[Most 1.12.x] Near Future Technologies (August 26)

[Crimeo]

0.625 reactor is already significantly powerful, definitely OP if anything, not the other way around, it does not make all that much sense to me to have an upgraded version. It's currently described as a stirling engine, and yet is a way high 10x more efficient than the RTG after adjusting for weight, which is itself 2x more efficient than the other RTG,

We are spoiled rotten at 60 already, IMO and more than that still would really be getting into the realm of straight up Star Trek levels of not-so-near future tech. 

(edit: I think real life comparisons previously here were wrong, but just purely in comparison-to-other-game-techs, it's already very powerful. PRETTY sure it's also way more powerful than realistic as well, but the ECs are too confusing for me without enough coffee in my system at the moment)

edit 2: Okay it seems the consensus is about 1kW = 1 EC/s. So in real world, a RTG weighing 80kg (stock pb nuk) should produce about 0.3 EC/s PB AS NUK mayybe 1 EC/s, Stirling engine 0.625 thing ~10 EC/s at best (already taking into account increasing weight which multiplies onto efficiency). So you're already getting a 500% fantasy bonus.

Edited April 29, 2017 by Crimeo

[AwkwardNoah]

so uh when I use Near Future in my game it causes the SPH/VAB item menu to freeze on the pods menu

Any clue why that is?

 

Edit: bad install, don't mind me. Works now

Edit 2: Now im getting horrible frames and it gets worse with time till it crashes 30 minutes in

Edited April 29, 2017 by AwkwardNoah
fixed it

[Streetwind]

19 hours ago, MaxL_1023 said:

Would it be possible to add in some late-tree small-ish (0.625m or 1.25m) reactors which have better performance than the initial unlocks?

The best-performing energy sources that Near Future ships, in terms of power per mass invested, are capacitors combined with a trickle charging source. They outclass everything else by a significant amount. The downside is that your burn duration is limited to the amount of storage you carry, and that you'll have to invest some hands-on energy management effort.

If you need more power on a 0.625m class vessel than a KerboPower reactor can provide, consider some capacitors. The smallest model can be liberally stuck to any free surface without looking terribly out of place or consuming much room at all, and is probably best suited to the low-ish amounts of battery buffer probes tend to have anyway.

Let's say you want to drive a Helicon VASIMR, which takes 100 Ec/s. The reactor takes care of 60 of that, meaning 40 Ec/s remain to be provided. A CAP-101 radial capacitor stores 800 Ec and discharges at between 40 and 80 Ec/s, so that's perfect - doesn't even need a battery buffer. Carrying 12 of them will let you execute a 3-minute full throttle burn for only 60 kg of added mass. Your other option, which would be adding a second reactor, would clock in at 360 kg - six times as much (and costs a lot more funds too). So you save quite a bit of mass, which improves your dV, potentially letting you bring less fuel, further saving mass. And because spacecraft with capacitors are generally lighter for these reasons, their TWR is slightly better, so they can get away with limited burn times more easily.

Ultimately though it depends on your mission profile. If you're looking at one or two singular huge burns, capacitors are obviously less attractive than if you need many short burns. (You could, of course, always consider periapsis kicking for large burns...)

EDIT: Alternatively, installing USI Core reactors (shipped with many USI mods, like MKS) will give you several additional options for reactors. NF Electrical ships a patch that converts them to Near Future mechanics. There is no stronger 0.625m reactor, only a weaker one, but there are two 1.25m reactors in the gap between the KerboPower and the Garnet, delivering 100 and 200 Ec/s respectively. Perhaps one of them will fulfill your needs without being oversized.

 

12 hours ago, AwkwardNoah said:

Edit 2: Now im getting horrible frames and it gets worse with time till it crashes 30 minutes in

You might be running out of memory. Even 64bit KSP can only address as much as is physically present in your computer.

