[1.12.x] [WiP] Avalon Planet Pack - Moon homeworld, multiple star systems

[TheGhastModding]

24/01/2024: Important update 0.2.0! Major performance fixes! Read the two sections below "Download" for more info.

 

APP (Avalon Planet Pack or Avali Planet Pack) is a planet pack for KSP, built to tell not the story of Kerbalkind’s first venture into space, but that of the Avali, the avian alien species known from the popular Starbound mod. Avalon comes bundled with a mod to replace some of the Kerbal models in-game with Avali, and some flavour texts have been changed to include Avali references.

APP has you start from the Avali homeworld of ’Avalon’ (hence the mod’s name), which isn’t a planet, but a moon orbiting an Ice Giant! This means an abundance of early-game destinations and science, but it’ll only get harder after that. Avalon is orbiting Solakku, a high-mass star near the galaxy’s core. Having a more massive star means planetary orbits are scaled up compared to the stock Kerbin system. Transfer windows are rare, transfer times long, and antennas don’t reach nearly as long as you might want them to. To make it far, you will need to plan ahead, and get the most efficiency you possibly can out of each launch. ISRU will be a heavy part of any playthrough, and Avalon is ready, with complete configs for CRP, SpaceDust and Kerbalism resources. There is also three interstellar destinations in the pack: Crest, a red-dwarf directly orbiting Solakku. Karat, a dead white dwarf a medium distance away from Avalon, and Amber Light, a red giant flying by the rest of the systems, luckily quite far away.

Avalon

• Radius: 0.75 Kerbin Radii
• Gravity: 0.25g
• Atmospheric Pressure: 1.5 atm
• Orbiting: Valaya, ice giant

Avalon is difficult to launch from, due to the intense atmospheric drag, through an optimal location for building SSTOs (you can break orbital velocity at sea level or eject to escape velocity using only jets), and, being a moon, also provides an increased difficulty for navigation.

Its surface is covered in oceans made not out of water, but of a mixture of water and ammonia, as the mean surface temperature is a round -30°C. It does still posses an ocean of liquid water, but deep underground, warmed by tidal forces. Its surface is additionally cooled by the constant presence of a cloud cover blocking light from reaching the surface. Its perfectly habitable conditions for the Avali, an ammonia-based life form.

It shares the sky of Valaya with 5 other moons, some easier to reach than others. They will be your most valuable locations for early exploration, and good spots for fueling up. The journeys between planets here will be long and fuel-intensive.

System Layout

Full map of all solar systems in the pack (names only, no image spoilers):

Spoiler

Map of just the Solakku system, with images of each celestial body (slight spoilers!):

Spoiler

Screenshots (spoilers)

Spoiler

Tips for playing

• Build relays! The stock antennas aren’t anywhere powerful enough to reach even the outer planets, so you will need to strategically deploy relays not just around the planets, but also orbiting Solakku itself.

• Over-do transfer burns! Even getting to the nearest planet to Avalon takes over a decade. Getting to one of the outer planets takes up to 200+ years. It is basically required to burn additional dV on each transfer to get to where you’re going in a reasonable amount of time. Near-Future electric engines are really good for this.

• Launch multiple missions per transfer window! A few particular windows only come around every few decades (the window to Edith being the longest, only once every 20 years), so you really need to launch all the missions you can for each.

• ISRU is your friend! SpaceDust is a heavily recommended install. The other moons make for really good places to fuel (or build, depending on your mods) interplanetary crafts.

• If in science mode, set science rewards slider to 40% in difficulty settings for a more balanced experience.

Bundled mods

These mods are required, but included with the pack download, and you shouldn’t need to install them individually.

• Better Skybox (custom-made for this pack, License: MIT)

• Tholin’s PQS Additions (custom-made for this pack, License: MIT)

Required mods

These mods must be installed before the planet pack.

• Kopernicus
• Kopernicus Expansion Continueder
• Scatterer
• KSP Community Fixes (see "Known Issues" below)

Heavily recommended mods!

The pack will technically load without these, but may be unplayable past a certain point. I designed the pack with these mods in mind.

• Avali Space Program
• Near Future Technologies
• Far Future Technologies
• Though KSP-IE should also work
• Community Tech Tree
• JX2 Antenna
• EVE

In general, you will benefit from having a large set of mods while playing this pack.

