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[WIP] Coatl Aerospace ProbesPlus Dev Thread [Beta] 10/19/2020 (1.8-1.10)


akron

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On 9/15/2018 at 4:18 PM, Vovan_Schwarz said:

OMG, that is amazing history mod
Hello from cold Russia:D

Thank you very much. Happy to see you like it!

8 hours ago, STT1 said:

I know that you've done Venera 9/10, but will you be doing some of the early flyby ones like Venera 1?

I don't know. While I have some missions still on the to-do, I am fairly open to player suggestions. Just keep in mind I don't release updates as often as other modders. My thought process for early Venera was that other missions already would cover  the early tech tree, namely Mariner which I am working on now. The same thought applied to early Luna (later ones are on the list, about Luna 16 or so). So it was a gameplay and convenience decision, rather than a historical decision. I honestly did not see this mod becoming a historical mod as others already exist for that. That being said, if you guys want me to do early Venera/Mars, I can, but I think the general consensus is that I need to get to more landers and rovers soon. 

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19 hours ago, akron said:

I don't know. While I have some missions still on the to-do, I am fairly open to player suggestions. Just keep in mind I don't release updates as often as other modders. My thought process for early Venera was that other missions already would cover  the early tech tree, namely Mariner which I am working on now. The same thought applied to early Luna (later ones are on the list, about Luna 16 or so). So it was a gameplay and convenience decision, rather than a historical decision. I honestly did not see this mod becoming a historical mod as others already exist for that. That being said, if you guys want me to do early Venera/Mars, I can, but I think the general consensus is that I need to get to more landers and rovers soon. 

Well, I certainly would like to see more rovers! Are things like Lunakohd and Curiosity on the list?

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8 hours ago, STT1 said:

Well, I certainly would like to see more rovers! Are things like Lunakohd and Curiosity on the list?

Yes, both are. Lunokhod will be up first. I'll use it to figure out the whole rover thing; specially the wheels.

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3 hours ago, The_Arcitect said:

Oh hey, I was wandering what the landermesser was inspired by? By the way, great mod!

Thank you!

As @GrubbyZebra mentioned, NASA's Surveyor provided reference and inspiration for Landvermesser. Here's a cool pic of Surveyor 3 getting vandalized by the Apollo 12 crew:

surveyor3_ap12c_big.jpg

 

One of my favorite Apollo pictures. I hope when we return to the moon we go snap photos of more lunar residents like LEM descent stages, Yutu and Lunokhod

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17 hours ago, Gordon Dry said:

On RSS (no RO) I built a Fomalhaut test probe (looks like a ball), the parachute part burns up on reentry (DeadlyReentry, RealHeat - heat shield is retrograde) - the thing is comdemned to crash ...

It's not temperature, it's air pressure.  The default max pressure is 4000 kPa, or close to 40 atmospheres, but surface pressure on Venus is over 9200 kPa (96 atm).  I have made a pull request to beef up the Fomalhaut probe in the same manner as the Venera probes were, but it has not been accepted.

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@Gordon Dry @Kerbas_ad_astra It may very well be Pressure/Temperature tweaks needed for RSS. I unfortunately have no experience at all with RSS or realism mods. ProbesPlus parts are balanced to stock KSP, which is why they fail to meet the greater difficulty demanded in RSS.

Kerbas, I'd suggest bringing those changes to the RSS team. I am not sure another way to apply the changes without writing an entire new RSS config for every part in my mod and I just do not have the experience or the time to do so.

EDIT: Nevermind. It looks like RSS has no part configs at all. Just goes to show what I know. Realism Overhaul would be the best place to have those pressure configs without having to write RSS configs for my mod. If anyone want to help write some, that would be awesome!

Edited by akron
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I made the PR to your repo because not everyone uses Realism Overhaul (I don't, and evidently Gordon Dry doesn't), and because I didn't think that was something that should depend on the solar system (there may be other systems that have extra thick atmospheres).  I guess I could as well make a patch for it in SMURFF, which I guess is the other major alternative for adjusting parts for large solar systems.  (Now that I think about it, 10500 kPa might not be quite enough, since Venus's config defines sea-level pressure as 10905.2 kPa...probably should just kick it up to 12000 like the USI submarine parts.)

