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

[Errol]

13 hours ago, severedsolo said:

...

Note: You'll see some options for "Orbital decay" in the settings menu. These don't do anything yet.

 

HYPE!

Also, will it decay be applicable only to debris, or will we be able to have stations and satellites with decay too?

 

[severedsolo]

5 hours ago, Errol said:

HYPE!

Also, will it decay be applicable only to debris, or will we be able to have stations and satellites with decay too?

 

When I get round to actually coding it, I will see if it would be too much hassle to have non-debris decay too ( I will make it toggleable) - no promises, but if it doesn't make the code too messy I'll add it as an option.

It may be I split it into it's own mod, I haven't quite decided yet.

Edit: one thing I should mention is that if I keep it as part of Kessler Syndrome, there will be absolutely no stationkeeping, due to wanting to avoid feature creep.

Edited May 28, 2017 by severedsolo

[Errol]

Understandable. If it does get split into it's own mod I would suggest keeping simple at a high level of abstraction. My idea would be to just have a station keeping module that can be added to command pods via MM or something that consumes an amount of mono prop, LFO or something to prevent decay on that vessel. Don't worry about simulating the TWR, burns etc. There are more advanced mods for that already. 

[severedsolo]

8 hours ago, Errol said:

HYPE!

Also, will it decay be applicable only to debris, or will we be able to have stations and satellites with decay too?

 

Turns out it actually wasn't as difficult as I thought it was going to be - give the new pre-release a try if you like.

Needs a little explanation:

By default the orbital decay setting is off, and the mod works just as it always has.

If you turn orbital decay on, anything below the "in space high" threshold will decay, and only debris below that threshold will count when calculating impact chances (so you can have graveyard orbits). There is also a setting that will allow any craft that isn't the active to decay (as I mentioned before, no stationkeeping).

As I mentioned previously, I am struggling to get KSP to co-operate with changing orbits outside the flight scene, so until I figure that out, the decay will only happen in the flight scene and it will "catch up" when you switch to the flight scene.

TODO:

• Due to a bug in stock, which was supposed to be fixed in 1.3 but doesn't seem to have been, the "settings slider" will default to 0% or 100% decay if you try and change it. So I need to change that to an int, otherwise you'll have to edit your persistence directly if you don't like 1% delay.
• Remove the "this doesn't work" warnings from the settings menu.

Edited May 28, 2017 by severedsolo

[Nightside]

Will an abundance of captured asteroids cause more collisions?

[severedsolo]

1 hour ago, Nightside said:

Will an abundance of captured asteroids cause more collisions?

That does sound fun, but no, asteroids are specifically excluded from the calculations (but I feel I need to add this as an option now.....)

[severedsolo]

Hey @Errol (or anyone else who is interested) - I've just put a new pre-release of the Decay Manager up, check it out and let me know. If I don't get any complaints I'll do a release shortly (maybe tomorrow?) - although I am still seriously considering breaking it into it's own mod now.

• Decay is now atmosphere aware. It won't decay at all on airless bodies, and the decay will scale based on how high the debris is on atmospheric bodies (lower = more decay).
• Fixed bug where a scene change would be needed to make debris decay once staged.
• Handle (harmless) exception where decay manager can't load it's data.

Edited May 31, 2017 by severedsolo

[Errol]

Im travelling to quebec for my nephews' grad ceremony from basic training at the moment. So excited to give this a try. I had set up a craft with hyper edit to test the decay feature in the last pre-release. I may have been suffering from that staging bug you mentioned (my debris field was just a bunch of radial d ecouplers on a probe body). Will let you know as soon as i get a chance to test this out.

 

Suggestion, instead of completely disabling decay on atmosphere-less bodies could you just nerf it severely? Would be nice to help deal with accumulation, and in reality perturbations from many sources cause decay, such as magnetic fields and solar radiation. (Of course my vote is still to break it out into an orbital decay-lite mod; and include a simple station keeping module for rcs thrusters that consumes resources to inhibit decay).

