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

[a__gun]

Some people here are fans of blizzy's toolbar, to those people I say this:

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

More Details

• Toolbar will not be required or packaged with Interstellar, if you want to use it, install it but if you don't have it nothing will change for you.
  
• In the release version, if you have the toolbar, the sidebar button will be gone and the thermal helper will default to disabled in the VAB.
  
• If you have toolbar, you'll have to enable the buttons in each scene in order to see them.
  

Yay 10char

[Northstar1989]

Have you quickloaded recently? If you go back in time to before an impact was recorded and try it again, you won't get the science or an error message; KSPI thinks that impact was already recorded.

I've quicksaved plenty of times- it's kind of a necessity when you're running 18-20 flights at once (though most of those are my Duna Armada- which has already made most of its mid-flight course corrections). I might have even quickloaded a couple times around that time- but this didn't work the FIRST time (after which I quickloaded and retried it 5 or 6 more times to make sure I wasn't doing something wrong). I wouldn't have quickloaded back to before the impact if it had worked right off the bat...

Regards,

Northstar

[Northstar1989]

Has anyone been getting massive lag spikes in the VAB/SPH when placing some of the Interstellar parts such as the nuclear reactors and electric generators? When I place a single fission reactor, the game freezes up for about 1.5 seconds. With symmetry, the more copies, the longer the pause (8 symmetry can freeze for several seconds).

I've read some other posts in this thread about it, but there were never any solutions to it. This occured in 0.9 and now in 0.10. Was it ever discovered what causes it?

I've had this issue for months now myself- but always just figured it was from trying to run the game on my craptop (it typically takes up 70-80% of available memory, although lately it's been skyrocketing up to 90+% without my doing anything differently... I think my memory card might be starting to die...)

My guess had always been it was from the game calculating the WasteHeat and fuel system, especially since I have MechJeb2 installed (which comes with some Kerbal Engineer functionality...)

Regards,

Northstar

[Boamere]

I've had this issue for months now myself- but always just figured it was from trying to run the game on my craptop (it typically takes up 70-80% of available memory, although lately it's been skyrocketing up to 90+% without my doing anything differently... I think my memory card might be starting to die...)

My guess had always been it was from the game calculating the WasteHeat and fuel system, especially since I have MechJeb2 installed (which comes with some Kerbal Engineer functionality...)

Regards,

Northstar

Always have this, whenever radially attaching i get a massive lag spike that lags for at least 5 seconds (massive as in can't move the screen or do anything)

[zephrylia]

Apologies if these two questions have already been addressed - I did a quick search of this thread and didn't find answers.

1. I'm working on a low-Kerbol microwave power network using the Balka solar wings from the KOSMOS pack, but it appears that they aren't affected by the KSPI inverse square law? In a ~1500 Mm Kerbol orbit, the stock Gigantors produce about 50 times what they do at Kerbin (i.e., ~1000 rather than ~20 charge/sec), whereas the Balkas produce only 10 times what they do at Kerbin (~4000 rather than ~400 charge/sec). So it seems that the stock panels are obeying KSPI's inverse square law, but the Balkas are obeying the stock distance mechanic. I tried poking around at config files but couldn't figure much out - is there anything I can do to make the Balkas obey KSPI's inverse square law?

2. Just to check a few things I read in the thread but want to make sure I understand - the large phased away transceiver IS more efficient than the small transceiver at receiving power, but IS NOT any different in terms of relaying or transmitting power - right? Likewise, the transceiver DOES have to be physically pointed at a source to receive power, but DOES NOT have to be in order to transmit or relay power - right? There is no limit of how much power a transceiver can transmit - right?

Thank you, Fractal, for an incredible & totally engrossing playing experience!

[Idelacio]

I'm having an issue with this mod when loading a craft with animated parts. Previously engaged radiators unfold and the microwave reciever starts up opened and closes. The radiators are annoying but aren't too problematic as generally they're saved with space available for activated radiators. The reciever hower is playing havoc with certain designs: if I have a ship equipped with them in a cargo bay for example the reciever will clip with the bay on load then close causing further clipping. Solar panels are torn off and, if the reciever becomes lodged in the mesh, the entire craft will do nutty things like spin in place. This doesn't happen with any other mod that uses animated parts. Aside from using no clip is there a way to resolve this?

