Whitecat106

That would be the case but I think the issue was that the .dll could not actually find the config file due to a typo on my part, however this text isnt relevant since the dev version, the config file only needs a single letter in it to prevent errors so at the moment the release version of the mod contains the letter V in each config file which is automatically rewritten and updated every second to the correct values for each vessel. I have just downloaded the latest version to check it works and it is fine for me, I will be updating to V1.1.0 soon to provide more RSS support and add some more features. So yeah if you are experiencing issues I would update to the latest version 1.0.2 from KerbalStuff. Enjoy!

Sorry about that everyone! That's what happens when I try and release at 2am... I hate zip files... I think I have renamed the folders correctly now so that the mod will actually load! If you have not already renamed the WhitecatIndusties folder to WhitecatIndustries, you can download the latest version from Kerbal Stuff which will change the name for you! I think this will solve the issues I have seen in this thread about the mod not working with a heavily modded save since I have designed it to work when merged with an in progress game (you will just have to switch to each vessel upon the first start up so their information is updated and saved in the VesselData.cfg). Sorry for the trouble! Enjoy

Here it is everyone, the full release with station keeping now included! Enjoy!

Hi everyone! Okay so I am just about to release the full version onto the main release thread (the background resource issues and station keeping have all been resolved and incorporated) so this development thread will become obsolete, I just need a hand from some everyone in deciding quite how much propellant (Monoprop and Hydrazine at the moment - more will be included for real fuels in version 1.1.0) should be drained from a vessel say in a 300km circular Kerbin orbit, in this orbit the decay rate is about 3.6 x 10^-5 meters per second, so about 0.129 meters per orbit. Any preferences on the fuel drain from this? How long would you like a tank of say 80 units of RCS to last in a high kerbin orbit? Originally I had planned on having the resource consumption rate equal to the orbital decay rate but this isnt working out so smoothly so would anyone like to suggest an appropriate rate? Of course timewarp messes precise formulas up a bit due to the spool up and spool down of the timewarp so all I need are some suggestions (I dont want to release until this is a good balance!). So yes! Everything has come together in the last 3 days of insomnia and 'arrrgg fine ill fix this darn station keeping thing', the entire code has been rewritten nicely and organised (forget that jumble on GitHub!), hopefully I can put the release out on the main thread tomorrow or Thursday! So dont worry Mrsupersonic8, this mod certainly isn't dead! Just a bit hesitant so I do not put people off with bugs in the first full release! Not to fear Station Keeping is here! Tellion, I will be adding more Real Fuels and RSS support in version 1.1.0, basically adding MMH UDMH AZ50 Nitrogen and anything else, if you could maybe send me a list of all of the RCS fuels from real fuels I could implement this faster? Thanks everyone! Again I'm terribly sorry for how long it has taken (2 months now!) but I'm a student on summer break so time kinda doesn't seem to be an object at the moment! I hope you're enjoying the dev version and/or the Lite release version and I would greatly appreciate any feedback/suggestions and some ideas on the RCS drain rates Not long! Whitecat106

Sorry about that Nathan the notification of the PM never showed up! I would make a backup of your save first and complete any contracts you have active (accepted) and everything should integrate smoothly, of course you may have to update your contract configurator to the latest version too but everything should be fine! Just make a backup and let me know if there are any issues and ill see what I can do!

Hi everyone, I have released a new update which now includes all ISS expeditions and brings the total number of missions up to 440 but these missions are only included in the Full pack or the 1996+ sub pack for RSS or Stock Kerbin. I have also balanced some more contracts here and there so no more massive reputation gains (more to come). The next update will hopefully bring CKAN support and may include the Mars Program and or the Luna Program. Enjoy

I have tried to repeat the issue but I cannot, for me a vessel in a circular Kerbin Orbit at 300km with a velocity of 1980.9m/s experiences a decay rate of around 3.5603x10^-5m SemiMajorAxis size per second, so therefore a decay per orbit of around 0.129 meters, not 3 kilometers Can you recreate this issue? Was this first produced by hyperediting the vessel into a 300km orbit? Sometimes a vessel will not gain the correct orbit values if gravity is hacked in the alt-f12 menu causing the velocity to be much lower even though the vessel has a 300km orbit, this could cause issues... But apart for that I cannot see what is happening here. Unless you were maybe orbiting Jool at 300km?

I'm sorry I don't understand what you mean, are you talking about the Dev version or this Lite version?

I had not planned on adding a config file but I will make some changes based on this information, I assume this was for an active vessel? e.g a vessel that you are controlling? You see the issue is that an active vessel experiences a small drag force whereas a background vessel has its Semi Major Axis decreased by a small amount, of course these are completely different translations so trying to get the values for each equal to eachother and the planned 2km/month is difficult. In this case if this was an active vessel I will adjust the hard coding of the active formula to a more suitable value. So I will update this mod after I have calculated the new value. Sorry for the super decay!

