willow

So I was thinking, if you bring more fuel on a rocket you get diminishing returns. Doubling your fuel storage doesn't double your deltaV. There must be a limit someplace. What would be the maximum amount of deltaV one could hope to attain in the game? I'm guessing it to be somewhere between 15k and 20k. And the obvious next question would be: How do you then increase that limit? Sending out fuel depots to rendezvous with would obviously help. But these are hard to maintain and suffer the same diminishing return problems. Are there other options?

This is my observation as well, when taking off from Kerbin I don't mind switching to nuclear engines at 20km and I guess 15km would do too. Thats why I say you can ignore atmospheric delta-v if you bring the proper engine. You won't likely be off more than +/- 200 deltav.. So if you plan your ascent from kerbin, calculate roughly 4500 deltaV, then add about 950 deltaV for leaving kerbin, add 110 deltaV for your orbital insertion at Duna. 1380 for landing. That's 6940 deltaV for a complete one way duna mission. Of course your landing is going to much cheaper than 1380 because of the atmosphere. You can land on kerbin with 250 delta V no matter what speed or angle. Duna is more difficult because of the less dense atmosphere. With a fairly flat descent and the right parachutes you could still land for free. However, this is a perfect world calculation. Bring 10% more for random errors and losses, this brings us to 7634 which is only a bit lower than the recommendation you found. The return trip isn't on the chart, but in my experience it's a lot cheaper than the trip to duna, first of all, takeoff is only 1380, escape from duna to kerbol orbit should be about 300 (I'm just guessing here) return to kerbin 110 and landing on kerbin is free with the parachutes you didn't forget to pack. So add 2000 deltaV for the return trip. 10k for a round trip is more than enough and doable.

@Kardea Does it help to flip the probe upside down, paste it to the rocket, then pick it up again, flip it in the correct position and then paste it again? I've also seen nodes missing but they were restored once the subassembly was attached to the rocket. A bit inconvenient but you can work around it.

I have the feeling there's a fair amount of trolling in this topic But it's still a fair subject and most people have fair opinions. I personally am building spaceships that require about 10 refueling missions, monsters. If I had to do them by hand I'd be bored out of my skull before long. Now I program mechjeb, activate it, and let the computer run while I go do the dishes and occasionally check up on progress. Then when the big ship is full I sit down and have myself an adventure. Those big ships occasionally require 5 minute burns, I'm not sitting behind my computer all that time either... I could easily do all those things by hand, I have done them before, I have the skill and knowledge. But I'm really not interested in spending the time. I have built a part in the past that would generate free fuel in orbit so I'd only have to dock to a refuelling station to tank up. Like I said, the point for me is adventure, refuelling missions are really menial jobs. I hope at some point the vanilla game allows us to automate certain missions. The outcome would be the same. A game like KSP is about mastery. Discovering how to do things and then find better ways to do those things. For me personally, doing routine jobs that I know I can do because I did them hundreds of time with and without mechjeb, does not entertain me. If I wanted a grind I'd play an MMO...

Could you do it scriptless? Just record/replay options selected in the node planner, with the possible option of setting a fixed target or target via dialog. I'm a programmer but I never got into autom8 because I couldn't be bothered to learn the commands.

If you copy/paste the fuelbalancer module code from the fuelbalancer to mechjeb you don't have to add the fuel balancer part yourself, avoiding any node weirdness, and you instantly equip all your mechjeb enabled ships with fuel balancer functionality.

T3E, I presume you have this map in mind? It's based on delta-v, wherever you are. If you were to put a delta-v counter in your ship (For example mechjeb) and get to orbit your counter would indicate the number as indicated on the map. With most engines the difference between vacuum and atmospheric delta-v isn't so big. Especially if you're on solids for the first 10km. I usually bring 4500 delta-v for takeoff from Kerbin. So to answer your question: "Safely ignore atmospheric delta-v, but bring the proper engine for the job."

Is it just me? or are ships designed with spherical tanks just automatically "cute" to look at?

Last change to the code was 8 months ago. I'm afraid this one has been dead for a long time.

That's definately the better option, I built an interplanetary based on the big sphere. Took me up to 10 refuelling runs (little spheres) to fill it up completely! (Ok that test flight to the moon could have drained some) I am proud of the result, it's got around 10k deltav and an inbuilt lander that has 5k delta/v to spare when decoupled. And still only about 120 parts which my framerate thanks me for. First mission is to finally put a flag on moho... And then return! The new 2m docking port is also helping a great deal, keeping the wobble to a decent level.

I would like this feature too. When trying to dock with a ship you could set smartass to orient towards target. With rcs on mechjeb will just blow out all your monopropellant. With rcs off you just can't steer your approach.

Would it put you through much trouble to store all maneuvering nodes as opposed to only the first one?

