helaeon

Endgame. At that point I'm using Science & Funds as a score. I find the tech tree an annoyance but I like the contracts for direction, and the need to watch funds as a pressure to not build things super silly. It also incentivises setting up forms of income like bases and science labs (to convert science to funds). Also continuing to do more science for the same reason... plus I like reading the science reports especially with community science installed. It's a reason to go places like Dres too as those are likely reports I haven't seen before.

I think something to consider in balance is the annoying to use factor. I find myself wanting to use FusionPellet fueled engines because they're simple and also shared with the Pathfinder mod. Yes, other engines might be better, but there are more things to consider, more fuel tanks and types to mess with, maybe no ISRU tool chain if I want to do that. So I'll take an engine that has a lower ISP, higher power need, higher radiator need, lower TWR etc simply because it's more straight forward on craft design and makes it more versatile. Is it possible to have an engine direct heat at another ship or part within physics range? Maybe use heat as radiation? I figure the Kerbals would design the ship with the crazy engine to have proper radiation shielding for it, but that doesn't mean if you're trying to land at your base on Minmus with one of these engines it would be, so you'd cook your base, space station, other ship, etc. Literally cook it with the engine. Sending hundreds of megawatts per second or more of heat at the base from a kilometer away or more. Engine plumes can transmit heat to parts on the same ship, is it possible (and worth it) to turned that up fantastically for the exhaust plume of these engines?

Doubling the thrust on z-pinch fusion still has it at roughly half the thrust of fission for a similar mass. I'm currently running at 1.75x thrust so it is closer to half. Reason I started doing this in the first place back on the first test release it was included with, was I could build the same ship but use VASIMR thrusters from NFP and make a superior ship in all respects. Double the thrust of the z-pinch and it's usually better than the NFP engines. I'm not sure what the correct answer is for ZFusion, but it does feel weak. I do agree that the NSWR is way too good. It's really really easy to not use anything else, which is usually a hint it's too good. Many of the real-world drawbacks are not really issues in KSP. Sharing what I'm doing with my own game as feedback for what feels "right" to me at the moment. Others may disagree. I'll be the first to admit I'm rule of cool (but seems sane) rather than gritty realism. Certainly not asking for changes. Tonight I was messing with the ICF and I zoomed in on it and saw all the little lasers that fire through the engine on the animation effect. Supurb little detail. Made me smile. You do excellent excellent work.

For my own game I have the z-pinch fusion running at 2x thrust vs stock. Mass wise, it looks like it should weigh a lot. There would be a lot of iron, neodymium, & copper there. So current mass is fair I think. The Inertial Internal Confinement Engine I dropped the mass by half and increased the thrust by 2x. 1.5 may be a better number, but I think I'll play at 1/2 mass and 2x for a bit. It looks like it should be fairly light from the model. The existing thrust might be okay if it were a smaller form factor. Another thought here, if it's using the reaction products as exhaust, shouldn't it not actually create that much heat for the ship to dissipate as it's being expelled in that exhaust? A separate idea... there is already lithium implemented as a resource, what about a lithium spray radiator that fires off super heated pellets of lithium to dissipate x kW of heat per unit of lithium, player can adjust the loss of lithium to reject more or less heat per unit time? Sharing personal choices and thinking out-loud here, use or discard as you wish. I do have some funky stuff going on with the PW x2 fusion pellet fuel tank. It also doesn't switch the name in the VAB from fission pellet to fusion pellet though it does change the fuel in the tank. It causes anti-grav on the pad. The x4 does not have this problem. I copied ModuleB9PartSwitch from the x4 to the x2 and changed the volume to 1800 and that did fix the fuel switch issues but not anti-grav.

I've been running an xbox one controller for KSP. I strongly recommend it for flight controls and keyboard & mouse for operating the UI and building stuff. WASD flight seems so rough after using a controller. Looks like from Shadowmage's link, bluetooth is probably the easiest way. Your controller needs to be connected before launching KSP and remain connected the entire play session (it cannot be re-connected), otherwise it will not work! I've been using my controller plugged in via USB mainly to avoid the bluetooth connection issues. Though wireless is nice.

