Chris_W

To bring this up again.. The code does seem to need only a few changes to work again in .23 .. does anyone feel up to this? Has to do with vectors and camera focus.. I know quite soe people know a lot about that stuff.. It would be somewhat cool if we could revive this.

Could you please do me a favor? Go back one step in the history and make it so that you leave the cameras after one cycle again. Binding the default ABORT KEY (Backspace) to your only way to "get back to normal view" is a really BAD idea. Thanks, a guy who just lost a mission halfway through, only to be able to leave camera view.

Would you mind releasing the Launch Towers separately? I don't care at all for all the other parts, and the folder structure is somewhat unconventional. It'll take hours to reduce the mod to just the towers by hand. My KSP can't handle the full mod anyway, just too much stuff in there.

Could you please attend to a - to me, gamebreakingly serious - bug? Whenever a winch releases a cable that carries a part like the magnet or the connector port, so the [docked] button appears, it will reset your throttle to zero. Whenever you retract the cable so it snaps in position again, or hit the dock button manually, it will again set your throttle to zero. For Helicopters, VTOLs and other atmospheric crafts this means you die instantly. The winch should not touch the throttle at any time, or interfere with your craft's steering. Also, any part not defined KAS-useable by default, that you set to ge grab-able or storable in a container, will get miniaturized to about 2x2 pixels. See TAC Self destruct, or try making a Kerbpro from HullCamVDS storable. They end up too tiny to target or use.

[edit]So sorry, I take everything back. I actually was tired enough to save some designs that were never built after all. Those ants are surplus and have to go, you're right! I blame Foamy, while I still can [/edit] For all those who asked, I never saw the Apollo 18 movie, so I don't know what it's about. Quick search just now told me it's supposed to be some horror sci-fi flick.. no clue. Nothing to do with my project. One of the guys in chat asked me, if I were to reenact the Apollo program, if mine would have an Apollo 18 in it, since the real one didn't. So of course I said yes, and well, this was it. I'm not stopping at 17, hopefully will get a 20 underway soon.

I literally studied the whole Saturn V / CSM / LM design down to the very electrical wiring design charts to make this as accurate as possible. Even the LES Tower works and puts you (if used pre-launch) ~600m away from the rocket. The only things I could not reproduce were the S-I B center engine cutoff and the interstage fairing rings. Not without ruining the design looks. Even the antennas and lights are where they were in real life, according to various blueprints of the crafts after Apollo 10.

As much as I'd like to help test stuff here, It would break playability for me at this point. I'd have to setup a new clean KSP install without other mods for it and.. well, I'd not touch that a lot. BioMass, to me, is an addon to support other mods. It should not exclude their use. "Units" are there for user convenience and all of KSP along with its mods use that to provide e.g. batteries that hold 100 units instead of 1 billion, or fuel tanks that hold 200 units instead of 10000. This helps in rocket design as well as keeping an eye on your resources in-mission and also helps keeping math a bit away from the user by giving him simple numbers to work with. Don't get me wrong, this is not about "the resource biomass", which is unique to this mod and thereby completely free. But cross-mod stuff like CO2, O2, Water and the like? A lot of other mods use those resources. You're probably breaking compatibility with TAC LS, KSP Interstellar and a lot of others as well there by redefining resources used in quite a few mods, while those authors agreed on thisnthat density for thisnthat resource across those mods already to not dictate that "if you use a, you cannot use b". Using arbitrary numbers there is the worst thing one could do in respect to people running multiple mods. Those mods pretty much are your target audience for that matter, since they hold the userbase screaming for more stuff like greenhouses to support their epic long-term missions. At least I thought you were aiming to fulfill that demand with BioMass. Redefining the resources those mods use breaks compatibility and puts BioMass out of the picture as a solution for their fans. If I'm a KSPi fan and want something to be able to produce food and oxygen for KSPi spaceships, I won't deinstall my favourite mod just to get it. Same with TAC LS. Same with everything else. I don't bring this up to annoy you or anything, I'm just saying that you handle a major design decision there on an arbitrary level as if it were not important at all. Which could lead to severe complications I don't want you guys to run into. Even if it's only for testing purposes and for the moment, it already dictates your testers would have to setup an own KSP install only for this testing, because using other mods or existing saves will break resource definitions big time - narrowing down your tester base by a lot.

