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

[N3N]

14 minutes ago, sh1pman said:

It comes with Porkjet's mod, I think it's called Atomic Engines or something like that. @RoverDude uses it in his streams. I think it also need a patch to work with KSP 1.2.2

Is it this one: https://spacedock.info/mod/316/Atomic Age

Are you using it with KSP 1.2.2?

[sh1pman]

Just now, N3N said:

Is it this one: https://spacedock.info/mod/316/Atomic Age

Are you using it with KSP 1.2.2?

Yep, this one. You need a patch to make it work with 1.2.2

[voicey99]

Hm, that did just remind me of the Agamemnon Nuclear Ramjet engine from SXT. It needs another engine to accelerate but once up to speed it needs no fuel so perfect for long-distance travel.

[sh1pman]

1 minute ago, voicey99 said:

Hm, that did just remind me of the Agamemnon Nuclear Ramjet engine from SXT. It needs another engine to accelerate but once up to speed it needs no fuel so perfect for long-distance travel.

Nuclear ramjet sounds fun indeed. Atomic Age has atomic thermal jets, but they're very very weak, don't use them ever.

[voicey99]

35 minutes ago, sh1pman said:

Nuclear ramjet sounds fun indeed. Atomic Age has atomic thermal jets, but they're very very weak, don't use them ever.

Evidently Lack thought differently. The ANR basically doesn't work below about 150m/s and is very weak until you start picking up speed until you hit mach 2.75, where it outputs 300KN (at 1atm). It works all the way up to mach 6.5, and is great for small craft like this one below. Oh, and it looks pretty cool (physwarp will mess around with the thrust, so watch out for that)-I got this one into the air by attaching an RT-5 to the back end for a takeoff boost.

The rounded wingtips are from SXT too, which also recently got compatibility with USI-LS.

This isn't really MKS though. Still waiting on that new Karbonite thread as well.

Edited May 6, 2017 by voicey99

[RoverDude]

FYI - can someone with a lag issue with the pre-release get me a save?  Having trouble repro'ing this (Stock+USI only please)

[JadeOfMaar]

3 hours ago, voicey99 said:

Is it reliable (in that you can use it in any atmosphere and don't get caught out by biome variations)?

On the topic of Karbonite, how do you use the exospheric particle collector? I've tried it at a whole plethora of altitudes and bodies and so far the only place I've been able to find any space karbonite/karborundum is a tiny bit deep in Jool's gravity well where you have to use all the fuel you picked up getting back out.

3 hours ago, voicey99 said:

Hm, I took a look at the cfg and apparently Eve gets no special treatment with regards to atmospheric Ka placement (on every planet it's randomised between 10-1000ppm apart from Kerbin, locked at 10ppm), though the OPM gas giants and Tekto appaer to have very juicy amounts of atmospheric and exospheric Ka.

Not sure whether to stick with my ductfanmobile on Laythe or lug a jet engine around or have to put up with stopping to refuel (primarily cost, my plane costs 1/4M)

Karbonite is reliable. It may be a fault of CRP but its abundance (any resource's) in atmosphere does not vary with where you are geographically.

By default, it is incredibly scarce so it's kinda not worth chasing in atmosphere or in space in the stock system. Eve's atmo pressure makes it more viable, I think, but then there's the gravity.

If Laythe indeed has a lot of history of active volcanism I think it could do with a slight higher portion of atmo karbonite. Even in stock, kerbals aren't allowed to take off their helmets there.

3 hours ago, RoverDude said:

Eh?  Karbonite should produce oxidizer... if it is not, then that's a bug.

(i.e. Karbonite is an alternative and always has been for LFO generation)

Oops. The Converter produces LFO but the Distiller produces LH2 and O2. I forgot that.

3 hours ago, sh1pman said:

You can easily stay airborne with Ka scoops. In fact, my Eve SSTO uses karbonite turbojets with scoops to get to around 20 km height and 500m/s speed on Eve before firing the Lightbulb.