I am really really looking forward to this. Good command pods are rare and you have a pile of them in here.

Some ideas for fusion vs fission: Fuels being reasonable to buy in the VAB (due to factories and such on Kerbin) but very painful or annoying to ISRU. Such as needing materials from various biomes, maybe not available on a given world at all. The opposite also works to encourage building of bases to obtain fuel. I do think it should be one or the other though, you invest in infrastructure up front for fuel later (and with time) or with funds now. I've been using the fusion reactors from DSEV, and the big advantage usability wise is on-demand power fuel use rather than being always on. I think they're far too light though. So certainly on board with the dynamic power generation. I do like the mechanic of needing a certain amount of EC just to start them (or maybe an instantaneous loss of fuel if you don't keep it running at some trivial maintenance level?) Not sure on mass. Fuel should certainly be lighter, maybe the reactors too, but possibly burn through that fuel per unit at a high-ish rate so if running full out you'd need to refuel more often. Or, more of the mass is part and far less is fuel so unlike the fission reactors putting in less fuel doesn't get you much. Maybe a larger mass of radiators should be required even if the reactor itself doesn't have more mass? Just some thoughts to maybe help things along. Whatever you think is best, is best.

I've been noticing on craft with multiple antennas the game making what seem like silly choices about which antenna to use and determining signal based on a weak antenna that uses less power, rather than a stronger antenna or... the combined power of all antennas (like you'd think it would). Or it will use a far-away relay with a powerful antenna on the craft, rather than a near by relay. If you retract that more powerful antenna suddenly you have more signal. I'm leaning towards game bug.

No problems here either. I'll just play with all your other mods in the mean time.

My view is that everything is in dev with no warranty (mods generally) and something the author puts out as a dev version is really extra experimental. If saves and craft files must be edited between releases then so-be-it. You don't have to make any of this and certainly don't have to share it. Not a fan of biting the hand that feeds. Here to help or keep my mouth shut.

I'd like to have FFT back for 1.3 with what was there for 1.2. New concepts and parts are great but would be nice to be able to use what is there already in the mean time if it doesn't cause you headaches later. If it does, then wait.

I think a lot of us are looking forward to this one, glad to see it still lives. Whatever you think is best to do is the right answer for now. You're making a shiney toy for yourself first, and you're awesome for sharing it with us.

I'd love if the USI warp drive could do something like this for course plotting. Like, be able to cursor to your target and place an "enter warp" and "exit warp" node of some kind and then show your resulting orbit. No idea how to do that however. Would it be possible to hijack the maneuver node system? One thing I have never liked about the USI drive is the need to manually pilot it and watch your resulting orbit as you pilot real-time. I know this pretty well. I wrote part of it... Look what the USI drive does for moving through space using Krakensbane, it might help solve your boom problems when watching from flight scene.

Do you have any RCS ports or engines activated besides the warp drive? Where are your reaction wheels located (game does not like them away from center of mass), you'll notice if you have a reaction wheel on one side of a large heavy space station it will shake apart on any kind of motion? Are you autostrutted? You are using the current version for KSP 1.3 in 1.3 right? Unfortunately a balance cannot be met between an interstellar drive that some people requested and a friendly in-system drive. Back when I made my changes I figured it was an in-system only drive... lots of people wanted something else so the top speeds were further cranked up, and for 1:1 scale solar system use as at warp 1 Neptune or Neidon is an hour and a half away. I agree it accelerates too quickly and the top speed is too high for a 1:10 scale solar system, thing is, not everyone is playing in that sandbox so a balance has to be met.

@Spaceception Nope.... and if you do it will be very bad. For looks sake you can but you need to disable all of the drives but one. However you only get the warp bubble of that one drive.

