Domfluff

The new stuff is on Nertea's Github, but it's not released formally yet (or supported) and is liable to break or change with no notice. I don't know if Nertea appreciates linking directly to it from here, but it's a quick Google away.

This kind of decision is always an odd balancing act - perhaps it's best to have the default behaviour being whatever you think is best, but the "USI patch" brings this into line with Roverdude's mechanics? Similar to the logic that Roverdude's reactors become the more complex Near Future reactors when both are installed - Nertea's reactors are more explicitly modelled, so there's a logic in making the simple reactors more complex, rather than gutting the complex ones, or having two vastly different reactors with essentially the same output, but different mechanics.

Sweet!

Osprey is the Space:1999 Eagle-like craft?

Sorry, both base parts have a Ranger Power Pack to transmit EC (they can transmit and receive power, even with no Plutonium. Power comes from the NF reactor.). There's also a ground radiator behind the horizontal strut. The power pack, drill and geothermal radiator are all attached to the side of these - you can just see the tops of these behind the MPU.

Shot from last night, just thought it looked pretty. Minmus early research base, three launches so far (base, crew, lab). Base was delivered remotely and KAS-constructed in-situ. Crew vehicle has a tiny orbiting hab module for the return trip. Lab was delivered as a DIY kit, and has a PDU and local warehousing. No actual scientists yet, that's the next trip.

Yup, (assuming bringing this into line with USI is the goal) mass should be reduced whilst deflated, with the interior mass (chairs, fittings, etc.) kept outside in the form of Materialkits. In the USI parts, these resources are expended by the inflation process - so the a 1 ton deflated hab consumes 7 tons of Material kits, leaving an 8 ton inflated hab.

Quick worked example of a KRV, which is more than capable of the Kerbin-Duna-Kerbin crew transfer, with supplies and hab time.

With the new values, tried a fairly minimal 4 Kerbal Duna hab arranagement: Which also fits very nicely into a 3.75m expanded fairing (Fairing from SimpleAdjustableFairings - basically the KW Rocketry ones) So, yeah, happy with those values. The centrifuges are pretty heavy, so it's possible to have a less massive solution than the above, but not necessarily with the same form factor. Is the plan to have these expanded with a payment of Materialkits, as per RD's inflatables? Something like that seems sensible, since you'll need to kit out the inside with something (chairs, beds, laptops, ping pong tables, etc) - and it would be nice to use the same solution.

- Rigid hab stats all look great to me. - Inflatables seem a little bit higher than they should be, but not by much. You could make the case for a fudge factor of sorts with the rounded corners (domes and round shapes enclose a lot of space, but some of that space is wasted, since you can't build all the way to the corners. I'm assuming the plan is to use the USI Animation module to inflate these? (Material kits to kit out the inside, in line with the MKS inflatables). I'm not sure what formula RD uses for this, since the values seem pretty arbitrary on the surface. - Centrifuge multipliers seem fine to me at first glance.

The Storm Cellar is going to be a challenge - since Nertea's radioactivity mod is currently still WIP (I believe), then neither Nertea nor Roverdude have any radiation mechanics right now (Roverdude has talked about it in a more abstract sense - basically a lifetime limit on spaceflight). Three options spring to mind: - 0 bonus months, some amount of multiplier (it makes long duration space missions more palatable - this a "comfort" thing, insofar as "not dying of radiation sickness" is a comfort thing"). - Just making it as an overly heavy, poor hab module, keeping future functionality in mind. - Using the "Medical Bay" Colony Supplies mechanics to push back the hab/home timers for kerbals in that part. Option three does mean that you may have actual reasons to send Kerbals into the part from time to time. I do still think the centifuge parts should be heavy multipliers, since artificial gravity is so important for long duration missions, this is in spite of how Roverdude models it.

That's amazing.

