something particularly weighty on a low-g planet and more on a higher-g one.

That's a really good idea. I'm not sure that it does that right now, but might be something to suggest on their thread.  Lifting on Minmus should be a lot easier than lifting on Kerbin.

1 minute ago, voicey99 said:

I've also been playing for exactly one year as of today, so I (usually) know what I'm talking about as well. It's still easier to be able to be able to cut the engine and maneuver during the landing though (or maybe I need to use a proper VTOL for this).

I wasn't trying to say you didn't know what you were talking about.  I hope you didn't read that in that way. Landing on Minmus is easier, you are right there.  I'm just skilled enough to do it on the Mun and that's where I want to build.  I don't need to worry about that sort of thing myself.  For a real beginner, Minmus would be a better location for all the reasons you mentioned.

[Loren Pechtel]

7 minutes ago, DStaal said:

On that note - the forklift, crane, magnetic grappler, etc also count as Kerbals who can help 'lift' with KIS.  They can lift quite a bit more than 1 ton each. 

So a cart loaded with magnetic grapples would allow a Kerbal to lift Tundra parts around?

[Alshain]

9 minutes ago, DStaal said:

On that note - the forklift, crane, magnetic grappler, etc also count as Kerbals who can help 'lift' with KIS.  They can lift quite a bit more than 1 ton each. 

There is a forklift in KIS?  How is it I don't have that!?

[DStaal]

2 minutes ago, voicey99 said:

Tundra parts are anything up to 15t, so KIS is basically out of the question when it comes to the really heavy stuff. Lift capacity should (as in, I think it ought to) take into account local g, so you need less kerbs to lift something particularly weighty on a low-g planet and more on a higher-g one.

I've put larger than 15t into place using KIS...  (Especially with the Konstruction parts helping.)  Bigger issue on those large parts is that you run into distance limitations: You need to be within a certain distance of the *center* of the parts to attach them, and on 3m parts you start having issues getting close enough to the center.

The local gravity thing is actually something that works at first glance and doesn't on closer inspection in real life: The *mass* of the part hasn't changed, and you still need to maneuver it.  You can lift a *bit* more in lower gravity, but not all that much because you still have to push around the same mass.

1 minute ago, Loren Pechtel said:

So a cart loaded with magnetic grapples would allow a Kerbal to lift Tundra parts around?

Yep.  Note that the different parts have different weight limits and ranges - you may want to take a look at each's advantages and disadvantages.  (The forklift for instance can lift really heavy weights - but has to be close to the part.)

Just now, Alshain said:

There is a forklift in KIS?  How is it I don't have that!?

There's a forklift in *MKS*.  (Well, Konstruction, which got rolled into MKS.)  Which supports KIS...

[Loren Pechtel]

3 minutes ago, DStaal said:

I've put larger than 15t into place using KIS...  (Especially with the Konstruction parts helping.)  Bigger issue on those large parts is that you run into distance limitations: You need to be within a certain distance of the *center* of the parts to attach them, and on 3m parts you start having issues getting close enough to the center.

I really wish that as you add more Kerbals to increase lifting capacity it would also increase range.

[Alshain]

5 minutes ago, DStaal said:

There's a forklift in *MKS*.  (Well, Konstruction, which got rolled into MKS.)  Which supports KIS...

Oh, I found it.  That is neat.  Of course it probably wouldn't be that bad lifting it the real way with the forklift rover and only using KIS to attach it once you get close.

[voicey99]

4 minutes ago, Alshain said:

That's a really good idea. I'm not sure that it does that right now, but might be something to suggest on their thread.  Lifting on Minmus should be a lot easier than lifting on Kerbin.

I'm sure it's been mentioned before and passed over, like most suggestions for major mods.

4 minutes ago, Alshain said:

I wasn't trying to say you didn't know what you were talking about.  I hope you didn't read that in that way. Landing on Minmus is easier, you are right there.  I'm just skilled enough to do it on the Mun and that's where I want to build.  I don't need to worry about that sort of thing myself.  For a real beginner, Minmus would be a better location for all the reasons you mentioned.

I didn't take it as condescending, what I meant was that kolonising to the Mun seems like a bit of an unnecessary self-imposed challenge. But then again, I am unashamedly lazy and take pride in under-engineering everything wherever possible to safe those precious FFFs.

2 minutes ago, DStaal said:

The local gravity thing is actually something that works at first glance and doesn't on closer inspection in real life: The *mass* of the part hasn't changed, and you still need to maneuver it.  You can lift a *bit* more in lower gravity, but not all that much because you still have to push around the same mass.

I know what you mean (I study physics), but while the inertial mass indeed hasn't changed, the weight has and the weight is what determines whether something can be lifted or not. An object of mass 15t could be lifted off the ground with 147kN of force on Kerbin, but 7.37kN on Minmus, hence it would be much more liftable albeit just as slow to get moving and stop.

