katateochi
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Posts posted by katateochi
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Hey Guys, I feel I owe you all an apology and a bit of an explanation; KerbalX has been on auto-pilot for too long and recently has been crashing a lot.
Without details, life knocked me down and then kept kicking. It's been a relentless few years and I'm not what I used to be.I'm sad that because of that I stepped back from this community because I couldn't cope, with anything! I've just about managed to keep KerbalX running, but I've not done anything to it in ages. Big thanks to the KX moderators who've kept things clean.
I'm going to try and get back in to it, but I can't promise anything.
Aside from performance/stability issues, what is the most significant issue on the site right now?Now I've seen what a KSP 2 craft file looks like (JSON, thank Jeb!) it looks like adding KSP 2 support will be possible.
I'm still completely in the dark about how parts are stored in the game and I don't know what's known about how mods are going to work.
If I can get data about parts and there's nothing too weird in the craft files, then that should be simple enough.
Rather than having a separate section for KSP 1 and 2 craft, they will all be together but filterable. That fits with the treat-everything-equal mindset I've designed with. Later I could expand that just to give more visual separation, if that's needed.Anyway, I am sorry for the somewhat dishevelled state of KerbalX and it's great to see so many still using it.
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are we gonna need scatterer again?
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Hi @EndAllFilms, @Anonymous49 is right in that the craft is missing a part, but in this case it's not from a mod, it's from an older version of KSP. The craft you've selected looks like it was built in KSP 1.2.x and some of the stock parts have changed since then. So that's a little harder to fix that just getting the required mod. I can't remember of the top of my head, but I'm sure there are ways to upgrade and older craft to the current KSP version. One thing you could try, is exiting the VAB and then clicking on the launch-pad and seeing if you can load the craft from there. If that works then hit escape and revert to VAB and then try and save the craft again....not sure if that will work though. Sorry I can't be more help right now.
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13 hours ago, Lady Sean said:
EDIT: The problem seems to have resolved itself, and all thumbnails are showing up properly now.
This was just a delay, not the same problem as before. Sometimes it can just take a little while to generate the thumbs. There is a background worker queue, which processes jobs like making thumbs and sometimes you gotta wait for other jobs to complete. If I had more funding I'd run multiple worker queues, but I can't afford the costs for that unfortunatly.
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15 hours ago, Lady Sean said:
Thumbnails aren't showing up for craft uploaded since partway through yesterday (with a single exception):
14 hours ago, miguelsgamingch said:Same Here, Looks Like A Bug
Fixed!!
New craft should be doing the thumbnail thing properly from now on and those which had failed have now got their thumbs back! -
3 hours ago, miguelsgamingch said:
Any Clue?
So far nothing clear. But problem has to be somewhere between the process of generating the thumbnails and storing then on my image server.
I spent a couple hours trying to track it down last night. Annoyingly I can't skip work this morning, so I've gotta put this on hold for a few hours. But I'll try again hopefully after lunch.
Bear with me guys, I'll get it sorted!!
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@Lady Sean, @miguelsgamingch
Not sure what happening with craft thumbnails, but I'm looking into it..... -
On 8/30/2020 at 12:12 AM, swjr-swis said:
Congratulations with 6 years of KerbalX.com!
Thank you, @katateochi
For 6 years of hosting our craft and mission files, for tirelessly volunteering your time and resources in providing and maintaining this awesome community repository.
For allowing us a place to share and learn and help and enjoy.
omg, I was away for a few days and missed a bunch of notifications and totally missed this!
This is epic! Thanks so much @swjr-swis This has made my day. I'd actually completely forgotten the anniversary this year (it's been such a strange year!) so thanks for reminding me and for making this.
Yeah, 6 years! 41k+ craft and 3.4 million downloads. I am pleased!
This has been the most enjoyable coding project I've ever worked on, and that's entirely because of this community.Still got loads of things I want to do with the site, it's just finding the time to do them! And there is also the upcoming KSP 2 which at the moment is just a can-O-uncertainty that I can't do anything about yet.
