OldSedan

I've got the infrastructure more built out and oh my goodness, it is so very worth it. Thanks a million!

I’m trying to build out some beginning WOLF infrastructure on the prerelease. I’m feeling bottlenecked by transport credits so just wanted to check - the fuel production ratio I’m seeing is 5 ore/water : 2 fuel per refinery module, meaning 5 refineries and 2.5 bulk extractors for 1 set of 10 transport credits. Yeah? Reason I’m asking is that now that I’m trying to set up transport credit production in orbit to expand out from there I’m finding that I need really quite a bunch of stuff shipped up - materials for the transport credits themselves plus 7 cargo slots of food, o2 and water. It ends up creating a pretty hefty TC cost on the ground just to push that all up to LKO. Not complaining, this is end game stuff and I figure once I’ve got the basics in orbit I can start building out infrastructure on Minmus so it’ll feel easier; I just have the vague sense I’m doing something more onerous than intended.

Is there any way to use the new konstructor without having all the materials immediately available? Especially with WOLF infrastructure to deliver a steady supply of matkits it seems silly to have to build a million units’ worth of storage to construct a moderately sized ship.

I’m having trouble finding the containers. We’re they added in the constellation prerelease?

For WOLF transport routes, which containers count when establishing a new route? Do the contents of the containers matter when determining the route capacity?

You’re right - the displayed core life doesn’t change but the fuel consumption is appropriate. Sorry!

I added the extra patch that applies system heat to NFE reactors, and now it seems that decreasing the reactor power output no longer changes the rate uranium is consumed. Is this intentional or do I have a bug somewhere?

Yeah that’s what I would have expected since nuclear engines generally have more thrust and worse fuel efficiency, but the Asimov has an ISP of 45000 even on high thrust mode while the Discovery only gets you 17900 ISP on its high efficiency mode. I just looked again and the heat output is significantly more with the Asimov so I suppose you suffer a bit in radiator mass but I dunno man seems like a pretty easy choice. That said it’s the top tier nuclear engine vs only the second tier fusion engine so I guess it’s nice to get some benefit for spending the extra science on what would otherwise be a dead end.

First time playing through the mod and I have a balance question: the Discovery fusion engine and Asimov fission fragment engine are at the same tech level (on CTT). They have similar masses and heat production. The Asimov produces more thrust at roughly three times the ISP. Is there a reason to go with the fusion engine that I’m missing? Is it a refuelability thing?

Waste heat seems to dissipate at a constant rate that isn't affected by time warp. I've got a craft with a reactor for power and an open core engine; waste heat accumulates during a burn and then begins to dissipate via radiators while the engine is idle. My core temperature and waste heat doesn't dissipate any faster (in real time) when I increase time warp - the displayed rate of waste heat decrease does scale with time warp but so does the waste heat pool for my vessel so the proportional change is the same. I understand that waste heat is a little wonky because of the underlying stock heat system, but does this mean I need to twiddle my thumbs with my vessel loaded at 1x time warp to let my radiators work every time I burn?

Am I supposed to have both the magnetic nozzle and the electrical converter on the same reactor? Wouldn’t that pull power away from the nozzle? edit: the tutorial is very useful but the images are not loading

I think I did not have enough power on board to support both the fusion reactor powering the magnetic nozzle and the nozzle itself. I switched to a plasma nozzle and it's working very well. I'm not able to timewarp, however - I get an in game error message that the propellant is depleted despite full tanks. I think it's a bug, I'll keep testing. Where can I find information on the power usage and supply from different reactors and consumers? I'm not sure how to know how much power the magnetic nozzle needs.

I'm trying to set up fusion reactors for propulsion and find myself quite confused. From what I can piece together, a fusion reactor requires electric power either from an attached generator or a separate reactor on the vessel to sustain the fusion reaction. How do I know how much power this requires? For propulsion, each reactor has a set of either thermal, plasma, or magnetic nozzle that it is compatible with. Thrust and ISP vary with the fusion fuel set in the reactor interface as well as the fuel specified by the nozzle. Fusion reactor and engine nozzle should be the same size for efficiency. This all seems to work in the VAB, although kerbal engineer can't seem to handle the magnetic nozzle; it gives 0 ISP. When I attempt to launch however the fusion reactor appears inactive and I don't see an option to start it. Is there a button to press to initiate the fusion reaction or does it just happen passively when enough power is available on the vessel to sustain the reaction?

Oh nice, thanks for the quick reply! I'll look forward to the update!

Is global construction included in MKS or do I need to download and install it separately? Are there MKS parts that function as GC workshops?

OK, next dumb question. Can I shutdown a reactor (pebble bed in this case)? There's a 'deactivate' button visible in the reactor control window in-flight but pushing it seems to have no effect.

Thanks! Sounds like some waste heat isn’t necessarily a problem? What prevents it from continuing to accumulate? I haven’t had an issue so far but I worry that over an interplanetary mission waste heat would continue to build up and explode my craft. Do radiators become more effective at higher levels of waste heat?

Im new to the mod and having a little trouble understanding waste heat. I’ve built a couple craft using the first two nuclear engines, with enough radiators to cover the heat output according to the heat management window in the VAB. My vessel still generates waste heat after the engine is activated, even if the engine and generator are later shut down. Am I missing something?

Wow, that's bonkers! Is that propelled using a laser from a ground based installation? So let's say I wanted to propel a small science lander for example at Duna. Would the smart move be to send out a large solar beamed power provider and use that to power a small craft with either an ion/plasma engine using beamed power converted to MW or a thermal nozzle with beamed power converted to heat energy? Does solar cut it or would I need reactors orbiting?

This mod is super exciting. Thank you for all the work! What's the design intention for mid to late game probe and lander propulsion? The candle nuclear engine is nice but I'm looking down the tech tree and don't see many options for small craft. Is the idea to tweakscale things down to 0.625m?

Howdy, I just switched from KSP 1.7.3 to 1.8.1 and I'm no longer able to change the fuel types for the stock tanks; they're locked to LFO. Specifically I can't switch to liquid fuel for use with nuclear engines which is hobbling. I also have global construction and near future installed which might cause a conflict - is this a known issue? Is there something i'm missing? Thanks!

Is there a beta of the new WOLF mechanics available to download?

Are there any tanks smaller than the .313 meter spherical or 1.25 cluster Kontainer tanks that can hold Karborundum? I'd love to have a small radial tank that could hold 25 or so for small landers with a .625m fusion drive. Thanks!

Hey, sorry to bother you; I finally upgraded to 1.3.1 and ran smack into this issue with some off-world mining bases I'd set up with MKS and NF parts. I understand it's being worked on and I appreciate all your hard work! For the moment could you suggest any workaround? Would rolling back to an earlier version of NFE avoid this bug? Thanks!

Howdy, I really love the engines in this bundle but the altered LH2 mechanics aren't to my taste. I'm using the included extra that reverts the KA engines to LF, but my USI nuclear engines are still being penalized according to KA's LH2 mechanic. Is there a way I can disable the LH2 density change entirely? Thanks!