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

[SimonTheSkink]

Ok I'm back again with the same problem but a new video. I figured if i had another video showing the same problem but under different circumstances it might give some more light on the issue. I still can't get beamed power to work worth squat, I have made relays in geosynchronous orbit etc and nothing will pick up the beamed power.

The video is still loading so it may take a few for the URL to work. Please excuse the audio as it is very poor and i apologize in advanced for craptastic quality.

[shifty803]

Hello all,

Playing through the game as one does and I noticed a price discrepancy. The 2.5m aegletes reactor is more expensive than the 3.75m one. I think a random extra zero is to blame(or missing if you want to go the other way). Current costs as I know them:

1.25m fission kiwi - 100k

2.5m fission aegletes - 2.5 mil

3.75m fission aegletes 2 - 500k

2.5m fusion - 2.5 mil

3.75m fusion - 10 mil

So, either way the 3.75m fission, or 2.5m fission need price adjustments.

Still all praise to wave for going all out.

Edit: I know I can adjust prices in the config files, but I don't want anyone else to be confused, plus which way should I go? More inline or more expensive?

There are quite a few typos in the costs. For example, check out the electrical generators, specifically the large ones. I suspect you will be amused. Going out of business, everything must go! Basically what happened there is the "cost" field got switched with the "entry cost" field. In any case, WaveP is aware of these issues I think. I suspect his costs were somewhat arbitrary. Balancing stuff takes a great deal of time and effort, which he has not really had time to do yet. Plus there's more than one philosophy on how to do it. Take a look at the prices on Fusion reactors.

I really hate the fact that an LV-N cost 8700 when fission reactors are going for 25k to 2.5M. I wonder if we should change the LV-N when installing this mod.

[krillin678]

shifty803:

I can understand that... can't wait for it to get rejiggerd and edited to make complete sense. Haven't had much time to look at the generators and I haven't got that far in the game yet(looking at duna right now). I also understand your point about the lv-n but I personally think it was a little bit of a cop out, even says so in the code(something about burning lfo), which is why this mod make so much sense to me and I won't be using lv-n's anytime soon as long as I have this mod. At least there are reactors and generators and... well you know the stuff in the mod that make it awesome.

[WaveFunctionP]

Ok I'm back again with the same problem but a new video. I figured if i had another video showing the same problem but under different circumstances it might give some more light on the issue. I still can't get beamed power to work worth squat, I have made relays in geosynchronous orbit etc and nothing will pick up the beamed power.

The video is still loading so it may take a few for the URL to work. Please excuse the audio as it is very poor and i apologize in advanced for craptastic quality.

http://youtu.be/Dg3quZlMQMg

I was able to reproduce your issue with the DT Vista engine. I think it is an issue with the automatic power throttling code. The engine doesn't appear to be registering it's power requirement's properly with the power manager.

As for your video, I'm glad that you took the time to make it and upload it. There is one issue though. You set your arrays to relay. They do not transmit power in relay mode. Relay mode basically takes any transmitted power that it can see from it's location, and makes that power available as if it is being transmitted from its current location.

For power stations, I always recommend setting on array to transmit for the onboard power, and one array set to relay to make any other transmitted power sources it can see available from that location as well.

You don't seem to keen on watching my power network video or maybe I didn't explain it well enough, but all of this information is available on the wiki as well.

Anywho, thanks for helping to track this bug. I'll be sure to fix it for the next version.

[D.G.REX.ET.IND.IMP]

SimonTheSkink:

In your video you set both your Arrays on your reactor rover to "relay". Try setting them both to "transmit" as you want to send that power out into your network for use. With them both set to "relay" they should be sending along back into your network any power they receive from any other reactor stations/rovers you may have but will not add the power that your reactor rover is generating.

[WaveFunctionP]

SimonTheSkink:

In your video you set both your Arrays on your reactor rover to "relay". Try setting them both to "transmit" as you want to send that power out into your network for use. With them both set to "relay" they should be sending along back into your network any power they receive from any other reactor stations/rovers you may have but will not add the power that your reactor rover is generating.

Transmission only has a location, the direction or size of the array doesn't matter. A single array set to transmit with transmit all power available onboard in every direction.

[theSpeare]

Hey WaveFunctionP, just completely out of curiosity how's the progress on part cost adjustment?

[WaveFunctionP]

Hey WaveFunctionP, just completely out of curiosity how's the progress on part cost adjustment?