[severedsolo]

3 minutes ago, Errol said:

I may have been suffering from that staging bug you mentioned (my debris field was just a bunch of radial d ecouplers on a probe body). Will let you know as soon as i get a chance to test this out.

No problem. Don't forget to turn it on in the settings. (I honestly spent 15 minutes earlier going WHY AREN'T YOU SAVING! YOU SAVED FINE ON MONDAY!"  before remembering that it defaults to off.....)

4 minutes ago, Errol said:

Suggestion, instead of completely disabling decay on atmosphere-less bodies could you just nerf it severely? Would be nice to help deal with accumulation, and in reality perturbations from many sources cause decay, such as magnetic fields and solar radiation. (Of course my vote is still to break it out into an orbital decay-lite mod; and include a simple station keeping module for rcs thrusters that consumes resources to inhibit decay).

I'm definitely liking the "orbital decay lite" idea. I think there would be some appetite for it too, certainly if the minimum function was just to decay vessels that were in the atmosphere (and then optional toggles for the other stuff).

Obviously if that happens, there will be station keeping. I'm thinking just use a tiny bit of RCS (rather than having to mess around trying to find LF/O etc). The code is already written, I just need to adjust it for Non-Kessler activities. (Kind of already started on this, so it's probably going to happen, assuming I can get the stationkeeping working).

I'll have a think about the non-atmospheric stuff. I guess I could do a 0.01% decay rate or something, on the fence about it though.

 

[severedsolo]

 

On 31/05/2017 at 7:31 PM, Errol said:

(Of course my vote is still to break it out into an orbital decay-lite mod; and include a simple station keeping module for rcs thrusters that consumes resources to inhibit decay).

I am the king of procrasination apparently. I know you haven't chased or anything, but I feel the need to apologise anyway, I allowed myself to get distracted.

I sat down at the computer on Thursday night thinking "right, I'll crack on with SimpleOrbitalDecay". Nope. Instead I wrote EarnYourStripes and then started fiddling with UPFM. *slaps wrist* bad severed. Will leave the pre-release up until I get it done.

[Errol]

@severedsolo

 

No need to apologize. I have felt bad for not doing the testing i said I'd do, been too busy tilting my solar system with MM and kopernicus. 

 

Just a thought; if you are looking for something else to procrastinate with, there is a mod that is now crashing the game in 1.3 that could use some recompiling love. 

 

Edited June 11, 2017 by Errol

[Filigan]

hmmmmm i play with  the Orbital Decay mod right now. 

This raises a question: When you develop your orbital decay mechanics further (especially the station keeping part) i guess both mods qould do basicly the same?

 

And a bonus question just pops to my mind :   When the orbital decay mod removes objects (debris), will kessler syndrome realise it is gone?

 

 

 

Edit: and a word of warning!

The Whitecats orbital decay mod hat the bad habit to deorbit the "stranded" capsules created by rescue contracts, which made said rascue missions close to impossible to do (there is of course a sort of workaraound, by prebuild the rescue craft and send it out to the launchpad before acepting the contract). You may want to have an eye on this "problem" when working on your decay mechanics.

Edited June 30, 2017 by Filigan

[severedsolo]

1 minute ago, Filigan said:

This raises a question: When you develop your orbital decay mechanics further (especially the station keeping part) i guess both mods qould do basicly the same?

Does Orbital Decay even work in 1.3? The idea is basically the same yes, I think Errol just wanted something a little simpler than the N-Body of that mod. If it even happens. UPFM is keeping me pretty busy at the moment.

4 minutes ago, Filigan said:

And a bonus question just pops to my mind :   When the orbital decay mod removes objects (debris), will kessler syndrome realise it is gone?

Yup. KS refreshes the vessel list every time it rolls (it has to, due to altitudes etc)

[Filigan]

Great!  