 

Edited April 29, 2017 by Streetwind

[Nertea]

On 4/28/2017 at 0:41 PM, MaxL_1023 said:

Would it be possible to add in some late-tree small-ish (0.625m or 1.25m) reactors which have better performance than the initial unlocks? It seems like moving up the tree gets you to larger reactors, which can be way bigger than you want. RTGs can't produce enough power and the large reactors are too heavy and often overkill. 

I think that besides the above answers, the real key thing is that the roadmap shows no new parts remaining for NFE.

[AwkwardNoah]

8 hours ago, Streetwind said:

You might be running out of memory. Even 64bit KSP can only address as much as is physically present in your computer.

 

 

Might be, I was monitoring my computer's usage and turns out when I was using a large launcher for my Duna ship it was using about 7K MB

[Rayder]

On 4/30/2017 at 10:04 AM, AwkwardNoah said:

Might be, I was monitoring my computer's usage and turns out when I was using a large launcher for my Duna ship it was using about 7K MB

You might also find adding extra RAM is useful even if you're not hitting your limit or crashing. My KSP install was running on about 6GB in my system with 8GB and it seemed to run fine for a long time. Although I did have the occasional crash. I found that the game actually was running out of RAM and it was just hit and miss whether it was going to crash.

I threw in some more RAM and I'm now running with 24GB. KSP seems to appreciate the extra breathing room and is now routinely using up to 9GB.

[Crimeo]

2 minutes ago, Rayder said:

You might also find adding extra RAM is useful even if you're not hitting your limit or crashing. My KSP install was running on about 6GB in my system with 8GB and it seemed to run fine for a long time. Although I did have the occasional crash. I found that the game actually was running out of RAM and it was just hit and miss whether it was going to crash.

I threw in some more RAM and I'm now running with 24GB. KSP seems to appreciate the extra breathing room and is now routinely using up to 9GB.

Your operating system etc. also take up RAM, so this may add up to the actual limit anyway.

[Rayder]

Just now, Crimeo said:

Your operating system etc. also take up RAM, so this may add up to the actual limit anyway.

Exactly. It seems either KSP or the system was limiting how much RAM to assign. As I mentioned adding in extra allowed KSP to use up as much as it properly needed without hitting the cap.

[Schanez]

I am just returning to KSP after a longer break and thankfully my favourite mod is still here, perfectly fine ^.^

As I am not a modding savant of any sorts, can someone tell me, what exactly is required? The Installation part mentions Community Tech Tree as requirement, but there is a part in the Redmee file that states Dependencies and lists what I assume to be some other mods, those being B9PartSwitch, Community Resource Pack, ModuleManager and Optional - Community Tech Tree. At first I thought those might be known conflicts with other mods, but that Tech Tree got me puzzled. Can someone shed some light on it? Do I need all those listed installed before the NF pack?

[Streetwind]

39 minutes ago, Schanez said:

Can someone shed some light on it?

Dependencies are hard requirements, yes. Conveniently, they are also bundled in the downloads, so you don't have to grab them separately.

Community Tech Tree is not a requirement (and any place that states otherwise is wrong). However, these mods take advantage of CTT's extended nodes, allowing for better part progression than for example dumping all of NF Propulsion into just the stock ion propulsion node. Many other mods also support CTT, and even those that don't explicitly support it are not incompatible because the stock nodes still exist. So I recommend you try it out - you'll probably find that it's a no-brainer.

[mikegarrison]

1 hour ago, Streetwind said:

Dependencies are hard requirements, yes. Conveniently, they are also bundled in the downloads, so you don't have to grab them separately.

Community Tech Tree is not a requirement (and any place that states otherwise is wrong). However, these mods take advantage of CTT's extended nodes, allowing for better part progression than for example dumping all of NF Propulsion into just the stock ion propulsion node. Many other mods also support CTT, and even those that don't explicitly support it are not incompatible because the stock nodes still exist. So I recommend you try it out - you'll probably find that it's a no-brainer.