It's early, but it's not the only thing coming. An early list so far:

buff entry level fission reactors

delineate a clearer role for particle fission

tweakscale integration to reduce part counts

remove the largely hidden upgrade mechanics separating them into parts

give radial and inline radiators a real purpose

add resource recovery, vab availability and resource/logistics dependant progression

remove treeloader dependance

A lot of this stuff is interdependent, so I have no eta.

Why am I doing this?

Fission's lifetime isn't really a perk. The lifetime of a reactor doesn't really have much impact given the typical lifetime of a save, nevermind that you can simply place one with a refinery. And many mechanics that work off of time limits, do not work well since you can always timewarp. Reactor power scaling is plain ridiculous. Simply setting cost based on reactor output means that you have reactors go from a few thousand to hundreds of millions, without even considering the increasing power to weight they offer. And I don't want the game to become all about grinding currency via missions, and I don't want it to be about recovering resources for money.

Most of those changes have a part to play in that in some way. The others are simply things that have bothered me for a while.

KSPI isn't the only game or the only mod that I work on, so I have to do what I can.

Edited August 6, 2014 by WaveFunctionP

[AndreyATGB]

I found the folding transmitter is capable of sending more power than the smaller one. It needs to be in the tens of gigawats range to be different.

[ZonkX]

Hey folks, has anyone else a problem with microwave transceivers attached to antimatter reactors? My reactors aren't transmitting power at all (transceiver is set to "transmit"), even if there's also a nuclear reactor attached which is producing power. Am I doing something wrong, or maybe has this something to do with the automatic throttling function?

[SimonTheSkink]

I was able to reproduce your issue with the DT Vista engine. I think it is an issue with the automatic power throttling code. The engine doesn't appear to be registering it's power requirement's properly with the power manager.

As for your video, I'm glad that you took the time to make it and upload it. There is one issue though. You set your arrays to relay. They do not transmit power in relay mode. Relay mode basically takes any transmitted power that it can see from it's location, and makes that power available as if it is being transmitted from its current location.

For power stations, I always recommend setting on array to transmit for the onboard power, and one array set to relay to make any other transmitted power sources it can see available from that location as well.

You don't seem to keen on watching my power network video or maybe I didn't explain it well enough, but all of this information is available on the wiki as well.

Anywho, thanks for helping to track this bug. I'll be sure to fix it for the next version.

WaveFunctionP, in all politeness i have watched your videos and i have made a set of proper relays in space. I have even watched Scott Manley's videos on the subject and made my own relay satellites. I only made the ground generator as a quick demonstration for this video. Relay or Transmit gives the same results either way. But thank you for looking into this, i am happy that it helped contribute back to the community, im sorry i was a pain and had a hard time communicating from my end. But i have taken all your advice to heart.

But yes again, I have followed your tutorial on making a geosynchronous set of satellites that are relaying power. I honestly took your advice.

Edited August 6, 2014 by SimonTheSkink

[shifty803]

Balancing costs -

I am just thinking out loud here, so feel free to disagree. What if costs are set such that nuclear fuels become more of a limiting factor than the actual reactor prices, etc.?

That would tend to encourage mining resources in game, while making it potentially less grindy on the money side of things. I guess there is a fine line in this scenario, because one could find themselves grinding resources instead.

The starting fuel in the reactors would probably need adjustment as well.

[krillin678]

shifty803:

I can agree that to offset cost we could send up empty reactors and fill them from mining network to save money... that makes a lot of sense. The problem I have is we don't have a reliable way to tell accurately how much time a reactor has left in its lifetime. The thing that made me think of this is if we have price adjustments based on fuel I could just estimate the amount of fuel I would need for the entire mission profile(say a half years worth) and only take that up and save money.

Like the way you are thinking though, and I would be for the idea. Dunno if wavep wants to take the time though(lots of balance and tweaking).

[FreakyCheeseMan]

Hey everyone - late to the party and trying to catch up. I've read over a few pages of the discussion, but if someone could give me a brief overview of where this mod stands right now in regards to 2.4, I'd really appreciate it. It sounds like there's a pre-release available, and everyone is pouring over it looking for bugs and balance issues prior to full update? Is there any sort of a guess on when it'll be good to go?

Love this mod, by the way, and thanks to everyone working on it!

[AndreyATGB]

Hey everyone - late to the party and trying to catch up. I've read over a few pages of the discussion, but if someone could give me a brief overview of where this mod stands right now in regards to 2.4, I'd really appreciate it. It sounds like there's a pre-release available, and everyone is pouring over it looking for bugs and balance issues prior to full update? Is there any sort of a guess on when it'll be good to go?