I know Craft Manger is in need of some attention in the latest KSP release.
I've also got an idea for a mod (maybe 2) which would use KerbalX as a central point, but its just finding the time these days! I'll do a post about it and see if the idea appeals and if anyone would be able to work with me on it.
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I only change one thing in keybindings; to enable wheel controls in docking/rotation mode (or as I calling it, driving mode).
I use RCS with the IJKL keys so I've got pitch, roll, yaw on WASDQE as normal at the same time. I also bind H/N (RCS forward/back) to thumb buttons on my mouse, that way I can control attitude with one hand, and have RCS forward/backward thrust and camera control with the other hand. I never use docking/rotation mode for docking, I only use it for driving. -
Just now, Vanamonde said:
In KSP, people primarily make SSTOs for the design challenge. They're really not very economical and actual re-use is almost impossible.
I don't really agree about them not being economical, they're a core part of my space program transporting all crew and a lot of payloads (the only real limit on that is if it can fit in a cargo bay), and all they cost is the fuel (also, I find launching SSTOs to be much more laid back than rockets, my main cargo transporter needs 2 pitch adjustments to reach a 100km suborbital path, where as rockets need all that mucking about with gravity turns!
)
The re-use bit is more tricky, but definitely not impossible. For one career I did a lot of my tourist and training missions using one SSTO that was refuelled on the tarmac. It's payload was crew so that's a bit easier; Just load crew into a "bus" with a claw and dock it with the SSTO and transfer crew, and same for fuel. And the fuel was mined and refined at KSC, so it was a truly re-usable setup. The draw back was having a mining setup, fuel storage tanks and various ground crew craft parked around KSC all the time; made for a more laggy experience at the space centre. It did also get rather tedious transferring crew all the time and stock fuel transfers are also a pain. So eventually I gave up on that idea, but that SSTO had flown 10's of missions without being recovered.
Loading cargo into an SSTO on the runway is more of a problem and you need a good crane setup (more craft making KSC laggy). Loading cargo so it's properly centred can also be awkward.It's totally doable, the question is, are you playing Kerbal Ground Crew or Kerbal Space Program? If you want to spend the majority of your time refuelling and loading aircraft then great, but my feeling was, as much as I wanted it, it wasn't worth the time.
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yeah I'll just play a couple hours KSP....6-8 hours later...and that was much of the first few years
If I played an ave. of 6 hours per session, 290 days of the year for the first 5 years that's ~8700 hours. and then in the last 3 years more like ave. 4 hours per session 175 days in the year (~2100).
I'm almost certainly over the 10,000 hour mark.....and that's a fairly conservative estimate. -
3 hours ago, pTrevTrevs said:
Whoa man, I had no idea you were still around. I still watch your old Constellation mission every now and then and it's still great.
Yeah I'm still here! I've been a bit quiet on the forums over the last year, but never actually left, just lurking and keeping KerbalX running. I've been getting back into playing KSP again which is nice after a long break. Glad to see you're still about too!
I'm so happy that vid still gets views. I really want to do something like it again, but I just don't have the time for vid making these days. -
9 hours ago, RealKerbal3x said:
Nice LVs, @katateochi! In my latest career I've been developing a set of reusable launch vehicles too, they're fun to make
5 minutes ago, Mars-Bound Hokie said:Indeed, they are.
Yeah, there is something special about reusable kit. I've been really fixated on SSTO space planes for a while now, infact I built these rockets partly to force myself away from SSTOs for a bit, but still keep some of the reusable aspect.
I wanted reusable, but also fairly cheap to launch which is why I went with engine clusters rather than more powerful single engines (also I was aiming for something based on the Falcon 9 design).30 minutes ago, Mars-Bound Hokie said:I wonder what kinds of cargo (satellite/s, crew transit vehicle, fuel tank) you can put in your launch vehicles.
