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Robin Patenall

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Posts posted by Robin Patenall

  1. After a couple of weeks of work, I have eventually completed my first real surface base (not just a collection of landed craft).

    yxJrOYi.jpg It started with a contract for a new Mun surface base with capacity for 5 kerbals and a cupola and I thought I'd play with the parts from Kerbal Planetary Base Systems, which I'd installed but not used. First came the landing modules (foreground waiting for refuelling) which could dock with KPBS docking ports and ferry pieces down from orbit and move them around to assemble the base. As I wasn't sure that they could bring down a big enough piece and return to orbit, the second part was the stand alone ISRU module (horizontal, right of mid frame) which, if used as the first piece ferried down by the landers, could be used to refuel them before they returned to orbit. Third came the actual surface base and I found the K&K Central hub which ticked most of the contract requirements and with the cupola, fuel tank and some Meerkat engines formed the core of the base.

    IDAcZzl.jpg

    As I realised that I'd managed to put this base down on a good ore patch which was almost diametrically opposite my existing Munar ISRU site, I decided to expand the base to allow me to refuel the orbital infrastructure when it was night at the other area (which I find is the major problem with IRSU from the Mun). So the next item was the tank farms, orange for LFO and white for just LF (thanks to configurable containers).

    A green house  for role-play and running the (extremely difficult to biome farm) plant growth experiment and a proper science lab ( the central hub has a low capacity one) came next (left of mid frame) and some real accommodation for the kerbals (far left) so they can get out of the central hub.

    1ogUMqB.jpg

    Last thing, I realised that I can use the K&K nuclear reactor and centrifuge  without other mods so one was added (foreground) and this should allow the base to refine ore during the Munar night without having to resorting to ignoring the base because if I look at it them the solar cells will stop working. I'll have a play with that once all the fuel tanks are full.

    There's still a few more things to finish off:

    • I forget an Experiment storage unit where I can store all the experiments awaiting processing in the lab (yes I know I can use several other parts to do that)
    • I have a science hopper coming that can go from here to anywhere on the Mun and return to mine the Mun for science (again) for local processing
    • I think that I want some lights for the landing areas (near the  outer ends of the tanks farms), if the reactor allows for processing during the night then I might want to land there as well.

    Things to note:

    • The docking port you want to remove is always the root part and a pain in the neck.
    • Some parts will just make your base explode when added via EVA construction. A number of small truss sections which destroyed the base every-time I attached them got  turned into modular girder segments using the magic of save game editing.
    • A number of detached docking ports that ended up as a single part vessel got changed to a EVA dropped part in much the same way so my kerbals could tidy up.
    • One of the docking port camera mods (I use Docking Camera KURS Style) makes aligning the parts of the base  much easier
    • No matter how much you balance, adding lander sections to a module after the fact will always result in a thrust offset. The best you can do is minimise it.
    • Stock dV calculations really don't like radially attaching engines with docking ports. The TWR / dV  and maneuver timings were always wrong.
  2. Just to check, you put your vessel in a 75km polar orbit right?

    The Scansat instruments can only see directly below your vessel and to map a whole planet your going to need a high inclination, if you are equitorial then you're only going to get data from a small strip of the planet

    What do your maps look like?

  3. After 1200 hours of game play and on day 363 of year 4, my first vessel has reached Jool.

    GJI1Bld.jpg

    It's a full Scansat satellite stuffed with scientific instruments, a large relay antenna and a Nerv drive section. Once I've put the relay into a 90,000km orbit (safely inside Bop's orbit), I'll detach the Scansat satellite and attach it to the drive section and push it out to Pol to scan for ore and where, eventually, there will be an ISRU station to refuel it and allow it to continue to scan the rest of the Jool system.

  4. 4 hours ago, whatsEJstandfor said:

    Or four options in the picker: Runway 09R, Runway 09L, Runway 27R, Runway 27L

    It might be a good idea if the vessels spawned on the taxiway next to the correct entrance to the given runway, rather then actually on the runway. Mostly as spawning on the runway might cause issues for multiplayer depending on how it's implemented. Imagine coming into land and another player decides that they want to take off on the same runway, at least spawning on the taxiway could check if it's obstructed first.

  5. Today, the second part of the mission to investigate Moho was sent on its way. The "Hot Shots part deux" mission will extend the original "Hot Shots" mission (which consisted of a lander and a rover) with:

    • A science and refuelling station with comfortable living accommodations and a grabbing adaptor that will allow the station to refuel and reuse some of the existing infrastructure that is already in orbit about Moho.xc3TqTZ.jpg
       
    • An ore harvester which will land on Moho and refine fuel and is carrying an additional set of communication satellites.tza1nul.jpg 
    • Two tankers that will carry the refined fuel from the harvester to the station.WynUNGC.jpg

    These components, along with the six brave kerbals, will allow more science to be wrung out of the nearest planet to Kerbol and the return to Kerbin of the reusable components from both of the missions.

