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[1.9.x] Kessler Syndrome 1.4 (19/02/2020)


severedsolo

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Ever felt KSP needs more explosions? Me neither really, but space debris is a problem in real life, and now it can be a problem in your game too!

When/if you start leaving debris in orbit, your craft may encounter a "micrometeroid", which will explode a random part of your ship, unless the game considers it to be shielded from the airstream.

Debris only counts (and therefore explosions can happen) if:

1) It's Periapsis is above the atmosphere height (or 5000m for airless bodies)

2) Your vessel is outside the atmosphere (or 5000m for airless bodies), and below the Apoapsis of the debris.

More debris = more chance of an explosion (the exact amount this is affected can be changed in the difficulty settings)

I know, no pics no clicks, so here's some screenshots from some earlier versions with pretty explosions:

Spoiler

ZyQDgxM.png

GLYw0z8.png

License: MIT

Download it here

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downloads_wordmark_navy@2x.png

 

Edited by severedsolo
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@severedsolo If I understand rigth, the mod will identify the existence of debris (given the condtion on OP) and simulates a colision by exploding random part of your vessel, is that rigth?

If so, the amount of debris matter? The more, more chances of explosion.

And their orbit as well as the ships orbit count? More debris in LKO with 0° inclination means more explosions near this orbit a lower in higher or more inclined orbits?

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41 minutes ago, VaPaL said:

 If I understand rigth, the mod will identify the existence of debris (given the condtion on OP) and simulates a colision by exploding random part of your vessel, is that rigth?

Yup.

41 minutes ago, VaPaL said:

If so, the amount of debris matter? The more, more chances of explosion.

Yup. It's also configurable in the difficulty settings. By default it's a straight one piece of debris = an extra 1% chance of an explosion, but you can scale it anywhere from max 1 piece to max 250 (probably more if you edit the save file directly). There is also a toolbar button which will show you your chance of a strike at the current time.

41 minutes ago, VaPaL said:

And their orbit as well as the ships orbit count? More debris in LKO with 0° inclination means more explosions near this orbit a lower in higher or more inclined orbits?

I knew I was forgetting something. No, at the moment all debris counts regardless of inclination. However, it should be inclination based too. Raised #1

Edited by severedsolo
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58 minutes ago, VaPaL said:

More debris in LKO with 0° inclination means more explosions near this orbit a lower in higher or more inclined orbits?

I didn't read this bit properly. So, at the moment inclination doesn't matter, but once your vessel is above the AP of the debris, that piece of debris will no longer be counted when calculating the chance. So yes, the higher you are, the safer you are.

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3 minutes ago, severedsolo said:

I didn't read this bit properly. So, at the moment inclination doesn't matter, but once your vessel is above the AP of the debris, that piece of debris will no longer be counted when calculating the chance. So yes, the higher you are, the safer you are.

Nice! Very nice indeed :) 

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Do you think it would be within scope to add a feature that helps deal with debris fields passively? There is a mod for orbital decay which is not updated for 1.2.2 yet, and which aims to have a very in depth simulation of decay. I'm not suggesting anything nearly as complicated. Perhaps just a single configurable orbital decay rate for each body that affects all vessels (by decay I mean lower SMA until the vessel or part's periapsis is inside the atmosphere or below 5km, then cull it). I'm not sure how difficult it would be it implement code that can affect the SMA of a vessel like that. Failing that what about a time based mechanic, so if a vessel is marked as debris a timer starts that destroys that vessel after a delay based on it's SMA, so larger SMA means that the debris will stay in orbit for quite a while before being culled. 

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@Errol - I don't think it's out of scope at all. I considered it before releasing, but ultimately decided against it because I wasn't sure it was wanted/needed, especially as Orbital Decay is a mod.

So, let me preface this by saying that this mod's purview is debris only. It will not touch working vessels, only stuff that's marked as debris. It's also toggleable, in case you have Orbital Decay installed (once it's updated).

At the moment the gist is this: a piece of debris will have it's SMA reduced by 1% every time it crosses it's AP/PE marker. Eventually the orbit decays enough for the vessel to be destroyed. Station keeping is not a thing, because this is debris (ie, in my opinion it's decommissioned).

It's not ready for release yet, as it needs more testing (I've only tested in equatorial orbits around kerbin, and I may need to add special use cases for airless bodies, haven't tested that yet), but is this basically what you want?

