JamesonKerbal
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Posts posted by JamesonKerbal
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On 6/14/2023 at 12:04 AM, test_do_not_use said:
o you initiate the transfer from the Kolonization Dashboard on the toolbar, as you would while landed? Under Local Logistics?
Yes, same button. It doesn't care whether you're transferring between things on the ground or in space, the forklift is magic!
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23 hours ago, test_do_not_use said:
The documentation for orbital shipyards mentions using logistics to load consumables onto newly constructed vessels, is this current?
Yes. New ships will be spawned outside 200m, maximum transfer range is 250m. If you're spawning a new ship and don't get the ability to transfer consumables using the logistics window, there's something wrong.
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On 4/15/2023 at 1:43 AM, larkvi said:
Is there any advantage to using this over the EPL/GC systems, if it is this finicky?
The issue here is launching a vessel in KSP. I suspect there's an issue with complex vessels where some cleanup is done between the VAB/SPH and "launching" through the normal KSP means, and that cleanup isn't done when a craft is simply spawned. I've had craft explode before launch due to collisions between parts without the involvement of add-ons.
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On 4/5/2023 at 6:55 PM, larkvi said:
When I try to launch a new module using the orbital shipyard (the small one), the console suddenly starts spamming NREs and the screen transition turns black and the new ship never loads in correctly.
When this has happened to me I've sometimes been able to get the craft to launch by changing the root part in the VAB/SPH. Sometimes I've managed to get the issue to go away by "launching" the craft (ie: from VAB or SPH, click the launch button). On other occasions it's been a case of pruning the part tree (ie: taking off a part that has other parts attached to it) to find which part of the craft is creating the problem, then building it back piece by piece until you find which component was causing the problem. Sometimes it will be a part that was clipped or rotated, other times it will simply be a mystery that goes away just because you rebuilt that part of the craft.
Hope this helps.
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3 hours ago, Zmeya said:
Odd, I've been able to get funds from recovering resources from MKS/USI in 1.11 and 1.12
Which resources are you using for fund raising? Every time I try to recover vehicles containing mined resources I end up going broke because they end up being worth negative funds.
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1 hour ago, openperspective said:
Was an answer to this issue ever found?
Yes, it's a bug introduced in KSP 1.11 and still present in 1.12 where KSP is calculating the value of a recovered craft based on its "PREFAB" price, which does terrible things for parts that have been modified using TweakScale, or parts that now have more resources in them than the PREFAB data says they should.
The "fix" was a terrible hack packaged into KSP-Recall introducing a new resource called "refunding" which has negative value. The catch is that MKS is a resource based mod that handles resource logistics beyond just transferring stuff between docked tanks, so MKS in combination with KSP-Recall will just cause you endless problems.
If you want to fund your space program by mining resources and then recovering the filled mining trucks, you need to stick with KSP 1.10 (or earlier).
I addressed the issue by avoiding launching or recovering vehicles involved in resource gathering, and raising funds by carefully selecting missions.
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9 hours ago, RuParker said:
RefundingForKSP11 1x
Do you have KSP-Recall installed? That's an addon which gets around part refund costs that would send you broke if you recovered a vehicle that came back home with more mined materials than you launched it with. The "Refunding" resource is the hack used in that add-on to overcome the negative pricing of other resources in KSP 1.11+
You should find other resources being added to Planetary Logistics as the various Kontainers fill up. Note that they'll deposit to Planetary Logistics when inventory exceeds about ¾, then they'll pull from Planetary Logistics when the inventory drops below a similar amount (like ¼ or so).
I don't know how the Refunding resource is represented in game, but if it's something that shows up like other resources make sure to fill it back up (and turn off Planetary Warehouse on the kontainer) before you recover the vehicle, otherwise you're in for an expensive return home.
