AmpCat

Okay, here's my Houston error list: And logs: KSP.log And.. ModuleManager.ConfigCache? Not sure if that's the right file. Oh, and game seems to run fine. Not had any problems yet.

Merging parts that should not have joints in them seems like a very basic thing that should be part of the game out of the box. There should only be a very small handful of parts that really need physics joints calculated (thin structural parts maybe, like wings or landing gear). I guess it would make collisions and crashes more challenging, as once a ship is welded, you can't just like, break a solar panel or landing leg off. But perhaps some sort of selective thing where you can, for example, weld the fuselage of an aircraft or station together, all the fuel tanks, etc. Trying to keep large vessels below some part count of 100-150 or so with all the science parts, life support (which makes interplanetary missions an actual challenge), power, engines, fuel, landing craft, life boats, etc, easily gets you way up there. I can't see much leg room for KSP to grow if they can't fix this, or at least figure out how to multi-thread or GPU accelerate the physics.

Hmm, apparently I do. Not sure why though, since I'm not using any planet mods. I'll remove it and see if that helps as well. I also lowered the texture pack I'm using. Not very scientific, changing two variables at once, but oh well.

Yeah, I expected that, but what confused me was why it only specifically becomes a noticeable slowdown around the Mun, and not Kerbin. My Minimus station has a much lower part count, so I'm not sure on that yet. I would have expected the opposite, given Kerbin's larger number of textures and more polygons.

@Lisias, I don't suppose you did a comparison between KJR - Next and KJR - Continued? I was using the latter, and noticed a reasonable speed improvement in just removing it. I then tried KJR - Next, and I didn't seem to lose any performance (though I didn't really do proper equivalent testing and measurements). Then when encountering performance issues again I tried removing KJR - Next and did notice a slight improvement there. But not as much as when I removed KJR - Continued. But again, not good comparisons. Would be interesting to look at some data if you have it. I'm more concerned with just keeping framerates above something like 15-20fps so the UI doesn't start missing mouse clicks and whatnot. I'm not doing any streaming or anything.

Well, in this case a 10 core i9, 4.5Ghz computer. I also decided to move the station away from the Mun.. for science. And sure enough, it seems that being near a planetary body also has a big impact. Between the Mun and Kerbin I get another dramatic speed boost. Also, removing Kerbal Joint Reinformcement (or one of the newer versions) improves speed a bit too. Maybe it's not so much the number of parts. It's just odd because my 45part count orbiter has very smooth performance around the Mun, but switching to the 224 part station around the Mun is real laggy. But then moving the station away from the Mun to low Kerbin orbit, and it's fine and smooth again. So it seems some combination of high part count AND the Mun (and I believe I had the same issue before specifically around Duna). But is 224 parts even really considered a 'high' part count vessel? Oh, and changing texture quality didn't seem to have any effect on it. I have the Stock Visual Enhancements installed. I'll try installing the low resolution textures for that.

Now that I've got a decent sized station up in orbit in my new game, I'm running into a big performance issue again. The station has 224 parts, but when I get within 500m of it, the game slows to a crawl. Just a few FPS. Any sort of time warp makes it perfectly smooth again, so I imagine it's some physics that's slowing things down. What's the expectation on a vanilla game with 224 parts and a good computer? And of course, this is relevant because it seems that this mod specifically handles this problem.

Now that I've got a decent sized station up in orbit in my new game, I'm running into a big performance issue again. The station has 224 parts, but when I get within 500m of it, the game slows to a crawl. Just a few FPS. Any sort of time warp makes it perfectly smooth again, so I imagine it's some physics that's slowing things down. What's the expectation on a vanilla game with 224 parts and a good computer?

My comment was mostly a joke based on a previous post by Nertea a while back on not wanting to add new resources and fuels just for variety's sake, if they don't add significant advantages or trade-offs.

@Nertea, I was thinking about the centrifuge parts and I was wondering if in reality a centrifuge could be used as a real heavy duty single axis gyroscope? You'd of course have to figure out how to desaturate it, I suppose, and it might make it hard to maneuver the vessel about other axis while its rotating. But I don't remember my physics enough to know if the counter-rotating weight would counteract that or maybe even help out with maneuvering. Any thoughts?

Thanks for the quick response! Snacks! is my favorite life support mod, so I'm glad to see such active development.

Anyone else getting the issue where the 'Snacks!' toolbar will only let you see the body you're currently orbiting? It shows me buttons for all the bodies for which I have vessels with snacks in them, but it doesn't do anything if I click on them. Only shows the vessels orbiting the body my current vessel is orbiting. So, like I'll see a station and a Mun lander while I'm at the station around the Mun, and it'll show me a button for Minimus for my Minimus station, but clicking on that button does nothing.

@Nertea, small bug in the latest cryo engines. The atmospheric white contrails from the Fuji engines spew 90 degrees out from the main exhaust, rather than straight down. In vacuum you can't see these particles. I thought we were avoiding new fuels with just a small incremental benefit?

Oddly, I don't remember this being an issue at all when I was using USI Life Support, or even previous games with Snacks!, only after the Snacks! engine was revamped. Guess I have have to dump extra EC on things for now. A LOT extra. Also, awesome job on the new gold foil Cryo tanks! Now I have to switch my ships from the white to gold.

