[Most 1.12.x] Near Future Technologies (August 26)

[Roostergod]

hey @Nertea, i found a big exploit in the reflectors for NFEx while messing with @Poodmund's signal strength calculator, if you point a bunch of communitron 16s at a reflector dish, you can get a really powerful signal because of the communitron 16's 1.0 combinability factor. fix is real simple, just lower the feed effectiveness from 90% to something like 50% (or lower it's combinability factor if you'd rather).

[Streetwind]

On 7/6/2020 at 3:44 AM, Souptime said:

Hey nertea, is there a patch fore the thrusters that use argon/lithium just to use Xenon? i have a really good design but the thrust is too small for the ion engines and i wanna use the colossus engine, it just lookes better

There is another option: increasing the thrust of your electric engines. Yes, it's strictly speaking a cheat, but remember: in a singleplayer game, the only person who gets cheated is yourself. So if you don't feel cheated... Plus, you can make other values worse to compensate, if you so desire.

In GameData/NearFuturePropulsion/Patches, you'll find NFPropulsionTweakPatch.cfg. It's all set up for you to play with the values as you wish, no manual config writing required.

[Wyzard]

12 hours ago, Nertea said:

The problem is that the stock antennae are pretty superpowered...

I'd be interested in a rebalancing patch to fix this, maybe as an optional "extras" thing.  Similar to how NF Propulsion nerfs the stock Dawn to make the other ion engines more relevant.

(Actually, I'd be willing to write such a patch myself — but I don't know enough about antenna physics or part balancing to figure out what the new numbers ought to be.  If I had a good sense of that, though, writing the actual MM code should be pretty straightforward.)

[Nertea]

2 hours ago, Wyzard said:

I'd be interested in a rebalancing patch to fix this, maybe as an optional "extras" thing.  Similar to how NF Propulsion nerfs the stock Dawn to make the other ion engines more relevant.

(Actually, I'd be willing to write such a patch myself — but I don't know enough about antenna physics or part balancing to figure out what the new numbers ought to be.  If I had a good sense of that, though, writing the actual MM code should be pretty straightforward.)

@Poodmund has some insight there. 

The problem as I see it is that there aren't a lot of variables to play with. You have

• Range
• Packet size
• Packet power cost
• Combinability
• DIRECT/RELAY flag
• [Feedability]

These don't let you represent the challenges that real antennae have, particularly since science transmission is kinda balls, so packet size/power are less relevant than they should be. For probe control, your only levers are range and mass/cost. 

[Poodmund]

Its quite hard to place each antenna, reflector into a usage group. As there are only a small handful of antennae in the stock game for each range its quite difficult to add in new parts to fill niches when the stock parts cover such a massive range of powers already. You can kind of get round this by making parts' models larger or smaller so that the real limiting factor is how you can package them up within your payload. NF:Ex does this quite well as, generally, it offers some really small antenna parts which are nice but they are pretty anemic in power, maybe a little too much. Also some of the parts that are intended to be used in arrays (multiple antenna parts feeding into a reflector) have their feed factor or combinability exponent too low to actually make their usage in an array impractical as you end up needing too many to justify the size.

Basically... balancing this set of parts is extremely difficult. You need to consider a usage case or usage set for each part, tailor the powers to provide that capability, if a part is supposed to be used as a multiple (array), then figure out how many you want to be able to provide that usage case... is their still a usage case, though, with just one? Then there is exploit situation, like that specified above, where a part with a combinability exponent of 1.00 (which is a legitimately chosen value for this part for gameplay aspects) can get spam placed pointed at a reflector to take advantage of the reflectors power as opposed to its own very low power.

Wyzard, what I would suggest is that if you are serious about trying to rebalance these parts to take a look at my calculator spreadsheet, specifically the sheet that allows for NF:Ex calculation, and see what types of combos provide different max ranges. This should give you a good idea of what is underpowered, what is overpowered etc.

With respect to Nertea's comment above about variables, the only ones that really matter for the vast majority of the gameplay are power, combinability exponent and feedability.

Edited July 7, 2020 by Poodmund

[Wyzard]

7 minutes ago, Poodmund said:

Wyzard, what I would suggest is that if you are serious about trying to rebalance these parts to take a look at my calculator spreadsheet, specifically the sheet that allows for NF:Ex calculation, and see what types of combos provide different max ranges.

Based on what you've said, I can't promise I'll come up with something better than the status quo, but I am interested in trying.  Where can I find that spreadsheet?