I gave up on trying to make money by mining (I found the KSP Recall add-on and read up on how it hacks around the recovered vehicle cost bug and decided not to try living with that kind of hack) and just used Ground Construction which lets me build things on the ground. MKS has orbital shipyards but they will only build things in orbit — I do have some designs for flying or rocket powered descent vehicles to drop rovers from orbit but I figured once I was in space it was cheaper to direct my industrial efforts towards Minmus. I raise cash by carefully selecting the missions that will pay me to launch the rockets I was going to launch anyway: "oh nice, you're paying me to create a new station around Minmus? I'll stick some mining equipment on it and repurpose it as a mining base after satisfying the contract terms!" -
Is there any way to automatically set alarms with the "Display onscreen message if the alarm isn't for the active vessel" option? in the UI it's the button with the rocket superimposed on the top right of the envelope.
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On 3/4/2023 at 4:27 AM, dlrk said:
Can you connect any thing to the crew hatch/port on the Ranger Hab or Workshop in EVA construction?
I had no problem connecting things to the nodes of other Duna style modules, but I was using things other than flex-o-tubes. I avoid those because of kraken. I've previously built fancy rovers to carry modules for me -- check out Mark Thrimm's SSTO Space Program for some inspiration on the tools to manipulate base components. Note that many of the Duna and Tundra components are not able to be manipulated in stock EVA construction. I've tried modifying save files to add the ability but the modules obstinately refuse to be picked up. The cargo frame that Mark Thrimm uses in his main base construction vehicle has been quite useful for putting base pieces where I need them.
Also avoid using the PAL lifter components from USI Konstruction, they're useful if you intended to launch that component into orbit using a trebuchet though. Use KAS winches instead. You can even skip the fancy complicated base building vehicle and put the winches on the base and just tow pieces into position and glue everything together using the Konstruction docking ports. There was an addon out there somewhere that allowed welding craft together using stock docking ports. Also remember to use save games prolifically because of kraken attacks.
I've ended just building base components in one piece and dropping them from orbit:
Spoiler
Note the four vertically mounted 2.5m tanks in the "middle". Each of those has a Wolfhound engine underneath, and under that 3.75m Tundra module is a 3.75m SAS module. These engines and the SAS were adjusted to be under the centre of mass of the whole structure and landing was pretty easy. Note the application of struts between all the extremities to stop things wobbling.
This experiment is working better than my previous iterations which were more "traditional" landers:
Spoiler
Note the PDU sitting to the side, because that module refused to be moved by anything. Ground tether wasn't turned on, the legs weren't deployed, there were no extra pieces attached to it, but I couldn't move it. The original plan was to replace the nuclear reactor on top of the right-hand rocket by moving it up to the top of the right rear pillar (you can see the missing nose cone) and then up on top of the Konfabricator module. As you can see the PDU is still on the ground
Other learnings from this experience:
You can never have enough power. A 1.25m nuclear reactor is simply not enough to power a single Assembly Plant -- mine was boosted by four Ranger smelter modules, and it was hitting about 300% capacity with a 3-star Engineer operating it. With two large radiator panels you can see on the PDU to the right, they are glowing red all the time as that PDU is providing power to this assembly plant and another attempt offscreen to the right. The ship on the left is a Refinery and consumes most of the output of the PDU stuck on top and even with four radiator panels they will be glowing red all the time.
You can never have enough heat sinks. Shortly after this attempt I added large 2 large Thermal Management Systems (the triple-wide deployables) to the left-hand lander and that wasn't enough to handle the heat from the PDU.
You need to have enough spare capacity in storage containers to handle one day of production. This means if you're using Planetary Logistics each container needs to be about two to three times larger than you expect. Thus the large round containers attached to the side of the right hand rocket.
Also you can have too many containers, witness the rocket on the left with all those stow-packs close to the ground. If you have multiple containers it just makes things slower.
You can have too many logistics modules. If you have multiple vessels in one physics space, ensure that only one of them has planetary logistics turned on. Otherwise you end up with one ship pushing stuff into planetary logistics, and a second one pulling stuff out to fill that ship that just put stuff in. Not only does this cause extra load but it wastes resources because there's a "tax" on pulling stuff out of Planetary Logistics. I was producing 100-odd Material Kits per day but losing 3 Material Kits per second to out-of-control logistics hubs.
