Tristavius

I am not experiencing the reported problems with the Alcubierre drive - I can do Micro jumps (especially with action groups) without any difficulty. Could be a performance thing? What kind of specs are having problems?

How far away is your ship and with what type of receiver? When you say it doesn't connect to the relays, are the transmitting station(s) in line of sight? Basically it will only use relays if it has to - if it can see the station directly it will simply use it. If it needs to use relays it will use the minimum possible - the worst case scenario I ever saw for relays was being on the night side of Jool which was on the far side of the sun from Kerbol when the transmission station was on the night side of Kerbin and that only took 3 jumps (to a Jool relay with LoS on the sun, to a sun relay to a Kerbin relay with LoS on the station). Power tails off for a number of reasons, primarily distance and line of sight. I recently tried an experiment with a single mid-sized receiver (the non-moving hexagonal) jumping directly away from Kerbin towards deep space. The receiver was kept pointing directly at Kerbin. By Duna's orbit it was down to 63% of it's original power received. By Dres it was 4.5%, by Jool 1.1% and by Eeloo 0.7%. I also know from another craft that a single large receiver (the fold out hexagonal one) when it reached Jools orbit directly out from Kerbin was getting about 34% which is clearly a few superior performance. These values of course would only apply to a planet when it is at it's closest approach to Kerbin. Been meaning to do some more tests here anyway so I will try and do so soon and publish the results for small and large receivers.

You're right, sorry - typo on the text (the excel equation shows it correctly as a division). Corrected now.

The ISP of Thermal Rockets is taken from a combination of three factors... firstly the reactor temperature (not it's thermal output - see tooltips). If your thermal rocket is connected to a thermal receiver rather than a reactor the ISP is about 866. ISPs will be lower in atmosphere (sorry I haven't done the maths yet on how much so). Finally, the fuel type may change the ISP as well. Liquid fuel is the baseline ISP*1.0, all other fuels that I have seen are lower for example LFO = ISP*0.6. The thrust a thermal rocket is capable of is determined by.... 1) Thrust = Power / (0.5* ISP * 9.81) - Power is in MW and is the total thermal power coming from the reactor or thermal receiver. - The 9.81 comes from the gravity at sea level on Kerbin/Earth - does not change as far as I can tell. - The 0.5 comes does not change. 2) Multiply the answer by 1000 to get it in kN like most thrust ratings in KSP. 3) Finally multiply the answer by the fuel being used. Liquid fuel is again baseline at Thrust*1.0. LFO as an example is Thrust*3.7. An Excel equation if it's any use... =((THERMALPOWER/(0.5*ISP*9.81))*1000)*FUELMULTIPLIER

Out of interest what are those radial solar panels in the picture?

I too have been playing with thermal rockets a lot more the last 24 hours. I must admit I didn't really understand the wiki the first few times I read it but it's starting to make sense now. If I'm right, then the following may be helpful.... ISP 1) The ISP seems to be set by the temperature of the attached reactor (not the thermal power or output or anything like that, just the core temperature). This is evident by it not changing based on reactor size and input power; a thermal rocket attached to a fission plant will have the same ISP regardless of if that fission plant is putting out 5mW or 9000mW. The hotter the reactor, the better the ISP. 2) In the case of thermal receivers (which of course are NOT a reactor but can still power a thermal rocket) it seems to set the ISP rather low, in fact it places it lower than an un-upgraded fission reactor at 866 ISP. This makes a thermal receiving rocket slightly more efficient than a NERVA powered one. I guess this is for balance reasons; you can have a very high ISP rocket but you have to haul around all the power plants and other gear or you can receive the power to keep everything nice and light but you have only about the efficiency of the stock interplanetary engine. 3) As well as being effected by the core temperature, ISP is also effected by atmospheric pressure... using in atmosphere will have a much lower ISP. A thermal receiver on baseline liquid fuel goes from a bit over 866 in vacuum to around 347 at the KSC. It does rise quite rapidly - just a couple of thousand meters and it's way up. 4) The thrust available is a combination of two factors, the thermal power available and the ISP. Basically the more thermal power just can pump into it, the more thrust you can achieve. This means ships receiving thermal power especially can have enormous power - though thrusting at above around 7000kn usually shatters the thermal receiver and breaks the craft. Fuels can also be used to increase the thrust - LFO by 3.7x! All fuels other than liquid have a lower ISP. 5) A high ISP actually lowers your thrust. With fission reactors this means the upgraded versions actually give a slightly lower thrust (all be it by a tiny number). For fusions the upgraded version will still be better; the loss from ISP doesn't get rid of the gains from the extra MW's. What does suffer are anti-matter reactors which loose a significant amount of power once upgraded. For a thermal receiver this ISP is so low anyway you get a LOT of power to thrust to play with.

