Beamed power without KSPI mod?

[Aniruddh]

Is there a standalone mod that has beamed power (wireless transmission of EC with microwaves). I found KSP Interstellar a bit complicated, Is there a way to directly transmit stock ElectricCharge resource without worrying about Waste Heat or MegaJoules resources.

I have tried to only have the beamed power parts from interstellar but they seem to have dependency parts and modules.

[zer0Kerbal]

1 hour ago, Aniruddh said:

Is there a standalone mod that has beamed power (wireless transmission of EC with microwaves). I found KSP Interstellar a bit complicated, Is there a way to directly transmit stock ElectricCharge resource without worrying about Waste Heat or MegaJoules resources.

I have tried to only have the beamed power parts from interstellar but they seem to have dependency parts and modules.

range?

short range has two options:

Simple Logistics

Planetary Logistics which is a part of USI Tools by @RoverDude

[Aniruddh]

I would like something that is greater range, as I want to have a base that produces a lot of power and then have plasma powered spacecraft far away that uses that. This eliminates having a reactor (from Near Future Electrical) on every spacecraft

[Aniruddh]

Or is there a way to add the feature myself, using cfg. file editing and mm patches

[proteasome]

honestly KSPIe is the mod you want to use for this, sorry to say. however, you can DM me and I'll help you with figuring it out. once you do it will rock your space program!

[Aniruddh]

1 hour ago, proteasome said:

honestly KSPIe is the mod you want to use for this, sorry to say. however, you can DM me and I'll help you with figuring it out. once you do it will rock your space program!

I am ok with KSPI, but the main thing that I couldn't understand was why it uses the resource megajoules and waste heat. Also, Does waste heat turn into the heat that things like stock drills and ISRUs produce? Or have I misunderstood what that is.

[proteasome]

I might understand why you're confused.

The RESOURCE MEGAJOULES is just a much larger version of electric charge (ec). In fact, the two can be converted between each other with any KSPI part that is labled a megajoule converter. Megajoules the resource powers electric systems, such as ELECTRIC engines or fusion reactors.

MEGAWATTS is the unit of heat. This refers to the heat from a reactor, the heat consumed by a THERMAL engine or thermal power generator, and also waste heat.

Anytime you generate megawatts, or use megajoules (like from the reactor that powers a wireless power network, OR when the wireless transmitter is used) it produces the RESOURCE WASTE HEAT.

In order for things to work, you need enough radiators attached to the things that produce or use megajoules or megawatts (waste heat producers). Your radiators need to have a capacity roughly equal to the megawatts you are producing. When your in the SPH/VAB, click on the kspi icon and it will bring up a widget showing you what your radiator capacity is. When it turns green, you have enough radiators (provided they are placed close enough to the producers of waste heat).

There are a few quirks with this though. The first is that all radiators work much better in an atmosphere, so you can get away with fewer if you're on kerbin (like for a ground power station). The second is that when using a wireless power receiver, the game won't know in advance how many megajoules of power the receiver will get when you're building the craft (so the waste heat widget isn't as useful). In this case, look at the capacity of the wireless receiver and include enough radiators to match that capacity.

Not having enough radiators is one of the number 1 problems I've seen following the kspi threads. You can use tweakscale to increase the radiators capacity easily.

 

[kerbiloid]

Originally the Megajoules have been implemented in KSPI by its original author (@FractalUK) in addition to ElectricCharge to avoid the situation,
when a megawatt-power consuming device (say, engine or emitter) drains out every AAA-class battery on your ship in a millisecond, and the ship gets dead.

So, when your high-power devices produce and consume one resource (MJ), while the cabin and antennas another one (EC), on the out-of-power you just get the engines shutdown, but the life and communication are still going on, because they use EC rather than MJ.
Thus, you can keep being recharged your low-power EC-consuming devices from the MJ-producing generator, but a MJ-consuming engine can never suddenly spend EC.

The Waste Heat is something like that, too. While your solar panels and radiators produce just kilowatts of waste heat, MJ-class generators produce thousands times of that.
So, to keep away the low- and high-power equipment, he implemented the Waste Heat.