Mod support

Additional, APP supports the following mods, if you have them installed:

• Community Resource Pack
• SpaceDust
• Planet Shine
• Distant Object Enhancement
• EVE
• Rational Resources
• Kerbalism (resource configs only)

Known Issues

• You will need to install KSP Community Fixes and disable the stock manouver tool in its settings, or else the game will lag heavily, and eventually crash when orbiting one of the other three stars. This happens even when not currently using the manouver tool, as its code is always running in the background. This is a stock KSP bug, and not something I appear to be able to fix, unfortunately.

• Distant Object Enhancement may interfere with my custom skybox shader, which will appear in-game as the skybox being way too dark. To fix this, go to the Distant Object Enhancement settings in the toolbar, and disable the option for Max Skybox Brightness

• On some of the smaller moons in the pack, placing a flag will occasionally result in the flag spawning displaced far above the surface.

• Not technically an issue, but nothing in the interstellar star systems has been playtested in science or career mode yet. Expect typos in flavor texts, broken science rewards, and low terrain detail.

Note on upgrading

When upgrading versions, always make sure to completely uninstall (delete) the previous version first, or you may end up with duplicate files that break the mod install.

Download

From SpaceDock

Config File

A config file exists in GameData/Avalon/0-settings.cfg (as of version 0.2.0). Here, you can change some settings including disabling the interstellar destinations if you have little RAM (it won't disable the stars themselves, but their planets).

If you are daring, you can edit GameData/Avalon/2-Contracts.cfg where I had to put the lines forcing Kopernicus' on-demand texture loading on. Only set this to false if you have 32GB of RAM or more. Will provide a really good performance boost when on or near a celestial body's surface, though.

24/01/2024: Update 0.2.0

• Introduced the config file
• Now forcing on-demand loading on so the RAM requirements of the pack are no longer astronomical
• Download size reduced by almost 2GB
• Fixed Musoya deleting any vessels in its SOI
• Asteroid belts added around all stars and some planets

I switched to a new kind of custom PQS node for 16-bit heightmaps. This doesn't reduce RAM usage of the mod, but reduces download size, install size and load time significantly.

Source

Source codes for the plugin components of this pack are available on GitHub: BetterSkybox - Tholin's PQS Additions

Source for the pack itself is here!

Special thanks

Various people in the Luna's Mods discord server, for helping me fix issues in the pack.

Techo, for his contributions in the form of the moon Ghorun, and Avalon's cloud textures.

Everyone who playtested the pack before release!

License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0

Edited January 24 by TheGhastModding

[Sky Kerman]

Dude this pack is amazing! I love the other race included with the kerbals!

[TheOrios]

congrats on the release!

[ssd21345]

It seems the Avali community has spread to ksp

[Lithium-7]

Is an update for Avali Space Program on the horizon that will add the ability to force all generated astronauts to be Avali? When I'm playing this pack I'd rather have no Kerbals, and it's pretty inconvenient to avoid using them, since the overwhelming majority of generated astronauts are still Kerbals.

At the very least, the ability to force-generate an Avali or toggle species would be nice.

Edited April 12, 2023 by Lithium-7

[TheGhastModding]

On 4/11/2023 at 10:42 AM, Lithium-7 said:

Is an update for Avali Space Program on the horizon that will add the ability to force all generated astronauts to be Avali? When I'm playing this pack I'd rather have no Kerbals, and it's pretty inconvenient to avoid using them, since the overwhelming majority of generated astronauts are still Kerbals.

At the very least, the ability to force-generate an Avali or toggle species would be nice.

Unlikely for now. I'd need a way to generate Avali textures on the fly in a way more than "randomize three colors". I do like how each Avali in the pack right now has a unique look. Its quite a different challenge than generating Kerbals procedurallly, since those only need a unique name, and then re-use the same texture. I may, however, boost the amount of Avali in the mod to 20 - 30 at one point, and force the game to only show Avali in the astronaut center until they run out. That should be all most people need, especially in Career. Never going to replace Jeb & Co, though, because I think that might make some people upset.

[ShadowDr]

4 hours ago, TheGhastModding said:

Unlikely for now. I'd need a way to generate Avali textures on the fly in a way more than "randomize three colors". I do like how each Avali in the pack right now has a unique look. Its quite a different challenge than generating Kerbals procedurallly, since those only need a unique name, and then re-use the same texture. I may, however, boost the amount of Avali in the mod to 20 - 30 at one point, and force the game to only show Avali in the astronaut center until they run out. That should be all most people need, especially in Career. Never going to replace Jeb & Co, though, because I think that might make some people upset.