Mostly Pizza!
I have a rule that crew are only launched on space planes; they tend to be a smoother ride and also when things go wrong they can mostly regain control and glide back down even if all engines have failed. So I rarely launch crew on rockets unless they've got an LES built in. Which these could have, but these are more intended as unmanned cargo launchers; so basically anything; satellites, station and base modules or interplanetary craft (just without the crew, they come up via SSTO later). -
I'm looking for some tips and advice on which software to use to create and then host high quality gifs.
I mostly want to create short clips from KSP footage to post with craft, just to showcase a certain feature or show a pan around of the craft. So nothing long, just around 10 second clips.First, should I be creating .gif or .webm?
I've used a program called Wondershare Filmora to create both file types and it produces pretty ok quality, the webm versions have significantly smaller filesize. But which ever I create, when I upload them to imgur the end result is much more compressed and quality is poor.
I see people posting insanely high quality gifs on imgur, so what is the trick? -
The LV series are a set of Stock and Stock+DLC launch vehicles that are all built around a common design; A recoverable core stage with a pair of LFO boosters. The engines on the core stage fire from launch to orbit (no upper stages) and, on all except the 03 and 09, the engines are clusters, rather than a more expensive single engine.
The core stage has a small fairing-enclosed section just behind the main fairings containing all the components (probe core, reaction wheel, batteries, antenna, solar panels and parachutes for recovery). All the fairings are set to clam-shell mode.
The LV series are all tested carrying a payload at least a 6% heavier than spec’d (ie the LV-45 is tested with a 48 ton payload) and will reach LKO (100km) with at least 100m/s dV spare. In testing they were piloted by MechJeb’s ascent autopilot to ensure each test flight was the same. They are all built to be stable running at 3x physics warp all the way to orbit.
They're on KerbalX, here's a link to the first in the series https://kerbalx.com/katateochi/LV-03 or you can get the whole set here https://kerbalx.com/hangars/115373
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Considering the scope of this game and how long I've been playing it, there aren't too many things that really annoy me.....but there are some
I would put memory issues as the worst offender, but others have mentioned that already.
This
THIS
This bit of UI design makes me irrationally angry every time I see it, It offends me on several levels.
If I accidentally open the contents of a science container (especially one with that many results in it) I then have to click through every single result just to close the window.
It's actually easier/faster to do a quicksave and reload or switch to another craft and back again just to close it.
Even when you're not pillaging a planet for all it's sci in one go, and just have an action group that runs all stock experiments, that's still too many clicks required just to close a window.A simple close button in the top right corner would make this a lot better, but even with that it's just a bad bit of UI.
It's ok to get UI design wrong when you're creating a novel bit of UI, but this is just a standard "list and view", a UI concept that's as old (older) than HTML. There are standard conventions for this sort of interface.
It should have a list view, where you can see all the results as a list (preferably with options to group and sort it by various attributes like which biome or body it came from, experiment type, science value etc). From the list view you should be able to click on each one to view the details and take actions (although you should also be able to make common actions (ie delete, transmit, process in lab) from the list view). And from the details view you should be able to return to the list view. And from any view you should (WITH ONE CLICK) be able to close the window.
It also would be nice if the window would remember it's position on the screen and not always appear centre stage like it's the most important thing ever!The other thing in KSP that upsets me is watching your base do an impersonation of a glacier and gradually creep down hill. I say "hill", I don't think a 1.2 degree incline should really be called a hill, but even on such small inclines, surface craft will still gradually move. There needs to be a mechanism which locks stationary craft in place until an internal or external force acts on it.
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57 minutes ago, Avera9eJoe said:
Ah that is fair. Being able to exclude a tag/tags from a search would be equally great, too
You can! right click on a tag in the tags list and click Exclude in the popup menu. That tag will then have a reddish colour and craft with that tag won't be shown. If you then click on that tag to view the craft, the exclude rule gets removed so you can see those craft again (you'll then have to re-exclude that tag to hide them again...and I admit, that bit of the UI is a bit clunky, but automatically re-excluding the tag seemed more confusing).