[AndreyATGB]

Yeah I've got the same issue. Aside from it being a little weird (having a transmitter fold in a fairing on the launch pad is weird) it doesn't really matter. While it's animating it still works fine and the radiators unfold very quickly. Would still be nice if they'd just be the way I left them/built them.

[AntiMatter001]

ok i just have to make a really big molehill now.... i'm wondering if you can just copy over the warpdrive part of this mod without the other resources and stuff...

is this simple or completely imposible and should i give up all hope of ever doing this?

[Woodstar]

Does anyone know a way I can raise my efficiency of my generators? I can't seem to get better than 50%.

[GavinZac]

ok i just have to make a really big molehill now.... i'm wondering if you can just copy over the warpdrive part of this mod without the other resources and stuff...

is this simple or completely imposible and should i give up all hope of ever doing this?

No reason you can't do it, but it would only work in Sandbox I think, since I think Science controls a lot of the parts' efficiency. I could be wrong though. The best way to find out is to just copy and paste your KSP installation somewhere else, make the changes you want, and then test it.

[AntiMatter001]

No reason you can't do it, but it would only work in Sandbox I think, since I think Science controls a lot of the parts' efficiency. I could be wrong though. The best way to find out is to just copy and paste your KSP installation somewhere else, make the changes you want, and then test it.

ah sorry i wasn't clear enough...

i have the warpdrives (only... nothing else KSPI related) in ksp but they don't work... how would i go about fixing this problem?

[NeoAcario]

Hey Fractal!

Here's a reminder you asked for:

Release smaller and more frequent updates!

~Steve

[undercoveryankee]

Does anyone know a way I can raise my efficiency of my generators? I can't seem to get better than 50%.

IIUC, generators first calculate the Carnot efficiency (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnot%27s_theorem_%28thermodynamics%29 ) between your reactor core temperature and your radiator temperature, then apply their own efficiency as a percentage of that.

So, upgrading the generator will get you closer to the thermodynamic limit, but the only way to increase the limit is to use a higher-temperature reactor or use more radiators to lower the radiator temperature. 50% isn't necessarily bad.

[SciMan]

I don't think this is related to memory. The pause happens when placing the part on the ship (in fact, it happens as the cursor passes over any ship part to which the reactor or generator can attach to). At this point all art assets have been loaded into memory so if there were any pauses or errors that would pop up, they would occur when initially entering the VAB/SPH or whenever the parts' assets are loaded into memory.

Further, I've manually gone and shrunk all the texture files myself to either 1/4 or 1/8 size hugely cutting down on memory usage (some textures are just plain white or grey yet are 1024x1024 and since textures are not loaded into memory compressed, they can take up several megabytes even if the texture on disk only takes a few kilobytes).

I feel like this might be related to some kind of conflict with another mod as the two plugins are trying to calculate something when the part is being added but haven't been able to pinpoint any one thing as the culprit.

I need to do some testing on this issue because I don't have the same problem myself but, in principle, there is some limited file IO involved in testing whether a part is upgraded in the VAB, how much that file IO occurs depends exactly on how KSP handles the loading of parts in the VAB, it may be that it is reloading all of the parts every time the symmetry settings are changed. Generally, I develop, run and test Interstellar on an SSD to minimise loading times (pretty important when you have to reload the game every time you recompile the plugin) but a delay that is not really perceivable to me may be causing some kind of small and annoying delay on magnetic drives.

For clarity, the most noticeable effect of the problem as I understand it is this:

While being dragged with the mouse, certain parts cause an easily detected lag-spike if the mouse passes over the ship at a valid attachment location, or if the symmetry mode changes while the mouse is over a valid attach location.

I'm not using KSP-I at the moment, and I don't write plugins, so I won't say that the plugin can't be causing this problem.

However, I've used parts from a few other mods that caused effects nearly identical to those described.