[siimav]

43 minutes ago, Alshain said:

I haven't tried Tundra yet, but KIS has a "team lift" function.  The more Kerbals you have in close proximity, the more tonnage you can lift (1 ton per Kerbal specifically).  So it's really just the same as building small stuff, only with more Kerbals.  The Tundra 2.5m colonization module is 4tons, so 4 Kerbals can lift it into place and bolt it on with an engineer.  The only difference is a Tundra would have to be shipped on it's own, where as most of the Ranger parts fit in a KIS container (because they are inflatable).  In the end it simply makes surface construction tolerable.

As to the landing, that isn't a concern for me, I've been playing this game a very long time now.

Actually you can get away with only 1 kerbal when you park a Konstruction vehicle next to your kerbal. Each one of these parts can increase the weight  that your lone engineer can move around with KIS. Doing a simple vehicle with a single crane already adds 6 tons to the weight a single kerbal can carry and can be parked up to 16m away. Some of the parts have even higher mass bonuses (like the forklift at 22t) but the influence radiuses are smaller. The bonuses also stack with multiple instances of the same part. So 2 cranes would be 12 tons at up to 16m away. Forklift + crane would be 28t in 6m radius but 6 tons at 16m radius.

The actual values for different parts can be found in this file. grabMaxMass is the added lift capacity and maxDistance is the radius of influence.

Edited July 4, 2017 by siimav

[Alshain]

@siimav Yeah, that's what DStaal said a few posts back, but that file is going to be useful.  Thanks!

[voicey99]

1 hour ago, Loren Pechtel said:

Another newbie to MKS here:  What would an automated mining base look like?  And is it possible to build one that doesn't need maintenance?

This is an example metals-producing base I built earlier ^TM:

It probably isn't the best setup but it has two automated drills for mining metallic ore and feeding it into a mobile processing unit (bottom), which then processes it into metal and shoves it to the planetary stockpile (from one of the cylinder tanks via the MPU's inbuilt push capability). It is powered by the reactor on top (just visible). The grey box on the front is a thermal control system, which has an unlimited max cooling and can cool up to 3GW of heat per part (vanilla radiators do not play nice with MKS drills), though it only works on the surface. There is a small container of machinery at the back for refilling the MPU every so often, and a nuclear fuel canister for both types (enriched and depleted) to facilitate reactor maintenance.

The reactor will need manual refuelling every 4-5 years to refill its fuel an remove waste and the MPU should receive maintenance about every 10yrs to refill the machinery and push its production back up to 100%. It is possible to make maintenance-free automated bases in MKS, but for that you wouldn't be able to process raw resources in-situ and power would be a constant struggle as the drills would continue to hoover up large amounts of power at night. Maintenance only needs to be done every few years on designs like this, so it shouldn't be too much of a chore.

[Loren Pechtel]

7 minutes ago, voicey99 said:

This is an example metals-producing base I built earlier ^TM:

It probably isn't the best setup but it has two automated drills for mining metallic ore and feeding it into a mobile processing unit (bottom), which then processes it into metal and shoves it to the planetary stockpile (from one of the cylinder tanks via the MPU's inbuilt push capability). It is powered by the reactor on top (just visible). The grey box on the front is a thermal control system, which has an unlimited max cooling and can cool up to 3GW of heat per part (vanilla radiators do not play nice with MKS drills), though it only works on the surface. There is a small container of machinery at the back for refilling the MPU every so often, and a nuclear fuel canister for both types (enriched and depleted) to facilitate reactor maintenance.

The reactor will need manual refuelling every 4-5 years to refill its fuel an remove waste and the MPU should receive maintenance about every 10yrs to refill the machinery and push its production back up to 100%. It is possible to make maintenance-free automated bases in MKS, but for that you wouldn't be able to process raw resources in-situ and power would be a constant struggle as the drills would continue to hoover up large amounts of power at night. Maintenance only needs to be done every few years on designs like this, so it shouldn't be too much of a chore.

Would the drills restart in the morning or stay off?  And do you have to process on site?

[voicey99]

11 minutes ago, Loren Pechtel said:

Would the drills restart in the morning or stay off?  And do you have to process on site?

You don't have to process on site (the MPU will push any raw resource from full, connected and PL-enabled containers), but it cuts down the work required at your central operation for the more advanced products. The MPU would restart in the morning but the drills, like vanilla ones, would need to be manually restarted. At the volumes of power you need (240/s for the drill pair), you either need a reactor or a really big-ass solar panel and the entire world's lithium reserves' worth of batteries. Reactors are generally just as if not more cost-effective per unit of of power production as panels.