Community Tech Tree is a good first step when adding "extension" mods, like Near Future. It extends the tech tree the same way the new parts extend your design space. But if you want to actually change how the career progression works, you'll want one of the other tech tree mods, like Engineering Tech Tree or Historical Progression Tech Tree or something like that. These aren't always balanced too well with the stock science and fund gathering mechanisms, however.

[Urses]

The main advanve of the CTT is IMPO the ability to hide empty and unresearched  nodes, this adds some positive surprise moments and evades the problem with high level twchnologies where you have to buy nodes with anything in it

But it becomes as much as useful if you add more technologie modes to the game. Full tree is realy gigantic! And expensive as hell...

Funny Kabooms 

Urses 

[Schanez]

15 hours ago, Streetwind said:

Dependencies are hard requirements, yes. Conveniently, they are also bundled in the downloads, so you don't have to grab them separately.

Community Tech Tree is not a requirement (and any place that states otherwise is wrong). However, these mods take advantage of CTT's extended nodes, allowing for better part progression than for example dumping all of NF Propulsion into just the stock ion propulsion node. Many other mods also support CTT, and even those that don't explicitly support it are not incompatible because the stock nodes still exist. So I recommend you try it out - you'll probably find that it's a no-brainer.

So to be as blunt and straightforward as possible... I need to instal CTT BEFORE NF pack and it will be enought? Everything else is already included in the downloads of NF?

[Nergal8617]

2 hours ago, Schanez said:

So to be as blunt and straightforward as possible... I need to instal CTT BEFORE NF pack and it will be enought? Everything else is already included in the downloads of NF?

Shouldn't matter if you install it before or after, if it is there NF will make use of it.  Other than that yes all dependencies are included in the NF downloads.  For example I personally don't use CTT and all my NF mods work just fine, but if I decided to use CTT I could without having to do a re-installation of all my mods, I could just add it in.

[Streetwind]

7 hours ago, Schanez said:

So to be as blunt and straightforward as possible... I need to instal CTT BEFORE NF pack and it will be enought? Everything else is already included in the downloads of NF?

Install order is almost always irrelevant; what matters is when you start a save. Modded tech trees in particular are very partial to that. Follow the ironclad rule: "Do not ever change the tech tree of an existing save". There are situations where CTT is somewhat less problematic than other modded tech trees, but it's still best if you simply avoid changing it on running saves altogether.

If you're worried about locking yourself in, just make a test save first, look at the tree, cheat in some science and unlock some nodes. You'll be surprised how close CTT is to stock KSP. In fact, no stock part changes at all. Only modded parts have the option, if their author decides so, to be placed in extended nodes beyond the stock tree.

1.) Install NF packs
2.) Start a test save and look where the parts are
3.) Install CTT
4.) Start another new test save, and look where the parts are now

I'm sure you'll notice why CTT makes sense immediately

[Gordon Dry]

Could you integrate all of your engines into AmpYear incl. the RO configs?

[Oxygentlemen]

whan you release the updates, could you make a link that just downloads them all in one ZIP file?

[Streetwind]

14 hours ago, Gordon Dry said:

Could you integrate all of your engines into AmpYear incl. the RO configs?

...We don't ship RO configs? o_O

(Also, going out on a limb here and guessing the answer will be no. We don't ship other mod configs in general. Those are handled by other mods. The small few exceptions that exist are there because Nertea is the maintainer of CTT and has traditionally worked very closely with RoverDude. However, if you were to make AmpYear configs and created a pull request for them on GitHub, chances are Nertea will pull them in if they won't create too much overhead in future releases.)

 

7 hours ago, Oxygentlemen said:

whan you release the updates, could you make a link that just downloads them all in one ZIP file?

No, because making and maintaining a release like that takes Nertea more work than it takes you to click a few links... a lot more than you think. In fact, it was split up into subpacks for precisely that reason.

