PROCEDURAL ENGINES

[Luka 999]

Hello everyone!

I've just started playing with Realism Overhaul and Real Solar System. The mod is awesome after you get used to it, but it also has (in my opinion) a big flaw. Realism comes with some engines from the real world (like the famous F1 engine).

Although I like the idea that you have to make the rocket fit the engine and the payload, I don't think the system is particularly realistic. As Bob Fitch has pointed out a few times in his realism series "Project Alexandria", many of the real world engines have gone through many small and big changes that made them do what they needed to do.

I understand that fitting all of them into the game would probably take too much memory, so I came up with an idea of procedural engines (Actually swamp_ig (developer of Procedural parts) has firsth mentioned them under " Features That Are Not Planned".)

This system would sacrafice the strict rules of having only a set of engines, but in terms of realism it would be a big improvement cause it would let you design engines the way you want. I personaly like to have parts that i have full control over (I can rescale them to what I need).

The scale would be only one of many thing that you could change. Scott Manley posted a video yesterday thalking about engine nozzles. His video is actually what made me start this topic.

Here are some options that are in my opinion needed:

-Nozzel lenght tweaking (Changing the ISP in vacuum and atmosphere)

-Scale

-Closed or open cycle (Go for the safe but inefficient approach or go for the unreliable but much more efficient style) (There might have to be some game balancing things to be taken care of if this is implemented)

-The number of engines you have (I kinda doubt this is needed but it could cut down the part count and save some frames)

OK. Those are some of them. I will not post any ideas on how to make models, because I'm just a begginer at Blender and I don't know much about making models yet.

If anyone is interested in making this mod I will be verry happy cause I'm waiting for it for a long time now.

[Wjolcz]

I suggested the same thing some time ago. Would be nice to have procedural parts BUT only if this was a thing.

Why? Because a 50m long fuel tank would go *poof* in the middle when hit and whatever was on top of that would fall 50 meters down and also get *poof'd*.

[Luka 999]

2 hours ago, Veeltch said:

I suggested the same thing some time ago. Would be nice to have procedural parts BUT only if this was a thing.

Why? Because a 50m long fuel tank would go *poof* in the middle when hit and whatever was on top of that would fall 50 meters down and also get *poof'd*.

That can be solved by limiting the size of the parts and by increasing the crash tolerance speed linear to the scale. Also. The implementation of kerbal krash system would make the part take some punishement before exploding.

[John FX]

I`d like more elements of many parts to be tweakable even though that would upset some people who see the current parts as inviolate. I`d like to see parts improve as your tech improves, giving longer burn times, improved thrust and better atmo or vac Isp.

I`d like to be able to assign kerbals to research parts to improve them.

Obviously these are career options but they would tie in with having tweakable/procedural engines and parts in sandbox.

[awang]

many of the real world engines have gone through many small and big changes that made them do what they needed to do.

I think engine configs provide this fairly well.

The fun part about proc engines in RO, in my opinion, is that there are so many factors that affect engine performance. Nozzle length, shape (e.g. Space Shuttle), expansion ratio, combustion chamber temp/pressures, fuel ratios, plumbing design, material properties, etc. could make determining realistic performance parameters challenging (as far as I know). Granted, you can use simulations (see NASA's RocketThrust simulator), but making something like this friendlier to the KSP playerbase may be an interesting challenge.

In addition, (as far as I know) full-blown engine redesigns are not that common. It's usually more cost-effective to upgrade an existing engine, and engine configs work well for that, especially since those have real-life data to work from. There is, however, a mechanism being tossed about where proc parts are limited in the same way as real life (tank stretching is less expensive than changing the diameter, for example), so this may work well if/when that mechanism is introduced.

Don't get me wrong, I think proc engines could work well. That would depend on how well they are implemented, though.

[Luka 999]

On 30/05/2016 at 9:20 AM, Veeltch said:

I suggested the same thing some time ago. Would be nice to have procedural parts BUT only if this was a thing.

Why? Because a 50m long fuel tank would go *poof* in the middle when hit and whatever was on top of that would fall 50 meters down and also get *poof'd*.

I think the main thing is how many options you have available, and how the system handles the changes to the engines. When you "develope" the firsth engine you have to pay for the design, construction and testing of all the parts that make the engine (ignition chaimber, nozzel,...) and their interaction between eich other. When you modify the existing engine by making the nozzel longer you only have to pay for testing, and design of the nozzel. The bill could be included into the total cost of the rocket.

[Luka 999]

On 30. 5. 2016 at 2:21 PM, John FX said:

I`d like more elements of many parts to be tweakable even though that would upset some people who see the current parts as inviolate. I`d like to see parts improve as your tech improves, giving longer burn times, improved thrust and better atmo or vac Isp.

I`d like to be able to assign kerbals to research parts to improve them.

Obviously these are career options but they would tie in with having tweakable/procedural engines and parts in sandbox.

That's exactly what I'm going for.

On 30. 5. 2016 at 3:41 PM, awang said:

I think engine configs provide this fairly well.

The fun part about proc engines in RO, in my opinion, is that there are so many factors that affect engine performance. Nozzle length, shape (e.g. Space Shuttle), expansion ratio, combustion chamber temp/pressures, fuel ratios, plumbing design, material properties, etc. could make determining realistic performance parameters challenging (as far as I know). Granted, you can use simulations (see NASA's RocketThrust simulator), but making something like this friendlier to the KSP playerbase may be an interesting challenge.