Hi everyone, Just a quick update that fixes the Rover contract issues that was causing game crashes! - Sorry it took so long I didn't realise how serious the issue was Everything should now be playable, I will be correcting all contracts this afternoon for the IsNotVessel checks and some reputation balances so 1.4.0 may be out this evening or tomorrow! Update 14:20 I have released version 1.3.3 which fixes issues in the X-15 and STS series, both should now be playable in RSS and Stock in the separate or full packs! Update 22:40 I have now released version 1.3.4 which includes the first round of vessel validation checks (So that a contract cannot be completed by a different contract vessel), these are a work in progress most should work, however I am unsure how these changes will effect some of the Soyuz missions (E.g some Salyut expeditions), If a contract becomes impossible to complete let me know and I will fix asap!

At the moment yes, the Station Keeping currently uses (or should in theory hypothetically maybe possibly if I have some inspiration!) MonoPropellant from Stock but I will add in a check for the Real Fuels plugin and change this to an appropriate resource.. Hydrazine I think? Unless Real Fuels uses Hydrazine and Nitrogen? Ill have to look it up, been so long since I have actually played KSP with mods that aren't my own experiments! Not to worry I will include this in the full release too!

There is nothing in the code that is body title determinate - only the body characteristics and the decay formula itself works according to real life decay , so it should not break with any scale mods, if you try it out and experience any problems or lots of NullReferenceExceptions in the Alt-F12 menu please let me know and I will look into it since I know that this mod would fit well with Realism Overhaul. In other news progress in the Dev thread is steady, station keeping is coming! Enjoy! Whitecat

I would but the build I have at the moment is a tad unstable (Almost there with this resource thing, I have made it so that an active vessel will drain monoprop at the same rate as the orbital decay but I am still working on the catch up resource change for each background vessel (Currently every 10 seconds but I will change it to every scene change), but this is producing some bugs) The EVA bug has been fixed in the release of the Orbital Decay Lite version on the Release forum, and since that is a more condensed and smooth version I would recommend switching to that for the time being, at least until the next release of this Dev version (Soon I promise! I have got some more momentum to work on KSP at the moment!). However if you are really determined you could build the version on GitHub by replacing every instance of If(vessel = Flightglobals.activeVessel) to If(vessel = !Packed), but like I said the Lite Version is generally nicer than this mess of code at the moment! So yes everyone, progress is coming along, hopefully the Station Keeping feature will be released soon I am just playing with code waiting for some more inspiration for the background vessels.

Thanks! That's a brilliant idea! I had thought about some more interesting perturbations and this one should be pretty easy to implement! I may add in a random chance of an increase in orbital velocity when a vessel is within 90% of the orbiting body's SOI with this increasing as the vessel nears escape. This will definitely be included in the next or following update!

The decay rate rapidly decreases the further from a planet you travel, so from a really low Kerbin orbit to Dres (literally less 75km) could cause some minor perturbations (you may need say 5m/s extra) to reach Kerbin escape velocity, but once you reach the orbit of the Mun the 'drag' from Kerbin falls to a very very small value until it stops (at 10x the planetary diameter distance (currently)) so the very worse case scenario would be a tiny RCS burn after leaving Kerbins SOI. There is currently no drag or decay around Kerbol so interplanetary space is the same as the stock game to traverse. Since Dres has no atmosphere and moderately low gravity, drag around Dres is low and it could take many in game months or even years before a satellite decayed. The biggest issue I can foresee would be a really low orbit around Jool, at this point the rate of decay may be many meters per second at perihelion so an escape may be hindered, however this provides some minor benefits for aerobraking without the heat of the atmospheric friction. Thanks for all the comments everyone, I appreciate the support! If anyone would like to help out with development a GitHub port is available HERE. The main brickwall I have run into recently has been resource handling (one of the only things holding back the full release version), and my own messy code! But I would appreciate any help to speed things up Whitecat106,

Thanks everyone! Let me know how it goes! I might need to up some decay times in the future to make it more Kerbal! Ahh not to worry, the Dev version in the Development thread is soon to incorporate Station Keeping, keeping remote tech safe (if you have a stash of MonoPropellant that is!), on release of the Dev version the drift that satellites experience in KSP ; throwing off those once precisely positioned geosynchronous remote tech antennas, will be eliminated too! Enjoy!