Anyway sorry about the surprise TED talk.
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22 hours ago, Artificer_Drachen said:
Any way to make ksp use rocket parts from EL instead of material kits and specialized parts?
AFAIK the resources required to build a part or vessel in MKS are calculated based on part mass, tech level, number of modules, etc (it's not in a config file that you can change). You might be able to use the MKS infrastructure to provide metals, but I don't know if Extraplanetary Launchpad uses the same resource types that MKS uses.
It might be worth investigating Ground Construction which is directly compatible with MKS. MKS also has its own ship construction system using orbital shipyards, and MKS supports building the DIY kits produced by Ground Construction.
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On 1/31/2023 at 5:53 AM, Jefferson Kerman said:
Is it possible to lift Kerbals from Kerbin from the KSC biome with WOLF?
Yes, but it's complicated.
You'll need the WOLF Terminal building (there are two, one is a 3.75m part with room for 6 arrivals, the other is a dome with room for 12), and then you'll need to increase the biome abundance by 1 Habitation, 1 Life Support and 1 Colony Supplies for each economy seat capacity in the route you want to build. Then you need to build the route using WOLF Crew Kontainers. When you start the route you'll reduce the abundance of habitation, life support and colony supplies at the starting biome. Then you fly to the destination biome, make sure you're close to a terminal at the other end, and connect to destination depot.
When you want to send kernels from one place to another you just make them physically present at the terminal, add them as passengers to a passenger flight (accessed through the plane-taking-off icon in the toolbar) and launch. After some time passes you can disembark at the destination terminal, but if you only have 6 arrival seats and 12 kerbals in the flight you'll have to disembark 6, move those kerbals out of the terminal to other seats in the station, then disembark the other 6. Then your passenger route UI will be borked until the next time you restart the game as the first passengers you disembark from any flight will have their names permanently stuck in the passenger list for every flight (only a display bug).
Hope that helps?
Ultimately I ended up shipping my kerbals around in rockets because passenger routes are just too much like hard work.
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11 hours ago, ninenineninefour said:
Doesn't it have Ground Construction built in? Or am I missing something?
Ground Construction is no longer included in MKS. It's still maintained separately so you can use it in addition to MKS.
The parts you're looking for in MKS are the KonStructor 250 and KonStructor 500 which are orbital shipyards in 2.5m and 3.75m variants. There are practical differences between the two, but they are similar in operation :
- Get the KonStructor to orbit
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Deposit Resources (in the Part Action Window)
- KonStructor 250 takes 4000 Material Kits
- KonStructor 500 takes 27,000 Material Kits
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With stocks of Material Kits, Specialized Parts, Alloys, Electronics, Prototypes, Robotics and Synthetics available:
- "Open KonStructor" from the part action window (aka right-click menu)
- Select the vessel to build
- Build it!
- The newly constructed vessel will appear in space within 200m of the shipyard and control will be shifted to that new vessel
- You must load the vessel with all consumables, though it starts with 100% electricity
There are also various parts which behave as "3D printers" where you can build individual parts and then use the stock game construction tools to assemble new vehicles piece by piece.
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G'day, just popping by to say thank you to everyone who contributed to this add-on, it's my favourite visual enhancement (even including Scatterer and EVE) because of how much it improves my immersion given the tiny budget of CPU/GPU it sips while doing so.
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On 1/14/2023 at 6:18 PM, Shoey said:
Does it by pass that requirement and push without any containers and I just missed it?
Please forgive me if I'm trying to teach you stuff you already know but you might want to review Mark Thrimm's tutorial videos about MKS.
I keep going back to them again and again because there's always something new to learn. The episode on Logistics shows a bunch of examples of craft on the Mun using scavenging, resource distribution, planetary logistics, and orbital logistics. Being able to see the craft that Mark Thrimm built with how the inventories behave over time might help you like it helped me.
