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

[TheRagingIrishman]

3 hours ago, Wyzard said:

"MKS Tundra Pioneer - Logistics Module" makes it look like "Tundra Pioneer" is the part's name and "Logistics Module" is what it does.  Maybe change it to "Pioneer + Logistics" so it's more clear that they're two separate functions.

OK changed for the next release 

[Raven Industries]

I noticed that the KSPedia page for the tundra series parts has the text for the 3.75m kerbitat living module and the industrial regolith sifter mixed up.

 

[Terwin]

19 hours ago, KerbalSaver said:

I noticed that the KSPedia page for the tundra series parts has the text for the 3.75m kerbitat living module and the industrial regolith sifter mixed up.

Did you fix it?

[cordilon]

On 28.6.2017 at 3:29 PM, Terwin said:

Available Living space affected MKS production efficiency in previous versions of MKS, and has nothing to do with GC.

I was referring to this part of the GC description on the mod's forum page:

Quote

6. The amount of free space per kerbal inside the Workshop also affects efficiency: a small compartment with a place for a single kerbal may be more efficient than a big one packed with two dozen passenger chairs.

Besides that my question was rather if you could increase the efficiency of the workshop parts itself or can you only affect the build speed by the skill of your engineers?
In my test there were four 2-star engineers working on a small rover and still needed three days to finish. Oh also adding another workshop which would attend to the same DIY kit wouldn't change the construction time either.

[BashGordon33]

I've been having trouble downloading and getting this mod working. Firstly, I have been having trouble installing, the mod either crashes the game or doesn't work properly with my game. When it doesn't crash the game, I have problems changing the configuration on my modules in the assembly buildings. I click on the B1 Next/B1 Prev and nothing changes. For some I can't even set the configuration, it just says ???.

[Merkov]

1 hour ago, BashGordon33 said:

I've been having trouble downloading and getting this mod working. Firstly, I have been having trouble installing, the mod either crashes the game or doesn't work properly with my game. When it doesn't crash the game, I have problems changing the configuration on my modules in the assembly buildings. I click on the B1 Next/B1 Prev and nothing changes. For some I can't even set the configuration, it just says ???.

What are your MKS and KSP versions? Mods crashing games sounds like mods built for KSP 1.2.x being used in KSP 1.3 or vise versa. A picture of your GameData and UmbraSpaceIndustries folders can help us see if it's a simple install error, too. 

As for the configuring of parts, what life support mod are you using? Many of the configurations only work with USI-LS, some work without it but require at least one LS mod, and some don't need any. 

For example, any configurations that provide hab bonuses for USI-LS will not be available without it installed because hab time doesn't exist without USI-LS. Other configurations that provide life support converters of some sort will be available with, for example, TAC LS and USI-LS, but will be disabled without either of them. Again, this is because they serve no purpose without those mods. 

[BashGordon33]

36 minutes ago, Merkov said:

What are your MKS and KSP versions? Mods crashing games sounds like mods built for KSP 1.2.x being used in KSP 1.3 or vise versa. A picture of your GameData and UmbraSpaceIndustries folders can help us see if it's a simple install error, too. 

As for the configuring of parts, what life support mod are you using? Many of the configurations only work with USI-LS, some work without it but require at least one LS mod, and some don't need any. 

For example, any configurations that provide hab bonuses for USI-LS will not be available without it installed because hab time doesn't exist without USI-LS. Other configurations that provide life support converters of some sort will be available with, for example, TAC LS and USI-LS, but will be disabled without either of them. Again, this is because they serve no purpose without those mods. 

I downloaded MKS from the GitHub download, which says it's the 1.3 version. And my configuration problem is that when I click on Next to cycle through the configs, it doesn't change. Do I need USI-LS to run this? And here are my pictures:

Spoiler

This is what I put in my Gamedata, I have a bunch of other mods as well. 

 

[TauPhraim]

1 hour ago, BashGordon33 said:

when I click on Next to cycle through the configs, it doesn't change. Do I need USI-LS to run this?

