[1.12.x] Heat Control - More radiators! (August 22, 2021)

[Nertea]

So, this mod near-future update scope:

• Wraparounds:
  • Add 0.625, 1.875, 5m wraparound radiators
  • Make wraparound radiators switchable to 1x/2x/4x heights (probably?)
• Static high temperature radiator fins:
  • Remove medium, large, x-large high temp radiator fins
  • Make all fins surface attachable so you can lego them together like the static microchannels
  • Make tiny radiator fin model switchable to 1x/2x/4x/8x lengths (length means extending away from the craft)
  • New small radiator fin, approximately 4x the width of the tiny, 1x, 2x, 4x lengths
  • New medium radiator fin, approximately 2x the width of the small, 1x, 2x, 4x lengths

Probably mock up some models this week. 

[Rakete]

@Nertea It's your favourite bug reporter again.

 

 

Bug report - Type: visual, Severity; minor

The Beta-Radiators glow red, even if the loop is still cool due to not yet activated Reactor core:

In this loop: 4 Beta fins and one small kerbopower fission reactor. As soon as you turn the radiators on (once reached space), they turn red hot, even if loop is at 3K.

Testvehicle for reproduction: https://www.filemail.com/d/tzwtzwxdwqasywj - Bug concerns loop 0.

 

 

25 minutes ago, Nertea said:

 

• Static high temperature radiator fins:
  • Remove medium, large, x-large high temp radiator fins

Which ones are planned for removal ? Can you tell a list? So that we know, not to use them anymore, if we don't want to break the craft in our main save.... 

Edited August 23, 2021 by Rakete

[Nertea]

25 minutes ago, Rakete said:

In this loop: 4 Beta fins and one small kerbopower fission reactor. As soon as you turn the radiators on (once reached space), they turn red hot, even if loop is at 3K.

 

That's not really my fault, that's the stock glow thing, they're still working as stock radiators, removing stock heat and heating themselves up. 

26 minutes ago, Rakete said:

Which ones are planned for removal ? Can you tell a list? So that we know, not to use them anymore, if we don't want to break the craft in our main save.... 

Beta, Gamma, Delta. But they'll be soft deprecated for ages so don't worry. 

[jefferyharrell]

32 minutes ago, Rakete said:

The Beta-Radiators glow red, even if the loop is still cool due to not yet activated Reactor core:

1 minute ago, Nertea said:

That's not really my fault, that's the stock glow thing, they're still working as stock radiators, removing stock heat and heating themselves up. 

You're supposed to be able to turn that feature off by disabling thermal highlighting in the game's "General" settings, but it doesn't actually work in my game. Setting thermal highlights to off doesn't seem to do anything.

 

 

[Rakete]

32 minutes ago, Nertea said:

That's not really my fault, that's the stock glow thing, they're still working as stock radiators, removing stock heat and heating themselves up. 

Beta, Gamma, Delta. But they'll be soft deprecated for ages so don't worry. 

Alright then. Than it's kinda a stock bug, as there was no heat to dissipate. I "love" the stock heat system (sarcasm) and its weird effects. Your SH is sooooo much better! But that they still remove the old heat is good - please keep this feature. Especially for trips to Moho or Kerbol.

 

Beta, gamma, delta... so we are talking about the static grey ones. yeah, they are kinda weak anyway and were useless for almost everything bigger than a small fission reactor, because of the bad heat rejection values (except converters, where they did a good job).

Maybe you could provide some a bit more powerful static aerodynamically shaped nice and sleek looking ones? Something like the old betas but with more heat rejection? Also: maybe some additional graphene microchannel panels in smaller sizes. They are great (esp. when they glow, i love them) , but sometimes an additionnal smaller size option of them would make sense in order to create visually pleasing crafts.

Anyway, really looking forward to your first drafts/mockups, if you like to share them here / in the dev threat.

 

Soft deprecation means what exactly?

Edited August 23, 2021 by Rakete

[Terrestris]

15 minutes ago, Rakete said:

Soft deprecation means what exactly?

Will be hidden from the parts list in VAB, but existing craft remain intact until Nertea decide to remove those files.

Edited August 23, 2021 by Dr.Lxweei

[Rakete]

1 minute ago, Dr.Lxweei said:

Will be hidden from the parts list in VAB, but existing craft remain intact until Nertea decide to remove those files.

Sounds plausible... Thanks.

[Nertea]

40 minutes ago, Rakete said:

Alright then. Than it's kinda a stock bug, as there was no heat to dissipate. I "love" the stock heat system (sarcasm) and its weird effects. Your SH is sooooo much better! But that they still remove the old heat is good - please keep this feature. Especially for trips to Moho or Kerbol.

There is though, your ship's parts have temperature above 0K because of ambient heat etc. So the radiators are pulling all that heat to themselves! Why? Who knows!

43 minutes ago, Rakete said:

Maybe you could provide some a bit more powerful static aerodynamically shaped nice and sleek looking ones? Something like the old betas but with more heat rejection?

Just so you're clear, heat rejection values depend only on two things: surface area and loop temperature.  More heat rejection would just mean bigger ;).

I'm not really sold on dedicated aerodynamic radiators. It may be a little hard to see, but see what I did here?

This is 8 MW of radiators - more in atmosphere due to convection. A little hacky because they don't get occluded so 'realistically' it is only 4 MW. In my opinion if you want truly aerodynamic radiators that aren't just kinda... fins, you should build them yourself out of wing and surface mounted radiator parts like this. More dynamic and varied static options will accomplish this without the need for me to sink time and resources into it - it will allow catering to more users than configurations of aero radiators I can realistically make. It also looks sweet.

 

So to that end this is the set of footprints proposed for the fixed radiators of the three size classes (tiny, small, med). The purple small box at the front is 1x1, the size of the small KSP structural panel (some existing HC radiators shown as well as a 1.25m fuel tank for comparison). You can see that this should give a lot of flexibility in placing on surfaces like wings or trusses, or using as fins. 

56 minutes ago, Rakete said:

Also: maybe some additional graphene microchannel panels in smaller sizes. They are great (esp. when they glow, i love them) , but sometimes an additionnal smaller size option of them would make sense in order to create visually pleasing crafts.

Perhaps, but that's out of scope for now. Going to try to do smaller pieces of updates for now.

[Spaceman.Spiff]

14 minutes ago, Nertea said:

So to that end this is the set of footprints proposed for the fixed radiators of the three size classes (tiny, small, med). The purple small box at the front is 1x1, the size of the small KSP structural panel (some existing HC radiators shown as well as a 1.25m fuel tank for comparison). You can see that this should give a lot of flexibility in placing on surfaces like wings or trusses, or using as fins. 

Is that…. An inline radiator??

[ra4nd0m]

So these bad boys are going to be usable for ascend stages? Finally!!

It seems my dream of eve ascend stage powered by a NSWR is finally came true.

 

Edited August 23, 2021 by ra4nd0m

[Nertea]

17 minutes ago, Spaceman.Spiff said:

Is that…. An inline radiator??

No, it's just a fuel tank for visual scale ref

[Rakete]

12 hours ago, Nertea said:

There is though, your ship's parts have temperature above 0K because of ambient heat etc. So the radiators are pulling all that heat to themselves! Why? Who knows!

Just so you're clear, heat rejection values depend only on two things: surface area and loop temperature.  More heat rejection would just mean bigger ;).

I'm not really sold on dedicated aerodynamic radiators. It may be a little hard to see, but see what I did here?

This is 8 MW of radiators - more in atmosphere due to convection. A little hacky because they don't get occluded so 'realistically' it is only 4 MW. In my opinion if you want truly aerodynamic radiators that aren't just kinda... fins, you should build them yourself out of wing and surface mounted radiator parts like this. More dynamic and varied static options will accomplish this without the need for me to sink time and resources into it - it will allow catering to more users than configurations of aero radiators I can realistically make. It also looks sweet.

 

So to that end this is the set of footprints proposed for the fixed radiators of the three size classes (tiny, small, med). The purple small box at the front is 1x1, the size of the small KSP structural panel (some existing HC radiators shown as well as a 1.25m fuel tank for comparison). You can see that this should give a lot of flexibility in placing on surfaces like wings or trusses, or using as fins. 

Perhaps, but that's out of scope for now. Going to try to do smaller pieces of updates for now.

Seems like a good plan. doing kinda LEGO stuff is alright. Hope they are forcewise robust enough to withstand the aerodynamic forces when put on wings as shown in the picture (unlike the fragile graphene ones). And yeah, i have to admit, that I like streamlined looks also in space, even if not necessary.  So i tend to streamline even orbiters; at least some sort of. Personal visual freakiness :-D

but this are 4Mw of cooling? Am i blind? How many of which kind  have you stacked there? It is some kind of hard to see. :-)

Edited August 24, 2021 by Rakete

[Nertea]

5 hours ago, Rakete said:

but this are 4Mw of cooling? Am i blind? How many of which kind  have you stacked there? It is some kind of hard to see. :-)

There are 24 Beta radiators (4 on each side of 3 fins) at 60 kW each.

Which doesn't add up. Hmm. Maybe actually discovered a bug somewhere because somehow that manages to cool the engine!

[Rakete]

20 minutes ago, Nertea said:

There are 24 Beta radiators (4 on each side of 3 fins) at 60 kW each.

IRL putting fin-style radiators like the betas on flat a surface would reduce their cooling ability to half, as one side is blocked and can't emitt IR radiation and is not cooled by convection in atmosphere.  but that's okay for me. A game has to meet some compromises. 

 

Yeah... 24 Betas sound a bit few for 4 MW.  You 'd need 67 Betas for that plus some powerful energy source to power all those betas, which also needs a cooling... a whole lot to stick somewhere.

Edited August 24, 2021 by Rakete

[Rakete]

18 hours ago, Spaceman.Spiff said:

Is that…. An inline radiator??

A powerful inline radiator thingy would be gorgeous. 

Edited August 24, 2021 by Rakete

[Basesixty]

Are there any plans to add a radiation shield to this mod?

[Terrestris]

I guess reuseing existing assets from FFT Frisbee engine to make a 5m radiator truss (switchable length) is not a bad idea. 