KSP Orbital Decay Full Version (v1.5.0) Introduction Hello everyone, Whitecat106 here creator of the Historic Missions Contract Pack and I wish to share with you the release version of my new project. I have been working on this for quite a while and can now release this mod after I finally had a break through in the code - as a result of months of tinkering! Some mods in the past have come so close to this but none actually produced a viable working version... well until now... What does it do? On rails and off rails orbital decay for any vessel around any celestial body, this decay is determined by various factors, such as atmospheric drag, radiation pressure drag and more! Estimated impact times are given for each vessel. Station Keeping for active and non active vessels. Supports all KSP Resources. UI interface for predicted decay times and vessel information. The above work during time-warp! This is the full release version of the in-development mod featured here. Initial Dev Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CoeHIbgr-wo * Note this video shows the V0.0.1 Dev version, the features of this Release version differ slightly. Notes: For information on how to use the mod check out the wiki below! Orbital Decay Wiki : | Wiki | Known Incompatibilities: (Major, Minor) - RSS Extrasolar - Sagitarius A* causes problems with the coding of the mod, use at your own risk. Similarly other 'galactic core mods' may cause problems - To be fixed in 1.6.0 - Mechjeb autopilot can fail when nearly reaching a set altitude due to drag reducing the actual altitude - Fix in 1.6.0, other autopilot mods may be effected. Download: SpaceDock: | Download | -- Please Backup Your Saves, this is a work in progress! PLEASE NOTE: You must disable the ORBIT_DRIFT_COMPENSATION = True In the KSP settings.cfg file otherwise orbits will no longer decay as of KSP 1.1.3, a fix for this on the way! Just change 'True' to 'False' Github: | Source | Want to help a student and part time modder out? Please consider Donating ! Any donations will be greatly appreciated! Special Thanks: - Zajc3w for the complete reworking of the station keeping / resource system! - Everyone who has provided encouragement and has helped find bugs and report them! License: This code is licensed under the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0) creative commons license. Enjoy! Whitecat106

Hi everyone! First of all, an apology for my latency (again!) y'know - Pesky real life stuff... Its been a while but I have just updated the pack, this update includes some separation of the pack into three main groups; this means that now everyone can play whichever mission within a reasonable amount of time (rather than completing 398 contracts!). The groups are currently 1940-1975, 1975-1998, 1998+. Some minor bugs have been found and fixed! Thanks for all the help everyone, I shall be updating to 1.4.0 soon, this will involve fixes for all 'Must be new vessel' requirements as just mentioned by gerishnakov along with fixes for Rover missions etc as previously mentioned in this thread. Bear with me and all will be fixed! However I would ask that testing of the pack as it is, especially the missions that no one has tried before (shuttle, mir, iss etc), be carried out before I update (since now I pretty much have to sift through almost 1000 files on each round of additions/fixes) so I want to fix everything (as best as I can) in one big go rather than do this again in a week or two! Since I do want to add more detail and substance to the existing missions and eventually more missions to the pack! Thanks everyone! Enjoy! Whitecat106, P.S sorry if I have messages from anyone I have not replied to, I have been using a mobile for the last few weeks and messages don't like my phone! I will reply soon!

Hi everyone! I'm back, real life has been crazy lately but its a rainy day and I have a few hours to spare so now its time to work! First things first: My plans; So since the draining resource thing is still a thing.. I will be spending most of my time today trying to make that work, if so there may be a new release today! However, if this still eludes me I shall release the RSS version as it stands (without the UI) since in reality there are no station keeping burns carried out automatically without review by a human, so the RSS version will be a small plugin (saving RSS memory (I feel for you Windows!)) without the cluttered UI just simulating real decay (Information is limited on the Web, only really decay rates of Earth up to 500km are known.. so it will be an experiment!). Einkleinermensch, Sadly Eggrobins mod is a little too advanced for this mod I think, I have awaited the Principia mod for ages but it changes the 'physics' of KSP to a big extend that I do not want to step on anybodies toes, whereas his mod is genius, mine only exploits a few orbit manipulation commands. As I understand the Prinicipia mod on release will incorporate Orbital decay, and if this arises to be low in memory demand I will recommend that everyone using this mod move to Prinicipia since Eggrobins has put a great deal of work into it. I consider my mod to be a sort of fast track to Orbital Decay. But for now! To work!

Sure thing MK3424 and Maeyanie, the repository is now up HERE if anyone would like to help out with development!