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1 hour ago, Kerbas_ad_astra said:

I made the PR to your repo because not everyone uses Realism Overhaul (I don't, and evidently Gordon Dry doesn't), and because I didn't think that was something that should depend on the solar system (there may be other systems that have extra thick atmospheres).  I guess I could as well make a patch for it in SMURFF, which I guess is the other major alternative for adjusting parts for large solar systems.  (Now that I think about it, 10500 kPa might not be quite enough, since Venus's config defines sea-level pressure as 10905.2 kPa...probably should just kick it up to 12000 like the USI submarine parts.)

That's partly my bad. I have never used RSS or realism mods so I do not understand their setup and use. I didn't think you could use RSS without RO (Or something similar)because, otherwise, how can parts be setup for it? For example, none of my scienceDefs even have rules or results for RSS. This is why I think doing patches for RSS will be more involved than just fixing the Fomalhaut probe. I'm sure the Draco lander might need some tweaking as well, along with a number of other parts.

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1 hour ago, akron said:

That's partly my bad. I have never used RSS or realism mods so I do not understand their setup and use. I didn't think you could use RSS without RO (Or something similar)because, otherwise, how can parts be setup for it? For example, none of my scienceDefs even have rules or results for RSS. This is why I think doing patches for RSS will be more involved than just fixing the Fomalhaut probe. I'm sure the Draco lander might need some tweaking as well, along with a number of other parts.

It's true that supporting every planet pack (RSS or others) would involve a lot of writing, but science experiments will use the 'Default' definition if the planet is not defined, so there's no functional problem.  (I did notice that the new Argo camera calls for a ca_filmCamera experiment which is not defined, which is a functional problem...I've patched it on my install to use ca_orbitalScope instead.)  Most of the other functional elements of a spacecraft are handled either by RSS itself (antennas) or SMURFF and/or RO (fuel tanks, engines, reaction wheels, heat shields, etc.), but maximum pressure tolerance is a new system, so it's kind of left out.

It's not an issue for me to patch it in SMURFF myself, but if you're going to say "It is designed to survive rough landings in extreme environments" in the part description, you might as well give it the numbers to live up to the hype.  ;)

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15 minutes ago, Kerbas_ad_astra said:

It's true that supporting every planet pack (RSS or others) would involve a lot of writing, but science experiments will use the 'Default' definition if the planet is not defined, so there's no functional problem.  (I did notice that the new Argo camera calls for a ca_filmCamera experiment which is not defined, which is a functional problem...I've patched it on my install to use ca_orbitalScope instead.)  Most of the other functional elements of a spacecraft are handled either by RSS itself (antennas) or SMURFF and/or RO (fuel tanks, engines, reaction wheels, heat shields, etc.), but maximum pressure tolerance is a new system, so it's kind of left out.

It's not an issue for me to patch it in SMURFF myself, but if you're going to say "It is designed to survive rough landings in extreme environments" in the part description, you might as well give it the numbers to live up to the hype.  ;)

I understand the functional part of the ScienceDef, I was just highlighting the fact that my mod has no considerations for other solar system mods. Only Outer Planets Mod, actually. The Argo camera is not yet done and that's why it is broken. 

These values are all new to me and I have never given it any thought as it never comes up in Stock KSP. I still have an open Github ticket to re-visit this, and I plan to. Let me know if you tweak any numbers in your testing to see if 10500 kPa is enough or not. I'll try to better understand RSS support to add a MM patch for things that need it, but I'll rely on you guys to help test the changes. :) Is there anything else that would need attention?

Edited by akron
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  • 2 weeks later...

From some testing, 10500 kPa should be good enough for Venus landing.  Miiiight still recommend 12000 kPa to be a nice round number (3x stock pressure limit, also matches high-pressure submarine parts from USI), but it wouldn't be necessary.  Galileo's entry probe made it to a depth of 2200 kPa, less than the stock pressure limit, so no worries there.  Unlike my PR, I would recommend also applying that increased pressure limit to the Fomalhaut heat shield and parachute (and not just the probe and its solar panels), or else add some +Y CoPoffset for the probe body -- I found that if I ditched the heat shield and parachute, the probe tended to want to flip over.