Edited by severedsolo
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7 hours ago, severedsolo said:

@Errol - I don't think it's out of scope at all. I considered it before releasing, but ultimately decided against it because I wasn't sure it was wanted/needed, especially as Orbital Decay is a mod.

So, let me preface this by saying that this mod's purview is debris only. It will not touch working vessels, only stuff that's marked as debris. It's also toggleable, in case you have Orbital Decay installed (once it's updated).

At the moment the gist is this: a piece of debris will have it's SMA reduced by 1% every time it crosses it's AP/PE marker. Eventually the orbit decays enough for the vessel to be destroyed. Station keeping is not a thing, because this is debris (ie, in my opinion it's decommissioned).

It's not ready for release yet, as it needs more testing (I've only tested in equatorial orbits around kerbin, and I may need to add special use cases for airless bodies, haven't tested that yet), but is this basically what you want?

Yeah, this is exactly what I was talking about.

I still think it would be neat to have it as an option for vessels. It would be like a hard mode. And for station keeping just make it consume x amount of mono prop every time the SMA would be changed. Not sure how to decide what X should be, but it could be based on the value that the SMA was going to be changed by and factor in the vessel's mass. I really like the idea of a lite of orbital decay mod ( "abstraction for gameplay purposes" ). My game already runs at 5 - 15 fps, I don't want to ad a bunch of fancy physics calculations to what is already going on. No need to add any new parts or other mechanics, just a bit of basic math. We can assume that if the vessel has mono prop on board that it also has thruster it can use it with, and that they can translate in the correct direction regardless of orientation. There is already another really nice little mod that adds difficulty and uses a very similar mechanic:

(Semi-)Saturatable Reaction Wheels - Download/Source

It is an optional included .cfg for a momentum discharge thruster module MM patched into all the parts that contain reaction wheels, and therefore the RWsaturatable module. It just consumes some mono prop to restore reaction wheel torque more quickly. 

If you do decide to follow up on this, my suggestion would be to make a station keeping module that gets added to command pod parts that consumes monoprop, with some formula to balance the cost. 

EDIT: By the way, I really look forward to this feature. I may spend my time in time warp for KCT at the tracking station now so I can watch all the garbage slowly spiral inward....

Edited by Errol
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@severedsolo think you might of missed this

On 1/7/2017 at 9:11 PM, toric5 said:

what about a restriction that the part has to be between the apoapis and periapis of the debris. this would allow an above-keostationary graveyard orbit to be used, like in real life.

 

This is something I'd like to see too.

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2 hours ago, Errol said:

Yeah, this is exactly what I was talking about.

I still think it would be neat to have it as an option for vessels. It would be like a hard mode.

 

Oh it's a good idea, I just think it's well outside the scope of this mod. I added the debris decay because I personally don't like messing around with klaws etc to get the debris de-orbited. The other stuff is probably another mod in it's own right, and to be frank - one I'm not interested in writing because I wouldn't use it.

On 08/01/2017 at 2:11 AM, toric5 said:

what about a restriction that the part has to be between the apoapis and periapis of the debris. this would allow an above-keostationary graveyard orbit to be used, like in real life.

 

1 hour ago, TheRagingIrishman said:

@severedsolo think you might of missed this

This is something I'd like to see too.

Not 100% sure I like this, as I feel that you would never encounter the debris. It's not a bad idea though, and I'm not 100% happy with the current method, as I feel it's a little unrealistic. I'll add it as a difficulty option.

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That's fair, thanks for the response. For people who don't code, do you think it would be difficult to adapt what you have done here to do what I described (and does your license permit it?)
 

EDIT: On the topic of graveyard orbits, what about looking at eccentricity as part of the evaluation of if debris adds to the chance of collision? Also, doesn't the orbit decay feature help deal with this? Further, another thought for the decay feature is that you could disable it past a certain point, like keostationary orbit for example (and make it .cfg definable for other bodies).

Edited by Errol
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On 12/01/2017 at 9:57 PM, severedsolo said:

Oh it's a good idea, I just think it's well outside the scope of this mod. I added the debris decay because I personally don't like messing around with klaws etc to get the debris de-orbited. The other stuff is probably another mod in it's own right, and to be frank - one I'm not interested in writing because I wouldn't use it.