As for Orbital decay, there is a "unofficial" recompile that seems to work fine.

 

However, i am more than willing wo switch over to your version, since i  vermy much like to have a fair amount of realism, but keep it in "simple terms",  In addition i just assume to use several mods by the same Autor is a good practice, since there is a better chance they dont mess each other up.

[Bit Fiddler]

WAIT!?!?!? 

 

so I am to gather that without this mod my carefully constructed "Kessler Shield System" is not protecting my planet from invasion?   any ships will just ignore my "Orbital Defense Units" and not collide with them?

[Tyko]

I'm testing this mod and have a piece of debris in a 125,025m x 87,470m orbit. I've fast forwarded 10 days and orbit hasn't decayed at all. How long does it take?

[severedsolo]

6 hours ago, Tyko said:

I'm testing this mod and have a piece of debris in a 125,025m x 87,470m orbit. I've fast forwarded 10 days and orbit hasn't decayed at all. How long does it take?

Are you using the pre-release? and are you in the Flight Scene? It only works in the Flight scene. Otherwise I'll need a log.

[severedsolo]

Well, I've only been keeping @Errol waiting for 10 months... I think it's about time I turned on the orbital decay feature.

Kessler Syndrome 1.3 Released

• Recompiled against 1.3.1
• Turned on atmospheric decay functionality. When turned on debris will automatically decay it's orbit in the flight scene while orbiting a body with an atmosphere. Defaults to off. Mod will "catch up" when you switch back to the flight scene.
• Added option to decay orbits of all vessels, not just debris.
• When orbital decay is turned on, only debris considered to be in "near space" (ie for Kerbin, <250km) will be considered when looking for debris to impact your craft.

(I will backport this release to 1.3.0 shortly, I just don't have time right now to go through the VS stuff to do it).

Edited October 11, 2017 by severedsolo

[ZAJC3W]

Good job, consider radiation decay as addition to atmospheric decay. Or even better   speak to WhiteCat106 (he gave up modding for KSP) and take over his mod. May be less work than writing everything from scratch. If not consider RSS compatibility and keep up great work .

 

[TranceaddicT]

@severedsolo Nice work!  I'll be adding this to my list of realism-ish must-haves.

With regards to the destruction effect, would a damage model be out of the question?  A micrometeoroid impact is more likely to result in damage than destruction.

It could be interesting if you tied impact to ...

 

Edited January 21, 2018 by TranceaddicT

[theonegalen]

Thanks, @severedsolo!

[severedsolo]

PSA:

14 hours ago, UomoCapra said:

We are excited for the 1.4 release and look forward to the launch of the Making History Expansion next week. For our mod creators, please note an additional update 1.4.1 will come alongside that release and will need to be integrated as well.

None of my mods will be updated for 1.4, I will wait for the 1.4.1 release next week. At this point of time I don't know if any of them work and no support will be offered to users running 1.4.

[MaximumThrust]

On 14/07/2017 at 7:38 PM, Tyko said:

I'm testing this mod and have a piece of debris in a 125,025m x 87,470m orbit. I've fast forwarded 10 days and orbit hasn't decayed at all. How long does it take?

I have tested this mod in a 1.3.1 clean install, and under any circumstances or settings I observed any kind of decay in orbits above 70 km in Kerbin. It don't see to be working.

Anyone have a different experience?

[Errol]

On 31/03/2018 at 9:04 PM, MaximumThrust said:

I have tested this mod in a 1.3.1 clean install, and under any circumstances or settings I observed any kind of decay in orbits above 70 km in Kerbin. It don't see to be working.

Anyone have a different experience?

In 1.3.1 I have seen craft with a periapsis near the atmosphere (<80km) disappear, as if they decayed to the point that they touched the atmosphere, but never saw any other craft decay at all. I was wondering if it was just me....

[severedsolo]

Sounds like I have a bug to fix then. I look into it