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13 hours ago, Avera9eJoe said:
Hello again Katateochi! I was curious have you ever thought of implementing a folder system similar to Craft History? It would be very nice to be able to sort by tags and folders, and also possibly reduce load times by not immediately loading craft inside folders.
I didn't want to do folders for a couple reasons. a) I didn't want to do anything that would change the stock layout of files, so save that used CM would look and work just the same as a save without it.
b) folders.....they're so....old-fashioned. Folders make sense because paper systems came first, but they're bound by limitations of a piece of paper not physically being able to be in more than one place at the same time. We don't need to be bound by that limitation in computer systems, yet folders still apply that same constraint. Tags are basically folders, but without that limitation; you can have the same file "inside" multiple tags, so the piece of paper can be in more than one place at the same time. You could have a folder for your Launch Vehicles and a folder for SSTOs, but which one do you put an SSTO launch vehicle in? With tags you tag it with both and then can use the inherit way that tags filter to narrow down your search and provide you with just your SSTO launch vehicles, or just your SSTOs, or (using the ability to exclude a tag) show your launch vehicles that are not SSTOs, etc. I honestly can't think of anything that you can do with folders that you can't do with tags.So short answer is I've considered folders, but am unlikely to add a folder structure to CM.
7 hours ago, Friznit said:One way of doing this is create a second save game and store your unused craft on that. Craft Manager let's you transfer across saves, so basically does exactly what you need
Did you also know you can set a tag to be excluded? Craft which are tagged with an excluded tag won't appear in your list unless you click on that excluded tag to view it.
So I always have an "Archive" tag, which is set to exclude. And old designs or abandoned projects get tagged with Archive and then don't show up in the list, but they're still there in your save folder.
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I just took this pic, just with my mobile so it's not great, but it struck me that it was a whole load of moons in one shot....if only they could be seen!
I believe Saturn has 82 moons, Jupiter 79, plus ours.
I'm fortunate to live in a place with almost no light pollution, and on nights with clear skies I get some really awesome sights.
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Totally under appreciated folk! If aliens came and abducted all the sysadmins of the world, businesses and our economy would collapse, govts would fail (even more so) and our very way of life would crumble. (I'm actually being serious, some folk wouldn't even know which way north was without an app and the infrastructure behind it).
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There is a serious problem with this mod, it's almost a game breaking issue.
The problem is that all the parts just look so incredible, have such cool functionality and are just generally awesome that you end up wanting to put all of them on every craft, even when you don't actually need them. You end up designing craft just so they use US-II parts, rather than the other way around!
I mean look at this rover; it could have just had a nice simple stock fuel cell and some LFO tanks, but noooo, that Alkaline fuel cell just looks so awesome, and several of them together along with the hydrogen and oxygen tanks, and all their little pipes and wires and awesome details that just blend together to create some sort of steam-punk retro engine thing. It's a disaster!
But seriously, I absolutely love this mod. Have done since the first version of US and the way it's continued to change and improve is fantastic. It's top on my must-have list of mods. I'm also a big fan of TAC-LS (which is rather lacking in nice parts) and US-II brings some really nice Life support parts and converters to it.
The other thing I really love is the implementation of the parts from DMagic's Orbital Science mod. I still geek out at the animations of those parts.
The attention to detail in this mod is fantastic, beautiful model and texture work along with some really slick animations.
There's just a couple things that I'd like to suggest; Some US-II style solar panels which fit nicely into wedge sections and fairings and some US-II style antenna and dishes with the same sorta slick animations as you've done for the DM orbital science parts. If you'd consider adding those I'd be really happy (and if the dishes included the Remote Tech set of dishes, I'd be ecstatic!). oh...and (sorry, I know I'm asking a lot here), but a US-II style of ISRU drill would also be a super addition.