A 100 K overheat is nothing for a high-power reactor, but a boiling for the cabin and fuel tanks.
So, if both megawatt and kilowatt class devices were using same Heat resource, then the cabin would boil on any minor overheat of the power/propulsion system.
On the other hand, a cabin doesn't need the megawatt-class cooling,
So, the Waste Heat is for high-power devices and for high-power waste heat transfer/redistrubution, the Heat is just the waste heat from lower-power devices and their puny coolers.

(Also, iirc, when the Waste Heat was implemented, the stock KSP didn't have modern heat management. But I can be wrong here).

There was similar situation with Water. To prevent the situation when a water-consuming device suddenly spends all onboard water, there were Water and LqdWater or so.

So, in any case you have to either use KSPI-E, or reinvent the resource separation yourself. Just in KSPI-E you have it out-of-the-box.

Edited December 16, 2019 by kerbiloid

[Aniruddh]

Ok, I understand the reason for these resources, but I have to make it work with Near Future Electrical Nuclear Reactors which only produce stock  EC. Also, is it right to assume stock EC is 1 KiloJoule of Energy?

[kerbiloid]

KSPI-E detects the presence of the Near Future Mods, and scales its values if it's installed, to match Nertea's standards.

At least, this was in its previous releases. (Still didn't use the latest ones)

Edited December 17, 2019 by kerbiloid

[Aniruddh]

One final thing: do I have to use the entire mod, as it adds a lot of parts, many of which are already there in Near Future mods. I find playing with the entire mod installed slows my pc down a lot. Can I only keep the 'beamed power' folder under 'Parts'? 

[kerbiloid]

Afaik, at least most of unused KSPI-E part can be removed/relocated out of GameData. But not sure if any.
Say, trusses and tanks probably don't affect something (as they were added later, to the original family of parts), but maybe some key things like Science Lab are checked somewhere, I'm not sure.

Edited December 18, 2019 by kerbiloid

[Aniruddh]

Thanks guys for the help, I am trying the mod and have mostly understood the mechanics now. I built a test ship transmitter on the runway and a receiver on the launchpad. My transmitter is producing 40 MW with a muon-catalysed fusion reactor. However, my electric generator is saying it is only producing 9 KW! However, the receiver says it is getting 38 MW. Where is it losing power? I put enough radiators.

[kerbiloid]

Probably you would try the support thread for particular details. The mod team is very responsive, and knows better than anybody.

 

[Aniruddh]

I had heard there was a mod called KSPI lite, does it still work as I saw it hasn't been updated in a while, and should I try it?

[kerbiloid]

It was long ago.
When @FractalUK was absent for a year, and KSPI got outdated, @WaveFunctionP had partially adopted it and upgraded to the relevant KSP release.

Then he decided that KSPI is too overscienced for a computer game, and started his own fork - KSPI Lite (aka KSPI-L), less nerdish.

Kinda like with the Orion mod. There is (currently outdated) @Nyrath's original Orion mod, full of its own internal maths and "resources", and the later, more toyish @Roverdude's Orion.

In both cases the mod community got divided in two parties, "nerds" vs "gamers".

@WaveFunctionP said that he will keep developing the KSPI-L fork, as it matches his vision of what the mod should be, and he won't upgrade the classic KSPI anymore.
KSPI nerds got unhappy with that, and began awaiting for a messiah who will adopt the classic.

Several months later @FractalUK came back, upgraded KSPI classic to the new KSP release, and was not looking happy about the KSPI-L changes.
He said that he has come back and now will keep maintaining the proper, nerdish, KSPI.

@WaveFunctionP said that ok-no-problem, he will keep developing KSPI-L for his own joy, but let others keep downloading his fork.
Since then, afaik, he didn't publish KSPI-L on the forum, but it was probably available on his github or what he is/was using for development.

As I'm definitely on the nerdish side, I wasn't checking that. As haven't heard about KSPI-L for years, probably it's currently either abandoned, or a pet project.

A one or two KSP releases later the whirlwind of life took @FractalUK away next time, and KSPI (classic) stayed orphan again.

Several times it was updated by @Boris-Barboris, then adopted by @FreeThinker, who keeps heroically maintaining it for several years as KSPI Extended (aka KSPI-E).
@HebaruSan also plays significant role in the KSPI life, afaik.

I believe, @Roverdude took part in the KSPI supporting and iirc also upgraded it once or twice, but absolutely can't remember, at what point of KSPI bio.

Edited December 24, 2019 by kerbiloid