KSP Interstellar Extended Continued Development Thread

[Sahadara]

Could you eleborate exactly what change you are looking for, then perhaps I might create a patch.

I was thinking all resources common with USI resources could me merged together if the CRP doesn't already recognize them to be interchangeable. This would just mean a name change and making sure that the volumes, densities and other properties about them be corrected to ensure that correct amounts can be stored in tanks and correct amounts are used by parts that use them. I think resources that are unique to KSPI-E should be harvestable using USI parts which, because it uses the stock system (I think), also means they would be harvestable using stock parts. Finally is that manufactured resources could be manufactured by USI converter parts. Basically what I think would be cool is if the two mods just had one system and the conversion and harvesting rates are all set up to make sense in relation to each other. It would be great if USI colonies could be used as fueling sites for KSPI-E ships without need for a whole separate suite of harvesters, converters and containers.

[ABZB]

I was thinking all resources common with USI resources could me merged together if the CRP doesn't already recognize them to be interchangeable. This would just mean a name change and making sure that the volumes, densities and other properties about them be corrected to ensure that correct amounts can be stored in tanks and correct amounts are used by parts that use them. I think resources that are unique to KSPI-E should be harvestable using USI parts which, because it uses the stock system (I think), also means they would be harvestable using stock parts. Finally is that manufactured resources could be manufactured by USI converter parts. Basically what I think would be cool is if the two mods just had one system and the conversion and harvesting rates are all set up to make sense in relation to each other. It would be great if USI colonies could be used as fueling sites for KSPI-E ships without need for a whole separate suite of harvesters, converters and containers.

a massive patch set, all with NEEDS[uSI,WarpPlugin] would do that, without having to mess with the base forms of each

[Bishop149]

Seems to me the reactor is not connected to the generator. They need to be connected directly (toching doesn't count).

Pretty sure it is.

On one half of the docking port I have a Dusty Plasma directly attached to a Direct conversion generator, this one always seems to work

On the other side of the docking port there are 4 Molten Salt reactors all directly attached to thermal generators (which can be seen in the first picture), these supply power to the whole ship when launched activated and pre-docked. They don't when launched inactive, then docked, then activated.

I haven't tested: Launched activated then docked.

It seems to me that despite the ships being docked, KSP-I is still calculating power draw as separate ships.

I'll do some testing.

Note KSP ships cannot contain loops, even if it may seem so.

Loops?

[FreeThinker]

What URI resources are you referring at? Could you give an example?

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a massive patch set, all with NEEDS[uSI,WarpPlugin] would do that, without having to mess with the base forms of each

I'm sure someone could create it, the problem only is I don't the time. I already have a list of things to do which will keep me busy for a long time

[FreeThinker]

On the other side of the docking port there are 4 Molten Salt reactors all directly attached to thermal generators (which can be seen in the first picture), these supply power to the whole ship when launched activated and pre-docked. They don't when launched inactive, then docked, then activated.

I haven't tested: Launched activated then docked.

Your setup is asking for problems. The problem is that during docking it could re arrange it's internal node structure in such a way that you are no longer properly connected. Also why are you using 4 separate reactors instead of 1 which would be more efficient due to it's size and prevent connection problems

Edited September 9, 2015 by FreeThinker

[Bishop149]

Your setup is asking for problems. The problem is that during docking it could re arrange it's internal node structure in such a way that you are no longer properly connected. Also why are you using 4 separate reactors instead of 1 which would be more efficient due to it's size and prevent connection problems

Hmmmm well that probably is what's going on, I did some testing with a much much simpler setup:

Rover 1: Basically nowt but a reactor, generator, radiators and some energy demand it can't satisfy alone:

Rover 2 is essentially identical except lacking the power draining bit, but with some stuff in its place to give it the same weight (so the docking ports line up)

When I connected it I kinda expected Rover 1's reactor to run at 100% and for it to essentially ignore Rover 2 as it did on my last ship..

What actually happened was the opposite, which is weird as hell.

Made no difference at all when Rover 2 was connected with its reactor switched off and then subsequently turned on:

As I see it, it must be something to do with the way KSP-I calculates power supply and power drain across a docking port.

If a generator become disconnected from a reactor due to some node rearrangement weirdness, wouldn't I have got the generator shut down message?

Prehap's its not fixable, but I do think its quite a major flaw that docked ships essentially can't share power. It would also mean there's no way to swap out neutron damaged reactors.

Next I'll test and see if charged particle based reactors are any different.