Would it work if you'd just "shortcircuit" your gui so that a click on a lf/ox button behind the screens would be treated as a click on both lf and ox? That way your changes can stay restricted to the gui, and you can save yourself changes in the rest of the code! That could work don't you think?

You're right that's pretty much the same. Sorry, my brain got stuck on one idea.

I understand Mihara, those are two very distinct use cases. (I suck at spaceplanes so I tend not to build them) What do you think of 3 types? Fuel. Oxygen and Fuel/Oxygen. Where the first two will also show tanks that contain both types. And the latter one won't show tanks that only contain one of the two. That should satisfy both use cases?

They don't have oxygen in those tanks do they? What if you were to treat tanks who have both oxygen and fuel as one type, tanks with merely fuel as another type. Technically speaking you might want to transfer fuel from a fuel/oxygen tank into a pure fuel tank. But apart from that being bad design (leftover oxygen) it's also a corner case that can still be solved with the standard vanilla ksp fuel management option. Or maybe there's a better option? Don't hold back! I was just spewing ideas. No reason to believe they're the best ones.

Awesome Taranis, your mod is already much more userfriendly than the KSP in built fuel management options especially when many small tanks are involved! However I do have a few ideas. Since the previous one was so successful I'll just throw out the other ones, you decide on which are jewels and which are garbage. With loads of tanks the mod is at it's best yet at the same time the gui gets confusing and big. So I'm thinking along lines of reducing the clutter. * A smaller font would already do wonders in reducing the size of the window. * I think most of the time fuel and oxygen should be treated the same way, having them in separate groups only doubles the on screen confusion. * You could think about a super on/off switch which serves to activate/deactivate the whole mod whilst keeping all the settings intact. (This could be reflected in the on screen icon) A completely different approach to setting up the balancer (which might prove to be way too much work): How about a system where every tank gets either a "+" an "=" or a "-". Fuel gets divided first over the + tanks then the remainder gets divided over the = tanks and the remainder of that over the - tanks. You might want to add an "ignore option" which is the same as your lock right now and means the tank is ignored in the calculations. (Default would be = so when you activate the balancer via that single click default all tanks and all fuel types get balanced) In combination with this fuel tanks could get a right click menu option to either completely fill or completely empty the tank (Setting to + or -). There's one other situation I don't have a clear solution for. When sending refuelling missions I often want to keep a tiny bit of fuel left in a tank or ship for the deorbit burn. Right now that means timing a hit on the "lock" button which of course is inaccurate and leaves different amounts of fuel and oxidizer in my ship. Or I do a complicated act where I use a tiny tank on the station to siphon off a bit of fuel for the deorbit burn. This situation is so specific adding gui features for it would only make things more confusing. I don't see an easy fix while at the same time keeping your gui user friendly. The timed click on "ignore" would already work better if fuel and oxidizer were thrown together as one resource. Anyway, thanks for building the fuel balancer. It's one of those mods I keep installing.

Strange, I thought the new textures were an improvement. They fit the stock parts much better. Also thanks for putting in the different sizes and the monopropellant tanks!

Hey, I don't think your fuel balancer needs a part, could you make it work like the crew manager and alarm clock with a small icon on the top left that allows access to the balancer?

Exactly, I deleted the file. No need for any window executables. Certainly not for a game that also runs on mac and linux.

Awesome! It's simple and nice. My spacestation just looks better with spherical tanks. First thing I did was send up a ring with 6 attached tanks. Loads of fuel in a tight package and amazingly stable! I was thinking about putting 2 or 3 rings on a vessel I think that'd contain more than enough fuel for a prolonged IP mission.

I really like the form factor Could you set us up with smaller variants and monopropellant variants?

Looks nice! My suggestions would be a strong nuclear power generator that either feeds on xenon gas or uses no resource, and a fuel generator (Don't forget monopropellant!) it might look like a drilling platform and uses relatively high amounts of electric charge and preferably only works when parked on a planet. These blocks should be heavy so you have a reason to do 3 or 4 missions to a planet to get a viable colony. Think about people who want to put your colony on wheels. Think about little additions, like pluggable windows, small communication dishes, a light.

Good luck with it Trigger I was thinking the other day, and maybe it's unattainable, but perhaps it's an idea to put KAC in the tracking station view... With a "fast forward, auto switch to, and restore node, to next alarm" button?

I'm no expert in the inner workings of KSP of course, but can't you read the times from KSP? KSP shows the closest approach with little flags on the current orbit. If you were to set an alarm at the first of those points, I think everyone would be quite happy with the feature. A closest approach that doesn't even show up in KSP is imho not usefull anyway. Right now I use mechjeb to set a maneuvering node at the closest point and then use kerbal alarm clock to set the actual alarm from that node.