Anyway, just suggestions. Thanks so much for this mod! -
1 hour ago, fourfa said:
Looks like 1.10.1 fixed this particular issue:
* Fix Mk2 Lander cans open door action being missing.Wait...1.10.1 is out? When did that happen?!
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@Lewie This is my complete mod setup http://kerbalx.com/katateochi/installed_mods
(list is missing a couple things, like scatterer, but what's missing from the list are all dependencies of other mods on the list; ie Spectra will require scatterer)
yeah building this base is not straight forward! I'm planning to do a post on how I built this and also post the couple of rovers I used to help with construction, but that will have to wait till tomorrow now.
But the general idea is chop the base up in the editor into small manageable sections which you can launch and that aren't too heavy to move about, either using EVA Kerbals (with KIS installed) for the smaller parts or with rovers for the heavier parts. MKS has a special docking port that once docked can be "wielded"; you click join on the docking port and the docked ports disappear and the parts they connected to are joined. So for the heavy section I used a low-loader rover (there's a couple pics of it in my post on KerbalX) to move them into place and they were joined with those MKS docking ports. Everything under 6 tons was put into place by Kerbals.
Two sections (the central part and the workshop with a hab module attached to it) where too big for either option. So for those I used Global Construction to build them on site (you package up the section as a DIY kit, fly that out along with some Material Kits and then use a workshop with some engineers in it to build the kit). The workshop bit was added towards the end, was too heavy to move with a rover so used KAS winches to drag it into place and it's joined with docking ports (getting the winches to drag it so it lined up close enough to dock was awkward!)You could package the entire base into a single DIY kit and just fly that out and assemble it from that.....only problem with that approach is the DIY kit for the entire base weighs 95 tons and you'd also need around 82 tons of Materials Kits (plus a workshop part and some skilled engineers, and it'll probably take quite a while for them to assemble it!). That's the easy option in the sense you don't have to chop it up and then re-assemble it on site, but transporting 95 tons to Mun won't be so easy!
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One thing I've always wanted in KSP was a reason to setup a sort of space trucking program. Not just hauling stuff out to other planets, but bringing things back...for a profit.
The stock mining doesn't really provide this, it's just not profitable to transport fuel that's been mined/refined on another planets back to Kerbin, you'd have to transport a LOT and even then, the payoff is pretty slim.
I wanted to have something that could be mined on Mum, or perhaps further afield, that was worth something. So in this career I installed MKS for the first time, and that opened up the options to mine a bunch of other things aside from Ore. "Exotic Minerals" and "Rare Metals" were the two resources that caught my eye. So whistling 'Uranium Fever' from Fallout, and with precious little planning I shot off to Mum to make my fortune mining these Rare and Exotic resources.In my greed and haste I had selected a 2.5m Kontainer from MKS (below) to store my haul in. A quick check showed that one of those full had a value of 2.4 million funds!! WOOOO!
What I didn't check was how much it weighed when full....it was kinda similar in size to a FL-TX1800 fuel tank and they weigh about 10t so surely it'll be in that kinda ball park. I was extremely wrong.
Fully loaded that Kontainer weighs ~85 tons. It was going to take a much more beefy lifter than the one I brought, and a complete rethink about how to get it back home.So, somewhat miffed, I returned to the space centre and this time did some planning. Which is of course always a hazardous occupation in KSP, and I rather went down the rabbit hole on this and ended up with something that's so insanely profitable that it really kinda breaks the game from a funding point of view.
This is Romeo-Echo-Foxtrot (REFinery), a base that mines Exotic Minerals, Rare Metals, Silicates, Substrate and Minerals. It also requires Metallic Ore but that isn't available in the same location as the other resources, so it's mined a few km away and trucked in. Those are refined into Silicon, Refined Exotics, Polymers, Metals and Chemicals, which are then further refined into "Specialised Parts" and "Material Kits". The two building blocks for creating and deploying DIY kits from scratch. And this is the final product.