[Poodmund]

16 minutes ago, Wyzard said:

Based on what you've said, I can't promise I'll come up with something better than the status quo, but I am interested in trying.  Where can I find that spreadsheet?

https://goo.gl/Wn03VL  

[SpaceFace545]

hey @Nertea, probably not the best time but, could you or someone make a patch to run the vasimir engines on hydrogen like the real one, the real one runs on xenon, argon, and hydrogen.

[SkiRich]

Is there any way to add into the Near Futures Systems Manager consumers that are not displayed?

For instance, no MKS modules are shown in the consumers, the manager still shows a positive charge even though life support has been started on some of the parts.

[FreeThinker]

On 7/8/2020 at 9:38 PM, SpaceFace545 said:

hey @Nertea, probably not the best time but, could you or someone make a patch to run the vasimir engines on hydrogen like the real one, the real one runs on xenon, argon, and hydrogen.

Why not do it yourself? You could achieve that using

notice it is now also compatible with

Which allows you to use persistent thrust (and heading) with any engine.

Edited July 11, 2020 by FreeThinker

[DeltaDizzy]

17 hours ago, SkiRich said:

Is there any way to add into the Near Futures Systems Manager consumers that are not displayed?

For instance, no MKS modules are shown in the consumers, the manager still shows a positive charge even though life support has been started on some of the parts.

To do that MKS needs to write the current/predicted power consumption (which one depends on whether you are in flight or the VAB) to a KSPField (that means some code additions are needed) and the rest can be in a config. Edit these values as needed.

PARTMODULEHANDLER
  {
    // The name of the module
    name = <the module you want to add to the simulator>
    // The type of handler - can be Power or Heat
    type = Power
    // The name of the handler to use
    handlerModuleName = GenericFieldDataHandler
    // Is this shown in the UI at all?
    visible = true
    // Do we use solar distance attenuation?
    solarEfficiencyEffects = false
    // Is this module a producer by default?
    producer = false
    // Is this module a consumer by default?
    consumer = true
    // Does this item start off as active in the UI? Should canonically be true for constant sources/draws
    simulated = true
    // Does this item count as a continuous power source for the purpose of the UI?
    continuous = true
    HANDLER_CONFIG
    {
      // Field to poll in editor
      editorFieldName = <field to ask for power consumption>
      // Field to poll in flight
      flightFieldName = <field to ask for power consumption>
      // Multiply the output by these if you need to. Convention is that a consumer is negative.
      editorValueScalar = 1.0
      flightValueScalar = 1.0
    }
  }

 

[Virtualgenius]

Hi folks I just made a cool supply pod thought I would share some pics

 

 

Edited July 14, 2020 by Virtualgenius

[renejant]

43 minutes ago, Virtualgenius said:

Hi folks I just made a cool supply pod thought I would share some pics

 

 

omg that looks awesome! but i think the ramps are a little too short and the angle too steep.... but that's my opinion

[Virtualgenius]

I agree finding decent ramp mods is nigh impossible, but i will see if i can make them longer to reduce the angle

[davidy12]

Got a bug in 1.8.1 Engine mounts aren't showing there shrouds

[某事不过三兄]

19 hours ago, Virtualgenius said:

大家好，我刚刚做了一个很酷的供餐豆荚，以为我会分享一些照片

 

 

cool !

I have a question.

why "Near Future Spacecraft" needs "near future iva props" to work ?

[DeltaDizzy]

24 minutes ago, 某事不过三兄 said:

cool !

I have a question.

why "Near Future Spacecraft" needs "near future iva props" to work ?

The IVAs for it contain props provided by that. They are in a seperate mod because several of Nertea's mods reuse those props.

[Vas]

Is there any chance you can add an option to this mod to disable the odd reflecting antenna things? These are cluttering up my communication tab and I have no idea how to use them, as they are rather complex and confusing. I tried them out and they appear to do nothing. Even after I pointed like 8 of them at the reflector dish or whatever it was called. No connection of any kind.

I'd just like to disable these antenna since I don't know how to use them.

Would be nice to see some sort of in game config screen to disable or enable parts of the mods. Like a Near Future control panel button or some such.

[HansAcker]

17 minutes ago, Vas said:

Is there any chance you can add an option to this mod to disable the odd reflecting antenna things?

There's a mod for that:

 

[Telvee32]

Because of 1.10 breaking ReStock fairings I've gone through the process of disabling the ReStock assets for these parts (stock and Making History). However I can't work out how to do the same for NFLV (which, because I have ReStock installed, I can see has a ModuleManager patch to use ReStock assets), so I can't use the NFLV 7m fairing, nor the 5m fairing that replaces the MH one. Is there something I'm missing here, is the process more involved than with base ReStock?