Hi everyone, Sorry for the lack of replies and updates as of late, the weather here in the UK has been brilliant and I find it a shame to be sat inside coding As I have already said on my Orbital Decay mod I am just waiting for the next rainy day to do some serious work to both mods! In the mean time I would like to thank Duna for the invaluable help in his Github repo! @ManuxKerb, I have made the missions in chronological order based on agency so a certain agency set of contracts (e.g the Pioneer program) must be completed after its chronological predecessor (Sputnik-1), however this allows for missions to be progressed faster on some programs than in real life (For example later on, the soyuz missions along side the STS missions (Soyuz 1 - T-30 could be completed before launching STS-2) this is just so that people who want to only play a russian or american set of missions can do up to a certain point) the system I have at the moment causes issues with inter connectivity, so I will take your ordered flights idea into consideration when I release the individual and full packs. ( So basically I would have a purely chronological progression for the full pack and then no order limits on the separate packs (E.g the STS missions or the Apollo program). Sorry for not replying to your previous issue either, each contract has a cool down duration (Most are around 10 in game days) So you may have to wait a little while for new contracts to appear, If you don't see any new contracts after say 45 days then please let me know and I can have a look. By the way, some cool down durations are much longer for some Probe missions and the gaps after the wake of STS-51-L and STS-107 (due to the real life gaps). I hope everyone is enjoying the mod and soon I hope to gather the courage to leave the sunlight and return to my modding cave for some serious work! Enjoy

Hi everyone I'm sorry for the lack of content or updates (same goes for my Historic Missions contract pack), however its been beautiful outside here in the UK as of late and I think its a shame to be coding away indoors! But come the next rainy day I will endeavour to do some more work, the EVA bug should be fixed however resource processing is still lacking! If anyone wants to make their own changes to the code and send them to me to speed this process up I would welcome any help and I'll make sure you have a mention in my contract pack! I have not forgotten about this mod just waiting for the right day and the right frame of mind to crack on with the next few updates! Whitecat

Hello everyone, been abit busy IRL as of late but I have uploaded a new version to Kerbal Stuff, this includes some of DunaDirects (Thanks! Duna, you have been mentioned in the acknowledgments and you can have a cameo as a passenger on whatever STS/Future ISS mission you like!) github fixes, some re balancing, a few spelling corrections and a land on runway requirement for X-15 and Shuttle ALT flights. The next version will (I promise this time) fix the cheaty complete two contracts in one issue (Its only been put off since this pretty much affects all 398 contracts) and also the duration fixes (again atleast 300 contracts). The next version will also have some more balancing and possibly some completion messages (yeah again.. all 398..) I will try my best though! Enjoy!

Hello again everyone, I am currently working on the next version (Should be out soon!) This will include a fix for the Eva issue MK3424 was having and include resource handling based on a catchup on every scene transition approach (still not sure how taxing this will be for the system). I really appreciate all the help everyone has given! (I am sorry for not catching up with my messages but I will get round to it soon!) Hopefully the next update (0.1.0) will be out within a few days... code is still kinda messy and the UI is still ugly but that will be reserved for version 0.2.0) once this is complete I will make sure its all polished off ready for a release! Enjoy As for future ideas, I regret putting Lagrange points on my poll now! Well it seems I may be able to do some fancy orbit trickery for these but they will never simulate real N-Body physics (its just too complex!) But another in development mod was hoping to implement this (but I don't know what happened to it). Sun synchronous orbits should be relatively simple, at the end of the day I can alter any orbit in the background so any idea that causes movement/shifting of orbits as a result of hard set parameters (such as a waypoint (60 degrees from Kerbin for Lagrange 3 lets say)) can be implemented, its just the wider more complex physicy changes that cause issues. - That being said, perturbations in orbits from other bodies is now possible so stay tuned for more! - Once I get to version 0.2.0 that is... My biggest concerns at the moment are A: A lack of motivation... eh... and B: The upcoming upgrade to Unity5... nothing bad should happen but it could.. Since its taken 3 and a half years to get orbital decay working.. it may break within the next 3 months... (I'm 99% sure it won't.. but what if?...) Anyway! Hope everyone is enjoying the mod!

Thanks again Nightingale! I must have missed that when looking at the Wiki! I will include this in the next proper update That's great Duna! This has been plaguing me ever since I began with the STS contracts, unfortunately my linux system has broken down so I am stuck with le Windows.. but I will make the changes to as many of the contracts as I can. I must get round to putting up a github repo to make things easier, but thanks a lot for finding out the duration issue! I think you deserve the bug finder of the year award! Just a quick note on the bugfix, I have again fixed the Gemini-II mission and changed a typo in Gemini-VII. The next update will add: - Duna's fix for the durations. - Nightingale's isNotVessel parameter to stop vessels from being able to complete multiple contracts. - A search through some missions to try to preemptively find some bugs. - Runway requirements for X-15 and Shuttle ALT - Maybe some completion messages? - Rep balancing. Enjoy in the meantime! I hope the bugs will become less frequent!