Edited July 4, 2017 by voicey99

[Loren Pechtel]

43 minutes ago, voicey99 said:

You don't have to process on site (the MPU will push any raw resource from full, connected and PL-enabled containers), but it cuts down the work required at your central operation for the more advanced products. The MPU would restart in the morning but the drills, like vanilla ones, would need to be manually restarted. At the volumes of power you need (240/s for the drill pair), you either need a reactor or a really big-ass solar panel and the entire world's lithium reserves' worth of batteries. Reactors are generally just as if not more cost-effective per unit of of power production as panels.

I was thinking of avoiding the need to send maintenance (in other words, player time) rather than equipment cost (not so much player time).

[voicey99]

19 minutes ago, Loren Pechtel said:

I was thinking of avoiding the need to send maintenance (in other words, player time) rather than equipment cost (not so much player time).

It's basically impossible if you want to do it legit. If you do want to make it maintenance-free, you will have to export the raw resources to PL and run the autodrills off solar power (the MPU doesn't need to run to provide push capability). If you do that, you must not visit the base during the night or be still there when the sun goes down, since it will only give you your backlogged production if it is running to begin with.

Just stick some autodrills and solar panel big enough to provide for them in the daytime (plus resource storage and a heat dissipator) onto an MPU or logistics module and only have it loaded during the day.

[Loren Pechtel]

56 minutes ago, voicey99 said:

It's basically impossible if you want to do it legit. If you do want to make it maintenance-free, you will have to export the raw resources to PL and run the autodrills off solar power (the MPU doesn't need to run to provide push capability). If you do that, you must not visit the base during the night or be still there when the sun goes down, since it will only give you your backlogged production if it is running to begin with.

Just stick some autodrills and solar panel big enough to provide for them in the daytime (plus resource storage and a heat dissipator) onto an MPU or logistics module and only have it loaded during the day.

That sounds like it would do what I'm aiming for.  Once it's been placed there would be no reason to ever go back to it so the only-during-daytime rule wouldn't matter.

[voicey99]

Just now, Loren Pechtel said:

That sounds like it would do what I'm aiming for.  Once it's been placed there would be no reason to ever go back to it so the only-during-daytime rule wouldn't matter.

Well, you would have to go back from time to time since it does not actively produce anything nor contribute to planetary logistics when unloaded. To that end make sure it has >12h of storage for what its producing since resource catchup on loading the vessel gives you your backlogged production in 6h batches and tanks only empty down to half full each time they push to PL (max once per 'cycle')

[Loren Pechtel]

14 minutes ago, voicey99 said:

Well, you would have to go back from time to time since it does not actively produce anything nor contribute to planetary logistics when unloaded. To that end make sure it has >12h of storage for what its producing since resource catchup on loading the vessel gives you your backlogged production in 6h batches and tanks only empty down to half full each time they push to PL (max once per 'cycle')

Well, that makes planetary logistics not too useful if you have to cycle through the facilities to make it work.

[voicey99]

6 minutes ago, Loren Pechtel said:

Well, that makes planetary logistics not too useful if you have to cycle through the facilities to make it work.

It's a stock limitation, otherwise KSP would melt your computer into slag even more thoroughly then it does now if it had to simulate dozens of vessels. Just make sure you have surplus production and you can built up enough of a buffer in PL to go a very long time between checkins.

Edited July 4, 2017 by voicey99

[Loren Pechtel]

15 minutes ago, voicey99 said:

It's a stock limitation, otherwise KSP would melt your computer into slag even more thoroughly then it does now if it had to simulate dozens of vessels. Just make sure you have surplus production and you can built up enough of a buffer in PL to go a very long time between checkins.

Stock handles it by checking back 1/day.  I would have thought PL used the same system.

[voicey99]

Just now, Loren Pechtel said:

Stock handles it by checking back 1/day.  I would have thought PL used the same system.

Does it? Will check later.

[Alshain]

@DStaal FYI, it was pretty much exactly what I thought it would be.  I don't think ScanSat does the ridiculous "it might be there but it might not be" stuff that the stock system does.  Fine by me, I always though that was dumb.

(don't ask why there is an atmospheric sensor on this rover, I honestly don't know why)

 

So, the next thing I probably need is water if I want to turn that substrate and Gypsum into LS, correct?  I'm going to have to get that elsewhere.

[voicey99]

14 minutes ago, Alshain said:

So, the next thing I probably need is water if I want to turn that substrate and Gypsum into LS, correct?  I'm going to have to get that elsewhere.

The basic supplies chain is (gypsum/minerals→)fertiliser+mulch→supplies with no water or substrate in sight. You can make supplies with dirt/substrate and water, but the other method gives you so much more (it's less efficient in terms of fertiliser, but it's so easy to make who cares?). You will need them for organics production, but that's further down the line than you have to worry about right now.

Water would be much better used at this stage for fuelling the superecycler in the kerbitats (which reduces supply usage by half again on the standard kerbitat recycler). You can make it from hydrates in the ASM as well, given that water tends to be vanishingly rare.

Edited July 4, 2017 by voicey99