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[0.25]KSP Interstellar (Magnetic Nozzles, ISRU Revamp) Version 0.13


Fractal_UK

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From that last post I take it that concept is probably not going to happen then? Either way your really not joking about making kerbals work for their ftl. :P

Don't rule it out for the future but while it's definitely possible to do, I'm worried I'd be adding an awful lot of calculations by doing it. If you had a sizeable network of power satellites and relays, the number of paths to check could grow extremely large (receiver to every satellite, receiver to every relay, every relay to every satellite, you get the idea). I don't want to risk adding lag to the game so I'll need to find some "trick" to do the calculations with less operations.

Edit: Im an idiot. Yes that concept will happen. We can put "power satellites" in high local orbit and receive power through the night if I understand correctly.

Putting satellites into high local orbits should certainly be a pretty good method of receiving power at night.

Edited by Fractal_UK
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RemoteTech does just that but with control signals. Perhaps you could go look at the source code for it and use that as a way to figure out how to do multi-sat beaming to provide full global coverage. Also, here are two ideas:

1) laser power transmission

- Laser is autotracking and has higher transmission efficiency than microwave but must be pointed in the general direction of the target planet

2) omnidirectional beaming

- antennae that don't need to be pointed to transmit but at low efficiency and at loss of range.

Again, I think looking at RemoteTech would help bunches with figuring out how you could do the power beaming system.

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I really think you should add general purpose power transmitter. After all current is current - doesn't matter if it's generated by solar panels or stack of RTGs. Sure, when we get resource upgrade and suddenly we'll have to obtain blutonium for any sort of nuclear power source solar panel will have huge advantage. But this advantage will diminish the further we'll go into the system. Around Jool power levels drop noticeably even now. What when we get another gas giant to explore even further? Nukes will be a must.

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It might be interesting if you made relays that needed to be manually targeted. If you then limit a relay satellite to only one target, it should solve your issue of "pathfinding" the power through the system. It would be a crude solution, but simple and effective, I think.

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I tried the mod and it seems a bit too easy. I only captured like 100 units of anti-matter and my warp drive seemed to just work forever, I'm not sure if there is a bug or not.

The whole process is too convoluted.

Anti-Proton collector collects antimatter

Anti-Matter storage

Anti-matter reactors uses anti-matter to make heat

Gas turbine makes electricity from heat

Use electricity to charge warp drive.

It would be better off if we got rid of/combine those extra steps. Keep the collectors and a containment field storage and make the warp engine uses anti-matter directly as fuel.

Engaging warp drive would use a lot of anti-matter fuel to initialize the warp field and then a little bit over time to maintain it and keep it stable.

For example, you need to spend 1000 units of anti-matter to initialize warp, and then maybe 10 units per second to maintain speed.

The device used to store anti-matter consumes a small amount to power the containment field to prevent it from exploding. The amount the amount of power required to store anti-matter increases as the storage device fills up.

As gameplay mechanic, Anti-matter has a half life. You lose half of what you are storing every X length of time.

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I tried the mod and it seems a bit too easy. I only captured like 100 units of anti-matter and my warp drive seemed to just work forever, I'm not sure if there is a bug or not.

Can you give me more information? 100 units of antimatter is really not a lot, the 2.5m antimatter reactor will burn that in less than 2 minutes if left turned on. I suspect you could get fairly far on that using the slowest warp drive speed setting but if you use up all of your antimatter powering your warp drive, you will very likely be likely left adrift in space unable to reach anywhere.

Remember that warping somewhere is only half the objective, warping around is fine but its useless unless you can circularise your orbit at the destination. That is the part that uses large amounts of fuel and antimatter and without trying to perform this step, you won't realise how insanely hard it can be.

The whole process is too convoluted.

Anti-Proton collector collects antimatter

Anti-Matter storage

Anti-matter reactors uses anti-matter to make heat

Gas turbine makes electricity from heat

Use electricity to charge warp drive.

Doing that might make a simpler warp drive mod but it also drastically limits expandability. I have plans to create different kinds of reactors (which generate heat) and different kinds of generators (that produce electricity). Yes, I'm trading simplicity in favour of scope but I hope to be able to develop a lot of features that will make it worthwhile.

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What seems to happen is once I have any antimatter, I can turn on the reactors and my Warp drive keeps charging up even with all of the reactors turned off.

Ok, I see what it is doing. the Gas turbine generator is creating megajoules and filling up the warp drive even when the anti-matter reactor is turned off.

