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Relay Network Moves Magical


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I dont know where to put this... So i just Put it in here...

 

Ive got 2 Relay networks in my KSP game, 1 at the mun and 1 at Kerbin, Im playing with RemoteTech so its Important for me that these work. 

My Relay networks are made like this: 

4 Probes In a Polar Orbit 

and 4 Probes in an Equatorial Orbit,

but now these Probes are magical Moving, they dont Change orbit, butThey move closer to each other or further away from each other....

I even tryed to Place them With hyper edit (Used the Argument of Periapsis) but they  are always moving.

 

I Want to ask if anyone else has this Problem and may knows a fix for it?

 

Thanks for the Help already :wink:

HurricanKai

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I think you need to define by "moving".

As the orbital paths cross, they will move closer and farther apart.

Even with Hyperedit, I find it difficult to perfectly place constellations like this so they have perfect station keeping.  They tend to wander by a few meters, at least.  Nothing that will affect the constellation in the foreseeable future, as they won't drift far enough in the time span of the game. 

 

Or you may have built the probe a little wonky, and induced a small kraken drive. 

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@HurricanKai

Take a look at the orbital "period" of each probe.

The period is how long it takes a thing to complete one orbit.

For them to remain in precise lock-step, the periods must be equal. In practice it is difficult/impossible to get them exactly equal, but you can make it close enough.

A difference as small as a few seconds, can make probes bunch up or spread out over hundred of orbits (which might only be a few in-game days).

Generally if you can get the difference under 1 second, they will remain in formation for a decent amount of time (months to years of in-game time).

The apoapsis and periapsis dont have to be the same, its the period you want to check.

Tiny bursts of RCS are a good way to make small adjustments, dont worry about apoapsis or orbital height of any kind, just burn prograde to lengthen period and retrograde to shorten.

***

Alternative solution.

One method I end up using is just to make every probe sent up for any contract or reason a node in the network.

In this way, you spam it with so many nodes that statistically there will always be a viable connection pathway, regardless of how well sequenced or in formation they are.

Even 1-shot landers or rovers left lying around on moons and things can be useful nodes.

***

The same problem exists in real life, it is very difficult to get the orbits so exact that they never need adjusting to stay in formation, and thats not even taking into account gravitational perturbations from the sun, moon etc. Real life satellites have lifespans limited by the amount of station-keeping fuel they have on board and must save a certain amount for final ejection into a "parking" orbit wher it will remain for a long time without risk of collision with working satellites.

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Another alternative to ensure your network does not drift, is by anchoring it to the largest mass in the area:

I've also heard about a trick with KAS attaching a launch clamp to your satellite while in keostationary orbit, and then fleeing the scene before the Kraken attacks.

KSP_KerbinNet9.png

The radio towers near the south pole are 50m tall so they can reach around the curvature of the planet to bounce a signal off of an M1 relay at the munar south pole in order to get a signal across the oceans.

I've now got a supersonic bomber to skim mountains and drop relay probes for quickly expanding the grid, but the first probes were done by hand with a juno based bushplane, Jeb's wild piloting and Bill's trusty wrench.

 

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I end up cheating slightly with my relay networks. After setting up my satellites and getting their orbital periods as close as possible, I use HyperEdit to tweak them to have identical semi-major axes. Usually this means just shaving a few tens of metres. But making sure they're identical means they never, ever drift in relation to one another. 

Perhaps a nice idea for a mod would be a "station keeper". Define a satellite constellation and, as long as they're already quite close to identical orbital periods, automatically keep them in sync.

EDIT: Just a few days after I mention a station keeper mod, one appears! This looks awesome.

 

Edited by stibbons
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11 hours ago, HurricanKai said:

but now these Probes are magical Moving, they dont Change orbit, butThey move closer to each other or further away from each other....

Could it be inclination? The movement doesn't have to be pro- or retrograde. It can also be to the side.

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With 8 satellites in 8 totally random orbits you ought to have 99.999% uptime. I usually do two equatorial satellites and two polar and have extremely good coverage with both occlusion modifiers at 1.0. Unless you can enjoy station keeping, geostationary satellites are more of a pain than they are worth in the game.