Model wise I think the following... A short 1.25m liquid sized about like the FL-T100 A medium 1.25m liquid sized about like the FL-T200 A tall 1.25m liquid sized about like the FL-T800 A short 2.50m liquid sized about like the Rockomax X200-8 Would also be interested in some gas-looking tanks similar to the stock Xenon in larger sizes.

Interesting, what you were saying really didn't seem to fit what I was experiencing so I decided to check my installation. The modulemanager file was missing (must have removed during a mod purge), which I didn't think was needed anyway really. Well, I reinstated it and now oceanic collection appears to work and I now have several new options for my intakes! Very interesting that some stuff will work without it but not others. Hmmm... wonder if this may even solve those other bugs I reported!

Okay, the splashdown thing sounds plausible. Maybe if I scene change or something... will give it a shot shortly! The various methods I tried we're all landed in the ocean on chutes so they *should* be splashed. The refinerys were certainly part submerged. Still not sure about the Argon though. The sensors do show a good concentration of it in the atmosphere - certainly a lot more than Hydrogen and I can scoop that!

Hey guys, finally decided to delve into resource gathering and have a couple of questions... 1) The ISRU refinery doesn't seem to want to work for anything other than UF4/ThF4. I have deployed several into Kerbin's water and none are giving any extraction options. I have made sure they are well powered, well in the water (the sensors work and detect the water composition) and that the appropriate storage for what I want to extract is available (with every combination of fuel lines!) I have tried deep water and shallow but still no options to extract anything else, not even any good old water which you'd think would be practically flooding in the door! 2) Not having much luck with the Atmosphere scoops either! On Kerbin I am able to get Nitrogen (useless?), Oxygen (seems to become Oxidizer) and a tiny quantity of Hydrogen. Based on the atmosphere composition and the wiki entry I was also expecting to see some Argon in there too. I have tried various altitude and scoops making sure I have the tanks but still nothing! I want to do some Laythe sea harvesting and try some Jool atmosphere scooping but if I can't get the prototypes to work on Kerbin I'm reluctant to spend the energy taking them further afield! Cheers!

Watching this with interest... at the moment I have need for custom sized tanks for various fuels (including non-stock stuff from Interstellar). A simple good looking set with a choice of trim colors could be exactly what I'm looking for if you make them look good!

Additional Info (hopefully this stuff helps with the bug tracking!)... A new reactor was added. The reactor had been turned off in the VAB and never active. On initial docking it did NOT add it's power like the other offline ones did. After leaving the scene and later returning it is now incorrectly applying its power. I tried turning off the 1 remaining online reactor and the transmitter now only transmits a tiny amount, which I think is from the 'cool-down' period the reactor is currently undergoing. All offline reactors now don't seem to apply power.

Further to my previous bugs, I have researched a bit further and it seems other people have also reported similar things since. Just for extra detail/clarity... On a station with multiple fission reactors and generators I have 3 reactors on shutdown and 1 active. Despite three being offline the transmitter is successfully drawing the full online power from all four, as long as the generator attached to each offline one remains on. If the generator is turned off, that power plant no longer adds to the total. The Power Management display reads a current supply of only 1 reactor yet a power demand of all 4, showing a huge deficit to the net power. The issue with an inline refinery refusing to reprocess the fuel from some of them while time warping remains. The issue with a solar-only sun station transmitting all it's Electric Charge and becoming uncontrollable also remains. When the transmitter is triggered it takes a big chunk out the Electric Charge (I have plenty of batteries) then proceeds to use up all the mega-joules before then returning to and using the remainder of the Electric Charge. I know the mod isn't really designed around using just panels so maybe this is 'working as intended'. I guess the ideal behavior would be for it to only draw excess Electric Charge and leave the stored energy alone. Or maybe a toggle on Gigantor panels to choose between getting your energy in Electric Charge or Mega-Joules format?