In addition, (as far as I know) full-blown engine redesigns are not that common. It's usually more cost-effective to upgrade an existing engine, and engine configs work well for that, especially since those have real-life data to work from. There is, however, a mechanism being tossed about where proc parts are limited in the same way as real life (tank stretching is less expensive than changing the diameter, for example), so this may work well if/when that mechanism is introduced.

Don't get me wrong, I think proc engines could work well. That would depend on how well they are implemented, though.

Engine config's get pretty close to what I have in mind. I would like to have engines that I could tweak as much as I would like for the expense of money. I would like to be able to make small changes to the engines in the game. The tweaking would have to be limited by the technology. Also. Tweaking the engines and then building them should be very expensive cause they would be a new model that wasn't tested before. To put it short. I would like to have as much control over the engines as possible. I got pretty used with the option to resize the engines in the stock game with tweak scale and it really opened many posibilities on how to build rockets that were imposible before.

[John FX]

45 minutes ago, Luka 999 said:

That's exactly what I'm going for.

Engine config's get pretty close to what I have in mind. I would like to have engines that I could tweak as much as I would like for the expense of money. I would like to be able to make small changes to the engines in the game. The tweaking would have to be limited by the technology. Also. Tweaking the engines and then building them should be very expensive cause they would be a new model that wasn't tested before. To put it short. I would like to have as much control over the engines as possible. I got pretty used with the option to resize the engines in the stock game with tweak scale and it really opened many posibilities on how to build rockets that were imposible before.

If you have not yet tried it, some of the mods (not exactly sure which ones) in Realism Overhaul allow engine improvements based on your tech level, giving more Isp, burn times and thrust (also ignitions). Testflight allows more reliable engines after testing/using them for a while. You may have to start using realfuels. Not sure, I just installed the whole thing.

might be something to give the function desired while you wait...

[awang]

2 hours ago, Luka 999 said:

I got pretty used with the option to resize the engines in the stock game with tweak scale and it really opened many posibilities on how to build rockets that were imposible before.

You used TweakScale on engines that much? Then again, it's been quite a while since I last used it...

As a first approximation, if you're alright with REALLY bad-looking models, it should be somewhat easier to make proc engines as a clone of PP SRBs. Replace the motor casing with plumbing/combustion parts, change the tweakables (I'm guessing this is much harder than it seems), change the pricing code, maybe change the nozzle scaling code, and you have something that might work.

I just thought of one thing: no engine (that I know of) needs to know about any other engine, so the mechanism for looking for existing engines and seeing if the one being worked on may not exist. I'm not really familiar with the codebase, though, so it's quite possible it does exist. This isn't an issue if you're ok with forcing players to produce derivations by cloning an existing part, and not recognizing "Oh, you built this part before, so the price is reduced x%".

[Luka 999]

On 10. 6. 2016 at 0:30 AM, awang said:

You used TweakScale on engines that much? Then again, it's been quite a while since I last used it...

As a first approximation, if you're alright with REALLY bad-looking models, it should be somewhat easier to make proc engines as a clone of PP SRBs. Replace the motor casing with plumbing/combustion parts, change the tweakables (I'm guessing this is much harder than it seems), change the pricing code, maybe change the nozzle scaling code, and you have something that might work.

I just thought of one thing: no engine (that I know of) needs to know about any other engine, so the mechanism for looking for existing engines and seeing if the one being worked on may not exist. I'm not really familiar with the codebase, though, so it's quite possible it does exist. This isn't an issue if you're ok with forcing players to produce derivations by cloning an existing part, and not recognizing "Oh, you built this part before, so the price is reduced x%".

I wouldn't mind having bad looking models for engines as long as I have the ability to tweak them as much as I like (Nozzel length, fuel type, turbo pump fuel, turbo pump performance,...). For what I care there could be a normal engine model with tweakable parameters that would affect the engine performance (like if you make the nasallonger it will have a higher ISP in vacuum). The visual effects (thenozzle gets bigger when you adjust the parameter for it) can be added later. I seriously doubt I could do this on my own cause I just started messing around with the config files. I can try but I don't promisse anything. I think someone else with much more experience should do this.

[Luka 999]

On 9. 6. 2016 at 10:53 PM, John FX said:

If you have not yet tried it, some of the mods (not exactly sure which ones) in Realism Overhaul allow engine improvements based on your tech level, giving more Isp, burn times and thrust (also ignitions). Testflight allows more reliable engines after testing/using them for a while. You may have to start using realfuels. Not sure, I just installed the whole thing.

might be something to give the function desired while you wait...

I have been playing around with TestFlight recently. It's cool to see parts fail on you when you don't expect. My fuel tank got a hole in it while I was in orbit and all of the fuel leaked out. Then I send up a rescue mission and when I got close the engine of the rescue mission failed. I fortunatly had KIS installed so I could throw off the dead engine and replace it with the engine from the original craft. That was verry fun. I will have to look up what mod allows you to improve engines in RO. I am using RealFuels when I play my hard core career. I like the idea of fuel stability. Maiby I'll get off of my ass and start messing around with configs a bit more. We will se what I can do.