RoverDude

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why open licensing is good. In other glorious news, I have just finished testing the fully functional and animated converter (the little fans move properly when any of the generators are active). So at this point, I'm preparing to start wrapping things up for a pre- release. Once I get the first extractor from Nertea, I'll whip up a variant of the MKS module base to serve as a mining platform part (it would fit in between the extractor and something on top - converter or tank).

Let's see if someone makes one Launch is all about cheap and cheerful - I then expect the community will fill in all of the gaps, given the open licensing of Karbonite.

On that note... one of the more perposterous and bordering on ludicrous ideas I have is to enable dive bombing of Karbonite-rich atmospheres like Jool with large-scale cloud harvesters. Basically, ram the atmosphere as hard as you can to maximize, during the aerobrake, the sheer quantity of air going into the intakes. Then at AP, rendezvous with a ship to drop off your cargo, or use a Karbonite engine to pull your AP out of the atmosphere only to do the whole exercise again. Lucrative but incredibly risky. Just the kind of job for Kerbals.

So a quick design note. Karbonite will have a mass of 0.0125. This puts it at 2.5 times the mass of Liquid Fuel/Oxidizer, which I think is a good thing. It encourages conversion, with the loss in mass being the waste product. And it makes Karbonite-driven engines and generators less of a slam-dunk because of the weight, so there will be choices to be made. It may be that I compensate the mass and low ISP for greater thrust, etc. (basically balance it out in a way where there will be cases for both).

So things are shaping up nicely - working on the converter code to add in animations and optional particle effects to the standard KSP generator module, hope to have that wrapped up today, then it's off to atmospheric and oceanic resources. The random map generation by Arrowstar is beautiful (it makes randomized Karbonite deposits, in the shape of small concentrations as well as impact craters and some random shapes), the models are amazing, and overall I think we're in excellent shape to get a first alpha out for testing this weekend (I for one plan on spending my entire flight back from LA to NYC on the plane working on code and configs). I just wanted to say again how amazing it is that the community is coming behind this idea, and everyone's contributions are greatly appreciated. I stand in awe at your modeling and artistic talents and your generosity!

This is correct. One of the earlier thread posts justified chemically how it could be in different forms. On most planets it will be a solid that's extracted out, but can also be harvested from the atmosphere (with places like Jool being swirling balls of the stuff), and places like Eve having (literallty) oceans of rocket fuel. (edit) I think we can assume, fiction wise, that once harvested, it is generally stored in a liquid form.

This. I either have box colliders, or twelve sided cylinders. Sometimes custom shapes. The MKS modules only have ten sided coliders (the cube tapers at the top). But in any case, the very best thing to do is get out there and just iterate

I'm just teasing by the way - I actually appreciate it when people help out by finding those kinds of bugs in my mods.

Let me look at it - it's 4am here, but at least I like the license

Yep, there will be an early scary early release - very wip, only for test purposes (mostly balance, etc.) - working on the generators right now, I'll need to do a bit of plugin goodness, so worst case I'll release for test sans animation

Good news everyone! We have the first Karbonite extraction Moving onto a WIP converter till I get some lovely models in my hands. No reason why we won't have something testable as a super-pre-alpha this weekend, at least for the 'scrappy startup' parts.

Why not adjust crew capacity when not on the ground? FYI - what we do with Hollow Asteroids is that if you disconnect a crewed component (what would essentially result in Kerbals trapped in rock) we force-EVA and your ship starts pooping Kerbals out of the hatches. Which in itself is wildly entertaining to watch as they fly all over the place

Thanks for the correction. Best bit is I am 100% certain of everything being up and running, and pretty darn confident of success. Oh - and is it irony to correct the grammar on "I don't them having a lot of success"?

For modelers: Please let me know how you want your name in the credits. Please put your name in the stub CFGs you send me Please let me know if you want a different manufacturer other than Umbra Space Industries - I'll add it to the backstory for the mod ('a collaboration between USI and XYZ corp') And thank you again for being incredibly awesome

It was an excellent start - don't be shy on the tris It's generally not tricount that slows down KSP - The MKS parts are all in the 3K-5K range (as an example). I'd say do that radial one you started - that's perfect for 2.5/1.25. Here's the WIP (not done greebling yet, needs some finned vents and I want to round off the intake edges) on my 0.625 micro scoop: And oh yeah... first part!!!!

Nice idea, out of scope for first release

Thank you sir for being awesome.

Top notch! Feel free to do a pull request to the Models folder in Karbonite, or just send me a dropbox link to the assets Either the mu and textures or even fbx if that's easier and I can handle the PartTools bit in Unity

Also I'd want to see how it fits on 1.25/2.5m cylinders because it does look a bit flat, so it may have issues with curvature

Beautiful!!!

Those are just working notes so I can track the stuff I need for launch, especially as I am coordinating efforts of multiple modelers and coders I'll be handling all of the initial configs and test parts, plus the ORS stuff (most of which is done). Side note - for the Karbonite engines, they will be smoky, low efficiency brutes more for convenience than for replacement. A real world analogue would be the multi-fuel engines that can take in truely horrible things and produce power, albeit at a low efficiency. So these will be low ISP engines where there's a real consideration for whether to use one of them for simplicity, or to stack them with an inline converter and generator.

I have all of the models and textures from WaRi, so now I am writing the probe code, moving all of the parts into Unity and KSP, and changing how some parts work based on issues with multiple klaws, etc. So it's in that quiet phase where I do a lot of typing Sadly, I'm away from my dev PC this week, which means that I can't do any models, etc. nor work on my MKS or HA code bases (this is why I have some time for Karbonite, as I need something to do at the hotel vs. just watch TV)

Should be fine now... Thanks Reddit Right click on the engine Evac I need to check, it may be turned off for now. See other replies - since in TAC a Kerbal survives 30 days without food, 3 days without water, the DERP has 15 days oxygen, 12 days water. Space is very tight

I just slap a probe on it, but definitely mods out there. Awesome, let us by all means talk. I would ideally like to make sure there are no conflicts between mods (EL, MKS, Karbonite, etc.) and foster good interoperability. So while Karbonite will be the one-element mod, I can see a place where there's a whole pallete of compatible extensions for realism, variety, what have you.

Waterworld? Althiough it would probably be more of making a buoyant Module Base. I need to see how ORS handles this stock. What's nice is that we control the maps (though the random generation being done by Arrowstar is shaping up nicely!), and ORS has no issues with resources running out, which is helpful.