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On 1/1/2023 at 12:13 AM, Psykikk said:
adding a container filled with them does not help..
You need WOLF Machinery not MKS Machinery. The WOLF numbers are an abundance (basically a rate of extraction), while MKS numbers are a quantity. Everything on the Planner is a WOLF abundance of some kind.
The Machinery and Specialized Parts are probably for the WOLF Colony Supplies (5 WOLF Colony Supplies requries 5 WOLF Machinery, 3 WOLF Material Kits and 2 WOLF Specialized Parts), which you wouldn't be needing unless you were trying to set up a passenger route. If you're not trying to produce colony supplies, find that Fabricator and remove it (Fabricators have red stripes, if that helps). Colony Supplies is the default production for a WOLF Fabricator, it's probably supposed to be producing Material Kits.
Here's me trying to do a career game after having played sandbox for the last two years (levelling Kerbals turned into a long stay to process what's in the lab):
Spoiler
Valentina and her new BFFs in their cobbled-together science vessel KSS Placebo. They're currently having a working holiday on Minmus, crunching through the mountains of data gathered from their first visit.
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31 minutes ago, jd284 said:
It depends on their level. You get two points per star, i.e. a five-star engineer gives ten points, a zero-star rookie only adds one crew point.
Oh no!
I definitely need to cover that in the walkthrough. I had no idea.
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38 minutes ago, Psykikk said:
my kerbals only deliver 1 point per kerbal ?
Can you post a screen shot of the WOLF dashboard Planner tab?
SpoilerIt should look something like this:
Note I have one engineer in this crew, and it's a brand new biome so there are 0 existing EngineerCrewPoints and the one engineer I have is contributing 10 new EngineerCrewPoints (+10). There are 2 EngineerCrewPoints consumed by this infrastructure.
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5 hours ago, Psykikk said:
is there a way to reset depots ?
No, but yes.
The short version: there's no simple method provided in-game, but you can edit them in the save file or restore to an earlier save game.
The long version:
While playing through the sandbox game that became my "walkthrough" I learned the hard way that proper planning prevents poor performance. I ended up saving the game before constructing each of the depot expansions, before checking on rovers (because Bon Voyage is good but Kraken is better), and before each major manoeuvre.
The depots are defined using a "DEPOT" element in the save file. This element describes whether you've surveyed the biome and established the depot, and keeps a simple sum of the incoming and outgoing values for each resource. If you know what the settings used to be (eg: have an old save file around) you can reset the depot by replacing this section of the save file. Note that things get complicated if you have multiple depots and arranged routes between them. So before resetting a depot make sure you go through all your routes in-game and remove all transfers to and from that depot.
There are sections in the save game for depots, routes and transfers (transfers are expressed as a RESOURCE element inside a ROUTE element), and crew routes (CREWROUTES, and you're better off making sure there are no crew in transit before editing this section).
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On 12/27/2022 at 2:55 AM, notthebobo said:
Why build a small cargo transport when I can connect multiple 5m Kontainers together? Why have one hopper on a station when I can have many?
In the walkthrough I tried to illustrate the amount of effort required to do things like building Prototypes or running passenger routes between planets. If you didn't want to build Prototypes in WOLF you could just spend that effort putting together a production facility that produces far more prototypes than you'll ever need. If you don't want to build all those extra Specialized Parts for Colony Supplies and Machinery to support the WOLF Passenger routes, just use a torch ship which can get your crews to their destinations in weeks instead of years.
edit to add:
I guess I need to rework that part of the walkthrough: establish Minmus, then produce the bare minimum required to bootstrap Kerbin and Mun (basically 15 extra Material Kits, 5 extra Specialized parts, 1 each A/E/R/S for each), then a second pass for Minmus specifically to build the passenger route between Kerbin and Mun, then a second pass for Mun to produce the Prototypes.