Thanks! And yes, the takeoff and docking is like 10 pictures long, how did you miss that? ^^

So you just broke TAC LS compatibility completely? Seriously, you're driving this into a wall at increasing speeds. Please take a step back and check your heading. Requiring Kethane. Using and redefining resources used by other mods that Biomass is thought to enhance, not break. Adding more and more required parts that make crafts actually using Biomass enormously load-heavy and high-part-count. Stop. Look around. Reconsider. I liked this mod, but not if it keeps going down that bad road. You're destroying useability and compatibility right now.

I think it's time I contributed this here.. Kerpollo 18 in 72 images ..enjoy!

Actually, Seanth, we could make the difficulty setting a .cfg thing, methinks. I think I could come up with a solution once you tell me what .. let's call it "production rate" should be in which difficulty. The user then could just copy his favourite difficulty folder over the biomass folder, thereby overwriting the part cfgs with the new production levels. If you check out the most recent balanced spaceport modification I made (still a WIP but works fine already), and think of it as the medium difficulty.. how much easier / harder should we make it on the other settings? If I knew that, all it would take were some cfg changes that I could do via the "time" variable in there. Like.. easy mode could run the reactions/growth at 1.5 times the speed, while hard would use I dunno.. 0.75 times the speed. Would that be an idea? We'd have to find a nice setting for medium (aka standard) tho.

@Ferram: It occurs in flight, and indeed the crafts behave as if there were no wings attached. I don't know what causes it, but in ... .2 this did not happen, only just recently with the .3 at the end version. Maybe it's something about the tweakables returning a zero value? Divide by zero usually gives NaN afaik.. The VAB log seems clear of errors. Flight Scene

Exactly my take on things, too. Still, some processes have been so slow the user would have to spend hours sitting there, watching, while others, like food production, were absolutely through the roof. It makes no sense waiting a long time for 500 grams of sugar to be produced while that other greenhouse grows 500 pumpkins a day. I don't see how using all of them is cheating however. On a mission to Jool or other far places, you need all the lifesupport you can get. If we can make it feasible to take some greenhouses out there so you don#t have to watch your mission elapsed time that carefully.. why not? With the amounts I used the best you can get out of it, with part count still being reasonable, is a slight food production of 1-2 units per day overhead and try(!) to keep O2 and CO2 along with water levels from dropping too fast. If you're perfect, you can achieve balance. Takes a whole lot of math though. I see it as a reward. Learn about it enough and you actually can create natural balance on a spaceship. I'll try to list how I went about it. One unit is a daily Kerbal ration, production rate is per day. Kerbal (in TAC LS) -1 Food, -1 O2, -1 Water = +1 Waste, +1 CO2, +1 Wastewater Eco Greenhouse Photo: -4 Nutrients, -2 CO2, -all light = + 3 O2, +1000 Biomass, +2 Wastewater Resp: -500 Biomass, -0.5 O2 = +2 Water, +0.5 O2 Biomass Greenhouse Photo: -4 Nutrients, -2 CO2, -all light = + 2 O2, +2000 Biomass Resp: -500 Biomass, -0.5 O2 = +1 Water, +0.5 O2 Food Greenhouse Photo: -4 Nutrients, -2 CO2, -all light = + 0.5 O2, +1000 Biomass, +4.5 Food Resp: -500 Biomass, -0.5 O2 = +1 Water, +0.5 O2 MicroBiome -1 Wastewater, -0.125 O2 = +12 Microflora -1 Waste, -0.125 O2 = +12 Microflora -100 Biomass, -0.125 O2 = +12 Microflora and -6 Microflora = +6 Nutrients, +0.125 CO2 The varying rates are from different plant types inside the greenhouses and should make it more fun to specialize production. I excluded the Seeds here for a reason, namely the formula already being rather complex on one hand, and the part count of a station not growing excessively on the other. If you have to build a huge station to produce all of the resources, you still should be able to dock large ships so they can pick up those resources you produced. Compressors/Reactor/in-situ engineering: I went over it to make it more plausible. You don't just compress O2 into Oxidizer or compress Hydrogen into fuel on their own. Likewise, you only get a small amount of Xenon out of a lot of resources. Putting Biomass into the equation brings elements like N and ammonia into the equation that you need to produce usable fuels. It also is a great way to create waste products for occasions where you just don't have enough Kerbals around or are not using LifeSupport mods to begin with, which was a point I really missed. It wasn't independant at all, now it can be a little. Atmospheric Separator: Like I said, Lifesupport mods already have those things, no need to double up or "make a more OP version" or anything. Because you know people will say this. Koylent Maker: I totally like this idea, fun parts! I'd use BioMass instead of Biocake. Again, too many resources around already, let's not puzzle the users. Composter: That is basically the MicroBiome. Bio Containment Study: Provides science points Biological Systems Study: Provides science points Station Hubs: Their role is sort of evolving ..aye, took care of that. Check it out. Hm. Yes, I understand that having this idea seems great and complex and shiny at first. But do you really want to write a piece of software that is so complex that a user has to rely upon understanding tutorials to use it? KSP is about "grab the stuff, make it work somehow, launch it into space, enjoy".. so I tried keeping things rather simple and let out a few details, or used stuff like biomass and nutrients in a much broader role (instead of seeds for instance). I'm afraid this is a point where mods lose their first big chunk of users already. Look at Bargain Rocket Parts for instance.. so very simple, so much enjoyment inside. Noone goes "but this wouldn't work" or anything. Its pure fun, but it still teaches you you need fuel for that rocket, or how to get the mass right. Biomass could be just as enjoyable as a kid's first fishtank. You set it up, watch what happens, pour in some food (Nutrients, CO2), maybe turn on the lights, and watch it grow while learning the dependancies and having fun. Wouldn't that be a more desireable goal? Seeing it as an experiment that you can have fun with and learn stuff at the same time? It can, and it also lets you set up reaction chains such as photosynthesis. If light is missing in the equation, the whole thing does not happen and only respiration happens.