    The departure was complicated by the narrowness of the Moho transfer window and the low thrust of the vessels, requiring burn sequences that overlapped each other. But the result is that each vessel has over 4000m/s of deltaV which exceeds the amount needed to capture at Moho (about 1800m/s) by a  wide safety margin. The inline boosters that helped improve the ejection burns have been successfully decelerated and will begin the slow process of returning to the Mun refuelling buoys so that they can be reused.

    9WbUcTj.jpg

    Spoiler contains some non-action views

    Spoiler

    Close up view of Moho station

    UtKDvO7.jpg

    Close up view of the ore harvester

    jhUqjrX.jpg

    Close up view of the tankers

    f920VEG.jpg

       

  6. Do we have any information about whether there is going to be save game compatibility during the early access phase of KSP 2? That is, if I start a game when it first comes out, is it likely that I can continue to use the same save up until the final release? or is it more likely that I'll have to keep restarting?
    I understand the point of early access, and issues that may cause a save to become incompatible are always a possibility, but does anybody know how likely that is to occur? Did it happen in KSP 1?

  7. For the last week or so, I have been driving Bill and Bob out of Moho's Northern region, and have eventually managed to do so.

    I made the mistake of thinking I could rove to all the Moho biomes and made my way to the North Sinkhole (not the Mohole) and realised a bit too late that my planned route (a) was a steep slope down to the sink hole and (b) it was in shadow. This meant that I couldn't drive out the same way I drove in with my solar powered rover and had to find a way out that was in sunshine (or wait until it was).

    2A67TWP.jpg

    Things to note when roving on Moho:

    1. The North is very hilly, with steep slopes
    2. Take some RTGs. It sounds odd but if the route you need to take is in shadow, it's going to be in shadow for a long time, possibly (at high latitudes) forever.
  8. My "Hot Shots" mission has landed on Moho.

    a1AP7FR.jpg

    The science rover (left) and the main lander (middle) both have (with some transfer of fuel) about 1450m/s which should get them back to the orbital elements of the mission.  In an emergency there's a rescue craft (an ion powered lawn chair) that should have enough Xenon to get everybody off the surface if needed.

    Bill (left) and Bob (middle) have gone off with the rover to do Science! from different locations while Jeb has stayed behind to make sure that nobody makes off with their ride.

  9. 9 hours ago, Rakete said:

    Every Kerbal deserves a return to home.

    I've got a couple of Kerbals that might have been given the grand opportunity to be the first Kerbals to set foot on Plock when they decided to stow away on a rescue craft and required the poor Kerbal being rescued to hang on to the ladder on the outside for several orbits until I could rendezvous with one of my space stations. Luckily for them, I can't remember which ones they were any more.

  10. Finally, the year 3 day 310 transfer window  from Kerbin to Duna opened and I've managed to get all the hardware I had ready in Munar and  Kerbin orbit sent on its way.

    The first element is Duna Station, which has been on a fitting out cruise about the Mun and will end up in Duna equatorial orbit. Pictured here is the core, a couple of tug components and the reusable propulsion systems. Currently, the core is actually docked backwards and once it gets to Duna, there will need to have some rearrangement to put the orbital adjustment engines on the right end. 

    gXemQ4F.jpg Connected to the core station is a large fuel tank, a lander and an intra-system mover (under the gold fairing). If you are wondering why the intra-system mover is using Puff engines and mono-propellant , I had a "upgrade this station" contract and needed a lot more mono-prop to complete it.

    Z1x8ITw.jpg

    The next component is the Rover / ISRU system. The rover was originally used to gather science from the Mun which has been, and continues to be, processed in the lab aboard Duna station and will give the scientists something to do on their long trip. With its auxiliary stage, it has enough dV to land on Duna from orbit and will gather science, either under remote control or possibly with a crew, delivered by the station lander, aboard. 

    ejUBXos.jpg

    The rover is being transported on top of the ISRU system that is going to be landing on Ike and consists of a Kerbaled ore harvester / fuel converter and two large transfer tanks which will haul the fuel to orbit. This was also undergoing testing on the Mun and a similar system has been tested on Minmus.

    xJMLqQ9.jpg

    The last large component is the Ike station core, which was added to act as an anchor in orbit to allow the ISRU tankers and the main nuclear propulsion units, used to push Duna station, to have somewhere to dock and transfer fuel between themselves. In addition, there is a small facility for Kerbals and in an emergency explosives will destroy the central corridor and then the crew can use the fordecks as a lifeboat, with either the propulsion module, one of the ISRU tankers or a nuclear propulsion units to get them back to Duna station or Kerbin.