Edited by GoldenShadowGS
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What seems to happen is once I have any antimatter, I can turn on the reactors and my Warp drive keeps charging up even with all of the reactors turned off.

I've just this second been looking at this very bug, it will be fixed in the next update. Sorry about that.

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I was thinking about how you could use warp drive to get into low solar orbit without needing vast amounts of Delta-V. My theory is to use gravity to change your velocity.

When I warped to the sun from Kerbin, my velocity was far too slow and my orbit intersects with the surface of the star. However, all I need to do is let myself fall into the star and before I burn up, I warp straight back up and fall again, picking up more speed. Repeat this as many times as needed. Then once I have a high enough velocity I warp to the point in space 90 degrees around the star and now I am orbiting without spending any conventional fuel.

You could use the same maneuver, but in reverse to get into a higher orbit. Warp to a point that makes you go straight up from the star, so the star's gravity is slowing you down. When your speed is low enough, you can warp to the position 90 degrees at the correct altitude to get a stable orbit.

Edited by GoldenShadowGS
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Very nice mod! I set this, in a nice spot I think, up. Needs to be expanded, though.

56v7huuakjet.jpg

That is a very cool station!

Here are some bugs I noticed (I know that this is an early release):

1) The Thermic Rocket Nozzle works without a working reactor (no antimatter on the craft) - simply use action keys to release the Launch Clamps, fire the engine manually and you are good to go.. almost. The craft then has a huge tendency to go sideways if given any input, straight up works fine. (If you hit the staging button everything goes back to normal)

2) The Braytons produce energy without a working reactor (no thermic energy, of course, stored).

3) If you use more than one Antimatter-Tank and another one is empty, the reactor shuts down. (Had the middle one (full) and the biggest one (nearly empty, 1,3 units stored)). Took me a while to figure this out - set up from above; one of the sections was already there)

4) When the throttle gets locked, because of a deactivated reactor, it doesn't unlock when you reactivate the reactor. (You have to go back out and in again.)

All of these bugs have now been fixed and these fixes will be included in the next update.

Bug 3) is a bit of a pain as it appears to be a game bug - for some reason if you are continuously producing a resource that needs to be connected by crossfeed capable components, the game won't ever switch over to using a second tank of that same resource. I can fix the bug by simply making my mod produce twice as much of the resource half as often, which allows the game to go through physics frames where the tanks are completely empty and consequently allow them to switch over correctly. Not a beautiful solution but the best I can do.

I was thinking about how you could use warp drive to get into low solar orbit without needing vast amounts of Delta-V. My theory is to use gravity to change your velocity. When I warped to the sun from Kerbin, my velocity was far too slow and my orbit intersects with the surface of the star. However, all I need to do is let myself fall into the star and before I burn up, I warp straight back up and fall again, picking up more speed. Repeat this as many times as needed.

That's a very clever way of using the warp drive alone to alter your real momentum.

Edited by Fractal_UK
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The other feature I wanted to complete for the next update is the atmospheric scoop. I have created an atmospheric intake that will draw in generic atmosphere from any planet, you can use this as propellant for a thermal turbojet or you can attach it to an atmospheric scoop. The atmospheric scoop takes in the atmosphere, seperates out a particular component and compresses it.

This scoop requires 6MW of electrical power to operate.

On Kerbin, I assume that 21% of the atmosphere is Oxygen, so you can extract a certain amount of oxidiser as you fly, using the scoop. On Laythe, I assume 18% Oxygen and on Duna 0.13% Oxygen. On Jool, I assume that 89% of the atmosphere is Hydrogen, thus Liquid Fuel can be extracted from its atmosphere.

Here is an example of the scoop in operation:

IwNi3DD.jpg

It doesn't really generate enough to help fuel an ascent but you could use highly elliptical orbits and a highly efficient engine to harvest the upper atmosphere, or just use it as a little bonus while aerobraking.

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I presume it's intentional that none of the stock rockets can get these parts into orbit?

What are you trying to put into orbit exactly and with what? I'd imagine the prebuilt rockets can lift at least some set of these parts. You're probably better off building your own rocket to lift the heavier components though.

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Very interesting, I think I just found a plugin to build a parts pack around. I've been feeling the game could use late game vessels of scale. I've been tossing around the idea of a Capital scale parts pack, your plugin would make them a much more practical, as I've been trying to figure out a way to make large ships that weren't all fuel tank and engines.. Using just chemical engines has a lot of problems, unless you unbalance the game, I have been working on a fusion based engine system that had great thrust and ISP without breaking the game, it's difficult.

