[1.4] StageRecovery - Recover Funds+ from Dropped Stages - v1.8.0 (March 11, 2018)

[magico13]

New release, v1.7.1. This release adds support for a mod called RecoveryController that will ship with FMRS. What this mod does is allow you to designate stages to be recovered by StageRecovery, FMRS, "auto" (what it does now), or "none" (no mods recover it). You can set (and change) the recovery controller while building the vessel and in flight.

This is a brand new thing and there's a non-zero chance for bugs. If you test it out, let me and @linuxgurugamer know. Once the thread is set up for it I'll link it here and in the OP so you can give us feedback. It's a pretty exciting new feature and is the kind of integration I wanted to have with FMRS a long time ago

Edit: Link to RecoveryController thread: 

 

Edited April 10, 2017 by magico13

[ZacRedact]

Is there a recommended setting change for using this with RSS/RO? I think the "DeadlyReentryMaxVelocity" setting should be higher than 2000 given the scale of RSS versus stock, but I'm unsure what would be a realistic figure.

[magico13]

7 minutes ago, ZacRedact said:

Is there a recommended setting change for using this with RSS/RO? I think the "DeadlyReentryMaxVelocity" setting should be higher than 2000 given the scale of RSS versus stock, but I'm unsure what would be a realistic figure.

There are a number of discussions about this (I should just put one in the OP). Try searching with the search bar in the top right. I generally recommend upping it to 6 km/s or so. Depends on what you think is a speed that is reasonable to start having a chance of failure, since that velocity is the start of failures and not a hard limit. I don't use RSS so I can't say anything for sure.

[ZacRedact]

3 minutes ago, magico13 said:

There are a number of discussions about this (I should just put one in the OP). Try searching with the search bar in the top right. I generally recommend upping it to 6 km/s or so. Depends on what you think is a speed that is reasonable to start having a chance of failure, since that velocity is the start of failures and not a hard limit. I don't use RSS so I can't say anything for sure.

Thank you! For the DistanceOverride config option, I assume if I enter 500 there, all stages that survive would be recovered 500KM from KSC, correct?

[magico13]

17 minutes ago, ZacRedact said:

Thank you! For the DistanceOverride config option, I assume if I enter 500 there, all stages that survive would be recovered 500KM from KSC, correct?

No, it's a percentage represented as a number between 0 and 1 (1 being 100%, 0.5 being 50%). For Earth, to simulate 500km away you'd set it to 0.958. It's 98% at KSC and 10% on the other side of the Earth, which is 20000km away, and it's linear for all values in between.

[Bornholio]

42 minutes ago, ZacRedact said:

Is there a recommended setting change for using this with RSS/RO? I think the "DeadlyReentryMaxVelocity" setting should be higher than 2000 given the scale of RSS versus stock, but I'm unsure what would be a realistic figure.

Thank you! For the DistanceOverride config option, I assume if I enter 500 there, all stages that survive would be recovered 500KM from KSC, correct?

6K is good for RO&Deadly. (pretty sure 11.4.1 RO came with that as config since I don't remember changing it) 7K for Stock RSS is probably reasonable.  I tested a large number of RSS and RO/RP-0 re-entries.  If you are not using "shielded" tanks the value is quite a bit less in RO/DRE.  Also FAR has much more influence on true survival. If you are not including aero surfaces for re-entry attitude reduce the number also. I found a set of grid fins on the upper tank section made a large amount of difference in how well the stage came back.

I found it a lot of fun just running stages back in to see how they do. FMRS would help also if you don't want to run separate testing. 

Lunar return speed is a whole other ball game.  Angle makes so much more impact than LEO.  Bad retro burning can actually make a re-entry worse even though the speed is lower.

M13-ninja answered

Edited April 17, 2017 by Bornholio

[ZacRedact]

21 minutes ago, magico13 said:

No, it's a percentage represented as a number between 0 and 1 (1 being 100%, 0.5 being 50%). For Earth, to simulate 500km away you'd set it to 0.958. It's 98% at KSC and 10% on the other side of the Earth, which is 20000km away, and it's linear for all values in between.

 

3 minutes ago, Bornholio said:

6K is good for RO&Deadly. (pretty sure 11.4.1 RO came with that as config since I don't remember changing it) 7K for Stock RSS is probably reasonable.  I tested a large number of RSS and RO/RP-0 re-entries.  If you are not using "shielded" tanks the value is quite a bit less in RO/DRE.  Also FAR has much more influence on true survival. If you are not including aero surfaces for re-entry attitude reduce the number also. I found a set of grid fins on the upper tank section made a large amount of difference in how well the stage came back.

I found it a lot of fun just running stages back in to see how they do. FMRS would help also if you don't want to run separate testing. 

Lunar return speed is a whole other ball game.  Angle makes so much more impact than LEO.  Bad retro burning can actually make a re-entry worse even though the speed is lower.

 

Thank you both! I'll be setting the DistanceOverride to .958 and DeadlyReentryMaxVelocity to 5000 for my RSS/RO game. Not using shielded tanks at the moment and I don't mind a little extra difficulty.

