realistic communications mod requiring directed antennas?

[mr. engino]

It appears I've gotten into making ksp more realistic, and I was considering the communications aspect. I know about remote tech, but I was looking for something different. Unless remote tech does contain what I'm about to describe, I am looking for a communications mod that features a requirement to have the antenna directed at Kerbin to not only maintain contact, but also to transmit data, with being not properly orientated affecting control and transmissions.

[Tyko]

Remotetech included directional antennas and requires you to set where your antennas are pointed for them to work.

[linuxgurugamer]

Given that this is a game, and rails, it would be unrealistic to have to force the antenna to actually be pointed at Kerbin

[mr. engino]

13 hours ago, linuxgurugamer said:

Given that this is a game, and rails, it would be unrealistic to have to force the antenna to actually be pointed at Kerbin

Not really. Most spacecraft in real life usually had two antennas, a low-gain omni-directional antenna usually used for backup and keeping track of the spacecraft, and a high-gain directional antenna that required orienting the spacecraft so that the antenna was pointing towards earth in order to transmit data successfully. Since I already installed a life support mod to my game, I figured I'd try to go all in with realism, which is why I asked about a realistic communications mod. It appears that remote tech has what I'm looking for, so I guess this question has been answered?

[linuxgurugamer]

12 minutes ago, mr. engino said:

Not really. Most spacecraft in real life usually had two antennas, a low-gain omni-directional antenna usually used for backup and keeping track of the spacecraft, and a high-gain directional antenna that required orienting the spacecraft so that the antenna was pointing towards earth in order to transmit data successfully. Since I already installed a life support mod to my game, I figured I'd try to go all in with realism, which is why I asked about a realistic communications mod. It appears that remote tech has what I'm looking for, so I guess this question has been answered?

If that works, great. Maybe I misunderstood you.  RT logically points the anennas, I was thinking that you wanted to actually point it

[Drew Kerman]

9 hours ago, linuxgurugamer said:

I was thinking that you wanted to actually point it

On 8/10/2018 at 4:13 PM, mr. engino said:

with being not properly orientated affecting control and transmissions

yea that's what it sounds like to me too. RT does not do this. You have to tell RT dishes what to point at, so it's a bit more realistic that stock CommNet just finding the best hop home (like, if you want to transmit to Kerbin but a planet is in the way RT won't automatically route the signal around through other probes - you'd have to tell your spacecraft to point at a probe that could relay the signal to Kerbin). However RT does not care if the dish itself is physically pointing at Kerbin. As LGG said, since space craft are packed and the game itself doesn't even monitor this type of stuff, your only real hope is Kerbalism. That mod has background processing which I do believe factors spacecraft orientation into its monitoring of power levels for solar panels so comms pointing could potentially be included. However the current mod author has already scrapped most of the complex signaling system put in place by the original author so he may not be too enthusiastic to add more complexity to it.

[Stone Blue]

RT used to have an antenna that did this. I had a lengthy discussion about it with TaxiService back when they picked up the torch on RT. IIRC< it was put on the backburner for moar important stuff, plus, someone would have had to make and donate models, since the original part model was ARR, and I could never get ahold of the original dev.

Heres pics of it...

The antenna would rotate at the two pivots, IIRC

 

Edited August 12, 2018 by Stone Blue