A thought on things.. Could you separate antenna and lights in the filter? Your antenna power usage values are really high and considered always-on, which they never are. I like including a lot of them as well as a lot of lights to make things look nicer, it would be really handy to know what happens if you just leave all the lights running.

Using the latest version, I'm getting a lot of errors when I use any winglets on the bottom of a rocket and disable all control directions via tweakables. It keeps saying lift is NaN in flight for every winglet over and over, happens every time. I usually do this since my designs are stable enough to be controlled through a single gimbaling inboard engine, enabling the winglets to move would just make them less controlable. Example design (Parachute test craft)

They do have a lot to do, so Roboto was fine with me updating it for .23, as I did in the main thread. I also asked permission to rewrite it since I found a lot of it outdated with .23, and have been doing so since I got the go-ahead. He and the other BioMass guys still get the final word on things, is why I posted the first working suggestion here in development instead of in the release thread, so they can evaluate what I'm up to and make up their minds about it.

Some news from the "core redesign" front here.. I managed to revamp all of the BM stuff that's on Spaceport at the moment. Right now my core BioMass pack contains: * 3 resources .. BioMass of course stands for sugars and plant fibre. MicroFlora stands for useful bacteria, Nutrients are made by them from waste products and water. All of them are treated as near-liquid in state, since Nutrients now also include the water plants need. I had to change density of BioMass to make it possible to work with smaller numbers that make container sizes appear more game-like and ease up the math I had to put into all this. We're now just moving around more at once if we look at 1 unit. * MicroFlora Experiment .. takes bacteria into space to study them. This unlocks prior to any other parts of the mod. .. I also rewrote the science results. * Plant Life Experiment .. takes plants into space for study. Unlocks second, and just before you get the greenhouses. .. I also rewrote the science results. * Supply Tanks .. 2 small and 2 large tanks for both CO2 and Nutrients, unlocking with Survivability already. You don't need them, except if you plan on speedy specialized production of one resource only, then they can hold extra resources usually produced by Kerbals or bacteria. Also they are useful for resupply runs in case you miscalculated something. Greenhouses can collect light from built-in artificial lights (using up electricity) or sunlight (opening the shutters) or even both and are researched after the experiments. They come with 3 different collections of plants inside. * Food Greenhouse .. photosynthesis (using up light, CO2 and nutrients) gives you edible fruits and plants (aka food), some oxygen and some biomass. .. respiration (always happening, tiny amounts) gives CO2 and water while consuming biomass and oxygen. * BioMass Greenhouse .. photosynthesis (using up light, CO2 and nutrients) gives you some oxygen and lots of biomass. .. respiration (always happening, tiny amounts) gives CO2 and water while consuming biomass and oxygen. * Eco Greenhouse .. photosynthesis (using up light, CO2 and nutrients) gives you lots of oxygen, wastewater and some biomass. .. respiration (always happening, tiny amounts) gives CO2 and water while consuming biomass and oxygen. The greenhouses all can store whatever they produce, with more space for the things their plants specialize in. They also hold a small "starter kit" of CO2 and Nutrients. Usually a set of 2 BioMass, 1 Eco and 1 Food greenhouse can support up to 4 Kerbals near(!) indefinately, provided you use some Lifesupport mod part that turns Wastewater back into clean Water (TAC LS can). New models for them are in the works and looking extremely promising. ALL production levels have been somewhat reduced. Users can now watch for a minute and see slight changes in numbers, but will not end up having produced 300 days worth of food for instance in a single hour. Production rate of food is about 