That's a nice piece of machinery you got there. I wonder how much better it will perform when the update gets released, and assuming the engines don't start starving.

[sh1pman]

@JadeOfMaar well, at 20km and 500 m/s these four karbonite engines consume less karbonite than the scoops produce, so if their ISP isn't changed, they should generate even more surplus karbonite and go even faster at that particular altitude. 

Also, glad you like it. I lost count of hours spent building, flying and optimizing this thing. You know what's the hardest part about Eve spaceplanes? Not the delta-v. Not even the TWR or drag. It's the heating, because you need to go really really fast in the middle atmosphere to reach suborbital speed. I spent most of the time trying to figure out the ascent profile that won't lead to explosions.

Edited May 7, 2017 by sh1pman

[JadeOfMaar]

@sh1pman Their Isps have changed so it's possible they might breakeven with the scoops or demand more than is supplied.

[FrontLineFodder]

12 hours ago, DStaal said:

And hard to see at night.

Basically: You're complaining about an issue with power transfer - It's best to let us see exactly what's going on so we can tell if there's some issue with how you've designed it that's preventing the transfer.

installed Ambient light adjustment and took another pic

it's not so much power transfer i'm having issues with, I can see that works, EC drops on non connected parts and regularly gets topped up (via PDU).
even when the generator is directly connected I'm getting the message, the generator sits there almost idle (don't have anything significant drawing EC)

RoverDude, should I take this issue to the GroundConstruction thread ? I don't know if you have modified it in any way

update:
amusingly, I am able to start work on the second DIY kit without the issue.

Edited May 7, 2017 by FrontLineFodder

[Grobluk]

12 hours ago, RoverDude said:

FYI - can someone with a lag issue with the pre-release get me a save?  Having trouble repro'ing this (Stock+USI only please)

Right. Removed all mods. Installed Constellation 0.50.18. Discovered that I could not load the Mun base causing the lag without KAS. Installed KAS and had no lag.

Updated to the MKS-prerelease and reproduced the lag. Reverted MKS back to 0.50.18 and was back to normal framerate. 

 

My issue would seem to be with the pre-release or the interaction between the pre-release and KAS. Or with my hardware, although I find it hard to believe since 0.50.18 is running fine. 

Link to the save: https://www.dropbox.com/s/c83zzvddz3s26r9/persistentROVERDUDE.sfs?dl=0

Edited May 7, 2017 by Grobluk

[RoverDude]

@Grobluk - Ok - if all it has is KAS blocking a load, I can install that on my testbed.  Just want the minimum since it is a lot harder to run in debug mode with a ton of mods.  I really appreciate it!

[Gilph]

6 hours ago, FrontLineFodder said:

installed Ambient light adjustment and took another pic

<SNIP>

it's not so much power transfer i'm having issues with, I can see that works, EC drops on non connected parts and regularly gets topped up (via PDU).
even when the generator is directly connected I'm getting the message, the generator sits there almost idle (don't have anything significant drawing EC)

RoverDude, should I take this issue to the GroundConstruction thread ? I don't know if you have modified it in any way

update:
amusingly, I am able to start work on the second DIY kit without the issue.

Hi, have had some issues with PDUs in the past, but was never able to track it down consistently. Some of the ways I got around it are:

1. Put an Engineer in the PDU and restart the game.  The PDU needs an Engineer to enable the Power sharing function, but does not need it after that. Moving it back to the PDU looks like it resets the PDU functionality, at least for me.
2. If you power a vessel with a nuke, and your vessel draws more EC than the nuke can handle, you would think that a nearby PDU would supply the extra EC needed. It works fine when the vessel is active, but after a warp and catch up processing, my vessel looks like it ran out of EC (drills stop, etc). Seems like solar panels do not have this issue, only nukes.  Is this your situation? I just stopped that design and used either large local nukes or no local power at all.

There is not any way to define your power consumption and power supply hierarchy that i can figure out.  Flow control doesn't work.

[Grobluk]

2 hours ago, RoverDude said:

 I really appreciate it!