Bug Reports Didn't see a specific place for these so here we are... 1) The first is kinda hard to pin down as an example. I have a large transmission station in LKO which can have up to 12 3.75m reactor/generator combos plugged into it via ports at any one time, all of which have arrived at different times. When I'm trying to reprocess the fuels from Fission plants using the inline refinery what I think it's doing is processing until one has been refueled at which point it seems to stop. This may only effect time warping as I was able to refill a couple of the less degraded ones in real time last night. Sorry, I know this is more than a bit vague but it's quite hard to understand what it's doing - will try and test further later. 2) I deployed a station is low Kerbol (sun) orbit yesterday. It is primarily just a large bank of gigantor solar arrays which that low to the surface actually provide a decent amount of energy each for any interplanetary missions blocked from Kerbin. It does have a generator and reactor but I designed them to be switched off most of the time and only come on when it needs to move itself. The problem is when they are off and I'm transmitting energy it doesn't give the DC Systems priority and actually drains all the Electric Charge, rendering the station uncontrollable. Same if the generator is left on. Finally, a parts request: I'd love to see a small radial single solar-panel like microwave receiver (probably a bit larger but nice and low profile). I would guess the penalty for such a convenient part would be a very poor surface area and thus range, below even the Small Receiver. Once again, many thanks for all the hard work on the mod - having played a year of vanilla KSP I was beginning to run out of ideas and Interstellar has really revitalized it for me!

Loving this mod! Talk about opening up a whole new side to the game. I usually avoid new parts packs as they often seem totally unbalanced or unnecessary but I'm really glad I finally tried this. It took me a whole day of just having ships on the launchpad to work out most of what was going on - and I haven't even started on mining/refining yet. The Alcubierre drive initially sounds very over powered - it generates fuel easily and basically for free and you can skip around all over the system in seconds but actually it's NOT by any means OP. The fact that you still maintain your velocity and direction relative to Kerbol after you jump means some potentially huge Delta-V burns. As you begin to understand how to utilize this you can begin to use it more effectively and by altering your position then using Kerbols gravity to slow down or speed up you can begin to do some very low delta-v transfers = but at the cost of it often taking almost as long as a Hohmann. Anyway, a well thought out non game breaking addition either way. Three things I would like to see however! 1) Get rid of the god-awful massive power button on the right hand side! Consider making it a lot smaller and movable like so many others do (Alarm Clock, VOID, Protractor etc) or better yet integrate into the Toolbar API. 2) Would it be possible to integrate scanning for resources into Kethane - I think it has an API for doing so if I remember rightly. It currently has a superb scanning system! 3) Can we have a slower warp speed? The slowest is still way too fast for maneuvers around smaller bodies (Kerbin even!) An option for a 10th or even better a 100th of the currently slowest would be superb and would actually allow for precision jumps.

Have always loved this site... I update it even though I rarely post on the forums anymore. I also use flags generated from here for every mission I do. On that note, there's some stuff I'd really love to see on the flag generator that aren't there at the moment... Ship Icons for: Rover, Aircraft & Multi Part Beyond that, it'd be cool to be able to enter a line of text or two (something I do anyway myself, but it'd be even easier to do it at this stage!)

Yeah that's understandable! You clearly put a ton of work into this stuff and it's good that you take pride in what you're doing. Wasn't meaning to be critical, just honestly felt it was a shame that, at least among my very limited circle (and thus maybe not reflective of the whole community), this approach is reducing usage of this mod. On saying that I'm sure when you do your next big release we'll all be scrambling to built more FusTek stations again!

Always loved this mod but it's a shame to see no official release since 0.21. I think I'm going to have a crack at the developer version tonight. The unfortunate truth however is that a lot of people look for the 'updated' version after a new patch, even if the patch is literally just a 'checked for new patch compatibility - all okay' type deal. When dealing with so many mods a lot of people don't have the time or inclination to go in and read often many, many pages of often contradictory advice over whether the mod still works - that [0.XX] in the thread title is the primary indicator of if it works or not. By the time something is two patches out of date it's kind of hard not to think of it as dead, even if lots of cool stuff is actually happening in developer mode. The worst thing as a software developer is having to stop your new development to update old version for compatibility - it sucks pure and simple, yet I think it's a necessary step if the new version won't be ready fast. Don't mean any of this to sound critical, it just seems like many of the people I KSP with (well, not 'with', but trading stories and screenshots etc with) seem to have moved away from a superb mod due to that [0.21] remaining in the title and as the last 'official' patch. If everything still works fine that's great - update the version to reflect this. If it doesn't, well, as much as it sucks it may be better to get a compatibility release out if the version currently being developed isn't ready imminently.