I do like the volume-based assumptions in the spreadsheet. I was still a bit sceptical of the outcome - the Sunrise hab from the spreadsheet gives this 5 (bonus) + 1 (for the four seats) kmonths, or 90 days for two kerbals in a Soyuz-like arrangement. The longest duration spaceflight in a single craft (two men, Soyuz 9) is 18 days. I suppose that works with scaling though - (Scaled-Kerbin time, 72 days (18 x 4) is close enough to 90 days to work). So... yeah, that'll do fine, I think I assume the inflatable/expanded parts will use a similar Material Kits cost as Roverdude's inflatables. I wonder if this is necessary for the smallest of them? It's certainly a nice price to pay for their convenience and additional The Greenhouse figures I have weren't producing all that more than the USI one. I do think there's room for intensive, dense-farming methods (and indeed Kale ) which would give this a real place. As before, I appreciate the work. Nertea's work is beautiful, so having it also be functional is really important.

A couple more thoughts: The original USI-LS docs had these as guidelines: //Suggested settings are based on part mass for consistency. // //For dedicated hab parts (no other generators, etc.):// Kerbal Months should equal mass * 5// ReplacementParts = 100 * crew capacity + 100 * Kerbal Months. ////For parts that act as hab multipliers (dedicated or bundled with other functions/converters),//a multiplier equal to the tonnage works well.////For recyclers, their percentage should be mass / crew capcity (i.e. the UKS Pioneer Module at 3.75t = 75%)//at crew capacity 5. Increasing crew cap should result in an increase in mass.//i.e. a 12-crew recycler that weighs 7.5 tons should have a recycler percentage equal to 7.5 / 12 = 62.5%//Recyclers require (per crew capacity) 0.2 EC and 0.000002 ReplacementParts with a cap of 75%.//If water is used as an input (0.0002 per crew capacity) the cap can be extended to 90% I think a lot of the formulae and balance fudging have changed since then. I believe the default BaseHabTime is currently 0.25 kmonth per seat. That means the above "Soyuz" arrangement would have 1 kmonth base hab time, so 2 Kerbals = 15 days. If this had +1 additional kmonth bonus, that would mean a 30 day hab time for 2 Kerbals. The above part mass is 1.25 tons (which seems okay to me). I could easily see this having a kmonths bonus equal to mass (+1.25 kmonths) (Hitchhiker pod is 2.5 tons and provides 21 bonus kmonths. The issue here is that the mass of the Hitchhiker pod has always been a bit weird). In general, I'm not terribly happy about the idea that kmonths scale with mass. Volume would seem an awful lot more sensible to me.

@Wyzard - I really like the Kontainer mounts. Two 1.25m Kontainers also fit nicely side by side in a 2.5m stack (e.g., in a stock payload bay) - having a similar exposed mount would be great as well.

I'm just reading through the configs now - I suspect all of the basic "Rigid Hab" section could easily be 1/4 or even 1/5 of the total hab time. The small inflatable habs certainly seem to have a good ratio over the rigid ones, but again the inflatable ones could be reduced significantly. One thing that is worth bearing in mind is that the bonus hab time is then multiplied - so even the larger ones ("Hostel", etc.) will in practice have hab multipliers - that probably implies that the hab month bonus should be reduced across the board. When I was working on a similar project, my core assumption was that hab month = "living space" and hab multipliers = "things that make living more comfortable". Outside the scope of most KSP mods, but a cabin would grant you bonus months, whereas a restaurant or pub would give you hab multiplication. That means that in practice, hab multipliers are windows (Cupola, etc.), but they could also be considered for the centrifuges - I would suggest modelling the centrifuges primarily as large multipliers, and the rigid structures as bonus months. This means that there's mechanical incentive to mix the two on a large vehicle, rather than just whichever is lighter or looks cool. The problem with that line is that this isn't what Roverdude does with *his* centrifuge, which is a reasonable critique. The 2.5m inline Greenhouse (PPD-F412M) is the same footprint as Roverdude's Nom-o-matic 25000-I, and produces a little more for a little more power... it's also three times the mass, and I can't see that as being worth doing. There's probably room for a similarly massive greenhouse, with intensive hydroponics, but you'd want more food output to match. I'm not read up on the difficulties of hydroponic vertical farming, so I don't know if a linear multiplication (i.e., 3x mass = 3x output) would be appropriate here, but it might be. Same problem obviously applies to the 3.75m greenhouse. Will post some more if I notice or think of anything. Not life support, but the logistics modules (e.g. PPD-CRG-1) seem to be carrying a lot less than the apparently smaller Kontainers. PPD-CRG-1 carries 2000 Ore, and the 2.5m Kontainer (approximately the same length, slightly less diameter, since it's not a cylinder) contains 3200 Ore, with the usual relationship with the other goods. I'd expect the PPD-CRG-1 to carry the same, or slightly more - especially since an empty PPD-CRG-1 is 2.5 tons, and an empty Kontainer (2.5m) is 2 tons. Having said that, good work on the LS patch You can balance and tweak endlessly, but getting the core of it up and running is huge.