As for gTolerance, I was able to get greater than 50 G's (stock limit) by smashing the probe into Venus on a very steep entry angle, but a more conventional entry kept max G-loading below that.  However, for Jupiter entry, I got a peak load of something like 70 G's with what was intended to be a nice easy entry, and Galileo IRL had a peak load of 228 G's, so 450 is a fine number to use.  Obviously Galileo and Venera were different missions, but it probably makes sense to give both values to both sets of parts (it's the same design principles for dealing with high stresses), so that players can choose to run both sets of experiments in multiple environments.

Even with a high-speed entry to Titan, I found there was no need to enhance the durability of your Huygens parts -- in fact, I forgot to pack a parachute and still landed intact.  :)

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Coatl antenna seems does not have stats if you install CommNet antenna extension alongside with probe plus. It seems the culprit is the CommNet antenna extension requires remote tech antenna model. May you have a look on it?

Thanks you.

Edited by ssd21345
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26 minutes ago, ssd21345 said:

Coatl antenna seems does not have stats if you install CommNet antenna extension alongside with probe plus. It seems the culprit is the CommNet antenna extension requires remote tech antenna model. May you have a look on it?

Thanks you.

Just saw your post on the other thread, sounds like you need to go into GameData/Coatl Aerospace/ProbesPlus/Compatibility/ and delete CA_RemoteTech_Antennas.cfg and maybe CA_RemoteTech_Probes.cfg

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8 hours ago, ssd21345 said:

Coatl antenna seems does not have stats if you install CommNet antenna extension alongside with probe plus. It seems the culprit is the CommNet antenna extension requires remote tech antenna model. May you have a look on it?

Thanks you.

I am not sure I understand the issue. I am not a RemoteTech expert so I do not know any possible causes. I have not had any complaints from other RT users about antenna problems so it may be something to do with the Antenna Extension mod, which also does not make sense at it seems to add new antenna, not modify others. You can try @CobaltWolf's suggestion but that's only going to REMOVE my RT configs, so you'll have to rely on another mod adding them, or you yourself. If you want to troubleshoot with me, can you get some logs so we can investigate further? Good luck

Edited by akron
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11 minutes ago, akron said:

I am not sure I understand the issue. I am not a RemoteTech expert so I do not know any possible causes. I have not had any complaints from other RT users about antenna problems so it may be something to do with the Antenna Extension mod, which also does not make sense at it seems to add new antenna, not modify others. You can try @CobaltWolf's suggestion but that's only going to REMOVE my RT configs, so you'll have to rely on another mod adding them, or you yourself. If you want to troubleshoot with me, can you get some logs so we can investigate further? Good luck

Basically, the Commnet extension requires the Remotetech models ONLY, but because there is still a remotetech folder for MM to find, you RT configs are activating.

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3 minutes ago, CobaltWolf said:

Basically, the Commnet extension requires the Remotetech models ONLY, but because there is still a remotetech folder for MM to find, you RT configs are activating.

So Commnet extension adds the RT antenna models ONLY *without* the functionality? Oh, it probably needs to have the models in its own folder, then. I believe the issue is in the Commnet extension mod, but from reading, it looks like the fix has already been suggested.

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14 hours ago, akron said:

So Commnet extension adds the RT antenna models ONLY *without* the functionality? Oh, it probably needs to have the models in its own folder, then. I believe the issue is in the Commnet extension mod, but from reading, it looks like the fix has already been suggested.

It's fixed, thanks for your help!

 

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4 hours ago, The_Arcitect said:

Hey @akron,

By any chance, will there be a parker solar probe?

Also, had fun with the Cassini build.

Glad you enjoyed Cassini! I see it used a lot, specially on the KSP subreddit :D 

I do have plans for something related to Parker/Solar Probe Plus, but I am not going for a replica. My plan is to make a new bus and then make standalone parts to convert it into a Parker Solar Probe inspired craft. The bus will be primarily used for something else though

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Still chugging along with Mariner parts, but I did take a little break from them to work on this old unfinished part:

f6tNNnH.png

I'll try to make a pass at the Star 37 used in the Voyager/Torekka propulsion module as well since it's supposed to be the same engine, but it's not high on the priority list

EDIT: Referring to this guy

7ubGW46.png

Edited by akron
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