The only thing I might add to your idea is to limit the ability of the warp drive to operate in any SOI other than the Kerban Sun. So if your in a planetary SOI the drive won't produce useful amounts of thrust or simply not function. This would eliminate the overpowering effect it has once you, force your players to taxi out to a warp ship and back down from it.

It would also make useful deep space space stations. or ports of call maybe? :-)

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I presume it's intentional that none of the stock rockets can get these parts into orbit?

indeed i would also like to know what you're lifting, since i put a ship with a turbine, warp drive, AM collector (and tank) and reactor , plus some solar panels, and a fuel tank for a skipper engine all into orbit with stock parts only.

Only had time to mess with this mod alittle but i love it and love the things you're planning on implementing. I feel this system is completely balanced. Though i did hit that bug mentioned earlier where the gas turbine thing continued to make mega watts even though my reactors were off (I thought for a second it was working off the heat from my overheating skipper engine :P)

And on a side note, i actually kinda like the fact the parts are just the skins of existing stock parts, makes them blend into ship designs better :D

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Version 0.2 Released

New in version 0.2

  • Microwave beamed solar power. Build solar satellites and attach a Microwave Beamed Power Transmitter to add its power to your energy network. Then build ships with a Microwave Beamed Power Receiver and power them from your solar satellites!
  • Magnetic scanner - Scan the magnetosphere of every planet in the Kerbol system with a new scientific instrument. Record their values for science or look for an abundance of anti-particles to power your antimatter reactors.
  • Atmospheric Intake - A generic atmospheric intake that functions on any planet with any atmosphere, feeds propellant to the Thermal Turbojet allowing you to fly efficient aircraft on Eve and Duna, or even with Jool's atmosphere!
  • Atmospheric Scoop - Harvest the atmosphere of certain planets for useful resources. Beware of significant electrical power requirements though!

Changelog:

Version 0.2
Changes:
-Warp Drive required power now scales with rocket mass, big rockets need more power.
-Added new nuclear reactors and tiny brayton turbine.
-Added Microwave solar power transmitter/receiver system.
-Added planetary magnetic probe.
-Added atmospheric intakes/scoop.

Bugfixes:
-Fixed Thermal Rocket Nozzle behaviour with manual activation and staging. It will no longer function in any circumstance without thermal power from a reactor.
-Fixed Brayton Cycle Gas turbines generating power with no input.
-Thermal Turbojet now functions with the same mechanism as the Thermal Rocket Nozzle and scales output properly depending upon attached reactor.

Download links in the first post have been updated.

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The best place I found was in a low Solar Orbit. Here are some screenshots.

http://i.imgur.com/l98jKLp.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/UoDtYEO.jpg

I used infinite fuel cheat to get that into a circular orbit around the sun. It seems to be very close to the best spot to gather anti-matter.

Altitude is between 390,000 kilometers and 400,000 kilometers with an orbital velocity of 42,300 m/s. I am gathering antimatter at 3.06E-002

Edited by GoldenShadowGS
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The best place I found was in a low Solar Orbit. Here are some screenshots.

http://i.imgur.com/l98jKLp.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/UoDtYEO.jpg

I used infinite fuel cheat to get that into a circular orbit around the sun. It seems to be very close to the best spot to gather anti-matter.

Altitude is between 390,000 kilometers and 400,000 kilometers with an orbital velocity of 42,300 m/s. I am gathering antimatter at 3.06E-002

Interesting, I actually intended Jool to be the prime location for harvesting antimatter. This is based on Saturn and Jupiter being the prime locations for doing so in real life. Obviously the sun has a magnetic field orders of magnitude stronger than the planets but I imagine there must be other factors that make long term trapping in the sun's magnetic field difficult.

I will revise down the sun's supply in the next update slightly to make Jool into the prime location as intended - there isn't a huge amount of difference between the two at the moment so it need only be a small change.

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Could you make the TWR and ISP of the nuclear reactors a little bit more interesting? I thought about to build a probe with the smallest parts, although relativly efficient (okay no, still 1/2 less efficient than the stock nuclear engine) it delivers nearly zero thrust. The biggest one works, but... It's simply too large for a probe.

(I think it's intended, although it would be awesome).

But as a source of power, the nuclear reactors work fine.

And could you explain how to read your Magnetospheric Probe? I have no idea. :/

Greetings,

Khoal

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Shouldn't that wee ship get melted at that distance? Perhaps just add a thermal SOI around the sun say half the distance to it from moho where ships start take overheat. The mechanics are there for it in the game to make it work, then someone who inventive enough could engineer some kind of thermal solution to get close enough.

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