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Welcome to the dev page of "Interstellar Consortium", a collection of ideas and agreements regarding the position of stars in KSP Modding This has the goal of making star planet packs compatible with each other with a simple patch (or no patch at all) at all time without any major problems what-so-ever. Interstellar Consortium (Github) - Explanation of the Plugin Link to the decided stars positions spread sheet Stellar Viewer Github & Stellar Viewer The Original Problem KSP wasn't designed to host star mods at all and it has multiple problems: Just until recently, if you wanted static stars (Not moving stars a.k.a. non colliding stars) you had to create a new central body. This causes a lot of problems with compatiblity and float point errors. Planet packs that had their stars orbiting Kerbol/Sun, could have their SOIs (Sphere of Influences) collide and cause some problems if you wanted to go interstellar Light of Kerbol/Sun is infinite, so it lights up every planet in the whole game regardless of distance Most of the problems can be fixed now, like the infinite light problem. And this is where Interstellar Consortium comes into play Interstellar Consortium Interstellar Consortium will be a series of small patches or decisions between modders to fix these problems and provide a stable interstellar experience by not having a central body put neither have stars moving. For this, there will be a map describing the position and SOIs of almost every star in KSP modding and a new unit of measure for interstellar distances. In the technical part, the stars will still be orbiting Kerbol/Sun and won't require important patches, but will be static to avoid collisions by changing the orbital period of these. The Unit and the Map The new unit for interstellar travel was decided upon looking at an optimal distance at which KSP will still hold up without major glitches. The unit will be called/shortened ki (Kerbal Interstellar or something like that) and will equal 1e+13m which is close to 0.1% of real distances compared to real life and 1% of what it should be in KSP scale This was decided for gameplay balancing (Interstellar travel takes time and making these distances longer could be damaging), some realism (Still far enough to feel as a far away target where to go in the future) and glitch-avoiding (Greater distances can cause float point errors and make returning to the home world bad) The map itself is very simple: A central point to consider it the "center of the galaxy" and Kerbol/Sun but with some requirements for the stars so to make everything compatible: The minimun distance recommended between two stars should shall be 2 ki - A bit short of what Proxima's distance would be with this unit. The max SOI radius should be 1.2 ki - With this, no SOIs will collide and will avoid some major glitches and gameplay flaws The recommended SOI for Main Secuence Stars should be 0.8 ki - This part is entirely albitrary and it's just a recommendation. From a star, the closest stellar companion has to be further than its SOI No star should go farther than 15 ki from the central point in the plane of the "galaxy" and no farther than 4 ki in the normal axis Kerbol/Sun will be at coordinates (10,0,0), being X and Y in the plane of the "galaxy" and Z being up and down - Leads to a feeling of lonliness on the outside and a feeling of crowdness towards the inside Star Clusters (Looking at you Dawn from TWB) can have their own stars as close from themselves as the author wants, but has to ensure no star of those are closer than the minimun distance with a external star Multiple Star Systems count as a single star system The current map has enough space to host 80 to 100 stars which is already a lot and should last for a long time before require of another galaxy or widening of the current one Claming of spaces Of course if we dont decide on the places the stars are, this whole consortium wouldnt make any sense. For that, I've created a small sheet on google with a top-down and side views of the whole map/galaxy (At the moment it doesnt provide the oribit output which will be the actual "orbits" of the stars for the packs, but I'm doing the math) To claim a part of the map just comment with the coordinates (X,Y, Z) you would like your star to be and make sure to follow the rules previously mentioned. And if you want to claim more than 2 systems, please don't claim all to be very close to Kerbin/Sun, that would be very sad for all of us and could damage some planet mods. (Higher class stars like F, A, B... could be nice to have a bit more space out to preserve a bit of realism regadring stellar class proportions) Also, I'm not the only one that would judge the claims. This has to be a consortium after all, a decision made by all of us. To put your star in the correct place, just put its period at a very high number (9e+50 is a good number) and put as the orbital parameters the ones calculated in the spreadsheet (Todo) System Modify Mods A lot of planet mods center around changing the stock system to a brand new one. These changed systems could also serve as a different start point in the map, moving the rest of the stars accordingly to make the effect succesful. This would mean that, for example, you could start in the GPP system but the map wouldnt change. Kerbol/Sun would still be in the same spot and his neightbor stars would still be the same This would require the IC mod part to bundle the Stock System cloning data and have the System Modify mods to move every star to the correct locations. (This could be eased with a proper orbit calculator or a custom plugin to ease things) Who are you to say these things As a disclaimer, I have done a star system of my own and have talked with different planet modders about this and we came to the comclusion that this would be a very good fix to all compatibility issues and at the same time be fun to explore (It's Kerbal Space Program after all, it's meant for rockets and spaceflight) For the moment, I'm the only contributor to the spread sheet and mod aspect (To be done), but I have talked, again, with people about this and they might come on-board to help with the organization of this map. Participant Planet Packs The Worlds Beyond Alternis Kerbol Rekerjiggered Seven Worlds of SLIPPIST-1 Whirligig World Rocheworld Event Horizon Galileo Planet Pack Gameslinx Planet Overhaul Before / After Kerbin Other Worlds Reboot Hope you liked the idea, the read, and the english mistakes I probably have done - Niako