5 units per day, so with 4 kerbals around you have exactly 1 unit overhead left per day. I kept overheads small on purpose, it just feels more realistic. * MicroBiome .. this cultivates bacteria for the greenhouses. They feed on Waste or Wastewater or BioMass, whatever happens to be around will be used and speed up bacteria production. As they grow in number, some also die over time while producing Nutrients for the plants. The whole lifecycle uses up a tiny amount of oxygen and sets free some CO2. Usually one container per greenhouse is enough. Note that plants now create BioMass, while bacteria and plants both consume a portion of it. This is meant to symbolize plants and bacteria dieing and growing back and creates lifecycles. If the bacteria are not supplied with waste products properly, they will die and Nutrient production will stop, causing plants to decay next. If BioMass reaches zero and nutrients reach zero craft-wide, all plants are considered dead until you resupply. With this it is now possible to build greenhouse stations/bases, relying either on occasional resupply runs or a gardener being around (producing waste products and CO2 while caring for the plants). * Station Command Hab .. a habitat module made for 4 Kerbals to build your station or ground base around. It has controls, can be used to store science results in and looks really cool. Can create crew reports, too, which is nice for low orbit stations that pass over a lot of biomes on their orbit. * Station Supply Hub .. basically the same design, but without a glass dome for observation. Offers space for a lot of storage as well as one Kerbal, possibly the gardener of a station or base. No control features in here, no science storage or crew reports either. Main idea here being to reduce part count on your stations by holding a lot of stuff that usually is put in dozens of containers in one central place instead. * BioReactor .. this thing, once turned on, creates either LiquidFuel or Oxidizer using algae and bacteria. It is a slow process and uses up ElectricCharge, BioMass and a little MicroFlora (which decays in the process). Byproducts are CO2 and Waste, as well as Wastewater, yet in tolerable amounts. (Can supply your bacteria!) The production rate is slow, yet can be feasible for larger stations so they can supply the crafts visiting them once in a while. New model for this is in the works. * Gas Compressor .. true in-situ engineering at work, this thing can produce Monopropellant and XenonGas through compression and mixing of gases. The compressor runs on ElectricCharge and is able to turn LiquidFuel, Oxidizer and BioMass (requiring all 3) into either a moderate amount of Monopropellant or a small amount of XenonGas, giving CO2, Waste and Wastewater as byproducts of the process. The production rate is slow, yet can be feasible for larger stations so they can supply the crafts visiting them once in a while. New model for this is in the works. I also looked over the things you have in the Science+ pack, and noticed how much you relied on Kethane for most of the new things. I see two roads ahead now - either I can try to include basic functionality of the added parts, but without requiring users to use Kethane for them, or I could just call it a day for "BioMass Basic" and we could call the rest "BioMass Kethane Expansion". Personally I prefer to keep the core separate and the "plus pack" to just use it as a foundation. Let me know if you have more ideas, comments or questions on the whole thing.. I'll have to wait for the new models before release anyway. If you want to check it out using the old models, here goes. Known bugs: Animations and colliders are broken, some of the models don't have collision set right and are wobbly, some look bad, some have problems with attaching. (Guess why I'm getting new models for all this.) I lacked the source of the old DLL so I made everything work with the help of TaranisElsu's TAC converter instead of coming up with an own way of doing the exact same thing. The old BioMass DLL is not needed anymore. Math does all the stuff now. I did get TE's permission for use and he has his source on display in the lifesupport thread. Converter and resources included in zip file.