Entirely my pleasure.

[RoverDude]

@Grobluk (and anyone else interested in testing it out)

new pre-release is up.  Please let me know if anyone experiences any unusual lag, etc.

Thanks!

[DStaal]

18 hours ago, FrontLineFodder said:

installed Ambient light adjustment and took another pic

it's not so much power transfer i'm having issues with, I can see that works, EC drops on non connected parts and regularly gets topped up (via PDU).
even when the generator is directly connected I'm getting the message, the generator sits there almost idle (don't have anything significant drawing EC)

RoverDude, should I take this issue to the GroundConstruction thread ? I don't know if you have modified it in any way

update:
amusingly, I am able to start work on the second DIY kit without the issue.

I've got nothing.   If it's mostly a GC issue, I'd try over there.

And because I just thought it was fun:

(Trixy Kermin moving some base expansion parts into position from where they were landed ~50 meters away.)

[Plecy75]

so, this happened

https://youtu.be/5X9pgzgkLfQ

any ideas as to what's going on here?

[goldenpsp]

38 minutes ago, Plecy75 said:

so, this happened

https://youtu.be/5X9pgzgkLfQ

any ideas as to what's going on here?

Looks like you got the wobblies.  Beyond that there isn't nearly enough information to help.  It could be a part or collider clipping issue.  Or fighting SAS modules.  I've had stock ships rip themselves apart so this isn't necessarily an MKS issue as it can happen in stock KSP.  But seriously a 16 second video from your phone of your computer screen with zero context isn't giving anyone much to go on.

[Plecy75]

SAS was not on, and no parts were clipped. i literally have no idea why it's doing this.

[goldenpsp]

16 minutes ago, Plecy75 said:

SAS was not on, and no parts were clipped. i literally have no idea why it's doing this.

I've got nothing either based off the information at hand.  But I wish you luck getting to the bottom of it.

[damerell]

1 hour ago, Plecy75 said:

SAS was not on, and no parts were clipped. i literally have no idea why it's doing this.

Neither will anyone else without, for example, the logfile.

[voicey99]

6 hours ago, DStaal said:

I've got nothing.   If it's mostly a GC issue, I'd try over there.

And because I just thought it was fun:

(Trixy Kermin moving some base expansion parts into position from where they were landed ~50 meters away.)

How did you land that kontainer in the top left? It has an engine but no fuel tank (unless the nose cone is a tank?).

And tbh in Minmus' low gravity I simply harpoon parts with KIS and drag them around, no fancy cranes involved.

[Kobymaru]

7 hours ago, Plecy75 said:

SAS was not on, and no parts were clipped. i literally have no idea why it's doing this.

Two things:

First, parts have colliders that don't necessarily match the visual mesh of the part. So it could well be that you *do* have parts clipped, and you just don't see it.

Second, do you have Autostruts? I had a similar issue, but I was able to "fix" it by going through the parts and disabling autostruts one by one, and found the one part whose autostrutting caused wild oscillations.

[voicey99]

9 hours ago, Plecy75 said:

SAS was not on, and no parts were clipped. i literally have no idea why it's doing this.

I have fallen victim to this before, but I think this is a stock bug given I have also had my craft thrash about on me and break up for no apparent reason. Tundra modules do seem especially susceptible though, my guess would be how they might half-clip into one another when attached end-to-end (in that they produce a cone when attached to a different diameter part, like an engine shroud). This issue was kinda swept under the carpet when the grount tether was added to restrain the kraken via brute force, but I've never seen this on a station before. Try using KJR to give you enough time to install a Ranger Anchor Hub and use its weight transfer (rendering all attached parts physicsless) function?

P.S. there are free screen capture programs out there that will do a much better job that a phone camera held up to the screen. If you use a Nvidia gfx card you might have one inbuilt.

Edited May 8, 2017 by voicey99

[RoverDude]

Reminder - there is a new pre-release for the constellation available (let me know if anyone gets lag with this version or not!)

Thanks