Okay, I think that's everything clicked into place. So for any individual body, it's 0° Longitude of the Ascending Node was the point of the body facing in the (lets call it 'A' for arbitrary') direction at UT 0. Makes sense. Now I just need to work out the maths for how people are working it out at specific point in time; my next challenge!

Hard to know which would be better, but I think diomedea raises a valid point in that having to constantly manually change the units would be a real pain. I think your solution to be able to toggle between the 'default' rounding and 3n lower will solve more or less any situation I personally can think of. I can't see someone working in Gm needing meter level accuracy for example. In fact, the main use for this whole thing I suspect will usually be people working at km scale who need the information in m. The button is good for now... I don't think adding more is a good idea though, it does already look a lot more 'cluttered'. Thanks once more!

Yeah that's the conclusion I'd come to. I think the First point of Ares refers to a particular star (or constellation) that used to be at a certain position during the Equinox. Over time of course the movement of stars will have changed so I think the term is now 'out of date'. So if in the real world we have a fairly arbitrary direction, where is that direction in KSP and how can it be worked out for the various bodies?

Hi All, I've been spending the last few days trying to teach myself a lot of the maths/science that goes into KSP. I think I now have a handle on most things that effect the game (starting with ISP, TWR etc and working my way up) and I'm now happy what each of the six orbital elements that make up an orbit are and how they relate to each other. I am however struggling to get my head around part of the Longitude of the Ascending Node which is the use of an Origin of Longitude. I understand what the LAN shows, but not how to acquire the Origin of Longitude itself. A lot refers to the First Point of Aries, but I believe this is no longer a relevant terminology. Further reading show it has to do with the Spring/Vernal Equinox and where the Sun (or Kerbol) would be at the spring Equinox. In the sun's case this seems to be round about Mexico? That only makes things more confusing though... does Kerbin actually have an Equinox as it has a non-eccentric, non-inclined orbit?! This also wouldn't account for how it's measured on, say, Dres. In short, I suspect I'm missing something big here; something isn't clicking into place. Have read the articles available from the most obvious places and I'm still banging my head off the desk. Can anyone offer me more or an explanation (both real world and KSP)? Much appreciated.

The extra precision seems to be working great! Was able to use it to fine tune some satellite orbits. Did exactly what I need, thank you! The current implementation works just fine with the decimals, but if I was being really pedantic I would suggest that instead of changing the decimal places it would be even better to instead be able to toggle between units of measurement (Mm, km, m, etc), perhaps each with 2 decimal places. Meter scale with 2 decimal places is probably the smallest realistic value anyone would ever need in the game I imagine. Perhaps as well just to keep the UI looking sleek, would it be possible to click on the line of text to toggle the precision rather than have the buttons? Again though, both points entirely minor cosmetic things, what you've implemented is great

It's like me own private update! I shall get testing after work today and pass on any feedback but the way you've implemented it sounds superb actually. As I said before, rounding is the better option in 99% of circumstances but just occasionally someone will need the extra precision and usually only on 1-2 figures. This will allow us to do so without turning everything into a total mess. Sounds like a sensible idea... can't think of many/any circumstances where the high rate of change will benefit us mere mortals... would be nice to see something a little smoothed out. Intrigued! *waits*

Loving this mod... I always wanted a lot of the information it provides, especially recently as I've had a big focus on building precision GPS arrays and so forth. Never wanted to install Mechjeb though as the temptation would always be there to let it do the work which is something I'm 100% determined to avoid doing. As others have suggested, a customizable HUD display would be the next big step in my opinion, though I appreciate that's got to be a lot of work. The other thing I'd like to personally request is a bit less rounding of figures (or an option to toggle this)! Again when doing very precise work recently I came across things like trying to get a semi-major axis as close to perfect as possible, but it was rounded to the nearest kilometer when I really needed meter level detail. I guess a toggle would be the best option for this as rounding is much easier to read for day-to-day usage. Keep up the good work!