Then an alternative path for producing prototypes at Kerbin station using MKS industry - it's basically one assembly plant and the life support required to support the engineers as opposed to half a dozen 400t WOLF depot expansions.
I think I'll rework Minmus because I just magically start people with two biomes instead of showing them the work that went into selecting those biomes. This will be a case of surveying all the biomes, filling out the spreadsheet, then figuring out the fastest path to self-sufficiency.
Does anyone know if/how to define a custom tech tree? The career tech tree that USI/MKS comes with makes no sense, with assembly plants available long before harvesters are available (unless we immediately deploy Atlas class modules).
I think I answered my own question with Community Tech Tree, so I'll check that out.
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On 12/23/2022 at 8:04 PM, Psykikk said:
I assume this behemoth was transported there, or did you assemble it slowly through wolf itself ?
Back here I showed my "startup shipyard" which is towed into place after being supplied with Specialized Parts, Alloys, Robotics, Synthetics and Prototypes. From there I build the shipyard core (the part with the solar panel and the Konstructor-250) and the A/E/R/S component (bunch of WOLF hoppers for Alloys, Electronics, Robotics, Synthetics), then the "startup shipyard" can be reloaded and moved to the new construction site.
Note that in that previous post there's a picture of the startup shipyard with the LFO pusher and the comms network deployer (which also has a depot module to get the WOLF infrastructure started). It's actually less mass to ship the constructed comms deployer than to provide the materials required to build it since you need equal mass in material kits, plus the other resources based on number of parts and modules and whatnot.
The startup shipyard is mostly MKS and stock components. The WOLF component is the Material Kits hopper (the 3.75m white barrel that the startup shipyard is built on). The big shipyard is mostly WOLF components -- each segment has four WOLF hoppers. The hoppers are configured to produce materials in roughly the quantities consumed, and for mass production of anything I'd just add more and more Material Kit hoppers (basically the ratio is 100 Material Kits to 10 Specialized Parts to 1 of everything else).
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35 minutes ago, Psykikk said:
I watched a YT video from someone that build entire new MKS modules and such on the ground. duna base. this growing and improving his colony.
Probably Mark Thrimm? Ground Construction is still available and still works, it's just no longer bundled with USI MKS.
46 minutes ago, Psykikk said:aren´t there costs associated with planetary transfers of ressources ?
Yes and no. There are relatively easy ways to reduce planetary transfer costs to 0. There's no time cost at any time though. Once you get one route builder from Kerbin to Moho, you will have capacity to send stuff to Moho, and that stuff will just appear. The stuff is sent as an "abundance" which basically means a certain capacity of units per day when you extract that abundance through a hopper into a MKS resource container.
So for example I might have infrastructure on Minmus producing WOLF versions of Fuel, Material Kits, Specialized Parts, Alloys, Synthetics and Robotics, so I can build a route from Minmus to Moho (via Kerbin) with capacity of (for sake of illustration) 45 units. Now I can transfer 20 units of WOLF Fuel, 15 units of WOLF Material Kits, 5 units of WOLF Specialized Parts, and 1 each of Alloys, Synthetics, Robotics. Then at Moho build a shipyard with hoppers and storage to convert that WOLF abundance into MKS resources.
A shipyard with stuff imported from WOLF will look something like this:
Spoiler
The white components are hoppers, the large grey boxes are storage for Material Kits. The various little boxes are storage for the other materials that will be used. From front to back:
- storage for material kits and smaller amounts of other materials
- fuel bunker with four fuel hoppers fed by a supply of 20 WOLF Fuel abundance (each hopper converts 5 WOLF Fuel to 450 LiquidFuel and 550 Oxidizer per day)
- main shipyard spine with shipyard at left, a hopper that converts 5 abundance of WOLF Specialized Parts to 1322.75 MKS Specialized Parts per day, 3 hoppers that each convert 5 abundance of WOLF Material Kits to 5000 MKS Material Kits per day
- ancillary resources segment that converts 1 abundance each of Alloys, Electronics, Robotics and Synthetics to the MKS equivalent (at about the rate of 400 to 700 per day)
- passenger facility which has one passenger terminal, habitation and life support
You can use WOLF to transfer passengers but doing so is slow and extremely expensive in terms of required infrastructure. I find it much easier to just send passengers via dedicated crew transport.
