fragzilla17

There's a small link on the USI page that links to the constellation page: https://github.com/BobPalmer/USI_Constellation/releases I've been using USI/MKS for years and never noticed it until just a few days ago when goldenpsp mentioned it. I installed that on a brand new 1.6 install and I get many errors and some of the big drills don't load (a known issue with ksp 1.5+), but it seems like most of the other stuff still shows up and works

yeah that just started happening to me today, too. I think a recent update to Defender started the problem because I haven't changed KolonyTools.dll in a few days. I unquarantine it and it seems to work OK for a few launches and then "detects" it again. Seems to happen every other or every third launch of ksp or so.

My current approach for a sustainable Minmus base (I'm in science mode, not career mode, so I'm not worried about cost any more -- I just want to base build so your YMMV). Phase 1 - Get basic resources going - Mission 0: Umanned survey probe to do resource scanning on Minmus - Mission 1: Unmanned mining station: Dirt - a Duna logistics module, some of the round, white, inline kontainers for dirt, some USI drills configured for dirt, a nuke reactor for power and lots of radially attached radiators for drill heat. Set the kontainers as "Planetary warehouse" (you can set this in-mission, so don't worry if you forget it at the VAB). - Mission 2,3,4: Same as the "Dirt" mission but for Gypsum, Hydrates, and Substrate. NOTE: If you can find a good source of water, you may choose to do water instead of Hydrates since the only point (I've found) for Hydrates is eventually process them into water. So if you can get water straight-away then you skip a step which is nice (fewer parts). Once Phase 1 is complete, now you have a basic resource farm pumping the basic resources into the Planetary Warehouse which can then be consumed by any bases you plant around the moon or planet. Phase 2 - Basic base to get Kolonists going (not yet self sustaining, but close) - Mission 1: Unmanned lander with a (a) Tundra Pioneer+Logistics and a (b) PDU with heatsinks and docking ports and Konstruction ports (so I can weld my base together once I get situated). I use the 2m (or 2.5 or whatever it is) or 3.75m undercarriages under the Tundra modules and then use the wheels from the Karibou rover set (LOVE these wheels) so I can adjust the modules when landed and dock them to the Konstruction ports. - Mission 2: Unmanned lander with some Tundra 3.75 kerbitats set for "Quarters" and some set for "Common". Quarters increase hab time, "Commons" multiplies hab time (very important). Also maybe one for recycling and another for purifying (these reduce supply consumption rate which becomes an increasing problem as the kolony grows bigger). You don't need recycling and purifying yet, so you can skip this if you want to add it later. But you will need some eventually. Also make sure these Tundra parts are on undercarriages with wheels and both regular "Clampotron Sr." docking ports and the special Konstruction docking ports (which allow welding/fusing the parts once attached, further reducing part count -- very important). You may also want to attach some of the "Ranger" inflatable kerbitats also set for a balanced mix of Quarters and Commons to further increase the hab time. - Mission 3: You'll need unmanned storage for various things that the Tundra parts use, so have a dockable module that has a bunch of the smaller Kontainers radially attached for Gypsum, Dirt, Ore, Hydrates (unless you have a water source), Water, Machinery, MaterialKits, Substrate, Fertilizer, Mulch, Organics, Supplies (double- or triple-up on these, can't have enough supplies), Chemicals, Metals, Polymers, Recyclables, and anything else I'm not thinking of. For now, you don't need to worry about Exotics, Silicates, or some of the other things but it wouldn't hurt to add these if you want to be thorough. Some of that more advanced "industrial" stuff comes later in Phase 3 so it's up to you whether you can do everything now or add more storage later. - Mission 4: Unmanned lander with a Tundra 3.75m Agricultural Support module set to do Fertilizer(Gypsum), H2O (Hyd), H2O (Ore) if you don't already have a water source. Add two Tundra 3.75 Agriculture modules with these settings: (Module 1) Agroponics (recycles mulch/poop byproducts) and Agriculture(Dirt) or Agriculture(Substrate) and (Module 2) Cultivate(Substrate) and Cultivate(Dirt). I also added a 3.75 Tundra Recycling module since many of the other modules produces "Recyclables" as a byproduct and this module turns those into various things you need elsewhere (I think Metals, MaterialKits, and Chemicals or something like that, you can see it in the description in the VAB if you r-click on it in the part menu on the left). - Mission 5-n: Send a single freighter with a bunch of Kontainers or else send individual missions with the 2nd-to-largest containers full of: Supplies, Water (unless you've got Water drills already going in the planetary warehouse), MaterialKits, Machinery (these are really heavy so maybe send the smaller kontainers for now), ColonySupplies, and SpecializedParts. Some of these things are things that come in Phase 3, so you'll need to ship them in at first in order to bootstrap your Kolony. This is OK, don't try to do everything in one big phase (something RoverDude reminds us constantly!). Kontainers can participate in either local warehouse (within 2000m of your Tundra Logistics module) or the Planetary Warehouse so you only need to drop them near by your base(s) and then the kolony can use them. One exception I've found to this is Material kits. In order to do any of the Konstruction stuff it uses _LOTS_ of MaterialKits so unless you have lots of storage on board/docked to your kolony you won't be able to do things like process DIY Construction Kits or expand the radially-attached inflatables (like the inflatable hab, etc). One inflatable takes 4500 material kits to inflate, IIRC, so be aware. I made that mistake and now I'm trying to figure out a way to move a Material Kit Kontainer I dropped near my base closer to my base so I can use KAS to directly attach it so I can start inflating things. At the end of Phase 2, you should have a mostly sustainable kolony that produces most of the basic things itself but you'll need to keep shipping in Machinery and Material Kits (at least) for now and maybe some Supplies just to top off until everything gets balanced out. Once I've got Phase 2 complete, I send Kerbals in. You'll need lots of different ones - at least one pilot for the Logistics module, some scientists, a lot of engineers, and some kolonists, farmers, etc. I haven't figured all this out, so this is where you get to play. Phase 3 - I have just gotten to this part, so here's where my knowledge drops off. Now I'm going to look at doing the MedBay, making ColonySupplies and SpecializedParts as well as MaterialKits and Machinery so that I can be completely self-sustaining. I also haven't figured out the balance of kerbals yet to make everything efficient (different kerbal job types increase efficiency of various things and help balance everything out). I'm not going for perfection, I'm going for fun so as long as my base is self sustaining I'm OK with certain things overproducing and the balance being out of whack in favor of overproduction. You can keep an eye on the balance of everything by looking at the green square in the toolbar (the USI Life Support) to see how happy your kerbals are and also the icon with the planet with the flag on it - Planetary Logistics, Local Logistics as well as the Kolony Inventory (which tells you how things are balanced - red bad/draining too fast; green good/gaining). Hope this helps. Ooh! Sweet, thank you! I tried that and it didn't work but I must've missed something. Thanks for the tip!