It depends on the part, but a lot of the MKS parts provide converters for life support. For these you won't have anything configurable.

[Terwin]

15 hours ago, cordilon said:

I was referring to this part of the GC description on the mod's forum page:

Besides that my question was rather if you could increase the efficiency of the workshop parts itself or can you only affect the build speed by the skill of your engineers?
In my test there were four 2-star engineers working on a small rover and still needed three days to finish. Oh also adding another workshop which would attend to the same DIY kit wouldn't change the construction time either.

The description from GC is telling you which parts you should look at to try to find the highest efficiency rating.

It does not provide a way to improve a part that has a given rating.

I believe there was a recent change in GC to allow multiple workshops to recognize that there were other workshops working on  the same part when calculating the time to completion, but that does require that you have more engineers than fit into the one workshop part for it to be useful(putting two engineers into each of two four-engineer workshops does no make things any faster than all four in one workshop)

If all of your engineers are already in MKS assembly plants or inflatable workshops(which have 300% ratings), then the only way to speed up the project further is to add more engineers.  There is no in-game way to change the workshop efficiency of a given part. (you could edit the config files, but I doubt that is what you mean)

GC is very fast as far as realistic in-situ construction goes(hours per part and days/weeks per vessel), but it by no means works at the speeds of RTS unit creation(seconds/minutes).

After all, you had four moderately skilled(2-star) engineers build a highly reliable electric vehicle out of circuit boards and steel pipes in only 3 days, an electric vehicle that is not only able to re-charge it's own battery(I assume) but also expected to work in the vacuum of space with no prepared roads or repair facilities(other than fixing the occasional flat tire).  I would consider than a pretty heroic feat considering that they probably had to do a lot of that work wearing space suits.  If you had any sort of scientific equipment or enclosed modules, then that makes it only more impressive.

 

[cordilon]

1 hour ago, Terwin said:

After all, you had four moderately skilled(2-star) engineers build a highly reliable electric vehicle out of circuit boards and steel pipes in only 3 days

I totally get where you're going with this and I would completely agree if you didn't have to choose a spicific vessel to put in a DIY kit before launch. This way it feels more to me like an IKEA piece of furniture where everything's pretty much ready to be assembled (screwdriver not inlcuded) and only packed efficiently... hence the weight and size of the whole thing.

Either way, that's a design choice of the mod and I don't want to argue about that. Thanks for answering my questions!

A somewhat related last question: Is MKS downward compatible? I'd like to install the latest version but will stay with KSP 1.2.2 for a while.

[voicey99]

6 minutes ago, cordilon said:

A somewhat related last question: Is MKS downward compatible? I'd like to install the latest version but will stay with KSP 1.2.2 for a while.

No, it isn't. 0.50.18 was the last 1.2-compatible version (it's downloadable in the releases history on git). The SpaceDock page hasn't been updated in ages.

Edited June 30, 2017 by voicey99

[nhnifong]

Has anyone looked into the feasibility of keeping kerbals "on ice" for long journeys? (let them become tourists and revive them when they reach the destination)

Say I'm taking an 11 year journey out to Ulrum with 10 kerbals. I would plan to have a habitat only large enough to keep a single medic happy for 11 years, but let everyone else become a tourist (can effectively isolate habitats on the same vessel?) I would also carry a med bay and colony supplies to revive the kerbals when they reach Ulrum.

But it looks like this is not a better use of mass than just bringing a bigger habitat unfortunately. It seems to revive 9 kerbs of 10 years of homesickness would require 9*10*6*416=224640 Colony Supplies (349t)

But maybe it is still a viable strategy if the revival method is just to expand a very large habitat when we reach ulrum, and transfer all the tourists into it.

[voicey99]

4 minutes ago, nhnifong said:

Has anyone looked into the feasibility of keeping kerbals "on ice" for long journeys? (let them become tourists and revive them when they reach the destination)

Say I'm taking an 11 year journey out to Ulrum with 10 kerbals. I would plan to have a habitat only large enough to keep a single medic happy for 11 years, but let everyone else become a tourist (can effectively isolate habitats on the same vessel?) I would also carry a med bay and colony supplies to revive the kerbals when they reach Ulrum.