[SpaceGreer]

6 hours ago, Telvee32 said:

Because of 1.10 breaking ReStock fairings I've gone through the process of disabling the ReStock assets for these parts (stock and Making History). However I can't work out how to do the same for NFLV (which, because I have ReStock installed, I can see has a ModuleManager patch to use ReStock assets), so I can't use the NFLV 7m fairing, nor the 5m fairing that replaces the MH one. Is there something I'm missing here, is the process more involved than with base ReStock?

Yup, same here (obvs). Would be great if there was a fix as I love this mod! R

[Nertea]

10 hours ago, Telvee32 said:

Because of 1.10 breaking ReStock fairings I've gone through the process of disabling the ReStock assets for these parts (stock and Making History). However I can't work out how to do the same for NFLV (which, because I have ReStock installed, I can see has a ModuleManager patch to use ReStock assets), so I can't use the NFLV 7m fairing, nor the 5m fairing that replaces the MH one. Is there something I'm missing here, is the process more involved than with base ReStock?

I don't mean to sound snarky, but the fix is to downgrade your game to a supported mod version, which is 1.9.x. KSP 1.10.0 broke all mod fairings and this won't be fixed until 1.10.1. 

On 7/14/2020 at 6:14 AM, davidy12 said:

Got a bug in 1.8.1 Engine mounts aren't showing there shrouds

Can't reproduce this.

10 hours ago, Vas said:

Is there any chance you can add an option to this mod to disable the odd reflecting antenna things? These are cluttering up my communication tab and I have no idea how to use them, as they are rather complex and confusing. I tried them out and they appear to do nothing. Even after I pointed like 8 of them at the reflector dish or whatever it was called. No connection of any kind.

It's really not that difficult. Reflectors are things you bounce signal off to make it stronger. If you have a reflector, it makes your antenna stronger.

The only complicated thing is that you need to point your antenna at the reflector. There are ingame tools to help you tell when this is the case (generally, a large line that turns green when you have done this successfully and is red when not). Once you have mastered this, that's all there is to it!

If you are seeing something different, be specific so I can identify an issue or a bug. 

[coyotesfrontier]

On 7/14/2020 at 6:14 AM, davidy12 said:

Got a bug in 1.8.1 Engine mounts aren't showing there shrouds

I have an identical problem in 1.8.1, it's not that big of a deal as I can just use fairings in place of the shrouds. I assume it's some weird mod interaction, can you send me your modlist to find what we have in common?

[Vas]

10 hours ago, Nertea said:

It's really not that difficult. Reflectors are things you bounce signal off to make it stronger. If you have a reflector, it makes your antenna stronger.

The only complicated thing is that you need to point your antenna at the reflector. There are ingame tools to help you tell when this is the case (generally, a large line that turns green when you have done this successfully and is red when not). Once you have mastered this, that's all there is to it!

Eh, it just confuses me. I don't like the reflector antenna setup all that much. I t used the simulation thing in the VAB and had a bunch of white lines pointing at a large dish and then I tested this by teleporting the ship to orbit and had no connection. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to use real regular antenna with it too, but in any case, I'd rather just use my regular antenna without having a butt load of reflector and line antenna thingies cluttering up my comm area when I'm trying to find regular antenna with a specific range on them. I don't like these reflecting antenna, they just make no sense to me. I use Omni antenna for short range stuff within a small distance of a planet, and satellite dish antenna to point at planets. This is good enough for me.

I looked at the files to see if it was just a simple parts folder I could delete, but its not, its got other antenna in there too that fill in the gaps. I didn't want to lose those. Just these bizarre bouncing antenna.

EDIT: I'll try once more just to see if I can make it work, but ultimately its unlikely to be something I'll ever use in the first place. Even if I make it work. I just don't like it. Kinda makes my ships ugly and lopsided. If you are in the reddit KSP discord, you can give me a poke there to talk more about it directly if you want.

Edited July 16, 2020 by Vas

[SpaceGreer]

Before I mention some.issues, I just want to say that I really love this mod and it's adds great end of game content for me.

I have some difficulty with the cluster mounts; 

1) some disconnect from the bottom.of the rocket before launch and zoom away by themselves 

2) attachment of engines is tricky on some.mounts. On one of the 7m ones the nodes appear uneven on side so there is a gap

3) one cluster allows changing of nodes but when you try to attach an engine it defaults to maximum

I work round these but thought I should mention!

Thanks for you hard work on this. My 5m resuseable launcher is ace!

 

R

 

 

Edited July 16, 2020 by SpaceGreer