[1.12.x] Far Future Technologies - August 23: new engine!

[danfarnsy]

37 minutes ago, Nertea said:

It's hard to take these totally seriously without any mention of thermals or other things. Seems like you want more thrust in everything. Probably not happening!

You quoted me as well when you said this. I wasn't looking for a change to the mod; I was looking to see if somebody had examples I could follow because I haven't figured it out yet.

[Nertea]

1 hour ago, danfarnsy said:

You quoted me as well when you said this. I wasn't looking for a change to the mod; I was looking to see if somebody had examples I could follow because I haven't figured it out yet.

Oh my bad I was going to add a comment about functional scoops there.

Basically it seems you need to build something more plane-like.

[Rakete]

On 11/11/2021 at 2:51 AM, Nertea said:

 

It's hard to take these totally seriously without any mention of thermals or other things. Seems like you want more thrust in everything. Probably not happening!

KER is going to have to be pseudo-recommended at this point, because stock DV also can't handle the Clarke for some reason....

Yeah, the clarke isn‘t the only engine that can‘t be handled. In fact every fft engine requiring charge up has a problem with the ingame burn time calculator since the engine is not only throttled down but are also shut down until ignition after charging. Some kind of fix around the corner? Otherwise KER as workaround would be a depency for half of the fft engines. once you used one of the charging requiring fft engines once after launch you simply can‘t execute a precise burn using the stock system, since it can’ t calculate burn times for completely shut off engines. Will we get a fix on that in the next months (i know, you are retiring, but i think this some thing many people will stumble across) or will KER be a official dependency to make those engines work for the average player? No need to hurry, just a question for a dev decision - not for me personally, but for others who might stumble across this themselves :-) .  A last fix on that (whenever… some day in the next months) would be fantastic. @Nertea

Edited November 18, 2021 by Rakete

[danfarnsy]

On 11/10/2021 at 9:00 PM, Nertea said:

Basically it seems you need to build something more plane-like.

Yes, that worked out.

A few lessons learned for He3 scooping:

Hydrolox boosters (Etna or Fuji) have much better thrust to weight, require no radiators, and have infinite fuel below 188 km. You only need maybe 80-150 m/s to circularize at 350 km after leaving atmosphere, so you can keep your wet weight down. Fusion aerospike eats a lot of He3 on the way down and up.

Mk3 doesn't properly handle largest containers. Maybe you can shield it with fairing, but using the Mk4 mod makes it easy. The trip from low Jool orbit takes a while, so if you don't want to make lots of trips, a big plane is probably worth it (5x-ish the payload, 3x the weight, and 1x the flight time).

Drag at target altitude (below 106 km) is no joke, especially if your speed drops near Mach 1 (900 m/s). Fusion aerospike or "Project Eeloo" engine on closed-cycle can do the job if you get leveled out and climb slowly, but hydrolox did much better. This drag is also why I didn't get any trips to work with deployable heat shield. My Mk4 scoop powered by an Etna had 30 m/s^2 acceleration,  and drag peaked at about 27 m/s^2 even with a low angle of attack.

Stick the pilot in a pod in the cargo bay. You don't have to put harvester scoop on the front, but you only need one. Front is a great place for the scoop without trying to use the Mk3 or Mk4 cockpits.

This was fun.

 

Spoiler

Mk 4 with Etna, post dive. It liked to pull to one side, so I ended up spending an extra 500 m/s for plane change after reaching orbit.



Mk 3 on its way down. I could swap out fuel segment for more fusion tanks

 

Edited November 12, 2021 by danfarnsy
clarity?

[fragtzack]

Update: Error existed between keyboard and chair. Please ignore rest of post.

 

Had to uninstall the Far Future mods to get JNSQ to work. B9 part switch mod kept crapping out on these "far future mods".   Works fine without JNSQ though. The Near Future mods all work fine with JNSQ. Any chance could help? The Far Future mods are fun. 

 

Kerbal player log from startup when B9  part switcher croaked:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zOyMxbdu0V6ZOj281tOhIGfFdJOkzEj4/view?usp=sharing

 

Edited November 13, 2021 by fragtzack

[danfarnsy]

In the shadow of Laythe, this turned out great:

[Grond]

Is there a way to remove the engine heating. I'm trying to do something in sandbox with the Frisbee antimatter engine but I need it to not have heating?