Also why are you using 4 separate reactors instead of 1 which would be more efficient due to it's size and prevent connection problems

It was the most space, weight and money efficient way to get the required power . . . . . original plan was to hook in another Dusty Plasma + generator but was far heavier, about three times a pricey and made the ship look more than a little ridiculous.

Edited September 10, 2015 by Bishop149

[Bishop149]

Ok more testing.

Same rover setup as above, but launched pre-docked.

In this situation everything seems to work as it should (in my head at least). Initially both reactors can contribute to satisfying the power draw.

Un-dock and they become their own entities, re-dock and it goes back to being joint effort.

Interesting but pretty useless for practical application.

I also tried a variation in which all the power drain (the scoops) was on one of the rovers and all the power supply (the 2 reactors+generators) was on the other.

These were launched individually and then docked. . . . under this circumstance the both reactors throttled appropriately to cope with the power drain.

This is a setup that may be workable, for large constructs involving multiple docked segments a construction rule could just be; "Ensure all your required reactors / generators are either on the same segment OR that each segment has a supply that can cope with its own drain"

In situations where both reactors could contribute I also noted the way in which they did so. Say you have a setup in which power drain is 150% of a single reactors supply, two reactors will throttle 100% and 50% to cope with the demand. It would seem neater to me to have both running at 75%, so the 2 reactors age (fuel use, potential damage) at the same rate.

Edited September 10, 2015 by Bishop149

[FreeThinker]

Good testing. I admit I haven't done any docking test. THe jumping behavior is not surprizing to me, the top node can shift from start to end. What is surprizing is that that the power manager don't seem to be reinitialised after docking. A possible explanation is that after docking the 2 vessels the electric generator still use the seperate managers. As a result one of the generators thinks there is no need to produce electric power, because it's power manager tells him so.

Edited September 10, 2015 by FreeThinker

[Coga19000]

Just another thing I saw; Career had some 1.25m and 3.75m parts (eg. Warp Drives) that are not avalaible in Sandbox.

[FreeThinker]

Just another thing I saw; Career had some 1.25m and 3.75m parts (eg. Warp Drives) that are not avalaible in Sandbox.

Well I disabled them, but did not remove to prevent breaking saves games. In the VAB you just havre to replace the Warp Engine by the resizable version and rescale it to the desired diameter.

[walaykin]

Your setup is asking for problems. The problem is that during docking it could re arrange it's internal node structure in such a way that you are no longer properly connected. Also why are you using 4 separate reactors instead of 1 which would be more efficient due to it's size and prevent connection problems

Can you expand on what you think is problematic here?

It surely can't be the case that all KSPI-E reactors/generator pairs must be in the same vessel section with no docking ports between them, or docking a KSPI-E ship would be problematic?

[Insanitic]

Does anyone know what the closest type of engine to the Ranger SSTO in the Interstellar Movie that Interstellar Extended offers? A plasma/aerospike engine capable of using oxygen in an atmosphere to power it?

[FreeThinker]

Bebble bed + hybrid thermal turbo jet

[Bishop149]

Can you expand on what you think is problematic here?

It surely can't be the case that all KSPI-E reactors/generator pairs must be in the same vessel section with no docking ports between them, or docking a KSPI-E ship would be problematic?

Well I can give you my take on it based on my testing, FreeThinker can correct me if I'm wrong.

When you dock two ships (launched separate) that both have power generating capacity there is some kind of bug / error that leads to the power manager not combining the generating capacity of both ships. It sounds like that upon docking the module that is doing the power calculations should reset and recalculate are the values afresh for the two docked ships and a single entity, but this isn't happening.

Sounds like it should be fixable?

Upshot: Docked ships can't share power generating capacity. . . . . unless they were launched pre-docked.

[ABZB]

Well I can give you my take on it based on my testing, FreeThinker can correct me if I'm wrong.

When you dock two ships (launched separate) that both have power generating capacity there is some kind of bug / error that leads to the power manager not combining the generating capacity of both ships. It sounds like that upon docking the module that is doing the power calculations should reset and recalculate are the values afresh for the two docked ships and a single entity, but this isn't happening.

Sounds like it should be fixable?

Upshot: Docked ships can't share power generating capacity. . . . . unless they were launched pre-docked.

that does sound like it is some kind of [hopefully easily fixable] not-recalculating issue

[ss8913]

speaking of recalculating... remember my antimatter-tanks-unpowered issue - it seems that anything that needs power, keeps expecting power even if you turn it off, in general - and things that lose power, don't regain it.. it's weird. My latest example - I had hydrogen tanks, which require power - on this particular ship I just had standard PB-NUK electric generators, since I meant for those tanks to be hydrazine, not liquid H2... so the cryosats were depleting all of the electric charge. ok... so I turn the cryosats off, H2 starts boiling off, like you'd expect... but the power draw didn't stop. Reverted to VAB, changed tanks to hydrazine, relaunch, no draw as expected since no cryosats.

