Serino

Mine was about a year ago. I had just finished docking my lander module to my main transport around Laythe. I had decided to hit every moon in the Jool system at once and was carrying a massive payload of science with me. Unfortunately a fuel tank I had jettisoned previously swung back around and obliterated everything except the command capsule, which fortunately had all the science stored in it, and the lander module. This meant I had to spend the time to try and figure out how to use what fuel I had left in the lander to slingshot everything around a couple of the moons and still retain enough to hit Kerbin atmo. After working out all the math and getting on my way I realized that I only had enough life support to return 1 of my 3 Kerbals since I had lost my main system in the accident. I had a bit of spare life support if I only returned 1 Kerbal so I waited until we were securely in solar orbit and then my Kerbals drew straws to see who got to live and the others chose to take a permanent space walk among the stars. Seeing them drift away from the ship with smiles on their faces was probably the saddest thing I ever witnessed in KSP.

RoverDude is the main author and I do believe Helaeon is credited as co-author. I helped Helaeon with creating the secondary mode on the drive but as far as licencing is concerned I believe you only need to credit RoverDude and Helaeon since they are the official authors.

There is a lot of speculation on how Alcubierre drive would work. Mostly what is currently being tested in reality is more of a booster version similar to the original way this drive works but instead of just jumping you up to 15c it would instead multiply your true velocity to create an apparent velocity. Simple answer is that if we can make it then more than likely it will be a drive that makes it so you appear to move 100x faster than what you actually are. What I am currently working on is one proposed outcome that just makes you go X speed but conserves all your energy so when you exit the bubble then the universe punches you in the gut with a reality check. This is a less common idea of how it would work since we aren't sure how things would behave. As for my model of this idea as I said it will be Soon since KSP doesn't like complex math, nor some of it's own variable strangely, and krakensbane makes using vectors a pain in the ass, especially with how many I would need to use.

I am currently trying to make the equations more accurate for this so that the fact that you can use it to do some very unrealistic things, though you would have to purposely try to do them, will be gone. Just a few more kinks to work out and I will have helaeon test it and get it up if it works on his machine. So look forward to a little more realism in it some time Soon

For the people asking for experimental actuators to be required for orbital construction that then forces everyone with IR to get it before they can use any of the orbital construction stuff or if they don't have IR it would force them to research an empty node both of those options are bad cause it would very restrictive. Edit: Will there be a way to get to the ultra high energy physics if we don't have anything that requires anitmatter? None of the mods I use have anti-matter reactors or anything like that, unless Nertea plans to add some in his mods, but I do use Rover's warpdrive.

in general from when Helaeon and I were working on a new feature for it the CheckBubbleDeployment was what was used to see if the bubble was deployed ie warping or not, and in editor to display the guide bubble. It would toss an exception if something went wrong but that should be all it does so if you are seeing an error then maybe something is interfering with the module checking for warp and its tossing out and exception.

The best thing to do currently is balance it around what the USI drive does now, in case Rover wants to leave it as is, or to write an MM to go with yours that balances the USI drive down to yours. I personally think balancing it against the way USI is now is the better option because then it makes it easier to change later if USI gets rebalanced.

So helaeon the ZZZ drive is meant more of an in system drive? I don't see much reason to use it over the USI one since it has a smaller bubble and can't be run as long. Is it lighter and cheaper with more connection points? Sorry I just don't understand from the numbers you gave why anyone would want to use those over the USI ones.

Remember the drive was originally designed behind stock Kerbol system, I think, so it doesn't have a massive fuel range. Rover is working on a 5m version but I don't know how far he has gotten or what the EC and EM usage would be on it nor the storage. The question is which did you run out of EM or Zenon? If it was EM then that's solvable by using a powerful enough generator to charge while in flight, which is a bad idea normally, or to just drop out and recharge if it was zenon then pack more on. I think that a limit on how far you go is a good idea to keep a bit of challenge in it, in this case building a warp ship and the infrastructure so that it can go anywhere. My solar system mod is kind of outdated but with enough zenon stored and a large enough reactor I can make it across the gulf. As for the ideas on how to set up the drives I recommend balancing your pros and cons like how the USI stuff does. The warp is a big pro so it's balanced by it's limited bubble size and long charge time but a more efficient drive doesn't necessarily balance out the cons of smaller bubble, longer charge time AND more power use.

Well maybe instead of a smaller warp bubble instead make it larger since it is using more power, and make it use more EM, kind of like it's slightly unstable and a barely controlled drive. This would give you a pro and some cons maybe even make it charge slightly faster to emphasize the lower safety measures.

Helaeon if you are going to make the converted ones as a lighter version, which makes sense since those things look flimsy as hell, why not do something like 1.5 the electrical cost to run while it only holds about 1/2 the fuel. This would make up for the flimsy design since there would be less space for the EM and more energy needed to keep the EM from just tearing the whole thing apart. My only thing I think could be a problem would be the fact that if you have the USI ones which are better why use the flimsy ones, also was under the impression people wanted the new model as a full replacement of the USI ones.

If you go with both the breaking and the needing kerbal mechanics being implemented then maybe a time frame thing something like after 30 days without supplies they start breaking things every 15 days for the next 90 days, so at 30, 45, 60, 75 and 90, then on day 90 right after they break the item they go from on strike to unconscious and require a living fed kerbal to bring them back up at which point the ransack the rescue ship for food. This would give you a bit of leeway if you make a mistake but would start punishing you harder and harder the longer you went to prevent people from abusing it. This would also make it better for people who like to pull things with roleplaying out a scenario where with TAC you could technically under feed your kerbals and still complete a mission but the moment they passed that specific mark they are dead and no need for rescue. While this made for some interesting things, in my case kicking one of my kerbals out of the airlock on the way back from Jool so that the other could survive long enough to get the science home, it still made rescue missions impossible for far flung ships since by the time you realized you weren't going to have enough food they were too far out for you to get anything to them. I think I got off topic there so the TL;DR version is a good idea is to have them start breaking things after X days until X days have passed at which point you would need a living kerbal to come revive them.