But it looks like this is not a better use of mass than just bringing a bigger habitat unfortunately. It seems to revive 9 kerbs of 10 years of homesickness would require 9*10*6*416=224640 Colony Supplies (349t)

But maybe it is still a viable strategy if the revival method is just to expand a very large habitat when we reach ulrum, and transfer all the tourists into it.

Personally I think the challenge is fun (and long journeys are much better with kerbitats than colonysup) but if you insist on circumventing it, try DeepFreeze-it's fully compatible with USI-LS.

[nhnifong]

I'm certainly not just looking for a way to circumvent the challenge! But I thought that a long journey (10+ years) might call for a different strategy than a medium one.

[DStaal]

11 minutes ago, nhnifong said:

I'm certainly not just looking for a way to circumvent the challenge! But I thought that a long journey (10+ years) might call for a different strategy than a medium one.

I can see sending new colonists that way - you don't care if they go a bit nuts on the trip over, as long as they can adapt to your colony at the far end.

[voicey99]

16 minutes ago, nhnifong said:

I'm certainly not just looking for a way to circumvent the challenge! But I thought that a long journey (10+ years) might call for a different strategy than a medium one.

Did some testing and you need about 40t worth of hab kit to take 9 kerbs on a 10yr journey. I was more trying to say that taking kerbals on long journeys while trying to keep them from going nuts is what drives you to make more interesting ships to lug all that hab kit around and to me cryo freezing is a 'cut the knot' approach. Still, please don't take my word for anything and use DF if that's the way you would want to play. You might also be able to simply give them no hab for the entire journey and then dock with the base (assuming it has hab), at which point they will be ungrumped (also assuming mechanics allow that).

[nhnifong]

I think one of the most fun parts of KSP and MKS to me is the challenge of making a compact and low-mass vehicle that unpacks into a large, spacious and highly functional base or station at the destination.

I think the angle I'm going to take with my Ulrum mission is to send a large packed station ahead of time, and later send a super-fast manned ship on a ~1y trajectory to meet up with it and deposit the crew, who will unpack it.

If you say deep freeze is too easy, I'll take your word for it

[DStaal]

23 minutes ago, nhnifong said:

I think one of the most fun parts of KSP and MKS to me is the challenge of making a compact and low-mass vehicle that unpacks into a large, spacious and highly functional base or station at the destination.

I think the angle I'm going to take with my Ulrum mission is to send a large packed station ahead of time, and later send a super-fast manned ship on a ~1y trajectory to meet up with it and deposit the crew, who will unpack it.

If you say deep freeze is too easy, I'll take your word for it

I wouldn't necessarily say DeepFreeze is too easy, depending on the settings.  You can have it sensitive to EC and heat, as well as having to have the custom resource available at both ends.  (And also of course note that you will need some control of some sort to unfreeze them - they can't unfreeze themselves...)  But it's definitely going, 'ok, I don't want do deal with this set of challenges, so I'll deal with a different - and hopefully more straightforwad - set instead.'  It's *easier* - at the price of needing resources/parts/mass that aren't going to be useful for anything else, and needing to be able to handle it's requirements for use.  (Which can be fairly high - again, depending on your settings.)

It's also slightly more science fiction than most of the USI suite - We're pretty sure it's possible in theory to freeze someone and bring them back afterwards, but we don't really know if it's possible in practice.  (On the other hand, it's less fictional than the warp drive mod...)

[voicey99]

1 hour ago, nhnifong said:

I think one of the most fun parts of KSP and MKS to me is the challenge of making a compact and low-mass vehicle that unpacks into a large, spacious and highly functional base or station at the destination.

I think the angle I'm going to take with my Ulrum mission is to send a large packed station ahead of time, and later send a super-fast manned ship on a ~1y trajectory to meet up with it and deposit the crew, who will unpack it.