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@ExtremeSquared The Orbits arent Random they are as you said equatorial (4) and polar (4)

 

@Delayi also thought that first but: i done it with hyper edit and they are on a near (as far as it works with Hyper edit) perfect 0/90° orbit...

 

@p1t1oTryed the first one (second im not far enought) hasnt worked for me ... i often build interplanetary probes which take 10 Years to reach Jool (or aother) so even seconds matter

@suicidejunkiePlaying just with the ksc so doesnt works for me either

so after all of that:

@stibbons coud you give me some pictures? i now launched over 20 rockets (each 4 probes) but they just go wrong all the time ;( so please just tell me how to cheat them right....

 

Edited by HurricanKai
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On 3/24/2017 at 0:00 PM, suicidejunkie said:

radio towers

This struck me as a good idea, so I ran with it. I've built a radio tower which is a little over 50m tall, solar powered, battery backup, even has wide angle cameras mounted up top beneath the dishes - so to monitor the Kolar Bears. I've built a rocket around it, so to speak, and in testing it works great. Next step will be to launch and drop a tower at the north and south poles of Kerbin.

As for orbiting relay probes; I have 4 ion-powered probes up. They're all in the same perfectly circular orbit, 400km. Spacing them out is easy enough, just tedious... shortening (or lengthening) each orbital period until the probe falls into the desired place. The only thing it required was a little patience, no cheats involved (or MechJeb). :wink:

Edited by LordFerret
typo
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On 3/24/2017 at 9:00 AM, suicidejunkie said:

Another alternative to ensure your network does not drift, is by anchoring it to the largest mass in the area:

I've also heard about a trick with KAS attaching a launch clamp to your satellite while in keostationary orbit, and then fleeing the scene before the Kraken attacks.

KSP_KerbinNet9.png

The radio towers near the south pole are 50m tall so they can reach around the curvature of the planet to bounce a signal off of an M1 relay at the munar south pole in order to get a signal across the oceans.

I've now got a supersonic bomber to skim mountains and drop relay probes for quickly expanding the grid, but the first probes were done by hand with a juno based bushplane, Jeb's wild piloting and Bill's trusty wrench.

 

Amazing!  At the moment I'm playing a custom career where I need to build a ground relay network - this is inspiring.

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On 3/25/2017 at 10:30 AM, HurricanKai said:

@suicidejunkiePlaying just with the ksc so doesnt works for me either

 

I don't follow.  All of my comms have to reach KSC as well.

Every one of those links is a probe with an omni and some solar.  Sometimes a parachute or RTG for the newer models.

Signals from the southeast shore of booster bay will relay across the mountain peaks towards the south, hit the south pole, and then run along a chain of relays sitting on the ice cap 12.5 km apart until they reach the actual south pole.  25km out from the south pole are a set of four 50m tall towers with relays on top that relay the signal to a repeater landed on the south pole of Mun.  This repeater then beams the signal back to the northern continent of Kerbin.  At some times during the day, that is direct to KSC, but other times it can only reach a relay on the far side.  The far side relay bounces signals to mountain tops down through the desert, then to a special pair of low-altitude relays for jumping the channel, then back up to the mountains, finishing with a stop at Mt WhoopsTooShort, which then beams the signal into KSC.

On 3/25/2017 at 0:10 PM, LordFerret said:

This struck me as a good idea, so I ran with it. I've built a radio tower which is a little over 50m tall, solar powered, battery backup, even has wide angle cameras mounted up top beneath the dishes - so to monitor the Kolar Bears. I've built a rocket around it, so to speak, and in testing it works great. Next step will be to launch and drop a tower at the north and south poles of Kerbin.

One thing you will need to do is have a separator between the main body of the tower and the active core with the relays and sensors.

My towers are 50m tall, but act as if they're transmitting from the base.  The actual transmitter is a HECS core with relays and RTGs sitting in the bowl at the top formed from struts and panels.

Note; according to the math, if you want a single tower at the pole to get LoS on the matching pole of mun, you'll need a tower 350m tall.  Moving out 25km, you'll need only 30m tall towers, but more of them.  I chose 50m tall so that four towers placed on the cardinal directions would give constant contact.

If you want to get constant contact with any other body in the star system, you don't need a tower at all, just long range dishes on both poles.

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