Hi.
Just found that mod, and.. ya know, purging kerbals is essential now. Uniformity, immersion breaking, etc.
All kerbals look the same anyway without mods. Could you go a simpler path, pick some "average commoner" Avali texture, and just replace all kerbals with that by default, even keeping Kerman names? Including all the named guys if possible (bot the sucicide science quartet and facility faces).
Perhaps as a toggleable option, if it's so concerning.
Then as next step, a compatibility with texture replacing mods, so avalis could have their textures altered by the same mods that alter kerbals, and with time community will chur you up more custom unique textures than you can imagine, am pretty sure about it.

Going to give this one a try at some point too. How do you think it will fare with some world upscaling?

Now a question more for myself..
What is the helmet, is it a separate thing or is it a part of whole model that just goes invisible when "removed"?

Edited April 14, 2023 by ShadowDr

[TheGhastModding]

15 hours ago, ShadowDr said:

Going to give this one a try at some point too. How do you think it will fare with some world upscaling?

I only ever tried 2.56x scale using Sigma Dimensions, if you mean that. It works fine as in, its not bugged at all. But I don't know how it affects difficulty in this already fairly challenging mod. Good Luck, I guess?

15 hours ago, ShadowDr said:

All kerbals look the same anyway without mods. Could you go a simpler path, pick some "average commoner" Avali texture, and just replace all kerbals with that by default, even keeping Kerman names? Including all the named guys if possible (bot the sucicide science quartet and facility faces).

I'm striving for a higher-quality experience then that though, so I will definitely not do that. As for the KSC people, I don't know if they can even be replaced. I cannot find the code for them, so it is possible they're not even physically in the game, and just pre-rendered GIFs or something.

[ShadowDr]

16 hours ago, TheGhastModding said:

I'm striving for a higher-quality experience then that though, so I will definitely not do that. As for the KSC people, I don't know if they can even be replaced. I cannot find the code for them, so it is possible they're not even physically in the game, and just pre-rendered GIFs or something.

Perfection or bust, eh?
Welp.. guess unless i learn how to code, all that's left is wait and hope.

KSC crew could have their textures replaced, so they do exist and are accessible... somewhere, somehow.

[Zmeya]

I tried downloading this 3 times, twice from SpaceDock, once from GitHub, all 3 times the Zip file has been invalid and the content unusable for me.

 

Addition: tried again from SpaceDock, same result.

Addition 2: tried again through both SpaceDock and Github on Firefox instead of Opera, both failed, SpaceDock took too long and the download had to be restarted too many times, Github just gave me a broken file just like when I tried using Opera.

Edited June 6, 2023 by Zmeya

[Zmeya]

I dont know for sure why Im having problems downloading this mod, but if I had to guess it would be the file size, every other planet pack I've tried downloading recently has been half the size or smaller, and has worked even after having to restart the download several times.

[Souptime]

Will an interstellar version of this mod ever be made? I'd love to play it!

[Zmeya]

On 7/10/2023 at 8:08 PM, Souptime said:

Will an interstellar version of this mod ever be made? I'd love to play it!

I haven't managed to use this mod so I dont know for sure, but I think Far Future is merely suggested, most likely in my opinion because the mod author prefers it. As far as Im aware KSPi-E should work fine with this planet pack.

[Souptime]

14 hours ago, Zmeya said:

I haven't managed to use this mod so I dont know for sure, but I think Far Future is merely suggested, most likely in my opinion because the mod author prefers it. As far as Im aware KSPi-E should work fine with this planet pack.

I meant a version of this that doesn't replace the stock system, maybe placing the stars like 10 light years away as an end-game challenge

[TheGhastModding]

On 7/11/2023 at 5:08 AM, Souptime said:

Will an interstellar version of this mod ever be made? I'd love to play it!

Solakku is canonically located AT LEAST 24,000 ly away from the Sun / Kerbol, assuming it even is in the same galaxy. I could make it happen, but....good luck.

(It is canon to Avali lore that their home is close to a galactic core, which is also why the default skybox looks the way it does)

[Souptime]

8 hours ago, TheGhastModding said:

Solakku is canonically located AT LEAST 24,000 ly away from the Sun / Kerbol, assuming it even is in the same galaxy. I could make it happen, but....good luck.

