[1.12.x] - Modular Kolonization System (MKS)

[RoverDude]

Progress....

 

[TheRealMK245]

@RoverDude where can i find a tutorial on the WOLF and Atlas parts? Thanks

[Terwin]

 

2 hours ago, TheRealMK245 said:

@RoverDude where can i find a tutorial on the WOLF and Atlas parts? Thanks

@JamesonKerbal is working on one: 

On 12/25/2020 at 11:29 PM, JamesonKerbal said:

Yes, I'm up to that part of the WOLF tutorial, it should be out in the next few days.

Perhaps you can offer to review/proof-read it for him to both get early access and to improve the final product for everyone.

[KerbalAstronomer]

4 hours ago, TheRealMK245 said:

@RoverDude where can i find a tutorial on the WOLF and Atlas parts? Thanks

You can watch here : https://github.com/UmbraSpaceIndustries/MKS/wiki/WOLF-—-Industry-without-the-part-count

[TheRealMK245]

1 hour ago, KerbalAstronomer said:

You can watch here : https://github.com/UmbraSpaceIndustries/MKS/wiki/WOLF-—-Industry-without-the-part-count

Thanks

[eberkain]

Fool I am, still wanting to connect base modules, but I think i discovered a new way to get into orbit. 

 

[Hypercore]

Hyped to use the WOLF parts! But since its another level in complicity, we'll need some documentation in the wiki  IDK how it works, so I hope its updated soon, but it's going to be a big change. For now, can anyone send some info on the new atlas parts and the WOLF parts?

[goldenpsp]

8 minutes ago, Hypercore said:

Hyped to use the WOLF parts! But since its another level in complicity, we'll need some documentation in the wiki  IDK how it works, so I hope its updated soon, but it's going to be a big change. For now, can anyone send some info on the new atlas parts and the WOLF parts?

Did you go look at the wiki, or even read say 2 posts up before posting?

[RoverDude]

13 minutes ago, Hypercore said:

Hyped to use the WOLF parts! But since its another level in complicity, we'll need some documentation in the wiki  IDK how it works, so I hope its updated soon, but it's going to be a big change. For now, can anyone send some info on the new atlas parts and the WOLF parts?

Wiki, and I did a couple of documents on this as noted.

[RoverDude]

And a new feature is getting the tires kicked   There will be a constellation pre-release in a bit, but in the interim, here's a pic and a link to the design doc:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1x1Gwwt0u8RwZf3zVa26D7gfxvYZ1YT9LytOrMaHUyaw/edit?usp=sharing

 

[Hypercore]

10 hours ago, goldenpsp said:

Did you go look at the wiki, or even read say 2 posts up before posting?

Sorry! I was being ignorant. I can't seem to find it on the wiki home page, so that's where my ill-reasoned post came from Thx for the help in correcting me

[Heinoceros]

RoverDude asked a few pages back how people were liking this new WOLF system. I have played hundreds of hours with MKS, and I understand the general system limitations you were up against, and this is in my opinion a brilliant way to get around it.

I especially am loving maximizing the transport functionality by trying to connect between the various biomes using as little mass as possible. That is a great new mechanic. You prove you can do it once, and you get it forever going forward.  And the WOLF planning screen in the VAB is fantastic. The only thing that feels truly weird is disappearing the people for geologist/pilot etc, but it makes sense    

to anyone struggling with it, just build up your infrastructure on Kerbin to support transport credits and then jump to minimus. The build count and cost to get your first transport credits is huge, but it has to be for balance. If it was cheap it would be far too OP.

I was worried right after getting my first 10 transport credits that they were not going to be granular enough, but then i discovered how quickly you burn through them with even a relatively small ship. 

 

But also i have a question! It wasnt obvious to me how to delete an existing route. Is there any way to delete it once once you add more transport credits to an origin and want to make a single larger more efficient trip?

[RoverDude]

2 hours ago, Heinoceros said:

RoverDude asked a few pages back how people were liking this new WOLF system. I have played hundreds of hours with MKS, and I understand the general system limitations you were up against, and this is in my opinion a brilliant way to get around it.