[Axelord FTW]

As far as I'm aware, anything that use SystemHeat (as opposed to the stock heat system) cannot be used alone. Toggling off the stock heat in the cheat menu does nothing in relation to SystemHeat, and parts that use SystemHeat will just do nothing without being properly cooled.

  

On 11/17/2021 at 5:29 PM, danfarnsy said:

In the shadow of Laythe, this turned out great:

That's a WONDERFUL ship. 

 

EDIT: Unlocked the frisbee.
Don't have much to say on it except that at its maximum configurable length, it's tall enough to be quasi impossible to handle in the the stock VAB. I went and got Hangar Extender Extended. Not everyone has had the occasion to build ships so tall as to encounter the problem beforehand. 
I'm also sad to have discovered antimatter gives no money on recovery. 

EDIT2: Well, it seems like having an antimatter holding facility on the KSC premises doesn't work, since the game will ask you for the science funds for whatever it is holding if you launch any other crafts, even if that new launch doesn't have any anti-matter holding capabilities. I tried making an AM converting plant on the runway, but I either need to put the final storage tanks outside of load distance, or... something else.

Edited November 27, 2021 by Axelord FTW

[danfarnsy]

I tried to change the config files for the Frisbee, so that it generates full heat (360 MW) at all lengths and adds increasing amounts of radiator capacity, instead of reducing heat output with increased length. I didn't do very well with adding SystemHeatRadiator to the B9PS subtypes (similar to how Heat Control radiators are patched by System Heat). B9PS gave me a lot of errors upon game load. Is there a problem with adding SystemHeatRadiator to a part that already has SystemHeatEngine? Or am I just doing something dumb?

I was trying to do this because I'd like to have the radiator mass curve adjust more smoothly with throttle cap. A Frisbee capped at 90% throttle should only put out 324 MW of heat, while a 102m Frisbee should be able to reject 336 MW on its own, only needing extra radiators for the last 24 MW up to full throttle at 360 MW. Instead, the 102m Frisbee still requires 21.6 MW of heat rejection from extra radiators at 90% throttle. This gets weird, where a 20m engine with thrust capped at 10% throttle still requires about 10 tons of extra radiator mass, about 50 tons total. A 20m engine capped at 30% throttle ends up being almost 70 tons with enough radiators. 55m engine at 50% throttle cap with radiators weighs almost as much as 110m engine.

Example for what I tried with one of the subtypes:

Spoiler

    SUBTYPE
    {
      ...snip...
      MODULE
      {
        IDENTIFIER
        {
          name = ModuleSystemHeatEngine
        }
        DATA
        {
          systemPower = 360000
        }
      }
      MODULE
      {
        IDENTIFIER
        {
          name = ModuleSystemHeatRadiator
        }
        DATA
        {
          temperatureCurve
          {
            key = 0 0
            key = 1500 24000
          }
          RESOURCE
          {
            name = ElectricCharge
            rate = 0.5
          }
        }
      }
    }

 

 

[Rakete]

Mhhh.... Somehow I feel, that a fix for the precharging FFT-Engines would be very very cool. KER as workaround caused my installation to crash several times (it did not crash anymore after removing KER), so It would be really nive to be able to use the precharging requiring fft engines without KER as workaround in order to excute maneuver nodes correctly. 

@Nertea Is there a chance for a fix, or is every work on fixes completely stopped? Not request to hurry, but a polite question if there is a root issue fix on the way in the next weeks/months or if there is no chance anymore?

Edited December 1, 2021 by Rakete

[mcbmaestro]

Thought I'd give this mod a try but the heat generation thing is proving to be too much.   

I unlocked the first new engine in career,  the fusion one but no matter what I try it just overheats.   I've spent like 3 hours trying to figure out the right amount of radiators but the point I finally gave up was when having 8 large radiators was sufficiently working on the launch pad,  but not in space.   All I can think was the launch clamps were helping because there was literally no other difference of what was on the ship.

Is there any other way to cool these things down besides obscene amounts of the largest radiators?   I get that they need heat regulation but it seems rediculous that my ships all have to look like giant sunflowers.

[Starhelperdude]

2 hours ago, mcbmaestro said:

Thought I'd give this mod a try but the heat generation thing is proving to be too much.   

I unlocked the first new engine in career,  the fusion one but no matter what I try it just overheats.   I've spent like 3 hours trying to figure out the right amount of radiators but the point I finally gave up was when having 8 large radiators was sufficiently working on the launch pad,  but not in space.   All I can think was the launch clamps were helping because there was literally no other difference of what was on the ship.