(It is canon to Avali lore that their home is close to a galactic core, which is also why the default skybox looks the way it does)

Wouldn't placing it 24,000 light years away create tons of lag? If you do ever make an interstellar version then i'd recommend one of those config files that lets you set distance, a setting for canonical distance, and a setting for it to be much, much closer (Then pray to the Kraken that the other stars don't orbit too close to eachother or kerbol )

Since this is a huge star mod, it'd probably be a sort of end-game destination, needing warp drives to get to it (Like blueshift)

[Zmeya]

Might I suggest an option to download the mod in parts off of Github so those who might have problems downloading large files for no apparent reason(like me) are able to use the mod?

[TheGhastModding]

On 7/17/2023 at 10:25 AM, Zmeya said:

Might I suggest an option to download the mod in parts off of Github so those who might have problems downloading large files for no apparent reason(like me) are able to use the mod?

Have you tried going to the GitHub repo and doing Code > Download ZIP? Gets you the same files as the SpaceDock download. Also, sharing the exact error you get while downloading or installing would help me, like, actually know how to help you.

However, you are the ONLY person I’ve ever met that has issues downloading large files (which seems like a problem at your Internet Service Provider, you should let them know), so I hope you can understand that I cannot take hours out of several of my days to engineer a custom download solution for just one person.

[Zmeya]

7 hours ago, TheGhastModding said:

Have you tried going to the GitHub repo and doing Code > Download ZIP? Gets you the same files as the SpaceDock download. Also, sharing the exact error you get while downloading or installing would help me, like, actually know how to help you.

However, you are the ONLY person I’ve ever met that has issues downloading large files (which seems like a problem at your Internet Service Provider, you should let them know), so I hope you can understand that I cannot take hours out of several of my days to engineer a custom download solution for just one person.

From one of my previous comments:
"I tried downloading this 3 times, twice from SpaceDock, once from GitHub, all 3 times the Zip file has been invalid and the content unusable for me.

Addition: tried again from SpaceDock, same result.

Addition 2: tried again through both SpaceDock and Github on Firefox instead of Opera, both failed, SpaceDock took too long and the download had to be restarted too many times, Github just gave me a broken file just like when I tried using Opera."

As for the ISP, the ISP's where I live generally don't care if you're having problems unless you don't have internet access at all.

For me, smaller planet packs of about 1.6gb download through Opera or Firefox just fine from SpaceDock or github, ones about 2-3gb need to be downloaded through Firefox seemingly through any site other than Github and need to have their downloads restarted every once in a while, and 5gb or larger just doesnt work. But I find it quite strange so few mods have caused such problems, since I've downloaded mods as large as 4gb for other games without issue through sites like Nexus mods

[RevanX_LSR]

i spent almost 7 hours downloading this one, would be better to split this pack up into smaller textures. Probably will need rescale mods for this one. Legendary planet pack, haven’t finished downloading, probably still 19 more hours (after a failed attempt, actually ran out of storage, and also my pc going on to sleep and corrupting the download)

[Zmeya]

On 8/2/2023 at 6:29 AM, JNSQFan said:

i spent almost 7 hours downloading this one, would be better to split this pack up into smaller textures. Probably will need rescale mods for this one. Legendary planet pack, haven’t finished downloading, probably still 19 more hours (after a failed attempt, actually ran out of storage, and also my pc going on to sleep and corrupting the download)

Well what do you know, Im not alone in having this problem.

[RevanX_LSR]

 

1 minute ago, Zmeya said:

Well what do you know, Im not alone in having this problem.

I finished downloading the mod, but couldn’t get it to run.(The mod+ksp is nearly 13 gigabytes unzipped, and my 16GB ram computer couldn’t get that to run). I will be trying another mod of running with less bodies, maybe 7 or 8.

[Zmeya]

On 8/4/2023 at 8:54 PM, JNSQFan said:

 

I finished downloading the mod, but couldn’t get it to run.(The mod+ksp is nearly 13 gigabytes unzipped, and my 16GB ram computer couldn’t get that to run). I will be trying another mod of running with less bodies, maybe 7 or 8.

Guess it wouldn't matter if I could download the mod or not then since I have the same RAM limitation.

[NyneTheBeast]

Every time i try and load this mod i kopernicus fails to load the system with the error
"[LOG 11:06:19]: [Kopernicus]: Configuration.Loader: Failed to load Body: Avalon/Magnus: Value cannot be null.
Parameter name: type"
Does anyone know what could be the cause?

[destroyerofGPUs]

Hi, does anybody have any idea how to get out of Kerbol system? Or if the game will automatically put you into the Solakku system? I very likely did something wrong in the install, but have all the dependencies installed and working. (tbh EVE isn't working, but I think that's because I have AVP also installed)