So getting more and more excited as I read this I am left with a question. Will supplies, mulch and organics be transportable with your logistics module, the thing that allows you to send things within the SOI, or will they be locked out like Karborundum is? I can imagine dropping automated bases down that would allow you to just fly over drop the mulch and chill in orbit while organics are made if they are able to be transported with it.

Are you sure cause the way it is worded is that the buildings will have a different mulch to organics ratio. It wouldn't make sense to have different supplies to mulch ratio per building nor does it make sense in the fact that you can stick extra supplies and mulch storage on something when only the few things mentioned would be able to create mulch.

I have played with TAC-LS since it first came out and love the crap out of it. This is the first time another LS mod has actually got me interested, maybe cause I use so much USI stuff that having a mod for it is exciting. One thing that gets me is that you have made it so an orbital colony can never be 100% self sufficient. Personally I feel that very late in the tech tree, like an end node or something, Kerbals would have found a way to be 100% self-sufficient since we as humans already have an idea on it. I do have a legitimate question though. Is the conversion of supplies to mulch going to be 1 to 1 or will it be less forcing us to still make supply runs, albeit super infrequently?

Helaeon nailed the first point, thought he forgot to mention that depending on how the drive would work in reality gravity may or may not actually have any effect on your travel. As for your second point. Are you warping with your radiators extended? If so then try retracting them since it is a bad idea to try and charge EM while warping. Also you have to take into account that NFE is not updated for .90 so it has some wonkyness sometimes.

I have another solar system and when it was 1.5c it was like an hour and a half of warping to get there. now with 15c it only takes me about 10-15 minutes which is pretty quick since most burns to do that without a warp drive are in the hours long range, at least without karborundum fusion drives. Also people you gotta understand that kerbal speed of light is 1/10th c where as Rover's warp drive pulls 15c so you are technically pulling 150 kerbal c.

Everyone keeps wanting higher and higher warp limits but people don't realize that realistically the faster you go with a warp drive the faster you would use your EM, and it doesn't scale linearly. Realistically speaking 10-15c is pretty damn good and will get you to most possible habitable planets nearby well within a human lifespan. now with Kerbal distances are 1/10th what they are in reality and most extra star systems aren't even a kerbal lightyear. The burn time for the warp drive to the far systems is equal to or less than the average burn times you have to do to get to Jool before you get the warp drive, which isn't too unreasonable since you are flying to another star.

The most efficient way to kill or gain velocity using the warp drive while in an orbit is to wait till you hit apoapsis, to lose velocity, or periapsis, to gain velocity, then warp back towards the halfway point between the two, assuming your orbit isn't inside the failsafe distance. Hyperbolics you only have to worry about losing speed so for that you wait till you are almost out of the SOI and then warp back to the planet. Doing this will net you the most gravitational gain/loss per jump.

Helaeon be careful with that. That has been around since ARM came out and it still isn't too good cause of the shapes of the asteroids. Also careful with using docking ports and warp drive since accidental disconnects cause booms and docking ports aren't exactly the strongest connections so turning could cause it to snap and then boom. Honestly your best bet for asteroids is, if you need one around a planet/moon, build a ship with 4 engines in a square then lock on as close to CoM as you can then pivot to the best alignment and lock the pivot. Then just using low thrust to find your rotation point and make adjustments to the thrust limiters to make sure it flies straight. If you are doing it for the mining then just warp a mining ship out then mine and warp home.

I think the safe limit is the physics limit as soon as the other ship goes on rails your good to activate. Best bet is to do all docking within the planetary limit and then do a burn to bring you up to activation distance.

Yea after doing some more testing it is definitely the claw. That thing is unstable even when under high thrust. On a side note: Rover I know you plan on making a 5m drive for use with your FTT Starlifter parts so may I recommend that the warp bubble outline thing in the VAB be allowed to be toggled on/off in orbit so that we have an idea how big of a Starlifter we can build. This would also be useful for people now with those that want to build warp ships in pieces.

Hello again Helaeon. By measuring the size of the warp drive using my mobile colony, which is bigger than the warp sphere, against the E class I currently have orbiting Kerbin I can safely say that the warp bubble is just big enough to get the E class inside it. Unfortunately by that I mean you would have to place the warp drive inside the asteroid at least in the case of the E class I have since the bubble only covers about 1/2 to 3/4 of the asteroid from outside. As for the claw in use while warping.... No just no. I am not sure if it is how we did our version, still using that while waiting for the official roll in from rover, or the claw itself but I get weirdness and explosions at random times. I suspect it is the claw and the fact that placing your ship directly aligned with center of mass is near impossible that is causing it all.

Yea I have KSP-AVC already on my main install but the test install I was using for the AD doesn't have it and my main one needs a bit of work to get working again cause I have a corrupted file somewhere. That's the main reason I asked. Gotta take a look at MKS now to see if my mobile orbital colony needs to be reworked.

I am so out of touch on what has been going on with the entire constellation. Did I miss anything crucial? I ask cause my internet is currently slow from the ice that we keep getting where I live. Yes or no is really all I am asking for since if yes then I will slowly go through the thread.