Is there any other way to cool these things down besides obscene amounts of the largest radiators?   I get that they need heat regulation but it seems rediculous that my ships all have to look like giant sunflowers.

which fusion engine did you use for this example? if you mean the lithium/deuterium/optionally he 3 one, you roughly need like just 1-2 of the big graphene deployable radiators. Also, did you assign the engine and the radiators to the same system heat group?

[idkToga]

Hey can someone make tutorial for this ive been trying to figure out how to use it for the past 5 hours and cant get it to work so i just need a tutorial.

[idkToga]

On 12/24/2021 at 12:57 PM, Starhelperdude said:

which fusion engine did you use for this example? if you mean the lithium/deuterium/optionally he 3 one, you roughly need like just 1-2 of the big graphene deployable radiators. Also, did you assign the engine and the radiators to the same system heat group?

And how do you do that

[Axelord FTW]

Well, the first thing you should do is read the first post in the thread carefully.

mcbmaestro-guy asked for help on the Steam discussion page too, but with some more helpful context there. I can't say about you but his problem was simply the lack of proper radiators. And I mean, the total lack of availability in-game; he hadn't downloaded HeatControl and didn't look into what SystemHeat is and how it worked. Trying to cool FFT engines with stock radiators... 

[namreK haidebeJ]

The fusion engines/reactors as well as the Dirac and Fresnel engines spam errors and glow red if I try to place them, and ModuleManager says that "FarFutureTechnologies.dll" is a "broken .dll". It also breaks the Wild Blue Industries Omni Storage and Servo GUI. There are no errors I could find in the console or log besides ModuleManager's incessant whining about the .dll being broken. Has this happened to anyone else, and is there a way to remedy it?

[Nertea]

On 12/31/2021 at 2:41 PM, namreK haidebeJ said:

The fusion engines/reactors as well as the Dirac and Fresnel engines spam errors and glow red if I try to place them, and ModuleManager says that "FarFutureTechnologies.dll" is a "broken .dll". It also breaks the Wild Blue Industries Omni Storage and Servo GUI. There are no errors I could find in the console or log besides ModuleManager's incessant whining about the .dll being broken. Has this happened to anyone else, and is there a way to remedy it?

Need info. Please provide KSP version, mod version, log files, mods installed, confirmation that ALL dependencies are installed. Very unlikely to be this mods fault, either an installation error or some exotic conflicting mod is most likely.

[namreK haidebeJ]

26 minutes ago, Nertea said:

Need info. Please provide KSP version, mod version, log files, mods installed, confirmation that ALL dependencies are installed. Very unlikely to be this mods fault, either an installation error or some exotic conflicting mod is most likely.

I don't know what was happening, I reinstalled all of the mods I'm currently using as well as KSP itself and everything works as intended now. 

[Startpanikin1]

I think it would be cool to see Antimatter reactors if you could do that @Nertea

[Starhelperdude]

31 minutes ago, Startpanikin1 said:

I think it would be cool to see Antimatter reactors if you could do that @Nertea

look at the Q&A in the OP

[InfoTheGamer]

@NerteaI'm writing a little RSS/RO patch and I'm having trouble changing the pulse rate of the Inertial Confinement Fusion Engine. It seems that it is controlled by the module ModulePulseEngineAnimator and changing PulseDuration = 1.5 to something smaller increases thrust but does not show plume effects. If I were to make it more realistic like the design in Luke Campbell's Blade Shields (50 Hz, Ve = 2650 km/s), how do I change the laser (and Waterfall FX) pulse rate?

http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/torchships.php#bladeshields

[Pthigrivi]

Finally digging into this and SH and its great. Is there a tutorial somewhere though? 
 

Edit: Okay Ive got it mostly figured out. One question: are the only sources of Deuterium KSC and the Bussard? 

Edited January 9, 2022 by Pthigrivi

[WhatALovelyNick]

Hi! Can you help me?

Does function "output_resource" disabled in "fusion_reactor" module?

[Rakete]

@Nertea

Bugreport: Type: Visual

The dorsal nozzle of the HeFt/LiFt RCS-Thrusters is misaligned. The plume is correct and orthogonal to the module. The nozzle itself is not. Some Kerbal must have dropped the module while taking it to the VAB.

 

[Rakete]

Addendum: I am not sure, if this bug report above belongs to FFT or NFP, since I have most of the Nertea mods installed... anyway, I guess nertea will know where to put this report.