@Nertea, is there a possibility the Snacks! mod could get support from this as well? I think it's in the list of things to do, but I'm not quite sure based on how it's worded.

Nertea has also already added Snacks support to his station parts, so I imagine it's not hard to convince him to add it to DynamicBatteryStorage.

Well, Nertea has a mod with his electrical systems that are supposed to fix all this. And indeed, with other converters and such that require resources, like drills, ISRU, fuel tank refrigeration, etc, this isn't an issue, despite them having a much higher power draw. For now I'm just superloading my next station with batteries, but seems like there should be a way around this.

Okay, reading back in the thread several pages ago, someone else had the same problem and @Angel-125 replied with some math showing how much EC was required for each time warp setting. It's a LOT. I'm not sure why you need so much of a buffer, but it has to do with how he runs the simulation. So now I need to figure out if I can tune this delta time parameter which seems to have a very big impact on the EC use, change the base EC required by recyclers down a lot, or just put a huge amount of EC on the crafts. Not yet sure, but it's either in the realm of 20k EC, or 200k, depending on how many many snacks you can recycle per day.

Okay, I modified the cfg file for the StationParts Expansion from Nertea and changed the Autoshutdown back to false, so it will resume once it goes back below x10,000 warp. While at the station, it has plenty of EC, yet the module claims it's out of EC for some reason, if you timewarp past x1000. Still can't figure out why. The station with the Hitchhikers has the same problem, only it doesn't show up until past x10,000 warp rather than x1000. Not sure why there's a difference.

Yep, I'm familiar with that, which is why I mentioned I have both Nertea's mods installed (Near Future Electrical, as Streetwind recommended) and that my station has a huge EC capacity of over 13,000 (the other solution Streetwind has suggested). Either should have avoided this situation, and certainly while I don't have the stations in active focus. I think there's a problem in the simulation engine. Here there's also a difference in behavior between Nertea's crew pods that contain soil recyclers, and the Hitchhikers, but I think it's a different problem.

@Angel-125, I'm still running into an issue where if I timewarp at max speed, (using stock time warp), craft that are currently NOT in focus, will generate errors that they no longer have enough resources (specifically, electricity) to keep running soil->snack converters, and it shuts them down until I focus on that craft again. I think (I'll double check) that craft in focus no longer have this issue. I also noticed that the amount of time warp required to trigger these messages varied just a bit, and it seems correlated to the maximum timewarp speed (due to altitude) that the complaining craft can go if it were in focus. For example, I'm at my space station around Minimus, soil converters running, and go to timewarp. I have a station around Mun at a low altitude, so it's max timewarp speed is x1000. Once I hit x10,000 timewarp while focused on my Minimus station, I get a message that the Mun station is out of electricity. However, I've noticed an oddity. Say my Minimus station's timewarp max, due to altitude maxes out at x10,000, then I would expect to only see the warning for that station if I warp past x10,000. However, I don't. Not sure if I just missed something while doing the experiment, or there's some special cases. Okay, this is getting weirds. I'm focused on Minimus Station. It's at 50km up, so can timewarp x10,000. When I hit x1000, everything's fine. I hit x10,000, the recyclers shut down completely. I have plenty of power, plenty of solar, and a small nuke keeping batteries topped off in shadow. This station can store 13,000 electric charge. But it keeps shutting down the recyclers. The only thing I can think of that might be adding complexity, is I have @Nertea's mods, and I think there was some fiddling done on electricity levels in timewarp there, if I recall. Also, on another note, when I click the 'Snacks!' toolbar button, it shows me Kerbin, Mun, and Minumus buttons.. I can only use the button for the orbit I'm currently in. While at the Minimus station, I can't select Kerbin or the Mun. Edit: Okay, the other difference is the Mun station is using just two Hitchhikers for soil recyclers. The Minimus station is using 3.75m parts from @Nertea's station expansion (The Shelter and Coriolis parts) which now have soil recyclers on them. Also, at the moment, if I'm focused on the Mun station with the Hitchhikers, so far, I don't have a problem with time warp or the recyclers going inactive while its in focus. Only if that station is not in focus. Edit2: I tried installing Better Time Warp, and the issue occurs exactly the same as before, based on the time warp multiplier, not on the steps on the time warp >>>>>>> controller at the top left.

Forgot about that. Well, since they had some contract with Curse for mods, that mean we can finally have a good, official mod manager now? But, way off topic.

@Nertea, in the past there's been .. well, issues with CKAN in general, and many authors don't like supporting it. I recently noticed that now Twitch is supporting KSP mods, and your mods are up there. Is this something you've intentionally done, and is it a good/preferred method of mod installation? I've had my share of issues with CKAN, and Twitch has several features I like (such as saving/syncing mods).

I'm having troubles with a simple ship right now, using a Mk1 command pod, with a Pier Station Core (another 1.25m hatchless crew part from Nertea's station expansion), and the mod only recognizes the one crew member in the Mk1 pod when I alt-click the hatch. Any thoughts on this?

I didn't see it in the list of options, but can this be made to automatically collect science as well? It can get pretty tedious over some of these planets with many biomes to constantly be collecting by hand. Both of the other mods I've seen that allow automated collection aren't being maintained and seem to have many bugs with 1.7.x