 

Not 100% sure I like this, as I feel that you would never encounter the debris. It's not a bad idea though, and I'm not 100% happy with the current method, as I feel it's a little unrealistic. I'll add it as a difficulty option.

Is this feature in the release version yet?

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Just now, Errol said:

Is this feature in the release version yet?

Not yet. It works fine in the flight scene, but accessing vessels orbital info outside of that scene seems to be a no-no.

I'm trying to decide whether to go "meh good enough" and just have it work in flight scene, or do what Orbital Decay does and keep track of it, and update when the flight scene becomes available again.

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Perhaps have a look t the mod background processing?
 

EDIT: @severedsolo What about in the tracking station? Do the same "no-no" restrictions apply in the tracking station too? If the decay only worked in the tracking station that wouldn't be a bad compromise. (At least for players who also use KCT, as they do a bunch of time warping at the space center while waiting for build times to pass anyway, just having them do it in the tracking station means that all the debris will often get chances to decay some).

Edited by Errol
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On 17/01/2017 at 7:43 PM, Errol said:

 What about in the tracking station? Do the same "no-no" restrictions apply in the tracking station too? If the decay only worked in the tracking station that wouldn't be a bad compromise. (At least for players who also use KCT, as they do a bunch of time warping at the space center while waiting for build times to pass anyway, just having them do it in the tracking station means that all the debris will often get chances to decay some).

 

Same problem. Anything outside the flight scene seems to be out. I did find a hook that didn't rely on having a full Vessel loaded, but it doesn't seem to actually do anything. I'm going to ask on the Plugin Development forum, but otherwise this may have to be shelved.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Kessler Syndrome 1.1 released!

  • On screen message will now tell you which part was destroyed.
  • Mod will now take into account the debris inclination, and whether orbit is prograde/retrograde to the active vessels orbit, when deciding the chance of an impact.
  • Changed interval between checking for an impact to 30 real-time seconds, rather than 30 in-game seconds.

 

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Some ideas for expansion (I don't expect these to happen, just ideas):

- Integration with Kerbal Krash System to cause damage rather than all-or-nothing part destructions, like generating a minimum-sized whack-a-kerbal object to approach with a velocity dependent on how much the orbit of the debris field differs from the craft below it.

- Impacts during interplanetary travel. I'm not sure how serious a concern this is in reality but solar space is surprisingly dense and a ship that spends years moving around in it might suffer cumulative damage over its lifespan. Maybe flimsy folding solar panels and radiators would be holed over time. This wouldn't destroy the panels, maybe just produce an increasing number of random holes in the texture and reduce efficiency by some percent. Dunno if this can be done though. Maybe this could happen to fairings used as whipple shields too. Here's an example:

Spoiler

09F1FE64B952051AA0881CC5C714264DF8F010D6

- Increased chance of micrometeoroid impacts in proximity to asteroid zones (presumably there are thousands of pebble-sized dustbunnies for every A class), so maybe near Kerbin and Dres orbits.

Edited by Guest
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Is there any way to avoid fields of micrometeorites entirely? Like the ISS will see that a patch is coming up and then use its thrusters to dodge it. Is there any way to get out of the way rather than just having to take the hit?

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  • 3 weeks later...

@severedsolo 

The chances are calculated per part or vessel? I'm asking because I had 3 hits in one flight and 1 hit in the next with only a 2% chances it seems I'm being hit more often than I should. If the chance are per parts that explains it a lot, a 100 part vessel is expected to be hitted twice.

I saw now that there are a new version, but since the changelog doesn't mention anything about this, I don't think it matter for this case. I gave a quick look for this in the thread but didn't found anything about, but sorry if this was already mentioned.

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Just now, VaPaL said:

@severedsolo 

The chances are calculated per part or vessel? I'm asking because I had 3 hits in one flight and 1 hit in the next with only a 2% chances it seems I'm being hit more often than I should. If the chance are per parts that explains it a lot, a 100 part vessel is expected to be hitted twice.

I saw now that there are a new version, but since the changelog doesn't mention anything about this, I don't think it matter for this case. I gave a quick look for this in the thread but didn't found anything about, but sorry if this was already mentioned.

No problem. The hit rate was a little high in the previous version as it was checking every 30 kerbal seconds, which meant if you were at timewarp, alot of numbers were being rolled at once. Roll enough die, your gonna get a 6 sooner or later.

New version should fix it, as it's only checking every 30 real-time seconds.

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  • 2 months later...
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