Here's 3 example parts, all of them cause the exact same issue, each one from a different mod pack, and none of them use plugins.

• The first time I encountered this kind of issue was when using the KOSMOS pack's Balka Solar Wing parts. The models are extremely detailed to begin with, which is only compounded by the complexity of the deploy/retract animation.
  
• The Second time it was the 2.5m RTG from the station parts pack by UDK_Lethal_d0se (this pack is ONLY parts) Many parts from this pack caused this kind of issue, the 2.5m RTG is merely the worst offender. All of the parts in this pack have hi-res textures, and the models are EXTREMELY detailed.
  
• The most recent part to cause problems like this is the OKEB-250 from the Near Future Propulsion Pack. Almost immediately after it was added, several people reported that this part caused the symptoms described above. This one is noteworthy because the next update to the pack included a slightly simplified 3d model of the problem part with minor modifications to the textures, which eliminated all traces of the problem.
  

Based on these examples, I believe that the primary cause of these effects is a highly-detailed 3d model. Based on the favorable results of the solution used in the 3rd example, I'm confident that tweaking the 3d models of those parts in KSP-I that experience this issue would solve the problem quite thoroughly. Even if tweaking the models doesn't solve it, it would still reduce the mod's memory footprint, which is never a bad thing.

[CrazyOdd]

One question, as I am too lazy to check the forum and the wiki:

Is it possible (or rather: useful) to put 2 generators on one reactor?

[Makeone]

ah sorry i wasn't clear enough...

i have the warpdrives (only... nothing else KSPI related) in ksp but they don't work... how would i go about fixing this problem?

Delete the warplugin folder under gamedata and download the whole pack again (link at frist page). Install per instructions.

[Makeone]

One question, as I am too lazy to check the forum and the wiki:

Is it possible (or rather: useful) to put 2 generators on one reactor?

Yes, at least on fusion reactors, but they have to be different types, ie. one thermal and one direct conversion. That probably also work on dusty plasma nuclear reactor, but they doesn't produce that much thermal power if direct conversion is used.

[WaveFunctionP]

I've noticed the lag most when adding many (8+) of the Large radiators in symmetry. At one time I had to 12 or more (just to get into the yellow) on a 3.5 fusion reactor because I didn't have the radiator upgrades yet, but I had upgraded reactors. Would be nice to decrease the upgrade performance disparity. I can get better performance now with just 2 of the Huge ones now, which is just silly. I could see the upgrade being 2 times as efficient, but over 10x is a bit much. It's more than that actually.

The tooltip says the large radiator dissipates ~470 MW base, and 21K MW (!!!!!) after upgrades. All of the radiators have similar base to upgrade ratios. Maybe a decimal place was put in the spot? Specifically the base rates. And a minor quibble. Huge sounds larger than Large, but it is the opposite for radiators.

As a previous poster asked, I also just "discovered" that you can use two generators set to different modes on a reactor. Perhaps a note about what the upgrade does, or rather, call it something other than an upgrade.

I have a question of my own. I've built many different orbital power stations around kerbin, but no matter what I do whenever I turn the transmitter on it will drain anough energy to turn off the reactor. Though I haven't observed it directly while focused on one in warp. Waste heat is in the green and the bar doesn't fill up so I know it's not overheating. It's giving the message about power for the reactor. If I warp for a bit and then switch to a reactor, the reactor (and any receivers) will be shutdown, but the relays and transmitters will stay active (no power to transmit though). It'll even show on the power meter that it is transmitting past production capacity.

One would assume that transmitters should only transmit excess power (lowest priority), or am I doing something wrong?

Also, are there any plans to have tritium decay into helium in the background in the future? Otherwise I don't understand why the mechanic exists at all.

I love this mod. I was most "done" with ksp until I found Interstellar. Now I can't stop playing.

[merendel]

@wavefuntionP

The radiator upgrades dont actualy make them any more efficent at dissapating heat at any particular heat level. They still dissipate similar amounts of heat for their surface area at any specific temature level. What they do is alow the radiators to reach higher operating temperatures. The hotter the radiator the faster it dissipates heat so when you can crank one up a thousand degrees higher its dissipating much more heat.