From what I can tell any part cfg that calls for a module from a non 1.3 compiled DLL will cause a crash. Where the log says that the crash occurs is meaningless as to what mod is responsible. If your part mod is all module manager or uses only stock modules (or plug-ins that have been compiled for 1.3), it won't crash. If you search for "exception" in the log, that will give you a hint as to mods causing problems, but it isn't all of them. It's mostly part mods with plug-in dlls pre 1.3 that are causing the crashes.

You may also edit the KIS config file and have them wear whatever props, tools, parts, etc that you like. So you could have them floating in space with sunglasses on if you'd like.

All I can say is wow. I'm pretty impressed with the Eve part... I think it counts. To me it's the not ditching of any parts. That you break the ship in two for the Eve landing I don't think is a big deal because you meet back up again to reassemble the ship.

Melty Kerman.... from a rescue mission in low Kerbol orbit.

Whenever I find a formula spitting out nonsense I make sure my units all match up and cancel out properly, partly to make sure I'm putting in the right number! They don't from what I can tell. The way it's set up you should end with a unit of seconds, but you end in m/s2. due to those addition terms. If I'm following the order of operations correctly it cancels down to m/s2 - m/s2 + s , and you can't do that. So I messed up the order of operations in this analysis or the formula is flawed. If I do only the term in seconds I get something like 644 s which is also not right.

I'm having the same issue. I have a huge huge part list though so not ruling that out. I'll pop in if I can figure out the result. From Kaa253's response I'm expecting it's a mod conflict or maybe MM config causing an issue. If anyone has any ideas I'm also not seeing the Z-pinch engines in sandbox. SOLUTION: Use the release Nertea linked a while back (it's also in the OP), not the github repo. I have a feeling it has to do with the ChargedEngines module that is in-progress.

Thought... How much work would it be to split out Ven's parts entirely as alternate models to Squads? Or would it be better to balance them into their own niches to make them slightly different than Squad's as their own parts much like the PartOverhaul? It may be a good long term solution to some compatibility issues like with the Puff, and to not miss out on positive changes to the stock parts Squad may make, especially now that memory consumption is much less of an issue. I'm decent at part and MM configs but thoughts on an algorithm to do it efficiently and/or not step on toes, if it is even a good idea, would be appreciated, etc. are welcome.

That sounds just fine. How about a small node on the surface part somewhere to attach a KIS pipe end, surface experiment pack plug, or maybe the USI or Pathfinder crew tubes (which are also just KAS pipes)? Sometimes it's nice to have a base as one large vessel rather than lots of individual pieces. Though I guess that could all be done via the top node.

Very nice. I think this will dovetail in nicely with all of the major base building mods. You've grabbed a good niche. Have you thought about adapter parts for USI, Pathfinder, KBPS? Is it even relevant?

The jump to 10km/s you see is your speed relative to Kerbol. You had that velocity while you were orbiting kerbin too. All about frame of reference. When you leave kerbin SOI it should be 9284.5 m/s in this case your best case departure window is when the planet is directly lined up, worst is when it's on the opposite side of kerbol., so likely you're launching straight out and have about 2km/s excess velocity in relation to kerbol. It's always going to be about 9km/s regardless of orbiting or not. Then when you hit Eve or Duna your velocity shown is then relative to them in their SOI. You have to correct that just like you do when you do an inefficient transfer and have a bonkers velocity vector upon arrival. Which will be very very high regardless in velocity mode. That's one reason people suggest diving to near Kerbol and using it to change your velocity vector so that it is close to equal with your target (so parallel to your target and the same. For Duna it is about 7500 m/s), then when you arrive your velocity difference should be very low. Velocity mode can give you some really bonkers relative vectors to your destination but it's simpler to understand. Momentum mode less so (both in ease of understanding and how crazy the vectors can get). The final delta-v needed at arrival in that mode is the same as a normal transfer but without the time involved... and you can also repeatedly slingshot yourself at periapsis or use the oberth effect repeatedly to circularize.