 

Great mod @magico13!

[Loren Pechtel]

Feature request:

Could we suppress the messages about the failed recovery of aerodynamic junk that falls back?

I'm thinking of anything that is a lone in-line mount (although I can't think of a case where a radial-mount component should be falling off in the first place) aerodynamic component, perhaps with a decoupler attached.  It's never worth recovering such things but I'm getting a bunch of them at present from nosecones that go flying.

[magico13]

29 minutes ago, Loren Pechtel said:

Feature request:

Could we suppress the messages about the failed recovery of aerodynamic junk that falls back?

I'm thinking of anything that is a lone in-line mount (although I can't think of a case where a radial-mount component should be falling off in the first place) aerodynamic component, perhaps with a decoupler attached.  It's never worth recovering such things but I'm getting a bunch of them at present from nosecones that go flying.

You can either turn off failed recovery messages entirely (I do, I just use the main GUI if I care about anything failing to recover) or add all the parts to the ignore list. If a vessel contains only parts on the ignore list then it won't print a message.

[magico13]

May's Patreon poll is now open until the 5th of May: https://www.patreon.com/posts/9607929

This is a poll where my patrons can decide what they want me to work on for the month of May. For April I focused on KCT and ScrapYard and was able to make significant progress on getting a working part inventory system up and running. A public Beta build of ScrapYard (rather than the Alphas that are available now) should be available soon (as soon as I finish some configuration work, which might take a few days with testing). What I focus on in May is entirely up to you!

I likely won't post when new polls are available on my threads in the future, but people may have missed that I started a Patreon last month so I am mentioning it again. I will make a post when I decide when the May live stream will be, since that's open to everybody

[aaronsta1]

im fairly new to this game and i just recently found this mod.. i really love it. it sucks how the game destroys objects before they hit the ground, so nothing gets recovered but i have a question.. do you really need so many parachutes? 

say im doing a standard 2 srb rocket and i put 2 or 4 parachutes on the srbs.. i only get back like 25%. but if i put 8 or even 10 i get back 90%.. 

 

is this how its supposed to be?

 

its basically to the point to where the more parachutes i can fit on the more money i get back lol.

[Bornholio]

8 hours ago, aaronsta1 said:

im fairly new to this game and i just recently found this mod.. i really love it. it sucks how the game destroys objects before they hit the ground, so nothing gets recovered but i have a question.. do you really need so many parachutes? 

say im doing a standard 2 srb rocket and i put 2 or 4 parachutes on the srbs.. i only get back like 25%. but if i put 8 or even 10 i get back 90%.. 

 

is this how its supposed to be?

 

its basically to the point to where the more parachutes i can fit on the more money i get back lol.

Tweakscale or Realchute.  In real life the shuttle SRB recovery chutes are some of the largest ever made and still only got the speed to ~20m/s

[magico13]

11 hours ago, aaronsta1 said:

say im doing a standard 2 srb rocket and i put 2 or 4 parachutes on the srbs.. i only get back like 25%. but if i put 8 or even 10 i get back 90%.. 

is this how its supposed to be?

I typically only need 2 to 4 parachutes for what I would consider a standard SRB (a single mid-size SRB, the "Thumper"). But I also highly recommend RealChute since you can easily drop that down to 2 parachutes. Use the helper in the editor to get estimates of the recovery percentage. If you end up adding a bunch of chutes you'll run into the issue that you'll actually lose money compared to if you just let the SRB be destroyed.

For example, an empty "Thumper" costs 358 funds per the wiki. The radial chute costs 400 each. If you only get 90% back with 10 chutes, that's (358+10x400) = 4358 total value but you only get back 3922 funds, meaning you lose 436 funds overall, which is noticeably more than the cost of the SRB on its own. SRBs are super cheap.

[Loren Pechtel]

20 hours ago, aaronsta1 said:

im fairly new to this game and i just recently found this mod.. i really love it. it sucks how the game destroys objects before they hit the ground, so nothing gets recovered but i have a question.. do you really need so many parachutes? 

say im doing a standard 2 srb rocket and i put 2 or 4 parachutes on the srbs.. i only get back like 25%. but if i put 8 or even 10 i get back 90%.. 

 

is this how its supposed to be?

 

its basically to the point to where the more parachutes i can fit on the more money i get back lol.

Stage Recovery adds a button in the VAB (and I think in the SPH but you rarely use chutes on planes) that tells you how well the chutes will work on your booster.  I can't imagine needing that many chutes on a spent SRB, though.

Note that perfection is generally not worth it, adding too many chutes is counterproductive.  No matter how good your chutes you will still suffer the distance penalty on recovery and that will erode part of the value of your chutes.  Note that the VAB data only shows the speed penalty, it has no way of knowing where the booster will come down to know what the distance penalty will be.

This distance penalty is especially brutal if you recover second stages, not to mention the cost of lifting the chutes in the first place.  Bringing them down gently is almost never worth it except if you are doing a propulsive landing of something big.  (Put a probe core and a locked fuel tank with a couple hundred m/s of fuel.)