Information on what the generator upgrades do is on the wiki but mostly they just have a higher theoretical efficiency and you can also have them set to either thermal(standard mod) or direct conversion (uses charged particles not thermal)

In the current version power transmisison with fusions does not always work properly. Its soposed to reserve enough power to maintain the reactor and send the rest to the transmiter but there are several situations where this fails to happen. Notably if you have more than one generator on a reactor it seems to think both run at full output and trys to take that double full output minus runing costs which is more than the total output so you run outa power and it shuts down. Timewarp can also do weird things to it. The long and the short of it is dont use fusion for transmited power. Use fission nukes for transmission and use fusion where you need high power for lower weight.

On tritium decay in the background. Things like that worked in .22 but .23 squad mucked with the fuel system and broke alot of KSPI's fuel mechanics that worked in the background or at a very low rate. Fractals fixed alot of them and I'm sure is working on the rest but it takes time.

[Fractal_UK]

The fusion power transmission bug is actually a bug with the calculation of power available to a direct conversion generator, you can build reliable fusion power transmitters by switching the generators over to KTEC thermoelectric mode in the VAB. The bug is already fixed for the next update and I'm hopeful I can get the update out soon now.

Unfortunately I have a lot of work on at the moment so I've been having to make do with scraping little bits of spare time together to work on Interstellar as and when I can.

[HerrGeneral]

I have four helium tanks on my space telescope, but it won't do anything and says "Helium coolant depleted". It's not depleted and it has plenty of power- what am I doing wrong?

[WaveFunctionP]

I've been doing some testing. You get the power warning and the display shows a deficit with a single generator in either KTEC or Direct modes. it doesn't matter. Though the direct mode's deficit is like 300%, whereas ktec is like 1% or so.

I've been using a simple test setup with a 3.5 generator, 3.5 fusion reactor, 2 huge radiators, 2.5 inline battery, 2.5 probe core, and a transmitter.

Hope this helps.

[zephrylia]

I have four helium tanks on my space telescope, but it won't do anything and says "Helium coolant depleted". It's not depleted and it has plenty of power- what am I doing wrong?

Is it possible you're using He-3 tanks, rather than the helium cryostat found under the science tab? If so, that's the problem - use the cryostat instead.

[WaveFunctionP]

@wavefuntionP

The radiator upgrades dont actualy make them any more efficent at dissapating heat at any particular heat level. They still dissipate similar amounts of heat for their surface area at any specific temature level. What they do is alow the radiators to reach higher operating temperatures. The hotter the radiator the faster it dissipates heat so when you can crank one up a thousand degrees higher its dissipating much more heat.

I don't really know how they work, but it is a touch silly.

Upgraded radiators.

Regular radiators.

That's 38 (!!!) of the unupgraded large radiators performing worse than 2 of the smaller, upgraded huge radiators.

I had to send my power satellites up in pieces because I have to dock radiators to them to keep them in yellow with 12. Any more than 12 or so and the physics would go nuts on the launch pad.

Nevermind the lag in VAB when trying to build the stacks!

I don't really care how or why they work this way, I just care that it is needlessly excessive. And perhaps sandbox or max science players may not have encountered this behavior, and therefore haven't reported it as problem, because it IS a problem.

Thank you both of you for your answers. I can't wait for the update.

[singlet]

I don't really know how they work, but it is a touch silly.

<snip>

It is not silly. It may be a problem, but it is the sort of problem you cannot ignore if you are going to design a realistic spacecraft, because it is the way nature works, not just simple game mechanics.

It is because radiators become MUCH more effective as the temperature goes higher (proportional to T^4).

Look at the radiator temperature in the thermal mechanics helper - when the reactor work at 100%, the upgraded radiators are expected to work at 3165.4K, while the unupgraded radiators at 1356.1K. That is, the upgraded ones will dissipate about 30X more heat per unit area. Unupgraded radiators cannot stand such high temperatures because even at 2000K most metal parts will become nothing but glowing red hot spheres of molten metals.