    Rs9V3WQ.jpg

    Two sets of additional satellites were also sent, one for an equatorial orbit about Ike to give almost full coverage for the ISRU system and one set for polar orbit about Duna to augment the existing equatorial set that was placed in the last transfer window. Each set consists of three small relay satellites and a bigger relay on the carrier vessel.

    9dO9Spv.jpg

    (The KSC PR department apologises for another picture of this particular satellite deployment system that fails to show the mounting point that joins the small satellites to the main carrier craft. We understand that our followers are interested in the construction of our space infrastructure and we would like to say that all the rumours that the mounting system is "nothing" or "magic" that keep cropping up with regard to this particular system are completely untrue)

  11. Today, Jeb, Bill and Bob arrived in the  second half of my Moho mission "Hot Shots" and docked with the first part.

    qsAk5q2.jpg

    We have the rover component with the tiny pathfinder rover on the top and the main science roved beneath. The science rover supports two and with the orange and grey long range tank has a total of 3260m/s deltaV (1700m/s in the long range tank for going down and 1560m/s  in the rovers booster packs for going up). It will definitely get down but I'm not going to rely on its ability to get back into orbit on its own.

    r5HX6hq.jpg

    The lander supports three and has 2160m/s of deltaV, which is enough to get it down once and return. It includes storage with a set of surface experiments. This will probably not initially be landed as if the rover breaks down or gets stuck, the lander can go and retrieve the Kerbals on the surface.

    4m1xMyz.jpg Of the three nuclear pushers, two are empty (of fuel, they has some mono-prop) and Pusher 7, the hitchhiker storage container and the  MK1-3 command pod form the return stage with about 6500m/s of deltaV which should be enough to get the Kerbals back without aerobreaking.  That deltaV is the minimum as there is quite a lot in storage, including  parts for  an ion powered lawn chair that should be able to get two Kerbals back into orbit from the surface.
    2jh3VXG.jpg In the case of a serious system failure, in about 100 days a rescue ship should arrive which would allow the Kerbals to be rescues and returned to Kerbin, having over 7000m/s once in orbit of Moho, as long as they don't mind being rather cramped. It should have arrived already (before the Kerbals) but there was a slight issue with transfer window timing (If you put a vessel outside Kerbin's SOI, the transfer window moves by a few days and, in the case of Moho, that makes a lot of difference) 

  12. Hi @linuxgurugamer,

    The other day, I turned on the "Process manipulatable-only parts" feature and it got stuck in a loop, complaining that new parts had been detected every launch. I think I've identified the issue through.

    What happened was every time KSP started, the mod would extend the partVolumes-v3.cfg file entries for each of the the manipulatable-only parts, like it wasn't noticing that it had already fixed them. Each part gave an entry like:

    // SquadExpansion/Serenity/Parts/Robotics/RotorEngine_02/RotorEngine_02
    // Dimensions: x: 1.26, y: 0.88, z: 1.25
    // Bounding Box Size: 1381.887 liters
    // Volume adjustment: 10%
    //
    @PART[RotorEngine_02]:HAS[@MODULE[ModuleCargoPart]]:Final
    {
        @MODULE[ModuleCargoPart]
        {
            packedVolume = 1521
            KSP_PartVolume = true
        }
    }

    This edits the existing ModuleCargoPart module, but I'm pretty sure that it adds a new packedVolume value to the module, so there are two and when the mod looks it gets the the original -1 value and thinks that it hasn't been processed. Changing it to:
     

    @PART[RotorEngine_02]:HAS[@MODULE[ModuleCargoPart]]:Final
    {
        @MODULE[ModuleCargoPart]
        {
            %packedVolume = 1521
            %KSP_PartVolume = true
        }
    }

    with the leading %, to make MM edit or create the values (rather than add) seems to fix the issue when I edited my partVolumes-v3.cfg file. It looks like a couple of changes around [email protected] would fix the issue but I haven't tested this as I don't have an environment set up to compile and I was having some issues following the code generating the popup (the call seems commented out on [email protected] and the text of the pop up is different, is master the correct branch?)

  13. Hi @Angel-125,

    I noticed today that I couldn't manipulate the Printshops and Cargo containers while in EVA construction mode. It looks like it is intended that you should be able to this, as those parts have a ModuleCargoPart with packedVolume=-1 but that module needs to come before the ModuleInventoryPart one for it to work. I made the changes to the 2 printshops and 3 cargo containers and tested it and it all seems to work. I'm pretty sure that I've managed to submit a pull request with the fix on github, but it  is the first time that I've done one.

