Ion Engines need MegaJoules?

[NoXion]

Yesterday I tried building an ion engine propelled craft as a lander for very small bodies like Minmus and Bracacia, but was stymied when I found that for some reason the ion engine needed MegaJoules. I suspect it is because of one of these mods:



Which one is it and how can I fix this? Like a config file I can edit or delete? It seems ridiculous to me that the smallest ion engine I have available should require MJ instead of ElectricCharge, especially since everything I seem to have that produces MJ is really bloody heavy.

[Snark]

Moving to Add-on Discussions.

Easiest way to answer the question is to just do process of elimination.  Uninstall half your mods, then run the game to see whether the issue persists; that'll tell you which "half" the offending mod is in.  Once you know that, run with half of that installed, and just repeat until you narrow it down to the sole offender.  You've got, what, 43 mods?  That's < 2⁶, so you only need 5-6 rounds to narrow it down.  Should just take you a few minutes.

Alternatively, if you're command-line savvy, just grep your GameData folder tree for all .cfg files containing the string MegaJoule, which ought to point the Finger of Blame pretty accurately.

Or you could look at the log spew from when the game starts up-- I think (but don't actually know, and can't check right now because I'm not at a KSP computer) that when ModuleManager applies its patches, it says which patch is doing what.  If I'm correct in thinking that, you could open your log file and just search it for a reference to ionEngine, and see which MM patch is doing the work.

 

[Streetwind]

MegaJoules is a resource supplied by Community Resource Pack, used (as far as I know) exclusively by the mod KSP Interstellar.

[TheRagingIrishman]

Ya like @Streetwind said, it's used by KSP-IE (which is called WarpPlugin in the GameData folder)

[NoXion]

I went into the ModuleManager.ConfigCache file in the GameData folder and used Ctrl+f to find "ionEngine", and altered the relevant values there instead. Having run KSP with these changes this morning it seems to have worked.

Thanks for all the replies!

Edited May 4, 2017 by NoXion

[DStaal]

6 hours ago, NoXion said:

I went into the ModuleManager.ConfigCache file in the GameData folder and used Ctrl+f to find "ionEngine", and altered the relevant values there instead. Having run KSP with these changes this morning it seems to have worked.

Thanks for all the replies!

That will work until you update any mod or change any file in GameData.  Then the ConfigCache will be outdated and will regenerate from the source files.

Better would be to do the same via an MM patch.

[NoXion]

On 04/05/2017 at 8:28 PM, DStaal said:

That will work until you update any mod or change any file in GameData.  Then the ConfigCache will be outdated and will regenerate from the source files.

Better would be to do the same via an MM patch.

 

I realised this, but since I don't plan on adding any more mods I was thinking that would be enough.

However, If I were to make such a patch, do you have any ideas as to how I would go about it?

[DStaal]

1 hour ago, NoXion said:

I realised this, but since I don't plan on adding any more mods I was thinking that would be enough.

However, If I were to make such a patch, do you have any ideas as to how I would go about it?

It's relatively easy: I'd start by creating a folder to keep your own patches in, and then create a text file for the ptach.  Then it's basically copy over the values you modified, and format the file.  There's a wiki on the MM github with examples and details.

[FreeThinker]

On 3-5-2017 at 5:11 PM, Streetwind said:

MegaJoules is a resource supplied by Community Resource Pack, used (as far as I know) exclusively by the mod KSP Interstellar.

Yes an KSPI-E contains the following patch

@PART[ionEngine]:NEEDS[!NearFutureElectrical,!SETI,NearFuturePropulsion]:AFTER[NearFuturePropulsion]:FOR[WarpPlugin]
{
   @MODULE[ModuleEnginesFX]
   {
        @PROPELLANT[ElectricCharge]
        {
            @name = Megajoules
            @ratio *= 2
        }
   }

   !MODULE[ElectricEngineThrustLimiter]{}
}

This ensures the engines consumes a realistic amount of power in comparison to other electric engines

If you like to cheat, enable infinite resource or remove this MM script

Edited May 10, 2017 by FreeThinker