Yes, the larger MKS drills are currently broken in 1.4.x. RoverDude said they're working on it in a previous post.

The MKS wiki is pretty good and mostly up to date. Here's the article specifically on Habitation and covers homesickness: https://github.com/UmbraSpaceIndustries/MKS/wiki/Functions-(Habitation)

YES!!! Thank you so much! It was driving me nuts!

What's the trick to getting the 4-5 engines on a plate like that? I swear it worked for me when I first got Making History but now I can't seem to get it to work. Now the engines either want to attach in the center or else radially on the sides, but not in that configuration. Do I have to hold down some keys or something?

I'm on 1.4.1 + making history with latest release USI everything and Kontainers are working. The larger drills are not working and the DIY Ground Construction stuff is not working and a few other things, but in general most of the stuff is working.

@RoverDude I'm a .net programmer and dev lead by day, but I haven't done much work in KSP. If some of those issues above just require brute force and testing and you can point me in the right direction, I can do some gruntwork for you and submit a pull request

@RoverDude Thank you for getting the USI releases updated to 1.4 so fast! And thank you for all the USI stuff you do. I LOVE this mod! I noticed that the msk_drill_*** parts were missing in the VAB so I did some investigating and found an error in the ksp.log. I've cleared my GameData folder and loaded and installed just the MKS mod and I still get the error, so I think I've eliminated all the other variables I could. Here's the error: [ERR 19:04:55.201] PartCompiler: Cannot compile part [LOG 19:04:55.202] PartLoader: Compiling Part 'UmbraSpaceIndustries/MKS/Parts/MKS_Drill_02A/MKS_Drill_02A' [ERR 19:04:55.202] PartLoader: Encountered exception during compilation. System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object at PartLoader.ReplaceTextures (UnityEngine.GameObject model, System.Collections.Generic.List`1 textureNames, System.Collections.Generic.List`1 newTextures) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 at PartLoader.CompileModel (.UrlConfig cfg, .ConfigNode partCfg, Single scaleFactor, .AvailablePart partInfo) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 at PartLoader.ParsePart (.UrlConfig urlConfig, .ConfigNode node) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 at PartLoader+<CompileParts>c__Iterator1.MoveNext () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 I checked the part config and made sure that the texture file (`UmbraSpaceIndustries\MKS\Assets\TriBitDrill_GN.dds`) exists and is not corrupt (it opens in Paint.net just fine). I even tried copying the TriBitDrill_GN.dds file from an older, known-good version of MKS just to see if something got corrupted but I get the same error. EDIT: While I was in the log I looked to see if I could find any more details and noticed a few other things. Would you like me to make GitHub issues for these instead of forum posts? I can open Supplies.dds just fine in Paint.net, so I don't know what it's complaining about. That's all the instances of "Error" I could find in the log I found some other ERR instances: I found some other WRN instances: