[1.12.x] USI Core (Reactors and Kontainers)

[Starfire70]

<looks at USI's nuclear reactors> <looks at solar panels> <looks back at the reactors and smiles evilly>

Screw solar, my bases and colonies are going nuclear from here on out. No more of this 'Insufficient power - shutting down' nonsense.

Not to mention this makes exploring the outer planets soooo less painful.

Seriously, Roverdude, it was bad enough when I was spending spare time thinking up more efficient rocket designs, NOW it's not only rocket designs but bases and colonies. Lotsa love! I'll be re-designing munbase alpha for the next 5-6 hours if you need me.

 

[RoverDude]

Glad you dig it

[Tokamak]

Aside from the user facing sides of your mods all being quite good, it appears that USIAnimation seems to be just the thing for making an inflatable part, with handling for changing crew capacity and whatnot. If I am going to take a dependency on USI Tools, can anyone tell me what is the appropriate way to go about it? Should I just note it as required and leave it at that? I know most mods that use Firespitter bundle a copy of the dll, but I'm not sure if that is a special case or not.

[WuphonsReach]

On 7/23/2016 at 8:49 PM, Starfire70 said:

<looks at USI's nuclear reactors> <looks at solar panels> <looks back at the reactors and smiles evilly>

Screw solar, my bases and colonies are going nuclear from here on out. No more of this 'Insufficient power - shutting down' nonsense.

I run a trio of IX-8219 ion engines (I think from Near Future Propulsion), powered by a 1.25m reactor, on my deep space probes.  Gives 9-10k dV at a whopping 0.10 TWR.  Those engines draw 45 EC/s and it's really hard to get that power out of anything else.

<3 the reactors in USI

[RoverDude]

NEW VERSION FOR KSP 1.2 IS UP!

Also - if you want to grab the entire USI Constellation in a single zip... head over here:  https://github.com/BobPalmer/USI_Constellation/releases/

0.3.0 - (KSP 1.2)
------------------
All Kontainers moved to the Logistics division (to support new category icons)
All tanks now have a standard crash tolerance of 8m/s and are set to stock dry mass / volume ratios.
Corrected volume of the containers (no more kontainers of holding)
Dry Kontainers and Tanks now have five more resources - Silicates, Silicon, RefinedExotics, Organics, and ColonySupplies.

[goldenpsp]

29 minutes ago, RoverDude said:

NEW VERSION FOR KSP 1.2 IS UP!

Also - if you want to grab the entire USI Constellation in a single zip... head over here:  https://github.com/BobPalmer/USI_Constellation/releases/

0.3.0 - (KSP 1.2)
------------------
All Kontainers moved to the Logistics division (to support new category icons)
All tanks now have a standard crash tolerance of 8m/s and are set to stock dry mass / volume ratios.
Corrected volume of the containers (no more kontainers of holding)
Dry Kontainers and Tanks now have five more resources - Silicates, Silicon, RefinedExotics, Organics, and ColonySupplies.

One bug.  The new Kontainer tank-flat don't have the buttons to change cargo.  They have buttons to change texture but they remain the standard white.  A number of kontainers are missing their small icon textures.

 

Edit- actually a large number of tanks are missing their change cargo buttons.  FYI.

 

 

 

Edited October 11, 2016 by goldenpsp

[RoverDude]

hmm... I'll take a peek.  And those white ones do not have changing labels.

[goldenpsp]

Just now, RoverDude said:

hmm... I'll take a peek.  And those white ones do not have changing labels.

NP I'm just looking through parts before I have to run out the door.

[MarcAFK]

Nyancat, seriously Rover?

Is that just something you added to the constellation? Anyway I just wanted to mention I'm trying it out, any specific issues I have I'll make sure to post in the correct thread. Apart from  the USI constellation it's going to be an all stock career mode.

[DStaal]

35 minutes ago, MarcAFK said:

Nyancat, seriously Rover?

Is that just something you added to the constellation? Anyway I just wanted to mention I'm trying it out, any specific issues I have I'll make sure to post in the correct thread. Apart from  the USI constellation it's going to be an all stock career mode.

You seem to be using Module Manager as well...    (Nyancat's from there.  It will disappear in a couple of weeks - typically it only shows up on experimental builds, or if summoned.  In this case, it's marked until the end of the month.)

[DStaal]

BTW, on a different note:

With the new ability to transfer the mass of a Kontainer into it's parent part, would it be possible to get Kontainer variants with a built-in docking port (even custom) and balanced RCS ports?  I like the idea - and as I've mentioned, I'm throwing Kontainers around Kerbin SOI fairly regularly at this point - but since the ability to transfer mass only works if it's a lone part, I can't see much use for it at the moment: If you have to build the Kontainer into your ship anyway, why use a truss?  Just use the Kontainers as the backbone of your ship, and the problem the feature is designed for basically solves itself.  But if you're attaching/detaching the Kontainers, that's a different story.  With one docking port and RCS built into the Kontainer I can build my minimal tugs to load up an expedition ship, and bolt the Kontainers onto the side.  (Ok, I'd prefer two docking ports - but I know that's not possible in KSP.  And note I'm not asking for control or anything else - just the minimal to dock and maneuver them.)

Real life shipping containers have the equivalent of docking ports built in to hold them in place, so it's not unrealistic. 

[ZaeRoe]

for some reason the nuke parts don't load. KSP just hangs at this point in the start-up loading screen (nyancat still floating around and the nice messages are still changing). any ideas?

 

EDIT: not only happening with these parts, but with many IVAs of other of your mods too (Karibou, HERP, AES, Viewing Copula of LS...)

Edited October 21, 2016 by ZaeRoe

[Tarheel1999]

3 hours ago, ZaeRoe said:

for some reason the nuke parts don't load. KSP just hangs at this point in the start-up loading screen (nyancat still floating around and the nice messages are still changing). any ideas?

 

EDIT: not only happening with these parts, but with many IVAs of other of your mods too (Karibou, HERP, AES, Viewing Copula of LS...)

That's not a universal problem. Make sure all your mods are updated and you are not running out of memory. Also make sure that all your mods are properly installed.  You should not have any nested folders.  If that doesn't  work include your log files in the next post. 

[ZaeRoe]

@Tarheel1999 thx, but it's alright now. after a lot of work and even more patience I got it to work. I de- and reinstalled all mods (47 right now ) and ran the steam overhaul on KSP, restarted KSP and went for some coffee and a cigarette and there it was.

Seems to be a kind of initial start up problem with 1.2 of ksp. I haven't played it for a while now and all the updates were too much on first start afterwards. since it occured outstandingly often at the mods of rover, I thought it was his work. as it turns out - it wasn't

[Tarheel1999]

@ZaeRoe glad you got it sorted. 

[COL.R.Neville]

how do you cool the reactors or do you need to. and dont say radiators cuz they dont seem to work. 

[Tarheel1999]

19 minutes ago, COL.R.Neville said:

how do you cool the reactors or do you need to. and dont say radiators cuz they dont seem to work. 

You don't need to cool them to zero but you do need to cool them. The part info in the VAB tells you roughly what you need. And yes radiators work. 

[COL.R.Neville]

k tried a bunch of different ones guess the one i had wasnt working or something ive got it now thanks. 

[DStaal]

Also: The reactors actually need to heat up when you first turn them on - they don't work efficiently at ambient temps.  Normal behavior with enough radiators is for them to heat up their working temperature (1000K, I believe) and then stop heating.  If you under-spec your radiators they'll continue to heat up.

If you aren't seeing that, could you show us a pic of your ship?  There are some subtleties to how radiators work.  (Passive radiators only cool nearby parts, for instance.)

[COL.R.Neville]

yeah ive got a pair of fuel tanks above and below to help suck some off and its 900k it runs best at. I had the radiators directly on the reactor dont know what was going on there since they should have been able to handle it with one much less the 4 i had on. so you cant cool it below 900k i was having to load it up try to keep the same power setting and put into space then come back install the radiators put it back up again. and wasnt seeing the numbers change. so cranked it all the way turned the radiators off then turned them on with a different set and it seems to be working now. 

[RoverDude]

Be sure to turn the radiators on.

[AmpCat]

Don't suppose there's any chance the Kontainers will be able to support Snacks!? Would be nice to have a few containers of them on my ships. Kontainers look so cool!

[DrunkenKerbalnaut]

Heya @RoverDude. Thanks again for the heads up on ModuleSwappableConverter. A couple questions, if you don't mind. 

Firstly: Didn't see any documentation at GH on it. Is there? Nevermind, found it in Nuke_625.cfg . Not entirely sure it suits my needs, however. I have a dual-mode generator (LF/OX and LF/Air) and would like to limit to one mode at a time. Currently using ModuleResourceConverter (x2). Is there a way to do this?

And may I package this with a parts mod (yet to be released)?

Finally, would that depend on just the .dll, or would I need to re-distribute the .pdp and .mdb as well? I have no clue what those suffixes are  . (TO GOOGLE!)

 

[RoverDude]

That is precisely what ModuleSwappableConverter does....

And if you are going to use USI Tools, please use it as a full dependency - i.e. keep everything exactly as a user would download, and either bundle the whole thing, or inform your users they need to nab it.  Do not under any circumstances move the DLL somewhere else, or you are just going to cause support issues when people start having multiple copies.

[DrunkenKerbalnaut]

58 minutes ago, RoverDude said:

That is precisely what ModuleSwappableConverter does....

And if you are going to use USI Tools, please use it as a full dependency - i.e. keep everything exactly as a user would download, and either bundle the whole thing, or inform your users they need to nab it.  Do not under any circumstances move the DLL somewhere else, or you are just going to cause support issues when people start having multiple copies.

Maybe I should have more/less coffee before I look at it again   

Thank ya!