[FreeThinker]

that does sound like it is some kind of [hopefully easily fixable] not-recalculating issue

LOL. I did my first docking test and it appears my assumptions of what happens internally was totally wrong. OnStart is not called after docking! If it's not called after docking, the whole re-initialization will never occur. This explains all problems with docking. The internal power manager never get properly re-initialized. The generators still operate separately or worse they become frozen because they cannot find the manager which should have been created during initialization. Now to fix these problem, I need some reliable method of detecting docking has occurred. Any ideas?

Edit: For the moment, I found a stop gap solution that will at least allow docked vessel to help each other. I still need a good way to detect the docking event so I can force to look for any parts they can use.

Edited September 10, 2015 by FreeThinker

[silversliver]

LOL. I did my first docking test and it appears my assumptions of what happens internally was totally wrong. OnStart is not called after docking! If it's not called after docking, the whole re-initialisation will never occur. This explains all problems with docking. The internal power manager never get properly re-eintialised. The generators still operate separately or worse they become frozen because they cannot find the manager which should have been created during initialization. Now to fix these problem, I need some reliable method of detecting docking has occurred. Any ideas?

kOS has a script that can test exactly this.

[ABZB]

kOS has a script that can test exactly this.

found one of those scripts - basically, the SITUATION field on (one?) of the craft becomes 'DOCKED' (as seen in the sfs files).

[okder]

usage of KAS fuel line (between two ships) gives same bug as docking.

[ABZB]

usage of KAS fuel line (between two ships) gives same bug as docking.

this explains so much that I did not notice ATT.

[Kantas]

Could you eleborate exactly what change you are looking for, then perhaps I might create a patch.

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Are they both running in the same fuel mode? Fusion Fuel Mode also alters the core temperature

Yes they are both running D-T fusion. If i change their fuel type to something else, i have a similar discrepency for the temperatures. IE if Reactor A temp was 10 Reactor B is 8, when using H3-H3 fusion Reactor A temp is 100 Reactor B is 80.

One reactor seems to be providing the charge to keep the reactors charged, could this be the issue? I have a small Molten Salt reactor for initial startup conditions, but it cannot provide the maintenance for both engines.

[ss8913]

so are the warp drives supposed to draw power even when they're off/not charging? I had a 150t spaceplane that was capable of pulling 40 m/s^2 on hydrazine in vacuum.. thermal turbojet + antimatter reactor. I added a foldable alcubierre drive and a couple other things to balance the weight after adding it (second VTOL engine, but obviously that's also off in the scenario described). Total weight gain is 22t, for a total of 172t. I now can only get 12 m/s^2 on the main engine. So I've increased the weight by 15% but my available acceleration is 75% less...? Not sure what's going on here.

[ss8913]

one other thing - I'd REALLY like a static warp speed limiter again. 0.10c is great for close-in jumps especially considering there's a ton of lag between pressing the action key to disengage the hyperdrive and it actually happening. I hit a lot of planets when "1%" is over 2.00c ..

[FreeThinker]

one other thing - I'd REALLY like a static warp speed limiter again. 0.10c is great for close-in jumps especially considering there's a ton of lag between pressing the action key to disengage the hyperdrive and it actually happening. I hit a lot of planets when "1%" is over 2.00c ..

You do know you can change the the throte durring flight right? You can shift gear from 1% to 100%. You can even change direction durring flight!

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so are the warp drives supposed to draw power even when they're off/not charging? I had a 150t spaceplane that was capable of pulling 40 m/s^2 on hydrazine in vacuum.. thermal turbojet + antimatter reactor. I added a foldable alcubierre drive and a couple other things to balance the weight after adding it (second VTOL engine, but obviously that's also off in the scenario described). Total weight gain is 22t, for a total of 172t. I now can only get 12 m/s^2 on the main engine. So I've increased the weight by 15% but my available acceleration is 75% less...? Not sure what's going on here.

THe Warp drives draw power when charging or warping. You first need to charge the warpdrive untill you have accumulated enough Exotic Matter before you initiate warp. Once you have reached the amount needed to warp, you stop accumulating but continue to require power. If you stop charging before initiating warp, you lose all exoticic matter and can no longer warp untill you charge again. Jumping to warp will also cause all exotic matter to be lost. You cannot charge durring warp.