I especially am loving maximizing the transport functionality by trying to connect between the various biomes using as little mass as possible. That is a great new mechanic. You prove you can do it once, and you get it forever going forward.  And the WOLF planning screen in the VAB is fantastic. The only thing that feels truly weird is disappearing the people for geologist/pilot etc, but it makes sense    

to anyone struggling with it, just build up your infrastructure on Kerbin to support transport credits and then jump to minimus. The build count and cost to get your first transport credits is huge, but it has to be for balance. If it was cheap it would be far too OP.

I was worried right after getting my first 10 transport credits that they were not going to be granular enough, but then i discovered how quickly you burn through them with even a relatively small ship. 

 

But also i have a question! It wasnt obvious to me how to delete an existing route. Is there any way to delete it once once you add more transport credits to an origin and want to make a single larger more efficient trip?

@DoktorKrogg may have more insight, and I could be wrong, but I believe that once the TCs are spent and the route is created, all you can change is what's on that route, not redo the route/cost itself since stuff gets gobbled into WOLF (which is what makes it so efficient).

[Heinoceros]

59 minutes ago, RoverDude said:

@DoktorKrogg may have more insight, and I could be wrong, but I believe that once the TCs are spent and the route is created, all you can change is what's on that route, not redo the route/cost itself since stuff gets gobbled into WOLF (which is what makes it so efficient).

Yep, I downloaded the code and checked. The interface doesnt even have a capability to delete a route, only create or add to an existing route. I would argue a quick fix to that would be when you attempt to add a new route, if the cost is greater than what is left in transport credits, but not greater than the total amount of transport credits available from that origin minus the amount spent on the existing route (ie you remove the credits used to get to other destinations from the total), then it could use the current route and cost in its place. It should only work when the new route has a larger payload and larger or same transport credit cost, so it would always be adding to the routes payload, and subtracting from the total transport credits (that doesnt cover all possible new routes, but probably the vast majority of what folks would actually be doing) This fix would not require any dialog rework, and requires no knowledge of the past route details other than the total route cost and payload. I may give it a shot and see if i can get the source code up and working here, but its been a while since i messed with unity.

[notthebobo]

Atlas part descriptions have been added to the Wiki.

@RoverDude I'm curious on how you get kerbals in and out of the Atlas domes in your game play. Using something like the Tundra multi-hub and mini-airlock just don't look right, and given your penchant for clean design, I know I must be missing something.

[RoverDude]

1 hour ago, Heinoceros said:

Yep, I downloaded the code and checked. The interface doesnt even have a capability to delete a route, only create or add to an existing route. I would argue a quick fix to that would be when you attempt to add a new route, if the cost is greater than what is left in transport credits, but not greater than the total amount of transport credits available from that origin minus the amount spent on the existing route (ie you remove the credits used to get to other destinations from the total), then it could use the current route and cost in its place. It should only work when the new route has a larger payload and larger or same transport credit cost, so it would always be adding to the routes payload, and subtracting from the total transport credits (that doesnt cover all possible new routes, but probably the vast majority of what folks would actually be doing) This fix would not require any dialog rework, and requires no knowledge of the past route details other than the total route cost and payload. I may give it a shot and see if i can get the source code up and working here, but its been a while since i messed with unity.

I think that gets a bit sketchy since part of what's involved is figuring out the right mix of vessel sizes, etc. to optimize the load.  Not sure if this particular system of WOLF is one that needs a patch tbh.