Initially, this seems good, but I'll keep poking the actual figures. At first glance, I'm very suspect of the small hab module: Was looking at this with the intent of a Soyuz-style arrangement, hab, capsule and service module. The way Roverdude has balanced USI-LS, the Mun is accessible without life support or hab space (since you can easily get there and back within the default 15 day grace period), but Minmus is outside that. I think I'd be happy if the above granted something like 30 days of hab time for two Kerbals, but this is almost a full year for a single Kerbal. I'll poke the figures some more when I have some time. Hab parts are incredibly useful, and there really aren't enough of them, so these are much appreciated.

Oh, 100%, and I'm not asking you to account for Nertea's mod - but the (presumably) too-dense Kontainers combined with being free zero-boil off makes them by far the optimal choice for advanced propulsion, to the detriment of the whole. That's a shame, since the two mod suites both add tons of value to KSP, and complement each other nicely. Especially since Nertea's started producing 5m and 7.5m rocket parts, so delivering large mass bases becomes a lot more elegant. +1 vote for Wyzard's PR, basically

The issue is that the Kontainers are (now) so much more efficient than the NF tanks, that any USI+NF ships are much better off only using the Kontainers - the difference is that big, and compounded since the Kontainers don't boil off/need cooling. I believe this is something that changed a few versions back in NF - where Nertea had the tanks at double density or something similar. Could be wrong about that. Fully support Wyzard's PR here.

Another concept art. This one was from The Mars Underground, so it's the Mars Direct hab modules, which the Duna Modules are aping. The main difference is that the Duna modules are a lot smaller (these would be 5m parts at least).

Not sure the cooling tower makes sense, but it definitely screams "factory". Quite like the onions, mind you

Polish radio station The nice thing about that is it does give an idea what a bunch of similar modules together would look like. Whether that's the intended aesthetic or not is a different story. Quite a nice pattern for a geodesic dome. Again with the things-connected-to-earlier-modules look: Getting away from domes:

Really like the petal-like details on this one, more interesting than a plain dome, certainly The piled-regolith look might be hard to make work in KSP, and might make everything look mostly like hills. I could see a solution like ART though, for abstracting digging into the surface. The below looks very plausible insofar as how you'd get it to the surface, but doesn't gel with the existing MKS stuff quite as well, and will be a bit top-heavy. A model constructed for the Mars society - greenhouses look a lot like some of the artwork previously. These are clearly Mars direct inspired, so are a smaller scale than your intended end-game stuff. Still, it's more content.

Underground (or covered in regolith) certainly makes more sense, but I wonder if the issue with doing that in KSP (i.e., having parts which look half-buried) is mostly that they look weird when used for other purposes - which does hurt the whole lego-rocket aspect. Carter Emmart was the artist that Zubrin references in The Case for Mars. Full sequence: To satisfy my "High Frontier" boardgame urges, having an Engineering module look and feel like an actual factory would be huge. I'm not sure which of the various processes (e.g. basalt spinners) would be good to ape though. The third image above I think is the most suitable for MKS, since you can see how the smaller (Tundra) modules would interact. Again, domes seem to be the common theme. Wide, flattened circles, domes and half-cylinders.