Also, beware that 1.25m rocket parts often aren't worth recovering. 

[aaronsta1]

2 hours ago, Loren Pechtel said:

 (Put a probe core and a locked fuel tank with a couple hundred m/s of fuel.)

does it just factor in the landing like the parachutes? so no really need to have anything but fuel a 1+ twr?

[magico13]

1 hour ago, aaronsta1 said:

does it just factor in the landing like the parachutes? so no really need to have anything but fuel a 1+ twr?

Here's the requirements, outlined in the first post. Basically, it acts like parachutes and can be used in combination with parachutes. It doesn't reduce the loss from distance, it can only be used to reduce speed.

On 7/18/2014 at 11:15 AM, magico13 said:

Powered Recovery requirements:

  Hide contents

Now you can be your very own Elon Musk and have your rockets land with their engines! This feature is a work in progress, however, and will be improved in future updates. With that said, if you are having issues with recovery, first try going into the settings and disabling Powered Recovery, then you can report your bugs if they didn't go away.

So, what are the requirements for powered recovery?

• An activated engine (or multiple), excluding SolidFuel powered engines (engine ISP will be properly averaged).
• Atmospheric Delta-V of at least 1.5 times the terminal velocity after parachutes. (about 300 m/s without chutes, otherwise just 1.5x the terminal velocity indicated in the editor helper)
• A point of control, such as a probe body or Kerballed command pod, that has SAS capabilities (so a Pilot kerbal or a probe with SAS)
• A total Thrust-To-Weight ratio of greater than 1. Even if using parachutes.

 

Explicitly calculating the fuel amounts required for every engine is hard. Several approximations are made:

1. All engines are averaged together to act as a single engine.
2. All required propellant types are assumed to be the same as the first engine (non-SRB) found.
3. This is designed primarily for stock-alike engines. Mod engines that require strange fuels may have unexpected issues.

 

Powered recovery is made possible by Malkuth, of Mission Controller Extended. Malkuth graciously offered the MCE powered recovery code to me, which was used as a base for the code implemented here.

 

 

 

[Loren Pechtel]

6 hours ago, magico13 said:

Here's the requirements, outlined in the first post. Basically, it acts like parachutes and can be used in combination with parachutes. It doesn't reduce the loss from distance, it can only be used to reduce speed.

 

Note that while parachute cost scales linearly with weigh the cost of powered recovery does not--the probe core is a fixed cost and a bit of extra fuel is cheap.  If you're playing with SpaceY parts land it with rockets!

[ghost_depla]

I love this mod! but I update to ksp 1.3. and i was wondering if you are going to update this fantastic mod for ksp 1.3

[magico13]

5 hours ago, ghost_depla said:

I love this mod! but I update to ksp 1.3. and i was wondering if you are going to update this fantastic mod for ksp 1.3

I believe the 1.2.2 version may already work with 1.3, but I will try it out in a little bit and will report back or update tonight.

 

E: It works, but I'm updating anyway.

Edited June 1, 2017 by magico13

[Bornholio]

Will 1.7.2 be backward compatible with KSP 1.2.2? 

Going to be a long haul if i have to keep manually rolling back mods.

[magico13]

28 minutes ago, Bornholio said:

Will 1.7.2 be backward compatible with KSP 1.2.2? 

Going to be a long haul if i have to keep manually rolling back mods.

It should be. There weren't any compilation changes needed for StageRecovery since I wasn't using some of the UI elements that changed. ScrapYard, KCT, and a few of the modlets had some compilation changes so those won't be automatically backwards/forwards compatible unfortunately.

[Wragie]

Hi All

I just wanted to post that it is working wonderfully in 1.3! I never could get it to behave in 1.2 for some reason. It would never recover anything. I do tend to run heavily modded ksp but have decided to try a no mod 1.3 career. Obviously I HAVE TO HAVE mech Jeb and kerbaleng. They don't count as mods according to my rulzes lol.

Anyway rather pleased at it working as it makes careers a lot more enjoyable error uhm easier! All bow and praise the koder dude! !

[strudo76]

One of my stages did a powered landing with virtually no fuel remaining.

Didn't have any chutes, and only a tiny bit of fuel when I decoupled from sub-orbital. Don't have a log sorry, as I forgot about this until I saw the screenshot in the folder.

[Terwin]

9 hours ago, strudo76 said:

One of my stages did a powered landing with virtually no fuel remaining.

 

Didn't have any chutes, and only a tiny bit of fuel when I decoupled from sub-orbital. Don't have a log sorry, as I forgot about this until I saw the screenshot in the folder.

Sounds like it was low density due to empty tanks(low terminal velocity), had a very high TWR, and the last bit of fuel has the highest dv due to the very low remaining mass.

A tiny bit of fuel in a mostly empty ship can still have quite a lot of braking power.

[KerbMav]

The background simcalculation can also assume a perfect suicide burn, so the remaining fuel can be translated into a last second breaking burn under parachutes or simply at terminal velocity.