[Nertea]

On 8/24/2021 at 1:52 PM, Basesixty said:

Are there any plans to add a radiation shield to this mod?

No, this mod does not involve ionizing or particle radiation, only thermal longwave.

7 hours ago, Dr.Lxweei said:

I guess reuseing existing assets from FFT Frisbee engine to make a 5m radiator truss (switchable length) is not a bad idea. 

It's never going to happen :/

[Basesixty]

Alright I just thought it may look cool  

[Gordon Dry]

Is this bad?

[WRN 02:14:00.644] Warning on PartSubtype 15 on module ModuleB9PartSwitch (moduleID='sizeSwitch') on part radiator-microchannel-fixed-2: Could not find matching module
[EXC 02:14:00.645] Exception: Could not find matching module
	B9PartSwitch.ModuleMatcher.FindModule (Part part) (at <2aacd5f344de4b4cbd0690767697fdd6>:0)
	B9PartSwitch.ModuleModifierInfo+<CreatePartModifiers>d__10.MoveNext () (at <2aacd5f344de4b4cbd0690767697fdd6>:0)
	B9PartSwitch.PartSubtype.Setup (B9PartSwitch.ModuleB9PartSwitch parent, System.Boolean displayWarnings) (at <2aacd5f344de4b4cbd0690767697fdd6>:0)
	UnityEngine.DebugLogHandler:LogException(Exception, Object)
	ModuleManager.UnityLogHandle.InterceptLogHandler:LogException(Exception, Object)
	UnityEngine.Debug:LogException(Exception)
	B9PartSwitch.PartSubtype:Setup(ModuleB9PartSwitch, Boolean)
	B9PartSwitch.ModuleB9PartSwitch:InitializeSubtypes(Boolean)
	B9PartSwitch.ModuleB9PartSwitch:GetInfo()
	PartLoader:CompilePartInfo(AvailablePart, Part)
	<CompileParts>d__56:MoveNext()
	UnityEngine.SetupCoroutine:InvokeMoveNext(IEnumerator, IntPtr)

Edit:

see https://github.com/post-kerbin-mining-corporation/HeatControl/issues/43

Edit:
fixed https://github.com/Starwaster/RealActiveRadiators/pull/4

Edited December 11, 2021 by Gordon Dry

[SciMan]

So, I've been frustrated at just how many radiators I need to put on my craft when using multiple of the high-tech "torch" type engines in FFT, so I've been trying to make a double (or even 4x) scale static rectangular microchannel radiator so that I can reduce the part count of my craft (I'm holding the physical stats of the things in-line with the scaling, so mass, power consumption, and heat rejection are all being increased proportionally, no free lunches here).

However, I seem to be unable to do so using just a ModuleManager patch. Looking into it, it appears that I'd have to have my patch run AFTER the SystemHeat patch that makes all these nice radiators play nice with the FFT engines, and I'm aware of how to do that.

However, what I'm not aware of how to do is how to edit the values of the fixed microchannel radiator variants that are available thru B9 part switching. It seems to me that I'd have to delete and re-write the entire B9 part switch section of the config file, which seems like a chore when I'm only interested in changing the numbers on maybe 5 lines of the patch.

I thought I had a good handle on how to make MM patches, but apparently my knowledge (or the features of MM itself) fall short on this kind of thing where the value you actually want to edit is deeply buried inside a sub-node of an actual PartModule.

Any thoughts? I want to basically be able to say "Okay, in the B9PartSwitch part module, for all these "subtype" nodes, I want to take the temperatureCurve inside that subtype and edit the 2nd value of the 2nd key to be 4x as much as it is right now" but I don't want to have to re-write the whole dang thing to do that, if that's possible.

I'm going off of the ModuleManager guidelines and nothing in them says anything about editing things that are several sub-nodes deep inside the part module itself.

[WhatALovelyNick]

@SciManuse TweakScale.

But do not forget about TS Companion Program. I know, that @Lisiasis working hard on the upcoming FFT-PKMC addon. 

[Mossconfig]

Having radiators that could be tweakscaled to provide adequate cooling without ballooning part counts would be ice, but near future mods have very janky tweakscale compatibility. I'm not holding my breath.

[Lisias]

6 hours ago, Mossconfig said:

Having radiators that could be tweakscaled to provide adequate cooling without ballooning part counts would be ice, but near future mods have very janky tweakscale compatibility. I'm not holding my breath.

NF has created new PartModules that need to be supported, and this is what I'm working on - but this can take a while, because in order to scale something, I first need to understand it, I can't just scale every Field and expect it to work , as some Fields should not be scaled (and some just can't) and finding these sometimes is more trouble than scaling the part itself!  

In a way or another, it's going to take a bit more time than one would like. Use a scuba.  

Edited November 17, 2021 by Lisias
tyops!

[Mossconfig]

18 minutes ago, Lisias said:

- but this can take a while,

No, I'm not blaming you, I'm just complaining generally. Nertea likes to do their own thing, write a new mod that does exactly what is needed, which is probably great for that specific use case but compatibility with others isn't really a priority.