What is it you ask....
It's a set of KAS containers filled to the brim with Gravmax Gravioli Detectors (1600 of them), which I think have the highest cost to mass ratio of any part. Weighing only 10t it's easy to transport and has a value of...... 14 millions funds!
(note: the containers only have 40 item slots, so originally I scaled the containers down so they matched the volume of 40 Gravioli detectors. But as I was already running into part count issues I went with the larger containers and added a config line in the KIS settings that enabled stacking detectors so I could put more than 40 in a box. That doesn't effect the volume constraints and it also meant I didn't have to drag 400 of them in one at a time!).At it's current level of efficiency this base can produce one of these every 15 days......this base can generate around 364 Million funds per year.
And that's not even running at full efficiency. As I was new to MKS I hadn't understood what the significance of the "Machinery" resource was, and didn't know it effects the efficiency of the converters. So my design for the base only factored in power consumption for mid-range efficiency. I also have some (slightly odd) issues with overheating on the base.
But a quick check suggests that with a bigger power supply and more cooling, I could potentially push the output of this base up to something like 680 million funds per year. I'm not going to, that'd just be absurd! As it is I never need to accept another contract ever again.So from one extreme to another; with this system I'm now generating actually too much money. I was aiming for something a bit more balanced; a good source of off-world income, but not so ridiculous it completely breaks the funding aspect of the game!
I think next time around I will apply some constraints that say that certain resources can only be found on certain planets (ie Rare Metals are only on Dres) and then there will be the need for a more complex transport network and the process slowed down by interplanetary travel time.
I guess in the end the main thing is I had a load of fun designing it. Its way more complex than it needs to be, has stupid details like tracing lights that show "direction of flow" of resources from the drills and has way more storage capacity for the component resources than it needs, but that was an aesthetic choice. It's also fully self sufficient for TAC life support resources and has 6 Kerbals living there, potentially indefinitely.
Building the base was the really fun part though. I chopped it up into small parts, shipped them out over about 14 launches and It was mostly assembled on site by Kerbals (with the power of Kerbal Inventory System) and a couple rovers to move heavy parts around (a few of the really heavy parts were joined with welding docking ports from MKS). All in the base cost just under 3 mil to build and launch, took about 40 Kerbal days to assemble. It then took several weeks to get it up to higher efficiency, but it's already made about 30 mil profit in it's first 100 days since construction began.
I thought I'd share this gold mine process, although I think overall it's too OP and game breaking.
If you want this base, I've posted it on KerbalX, It's also very possible to achieve the same conversion process with a simpler base, but I always get carried away with designs.
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KSP2 EA Grand Discussion Thread.
in KSP2 Discussion
Posted
When I first loaded up KSP (0.16) many orbits ago I was presented with something that was clearly incomplete and buggy, with a rough and strange interface. Yet even though every 3rd launch would be to the desktop, I was instantly hooked. There was the hint of possibility lurking underneath all that incomplete UI which made me want to find work-arounds and solutions to the game's shortfalls. KSP 1 was a new frontier and I think that makes you ignore a lot in the name of exploring something new.
To expect that same "new frontier" feeling from anything with "2" in it's name is folly, so I didn't expect KSP 2 to make me want to explore the game in the same way. But I was hoping for more visual wow, not for my first thought to be to check if it was in ultra-low res because...what's with the font? The UI elements along with the font makes me think of old point and click adventure games from the 90's.
I was expecting issues/bugs, not missing features from things that had become quite polished features in KSP1.
Just picking on two things; action group interface and orbital markers. Those had both been the focus of much discussion, feedback and testing. There was a clear design spec based on years of work and community feedback. Why do we have something (in the case of the action groups) that looks like a place-holder and (with orbital markers) are missing key functionality? It's disappointing.
Trying to stay positive, this as early access with scope for improvement, but....didn't we just do that?