RoverDude

FYI - did a recent test to shake through some of the long term effects of converters and make sure the interface with TAC was working properly. My test ship had a Colony Hub, Terraformer for Purify, Kerbitat, and a Greenhouse. It also started with a seed of about 600 TAC LS supplies. I launched this ship with Jeb on board, then set another one to warp and push forward the global timer. I let Jeb spin around for a few years without focus until TAC LS had him shown as good and dead for a couple of months and his last update was a few years in the past. Note that to get food, he had to go through three converters - a composter in the Kerbitat, then the greenhouse to BioMass, then back to the Kerbitat for cooking When I then went and gave him focus, despite being 'dead' for over 30 days, all of his numbers snapped back, and he was in fact quite alive, and dining on snacks. Granted, these snacks had gone from Jeb's digestive track about 600 times, but were no worse for the wear.

True, could just be another module

No problem Basically, each module must have 250 construction parts inside of it in order to function, otherwise the generators will not work. These are also VERY heavy, so one way of saving weight (to the tune of 20T per module) is to build them in place at your Colony. The Construction Hub can take ore and minerals and make these parts. Later on, when you want to build your own supplies, one of the supplies you need as a component are ModularParts - these are the secondary function of a construction hub. I'm going to draw up an infographic this week to help with this

New version up on Dropbox Link on the first page of the thread

Building a Mun base... Space farming!

I had to do a google and run over to the thread to see what they looked like - so no My inspiration can be summed up in the phrase 'Space 1999 with Kerbals'

New models. All 16 core modules are done. Flat form factor, but require the addition of a cap - these are modular so the same 16 modules can be used inline or with their deployed tops. These come in clear round, solid round, and windowed. Inline cap (can be used by any module) All sixteen cores. Each has a numeric and color code, because trying to find a single module in a colony with 20 identical core parts is kinda hard. Will offer alternate textures for launch if there's interest (mor subduded or without most of the markings). Running through a batch of playtesting this weekend with the intent that if all goes well, I'll update dropbox and also swap out the imagery at the start of the thread (and also update the license).

Just a fun new model I am playing with to represent a five-kerbal capacity colonization module

Saw that one myself - will get that fixed for the next version Also on the fix list - short version is that I procedurally generate all of the configs and need that one to not need PunchCards. Let me see if that's doable, had the same issue and had to do the same tweak. Fallback is to adjust the requirements and numbers so they are a lot more tweak-friendly. Yep, I am going over all of the parts to find gaps like this. I believe the new one requires substrate and enriched soil, so you need another module and some drilling to keep the operation going long term. Also the generation rate went up fivefold since you'll need lots of biomass to make polymers, and there had to be a way to generate biomass in cases where you have a lot fewer Kerbals. Great to hear! I'm planning on rolling out a new version this weekend now that I have some models done.

Awesome! Let me know how it goes - I'm working on the phase 2 components this week, and would love feedback.

For the Kethane, did you switch through the different resources while in orbit view? there are little arrow buttons where it says 'Kethane'. Also make sure when you look at your Kethane parts in the VAB that they show the additional materials for detection (Ore, Minerals, Water). If those do not work le me know, I'll go check on a clean install myself just in case I broke something For attaching modules, you can use docking ports, KAS, etc. - basically whatever floats your boat. Part attachment is a solved problem so I figure people will find new and creative ways of handling this.

Inline modules done, this will be enough to get through alpha. Next models up will be the 3.75m and 5m versions of the Kerbitat and Greenhouse, since those will be the ones that people will end up needing lots of, to reduce part count.

Greenhouse top...

Nothing worryingly familiar about a Creative Commons share-alike license with attribution. RE new models - may want to look further up the post. As noted before, I needed something other than white cylinders to start iterating (and initial feedback has certainly changed how I am making the final models). Not trying to be snarky, but it seems that despite having the license spelled out with attribution in my first post, I seem to have to answer this question once per page.

Nope, just a little geodesic dome for a Kerbal to work in I'm going to play with a few different designs and see what sticks (was playing with the greenhouse version today with a translucent dome).

Thanks for the reply I agree with the difficulty of micromanagement, so a lot of the design has been in building it in a way that once you have the pieces in place, it pretty much runs on it's own, so the difficult part will be in selecting a site, and the assembly and logistics of get all of the parts there (which I think fits well with KSP overall). It's been a lot of Excel spreadsheets making sure there were no weird resource gaps, etc. specifically to keep it simple enough to be approachable, with some shortcuts at the expense of simplicity. I'm wrapping up phase 2 right now, so the next preview should give folks a good idea of what it would take. As an example, if you wanted to have a 100% self sufficient colony to support 10 Kerbals, you'd need about 30 MKS parts (although you could always ship stuff in). I expect the niche would be the same folks who use TAC LS today and are tired of sending supply ships to their stations every year

Finishing up alpha models - non-inline version

Working models (textures need normal maps, etc.) for the modules. The idea is that rather than having inline and surface parts for each of the 20 or so MKS modules, separate the core functionality (the orange and white bit - it's mostly foam) with the cap that would house the workshop, etc. and caps would come in inline (shown) or domed/tapered versions that look prettier on the surface of planets. One of the current coding parts is to enforce this dependency (a module must always be the child part of a cap), then extend this as I work on crew efficiency. More Kerbals and more space for those Kerbals means modules operate at higher efficiencies, so the idea of dropping in a 20-kerbal construction crew, then leaving fewer behind to man the colony makes gameplay sense, and the initial robotic factories save on life support, but are not nearly as efficient as having a Kerbal there to maintain things.

hm, colors should already be in place in the current version (blue for water, purple for minerals, Ore I kept as compatible with EL as a Red->yellow, substrate should be orange). I know that the plugin that KSP Interstellar uses lets us do resource maps, not sure if Kethane allows pre-definition

For whatever reason, when I delete it in the local folder it decides to not install my DLL due to reference paths, so that's on me to fix it (probably just a matter of moving my ref into the right relative path). So for now please keep it there or MKS will not load. I'll fix this with the first patch.

Dropbox link posted for super experimental pre alpha stuff. REQUIRES KETHANE and TAC-LS. Note that this is SUPER PRE ALPHA, and while I have tested it in a bare install, horrible things may happen, so do not put this in any save you care about. It will very likely, upon installation, unleash things and possibly eat children. That being said, thanks for helping out Please post bugs, questions, etc. here!

Thanks - I'm sorting out all of the basic configs before tossing up a dropbox link (also wrote a tutorial to get folks started). Just fighting with some configurations at the moment... many kerbals have died of starvation and other ailments, and I've had to airlock a few to test out balancing when there are fewer kerbals than the biodomes can support

Yep, for working models they are retextures with attribution (don't worry, I checked and made sure that anything I derived from had the correct license). Granted could have worked with round white cylinders given most of it has been adding new resources and a bit of additional C# code to add a new parts module.

FYI - I took a VERY quick glance at EL and it looks like it will be an easy add-on. I'll just change MKS to work with Metal vs Metals, and Ore vs MetalOre - also the masses look pretty close, so I will stick with what EL has. That way MKS can work either by itself or side by side. I'll just need to rope someone into compatability testing since I try to keep my dev install very light. May even add a RockedParts factory to the supply chain as a separate but jointly compatible part.

I'll toss one up once I finish the initial testing Today was a lot of warp fast-forwarding, but I was able to set up a three Kerbal colony in about four game years and a lot of launches. RE LaunchPads, it may just flat out work - but if I see there is some overlap in the resources (i.e. metals is probably one), I'll likely just stick with a shared name so that there would be no need for dealing with competing resources.