[Heinoceros]

2 hours ago, RoverDude said:

I think that gets a bit sketchy since part of what's involved is figuring out the right mix of vessel sizes, etc. to optimize the load.  Not sure if this particular system of WOLF is one that needs a patch tbh.

what i am suggesting would not keep you from having a mix of vessel sizes, since it would only do the replacement logic if you tried to do a route that you couldnt afford to just add on. IE if you had 20 transport credits, and you already have a route that uses up 6 credits with a small craft, you could then do a craft twice as big for 12 credits, and you would have a 6 and a 12, which adds to 18 (and your cargo max would be the sum as well). This would act exactly as it does currently. The replacement would only trigger if you then decided your routes were not using those credits all that efficiently, and you then did a route that took between 18 and 20 credits. This would then replace your existing route with the new one. (in a perfect world, i would argue the new route should replace the least efficient routes up until the transport cost is reached, but that would require knowledge of the individual routes, which are already rolled up into a single route. I suspect this is why its not possible to remove routes in the first place, although i do find it a little strange you cant just delete the route entirely) (also in a perfect world, a confirmation dialog that warns you that if you accept this new route, you will be deleting the previous route on between these two locations would help to avoid confusion)

yea clearly its not a big deal, since i think most of the time you will just be adding more transport credits. But it makes taking advantage of more efficient nuclear engines etc after you have started down the WOLF path significantly more expensive since you cant upgrade your existing routes with higher cargo values, you can only add new cargo space through adding more transport credits. With the WOLF parts all at the far right edge of the tech tree, you pretty much have the most efficient engines mostly in place by then, and since the cargo values look like they are determined by raw mass loss, additional transport credits should allow your cargo space to increase pretty linearly with the new credits.  

I just like to play with stuff, i have no expectation of pushing to the trunk. If there isn't any interest from other users its clearly not needed.

[Heinoceros]

i now see why there is no way to delete a route. It would be all but impossible to do, since all of the current transfers that are using that route would have to be zeroed out first. The Wolf system does not appear to allow you to remove allocated resources that are being used downstream (which makes sense, but the consequences of this are pretty extensive). So for instance, if i have a transfer that is transfering 25 water from the grasslands to the KSC, and the KSC is currently using 20 of those water to create fuel, there is no way to turn off that 25 water transfer. There doesnt even seem to be a way to reduce it to 20 from 25, which seems like an issue thats going to cause some grief. I tried adding a transfer of -5 water, but it didnt allow that. That seems like maybe the easiest fix for reducing resource usage. Obviously i could also have missed the method to do this, as i have only been using it for a short time, but if there is a way to reduce these transfers gracefully it isnt obvious.

yikes, also the transport cost isnt actually stored in the route at all, so there is no actual way to delete a route even if there are no transfers, since there is no way to work out how many of the spent transport credits were for a particular route. also there is no way to implement my replacement strategy suggestion, since that also requires knowing the per route allocation of transport credits. 

I implemented the change i suggested here, also i implemented a straight up delete that only works if there are no transfers in progress. But adding the transport cost into the route adds a hundred lines of changes to the unit testing code, since each addRoute now has to have an expectedTransportCost associated with it. 

Its just not going to be worth it i suspect. It looked originally like it was going to be 10 lines of logic to fix.

 

I still think at some point something should be done here. If you are just playing around with the system and try sending a big ship from the KSC to the water biome next door and blow 10 transport credits on it before you understand how the system works, you have just blown like 500000 credits worth of WOLF transport credit support parts on something you can never get back. (i mean you can edit the save file directly, and its a pretty straightforward fix, but that always feels like cheating)

 

 

 

Edited January 1, 2021 by Heinoceros
new information learned about how the route code works.

[RoverDude]

4 hours ago, Heinoceros said:

what i am suggesting would not keep you from having a mix of vessel sizes, since it would only do the replacement logic if you tried to do a route that you couldnt afford to just add on. IE if you had 20 transport credits, and you already have a route that uses up 6 credits with a small craft, you could then do a craft twice as big for 12 credits, and you would have a 6 and a 12, which adds to 18 (and your cargo max would be the sum as well). This would act exactly as it does currently. The replacement would only trigger if you then decided your routes were not using those credits all that efficiently, and you then did a route that took between 18 and 20 credits. This would then replace your existing route with the new one. (in a perfect world, i would argue the new route should replace the least efficient routes up until the transport cost is reached, but that would require knowledge of the individual routes, which are already rolled up into a single route. I suspect this is why its not possible to remove routes in the first place, although i do find it a little strange you cant just delete the route entirely) (also in a perfect world, a confirmation dialog that warns you that if you accept this new route, you will be deleting the previous route on between these two locations would help to avoid confusion)

yea clearly its not a big deal, since i think most of the time you will just be adding more transport credits. But it makes taking advantage of more efficient nuclear engines etc after you have started down the WOLF path significantly more expensive since you cant upgrade your existing routes with higher cargo values, you can only add new cargo space through adding more transport credits. With the WOLF parts all at the far right edge of the tech tree, you pretty much have the most efficient engines mostly in place by then, and since the cargo values look like they are determined by raw mass loss, additional transport credits should allow your cargo space to increase pretty linearly with the new credits.  