If you say deep freeze is too easy, I'll take your word for it

DF has its restrictions, like you need to constantly provide power for the pods (else they ded) and you need resources to freeze kerbals, but IMO it's still a bit too easy. If you're planning on building a station around Urlum, you're going to need habtime anyway and unless you plan on constantly ferrying colonysup up from Tal or Priax. It might be worth investing in either shipping in or making on Tal or Priax the just under 100t worth of hab kit required to get your 9 kerbs over the 50yr hab threshold required for perma hab so you don't have to worry about it.

What are you using to fuel your ships??? Getting to Urlum in 1yr requires 30kms of ΔV! Even my usual foot-down attitude only gets me there in 4yrs.

Edited June 30, 2017 by voicey99

[nickicool]

Hi for all! Pls, tel me one question. MKS/OKS have full support for TAC LS?

Thanks you, for answer!

[nhnifong]

1 hour ago, voicey99 said:

What are you using to fuel your ships??? Getting to Urlum in 1yr requires 30kms of ΔV! Even my usual foot-down attitude only gets me there in 4yrs.

Hahaha! I hadn't checked how much it would be. Yikes. I've only gone out to gas giants so far with nerva-type engines, but I've recently unlocked lithium plasma thrusters, and I'll probably go with those for the Ulrum crew vessel. Probably with a reactor in the range of 4000 EC/s.
There's probably an optimum somewhere between heavy hab long trip, and heavy fuel short trip but I don't know what it is yet.

[voicey99]

9 hours ago, nhnifong said:

Hahaha! I hadn't checked how much it would be. Yikes. I've only gone out to gas giants so far with nerva-type engines, but I've recently unlocked lithium plasma thrusters, and I'll probably go with those for the Ulrum crew vessel. Probably with a reactor in the range of 4000 EC/s.
There's probably an optimum somewhere between heavy hab long trip, and heavy fuel short trip but I don't know what it is yet.

I would think it's probably cheaper to go for a slightly longer route. You can get your 9 kerbs to Urlum in 4y with just over 5kms and only 30t of hab kit, and my bet is the reactor, thrusters and their fuel are absurdly expensive.

[Heyo!!]

Hey! Had a question for you MKS vet's out there, I'm having an issue with Hab timers... 

 

The issue I am having is that the hab timer's seem to expire WAY to quickly when switched to a vehicle. For instance I'll have a ship built with enough various cupola's and viewports etc. to ensure a short 2 year period of habitability. When I am in the complex view, with time increased, the hab timers work as advertised, slowly ticking down as time passes. When I switch to the vehicle and speed up time, the hab timers will go from 2 years or whatever to orange then will expire. The most common resolution was to just exit ship view, go back to the space port then switch back to the vehicle. 

 

After 15-20 seconds the hab timers will reset and I could restart whatever activity the Kerbs involved in ( in this case I had a ghetto science lab setup to burn down some data over the span of a few years in career mode landed on Minmus). I would go to space port view, speed up time to run off 500 science in about 70-80 days or so, then swap back to transmit - rinse,repeat until I burned up all available data and the hab timer was reaching it's end.

 

It's not a deal breaker by any means, but with switching and loading and sometimes having to transfer Kerb's back and forth just really aggravating the experience.

 

I can submit some pics or video if what I am describing is a little unclear

[howkong]

I have a question about the USI nuclear reactors...

What should I do if I want to tweak the core life of a reactor? There doesn't seem to be a "core life" in the cfg file.

(I am playing MKS with RSS, trying to power recyclers on a trip to Saturn, which would take way too long for the original core life of less than two years.

Solar panels are clearly not an option due to the weak sunlight, and I cannot find anything else that produces hundreds of Ecs per second other than nuclear reactors.)

Sorry for asking in the wrong topic but I failed to find a delete button on this interface...

Edited July 1, 2017 by howkong

[Baladain]

43 minutes ago, howkong said:

I have a question about the USI nuclear reactors...

What should I do if I want to tweak the core life of a reactor? There doesn't seem to be a "core life" in the cfg file.

Sorry for asking in the wrong topic but I failed to find a delete button on this interface...

reactor core life isn't part of USI, I believe it's added by Near Future electrical.