     

  14. Let me introduce the KPS Glom of Nit (Yes, KPS, the Kerbal Post Service). Used for when your Gilly mission is missing a small but vital part, and your engineer has a Kamazon Super Platinum Hyper Prime subscription.

    nfJJPz9.jpg

    The part was missed because almost all of the Gilly mission was recycled from older missions and right at the moment a Kerbin to Eve transfer is about 5.5km/s of deltaV so I had to build a rocket with about 10.6km/s on the launchpad for sending a 50kg part.

    CA3AhlX.jpg

    I over built a bit as I'm going to have about 2000m/s to rendezvous with and land on Gilly after a loose capture about Eve. 

  15. I wish I could have seen this a week or two ago before I went on my Minmus circumnavigation road trip. I think I got the wheels configured okay, but his would have made me more confident in the settings I used and had some tips that I might have implemented (different friction front and back). With any luck KSP2 will have better documentation.

  16. Our weary travellers. They even got tired of Mint Ice-cream after a while (they will have a discussion with Jeb about the proper selection of supplies for a Minmus mission when they return. Luckily for Jeb, he has scheduled their pickup by the Mun / Minmus / Kerbol XP gaining mission and it will take them some time to get back)

    PN6Kmae.jpg

    Hopefully, I've done enough to qualify for completing the challenge (Modded) on Minmus. I even managed to visit every biome to record science for a future Mobile Processing Lab to analysis, which is why I initially landed at the South Pole (and saw the strangeness that lies there). I recorded most of it on video, there's about 3 degrees of longitude that I lost, but it was a very boring zigzag up a hill to reach the Highland biome and I cut out most of the times I crashed and reverted (there weren't that many times). Hopefully this is judged as acceptable.

    This is a Modded attempt as I used the KER, Scansat and NavHud Renewed for helping me navigate and I have Restock and Restock Plus of which I believe I only used one part (a longer 0.625m fuel tank than the Oscar B) and the KER chip part, but as I was testing the rover for use on a future Duna / Ike mission in my current career mode game, I wasn't going to change it (which is why it has parachutes and an atmospheric analyser if anybody was wondering).

    I added waypoints after the fact to make the route clearer on the map view as the flags where a bit difficult to see.

    Spoiler

    From the South pole, up to the equator on the left then Eastward across the Greater Flats and to the Highlands.

    s0DIXuf.jpg

    From the Highlands to the Lesser flats stopping off at the debris of an old mission (and finding a couple of repair kits)

    b4wfOWp.jpg

    Across the South of the Great Flats, to join up with the journey from the South pole and back to the equator.

    kUSQhzA.jpg

    Things I learnt:

    • The poles are to be avoided
    • Minmus's lowlands aren't (low that is, in fact they're quite high)
    • KSP wheels have no traction on low gravity worlds.
    • Parallax 2 scatter colliders are not a good idea when using a rover for long distances, or medium distances, or even short distances.
    • As I found from my long drive on the Mun, the Scansat, KER and NavHud Renewed mods are really helpful for navigation and not ending up tumbling down a hill at break neck (and break rover) speeds.
    • I might just have forgotten how time consuming this is by the time that the Duna transfer window opens and I get the rover there.
  17. Does anybody know / can confirm if enabling collisions is safe on an existing save?
    I don't currently have much landed that I care about (mostly spent stages and surface science that has completed) but there are a couple of things that I'd prefer not to explode after being telefragged by a new rock. Right at the moment I could probably get everything  I care about into orbit and update to this and land everything again, but I probably need to do it now, rather than later.

     

  18. Hi @Geonovast,

    Just tracked down an issue I was having to the latest release of this. I was suddenly unable to surface attach light strips, I could node attach them and drop them in containers but not surface attach them. It was most confusing.

    It looks like the parsing of the attachRules is not well coded as changing all the lines in SN_utility.cfg that read:

    @attachRules = 1, 1, 0, 0, 1

    to (note the lack of spaces after the commas)

    @attachRules = 1,1,0,0,1

    seems to have fixed the issue for the lights I was having it with. You might also want to quickly check if you've made the same misstep elsewhere

     

  19. Anybody capable of creating a "string vest" suit option for the Kerbals? My memory is a bit hazy on UFO, but I remember that bit of costume design very clearly. Not that it would be quite as good on the Kerbals as it was on the original cast.

  20. 6 hours ago, darthvader15001 said:
      Hide contents

    boLMEbT.jpg

    Where are those graphics from?

    The West side of the East Farside Crater ^_^

    Part textures / overhaul is ReStock and ReStock+. The terrain is, I believe, Parallax and Parallax Stock Planet Textures, with most of the graphics setting turned right up. But I also have the following visual stuff:

    • Community Terrain Texture Pack (A dependency of something)
    • Environmental Visual Enhancements Redux
    • Scatterer + Scatterer Default Config + Scatterer Sunflare
    • Astronomer's Visual Pack (2k textures)
    • TUFX

    It's been a time since I set up all the mods, so I'm not exactly sure which does what without research.

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