From my work with BioMass and TAC LS so far I fully agree that we need a clever resource handler. Some thoughts on things: Flow modes I just had the thought "why not leave this up to the designers of the craft". Idea being, a Tweakable that specifies a priority - or a variable in the part.cfg. Priority could be twofold, for input and output. A command pod would for instance hold.. Oxygen - Input prio 10, output prio 1 (first to store, last to give away) CO2 - Input 1, output 10 (first to give away, last to store) Whereas a greenhouse would beg for CO2 and give away oxygen. Some canister somewhere on the craft could let the user decide how important it would be and default to 5. Locking certain containers should still be possible as well (emergency batteries for instance that you unlock by hand later). Activation Current stock model makes no sense whatsoever. I'd like to be able to specify if I want an on/off switch and the state the switch should be in on load. Some things better start activated already. Other things I'd declare always active, like bacteria growth, without a switch. Also resources should prevent the reaction from ocurring if they're not available and specified as vital. Sometimes you can still get things happening with one resource less, just at a lower efficiency. Output Specifying what output should be generated is tricky sometimes. Came across this when handling the bacteria from BioMass.. they "feed" on waste products and they generate two other products. One of them they should always generate, just because they exist onboard. The other one should be governed by the input. So what I'd like here is a method to say "this depends on efficiency, this does not and is always generated". Units I'd very much like to be able to specify "units per time" more efficiently. Allowing to specify an amount and a time would greatly ease things. units = 1, time = day.. much easier to handle than "0.0000117 per second". Update time scaling Other than the obvious, a given amount of time between updates per reaction would make the whole thing more enjoyable. If something creates 1 unit per day you most likely want to reduce it every 6 hours by a fraction if it is food, yet by a much smaller amount and every second if it is oxygen or electricity. Even Kerbals are not permanently eating.. their microbacteria in the lab on the other hand don't have much else to do, so they sure are. Just my two cents on what I experienced thus far, might not be much but.. may help thinking.

This is a known KSP bug, has to do with resources and modules not being handled correctly and breaking the info popup. I'm on it, might be a short while tho. Other mods are experiencing the same thing.

Another bug I found is in the animations. I don't really know how the animated bits of the greenhouses work, much less the reactor one, but they need to be checked out a bit. Greenhouse has issues with IgnoreCollision "both colliders need to be activated when calling IgnoreCollision". Reactor gives me weird behaviour when first activating it. Also, MaxAmount = 0 seems to set the value for a resource on an entire craft to NaN and throw out an error spam. I set it to 1 and updated the zip, since this is kinda gamebreaking.

Getting this in VAB, spams the whole ting. Current version, the last error in my mod setup.. any idea? Seems to happen when I work on staging.

For me, it still does 240mb of compression on some mods I use. It's not saving anything on squad's side though.

seanth: I found not only the resources to be off, but also the experiments stopped working. Fixed Spaceport version Changes: 1 annoying typo in the small experiment fixed ("perfrom experiment") Both experiments are collectable on EVA and repeatable again Biomass base greenhouse inflatable.. thingy lacked tree integration - done Resources made the same TAC LS uses (had different densities) O-RadialLong lacked Techtree integration - done The bug with the hubs is about to be shot down, it's a glitch on resources without modules. Modulemanager will tackle that. Sit back and enjoy.

Well, the ship was a) mk1pod, standard fuel tank, standard T45.. and the Kerbal X.. I dunno..

still is spamming NREs with the 07b version.. take a look at this But the window shows up now, that's good