 

Edited May 10, 2017 by Streetwind

[tallon43]

I don't know why, but I have been having this problem lately where the 0625 reactor wont load in the loading screen for ksp. Is there any fix to this>

[Gordon Dry]

I have this issue that the OKEB-500 (set up as solar panel only) explodes as soon as the graphene radiators come down to a part temp of a few degrees kelvin - seems irrational to me.

The Cryogenic Tanks get nice low internal temps of 4° K so somehow the radiators work.

The other radiators which are not specific named for "cryogenic" already exploded a few seconds after expanding ...

And those had no Testflight R&D's into them ...

On page 20 you mentioned to re-rig and re-animate the OKEBs, do you also have some issues in view?

Edit:

You can of course have the logs:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/sdehh8b0tl9ycqo/2017-05-11-2 KSP.log.7z?dl=1

Another edit:

 

Edited May 11, 2017 by Gordon Dry

[Streetwind]

9 hours ago, tallon43 said:

I don't know why, but I have been having this problem lately where the 0625 reactor wont load in the loading screen for ksp. Is there any fix to this>

The most common cause for this is not installing the mod correctly. Specifically, missing dpendencies - if Community Resource Pack is not present, then EnrichedUranium doesn't exist, and when KSP tries to load a part that includes EnrichedUranium, it crashes.

 

1 hour ago, Gordon Dry said:

I have this issue that the OKEB-500 (set up as solar panel only) explodes as soon as the graphene radiators come down to a part temp of a few degrees kelvin - seems irrational to me.

Could you tell us the minimum required number of mods you need to successfully reproduce this? You have a huge number of mods installed, several of which are alpha or development builds. Work out a test case that reliably produces the error with as few involved parts and mods as possible, then take a new KSP install, add only those mods, and see if it still happens. If not, start adding back mods until you see the error reappear.

[Spaceception]

I'm having a problem with the reactors, it installed correctly, I can put them on my ship and everything, the reactors, the fuel, etc, all go on and load properly but there's nothing I can do to turn them on, I remember when I got it last year there was a button with the nuclear sign on it at the top somewhere to manage them, and I think when you right clicked on the reactor there was an option to turn it on, but there are none of those things here.

[Streetwind]

3 hours ago, Spaceception said:

I'm having a problem with the reactors, it installed correctly, I can put them on my ship and everything, the reactors, the fuel, etc, all go on and load properly but there's nothing I can do to turn them on, I remember when I got it last year there was a button with the nuclear sign on it at the top somewhere to manage them, and I think when you right clicked on the reactor there was an option to turn it on, but there are none of those things here.

Screenshot, please? O_o That's a new one.

You should have two options. First, the rightclick menu, and second, the reactor control panel in the menu bar on the righthand side of the screen. (If you have really really many mods the menu bar may need to be scrolled.)

[Spaceception]

50 minutes ago, Streetwind said:

Screenshot, please? O_o That's a new one.

You should have two options. First, the rightclick menu, and second, the reactor control panel in the menu bar on the righthand side of the screen. (If you have really really many mods the menu bar may need to be scrolled.)

 

 

 

Sorry for the wait, I was playing KSP

And I really want it to work, because when I got RoverDude's Alcubierre drive, I could power it with positive energy using these reactors, I didn't need to pause for it to recharge, and with the USI reactors that I got somehow, I guess they're a standard for him, it just sucks my energy and I can't fly it.

 

Edited May 11, 2017 by Spaceception

[Streetwind]

@Spaceception You're definitely missing the NFE reactor panel on the right. That means the plugin didn't load.

1.) Make sure that ...\GameData\NearFutureElectrical\Plugins\NearFutureElectrical.dll exists in your install.
2.a.) If it is missing, reinstall the mod.
2.b.) If it is present, check your logs for any errors.
3.a.) If you can see one, upload the log for us.
3.b.) If you can't see one, the plugin is not present in your modlist and you failed step 1.

 

Edited May 11, 2017 by Streetwind