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On 12/22/2022 at 7:42 AM, SkyFall2489 said:
Fitting a large rover into my colony ship will be hard, however, and same with building the WOLF modules on the surface before I have SP production, so I guess WOLF is not meant for small starter colonies.
You can build smaller rovers, this one is just big because I was doing all my industry in WOLF. The smallest WOLF route-building Kontainer is 1.25m size and lets you build 1-unit routes with a Malemute or Karibou rover. Those rovers can be landed from orbit using a variety of methods such as an inverted Type 3 cargo bay (doors open to the ground), sky-crane, or built-in rockets.
I just follow the philosophy that if it's worth doing, it's worth over-doing. That rover in the picture is a 45-unit beasty, constructed in orbit using WOLF resources imported at the beginning of the colony build.
Here's a teensy route building rover:
Spoiler
And here's what I use to start a new colony with. First is the shipyard in the VAB to show the gist of what I start with, second is the assembled colony starter including the rocket that moves everything in place and the relay satellites and relay deployer:
Spoiler
edit: the assembled expedition vessel depicts the shipyard before 4000 material kits have been added to deploy it. Make sure the Konstructor O-250 component has all the external components as per the VAB view before you set off to Moho or wherever.
The only WOLF component there is the Material Kits hopper. I feed it 5 units of Material Kits from Kerbin, the storage on the component is only there to hold the Material Kits that are imported until there are enough to build other components (bigger storage, more hoppers for other resources, landers to deploy further WOLF infrastructure).
You can start a new colony with WOLF basically from scratch. Find out more through the savegame that I laughingly refer to as a "walkthrough" over here: https://github.com/MaraRinn/WOLF-Walkthrough - you might be interested in some of the utility vehicles even if the landers aren't of interest to you. I expect the "Startup Shipyard" would be of use to you, it's something you can graft to your colony ship and it will work as a regular MKS shipyard until you can send it 5 abundance of WOLF Material Kits. The storage is roughly in the proportions that I consume during the Walkthrough: lots of Stock/MKS/WOLF components without advanced stuff like nuclear reactors or karbonite/karborundum based propulsion.
The entire walkthrough is based on landing WOLF modules from orbit because USI no longer supports Ground Construction which had cool stuff like DIY Kits.
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4 hours ago, SkyFall2489 said:
Might it be possible to carry WOLF equipment in with the initial colony, and use a rover for zero cost transport between biomes?
Spoiler
here's my little rover for building routes between WOLF biome depots on the surface
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4 hours ago, SkyFall2489 said:
How hard would it be to land a base with a high enough precision to be close enough to scavenge across a border?
You don't need that precision. Use USI rovers to perform logistics over longer distances (from memory each remote component can be up to 2km away from the rover, they don't all need to be within physics range of each other). See "Resource Logistics" in this handy dandy explainer by RoverDude.
For Planetary Logistics you need a logistics building (the Duna or Tundra Logistics module). To deposit stuff into planetary logistics you just need a Kontainer configured to take part in Planetary Logistics. To pull stuff out you need a Quartermaster in the crew of the ship (along with the logistics module and the kontainer configured for planetary logistics).
So for two neighbouring biomes, park a rover on the border and land ships either side of the border. Exploit both biomes and use the rover for the manufacturing facility!
Spoiler
[1.12.x] - Modular Kolonization System (MKS)
in KSP1 Mod Releases
Posted
Using MKS parts you can "perform maintenance" on the nuclear fuel container that you want to move enrU into. I'm not sure about the mechanics of depleted fuel transfers. I've always had depleted uranium storage on my maintenance vehicles so it's always just worked.