TGApples

Thanks for the update. It's going to be my first time trying DRE so I have a few questions: 1) It seems I have both the stock and new heat shields. What's the difference? It seems that the new ones can handle less heat flux but are cheaper? Is there any reason I shouldn't delete them? I like to keep my part count down and as far as I can tell they don't add anything signficiant. 2) Just how deadly is deadly? If I used 40 ablator in stock should I be prepared to use 80 now? It seems the model is more complex so I guess it's not that simple, but if there was a rule of thumb that'd be nice. 3) Are the ablator and "ab" resource essentially the same but "ab" has lower maximum ablation rate?

@Benji13 What are the range on the omnis? The default settings use min(range1, range2) to determine connection range which means big dishes don't pair nicely with small omnidirectional antennas. There's an alternative model that uses min(range1, range2) + sqrt(range1 * range2) - the root range model. For this model they recommend you half the power of all comms (as if you don't you basically get 2x range). With this model you'd be in range.

The nodes are there. It's possible that there's something stuck in the save. I did test with a fresh save but I'm not 100% sure I started that save on 4.0.1.

I suspect there may still be some issues with 4.0.1. When using Kerbalism I'm seeing the fuel cell placed in the wrong place in the tech tree. Works fine with 3.1.3.

Am I correct in saying that before I have researched the upgrade for my control station the only way to collect the data is to send a kerbal?

I'd be interested in knowing if you can get this to work. This is actually one of the main reasons I wanted to use KOS in the first place.

I like using multiple small engines from time to time, mostly for fine-tuning thrust:engine weight/cost. For example: I may use two sparks instead of one terrier as it's 0.2t instead of 0.5t, but one spark doesn't have enough thrust to get me going. Or maybe I'll use a ring of 8 ants to top up my terrier thrust. That sort of thing. My issue is that the game seems to use additive volume for these engines, with a single engine being roughly the same volume no matter the size. This means that when you have many engines firing the game gets disproportionatly loud. 8 ants should not make nearly as much noise as they do compared to something with over 10x the thrust. Is there any way to tweak this in a configuration file or the audio settings? It's really rather annoying.

I hit the issue again. When I activate SAS I get a huge spike in oxygen used (from 0.310/m to, ~2.3/s). This is not reproducable: most of the time everything works as expected. As I said, I have a fuel cell but it's off. It also wouldn't use that much Oxygen even if it were on. Nothing else but basic life support (humidity/pressure/scrubber).

I moved to the dev build and that fixed my issue with the planner and life support. Now life support modules are a lot more powerful and seem to do what they say on the configuration screen. More issues, however: 1) I seem to be consuming much more oxygen than I should. I don't know what the cause is. I have suddenly noticed very sharp spikes in oxygen consumption when nothing should be using it but kerbals breathing though I've not figured out why. I seemed to be able to work around it by switching on and off tank flow until it fixed itself. The amount of Oxygen I packed should last me ~38 days according to the planner (4277 for a 3-kerbal crew). I was running a fuel cell for some time time, consuming a total of 1637 Hydrogen (and hence 829 Oxygen) and I'm 11 days into my mission, so that should be another 1130 spent. 4277 - 829 - 1130 = 2318 Oxygen remaining, which is fine. In reality I have 533 left which the planner correctly predicts will last me 4d 4h. That means ~1800 Oxygen has vanished somewhere and if I wasn't willing to do all this maths and hack my persistence file, my crew would die. That's not cool . EDIT: I should mention this is the first craft I've had with this issue and the first craft where I have three crew capsules, one with habitat disabled. Maybe related? 2) I don't believe the nitrogen issue (EVA/crew transfers burning nitrogen) is fixed in the latest dev build. My 11 day mission has used 2300 nitrogen. That's much more than it should have used due to leaks which are meant to be 0.073/m. It should come to 289 used. There's no docs on how nitrogen is meant to work with EVAs and internal crew transfers (both of which I have done). Is this a bug or a feature? FWIW I would argue one of two things should happen: either we depressurize the cabin we're EVAing from (and not others) and in doing so fill up any remaining tank capacity, or cabins should just never depressurize on EVA. Non-habitat cabins are trickier. It seems to me they can either be depressurized into tanks, or leak out. The gas shouldn't just disappear though. 3) Fixed solar panels do not play nice with the background processing. It appears that for some reason my ships are being rotated under background processing which can lead to the engine/nose facing the sun, and no solar flux. This isn't how space works. If I'm in a vacuum in Kerbin's SOI then tidal forces/solar wind aside (which I'm guessing aren't modelled ;)), my craft should not turn. I should take a quarter of a year for a solar panel facing the sun to rotate 90 degrees and not face the sun. Can I request that the background processing treat fixed solar panels a bit more optimistically: if it should automatically rotate it should keep at least one panel facing the sun.

Are there any plans to make the flight computer controls restricted per probe core? For example, the Stayputnick doesn't have any SAS, but because the flight computer provides all of this, that's not actually a hinderance in any way. Similarly the OKTO has no prograde/retrograde hold... and I could go on.

My method was to attach all parts to the ground then link them up. I had terrain detial on medium when I placed it! That seems to be the only relevent option. I have it on high now and they're no longer floating, I'll keep an eye on it and see if they refloat.

I'm also seeing issues with bases staying put. I popped it down, all was good, went away, came back, and now it is suspended a metre above the ground. It's still working, it's not exploded, but the game won't let me switch away as it believes the "ship" is in freefall.

On top of automation not working on my fuel cell that I posted about before I'm hitting a few other issues: 1) The values for configuration of life support system varies per part. That's cool. Unfortunately, according to the planner this doesn't seem to be true and everything has a flat rate. I can't figure out how the planner and the values in the configure screen are meant to align. My ECLS scrubber claims to clear 0.374/m of WasteAtomsphere (and produce 0.374/m CO2). My Mk1 Command pod is meant to do 0.125/m - about 3x less. With two crew the ECLS scrubbin is "inadequate" at 0.075/m scrubber and 0.149/m breathing. Switch that off and switch the command pod scrubber on, and I see the same. It just does not work. 2) There doesn't seem to be a way to switch off pressure control. If I'm doing a lot of EVAs I don't want to burn nitrogen repressurising the cabin every time I get out, so I switch the pressure control and air pump off. This does not seem to do anything and my ship burns nitrogen like crazy. EDIT: Actually, maybe it's not getting out that's the issue but transferring crew between connected parts of the ship? Might be because the ship loses control if I don't have anybody in the pilot seat? I can't really figure it out, but in any case I'm doing a lot of repressurising in situations where I should not be.

I suspect there may be an issue with the thrust reduction failure mode for liquid engines. Specifically, after leaving the craft and coming back to it I was able to set the thrust slider back up to maximum in the GUI, which seemed to reset the steady tick-down of thrust. It may be that reloading wasn't needed and just cutting throttle would reset it. EDTI: I'm also seeing my generation 31 new terriers come out at "safety rating 1". As far as I can tell the number isn't correct, and failure part highlighting doesn't pick it up as the worst part: it picks a tank with rating 8.

It seems one of the issues with using negative funds is that it gets cheaper in harder diffculties. I notice the config has "advanceFunds = -100000", whereas I'm paying 25000 at 20% funds. Not quite sure why it's not 20k, but still...