I just like to play with stuff, i have no expectation of pushing to the trunk. If there isn't any interest from other users its clearly not needed.

I get what you are saying, but disagree (and that's ok!).  An established route is already a sunk cost.  There's no real benefit to being able to delete them - each expansion of a route comes in the cost of having to physically make the trip.   Sometimes you'll luck out with a really good one - sometimes it's going to be less expensive, but each time you make the run you're optimizing efficiency and layering it into an existing transportation network, not wholesale upgrading your entire fleet.  Engines aside, different payloads and strategies exist and will be experimented with to get optimum trips added to your network.    Having a new route be affected by the inefficiency/efficiency of prior routes just feels off.  You are paying for that route expansion in the hear and now, and as it stands, it remains a really predictable result.  Extremes could result in weird stuff like zero-TC expansions, etc. when in reality, any dramatic difference in route cost would either be so late in the game it did not matter, or so early that the issue would solve itself as the TC/Capacity ratio nears peak efficiency asymptotically.   And in short., I don't think that is something I'd want to mess with (at least regarding this specific aspect - there are other things on the drawing board regarding routes, but they touch on other areas).

[RoverDude]

For those interested, you can grab the new Konstruction code/bits out of the pre-release of the USI Constellation here:  https://github.com/BobPalmer/USI_Constellation/releases/tag/2020.12.31

1. This is a dev build.  It's relatively solid, but bear that in mind - bug reports/feedback appreciated.  Back up your save.
2. This includes both the KonFabricator part, as well as EVA Construction enhancements - there are links to both design docs in that pre-release link.
3. This also includes a whitebox version of the Packrat rover that uses the new stock inventory system.  The old Packrat is now legacy.
4. While I use this in my own save with no ill effect, back up your save.  It's a pre-release.

[goldenpsp]

17 minutes ago, RoverDude said:

For those interested, you can grab the new Konstruction code/bits out of the pre-release of the USI Constellation here:  https://github.com/BobPalmer/USI_Constellation/releases/tag/2020.12.31

1. This is a dev build.  It's relatively solid, but bear that in mind - bug reports/feedback appreciated.  Back up your save.
2. This includes both the KonFabricator part, as well as EVA Construction enhancements - there are links to both design docs in that pre-release link.
3. This also includes a whitebox version of the Packrat rover that uses the new stock inventory system.  The old Packrat is now legacy.
4. While I use this in my own save with no ill effect, back up your save.  It's a pre-release.

Nice,

My save right now is just testing all the new stuff anyhow.

Happy New Year @RoverDude

[Danilo Coelho]

On 12/30/2020 at 1:17 AM, RoverDude said:

Progress....

 

So... is this going to be an alterative for Gound Construction or just for OSE Workshop?

Edited January 1, 2021 by Danilo Coelho

[RoverDude]

Just now, Danilo Coelho said:

So... is this going to be a alterative for Gound Construction or just for OSE Workshop?

What you see there is a replacement for OSE Workshop.  There may be other things being worked on.

[TomfooleryYT]

So, I'm trying to follow the wolf tutorial and I'm at the part where I've built a depot on the KSC launchpad, and am about to make a extension to the depot to have it start making material kits. But, the part where you add the extension to the depot, my game keeps giving me the error that the depot doesn't have veins for the necessary resources. the tutorial doesn't address this. am I doing something wrong? are there supposed to be veins there on the launchpad? could this have anything to do with me having tundra's space center?

[KerbalAstronomer]

Happy new year !