Love this mod, by the way, and thanks to everyone working on it!

Basically it's just 0.11 with some tweaks by WaveFunction (not official) recompiled for 0.24.2. It isn't cost balanced or offer any new contracts. Fractal hasn't posted for months so we don't really know if he's working on a new version or not.

[bonesbro]

Fission's lifetime isn't really a perk. The lifetime of a reactor doesn't really have much impact given the typical lifetime of a save, nevermind that you can simply place one with a refinery. And many mechanics that work off of time limits, do not work well since you can always timewarp. Reactor power scaling is plain ridiculous. Simply setting cost based on reactor output means that you have reactors go from a few thousand to hundreds of millions, without even considering the increasing power to weight they offer. And I don't want the game to become all about grinding currency via missions, and I don't want it to be about recovering resources for money.

I don't agree that fission's lifetime is a perk. In one of my saves I'd spent a long time building up relay satellites and power satellites and science bases/stations. I had a lot of fun doing that. Then I sent a few science and colonizations missions to Jool and the long duration of the trips meant that a lot of my infrastructure had decayed. I needed to replace or refuel six different places, at a cost of about six human hours. Maybe I would have been more efficient and it would have only taken three. But faced with that time investment I just gave up and I haven't built any of that stuff again (after a failure to get usable amounts of solar power in my next save).

That's a shame - one of the things I loved most about Interstellar was that it gave a reason to do cool missions like setting up a satellite network or building bases and stations. But even a ten year reactor lifetime evaporates after a couple of roundtrips to Jool.

(I agree that just making things expensive is a bad approach because it encourages currency grinding instead of building cool stuff and doing experimental missions. One problem with the currency system is that it seems to make me very risk-averse in my missions because a failure means I'm losing permanent resources)

[Avanti]

hey guys, i have the latest update for .23.5 and everything works fine. i have unlocked everything in the tech tree on career mode. now i am experimenting with the warp drive, however i have a problem. the drive doesn't turn on and off like i've seen in other videos. i charge up the exotic matter using beamed power. choose my speed, and hit the activate warp button, but there isn't a turn off warp button. what i have to do is turn around and activate the warp in the opposite direction to slow down to "real" speed, however it is impossible for me to perfectly inverse my speed and i end up with vectors that are 30km per second and higher in some off angle direction. which is way higher than the orbital speed of Kerbin. is there a version where the on/off button still exists? otherwise it is impossible for me to have predictable performance with the warp drive. another thing i have noticed is that the blue/red band that appears as you warp doesn't happen with my craft.

[FreakyCheeseMan]

Basically it's just 0.11 with some tweaks by WaveFunction (not official) recompiled for 0.24.2. It isn't cost balanced or offer any new contracts. Fractal hasn't posted for months so we don't really know if he's working on a new version or not.

Ahh, hmm. Is this one of the cases like KAS where it's propriety and the community is limited in what it can do on its own? Or are we just hashing out how much things should cost?

How un-cost-balanced are we talking? I haven't had any trouble keeping my coffers full thus far, so unless it's truly off the charts, I think I can handle it. (Mostly interested in the power network, anyway.)

Got a link?

[INSULINt]

Possible bugs: computer core keeps functioning in sandbox without megajoules or a reactor/gen combo. Also doesn't consume mj unless there is a reactor/gen attached......

[Haifi]

Hey guys

I think i have an idea for a possible solution for the power satelite network. As the Idea for solar power satelites came up it was intended to use mirrors and generators, i.e. solar thermal power.

Solar thermal's efficiency is limited only by the efficiency of the generator, which is about 50% IRL ( whereas photovoltaic solutions have only 10% efficiency, at least in geostationary orbit. Photovoltaic could still pull out the gigawatt ace in low kerbol orbit, lategame) .

There are recent theoretical plans for thermal power plants in geostaionary orbit stating a power output of roundabout 1300 MW_th, using a generator at 58% efficiency that yields 650 MW_e and at a mirror size of 1 km².

Sadly im no programmer / modeller or i would try to pull sth. out of the hat. The generators are already included in Interstellar, so its just a receiver + mirror combination thats needed. Something like a modification of the solar sail could eventually work as mirror and the thermal receivers could be modified to receive not just microwave but also solar thermal power.

Regards

Edited August 7, 2014 by Haifi

[crazyewok]

Usieng 64X version 24

Haveing trouble as some of the engines are not working. In the VAB they seem to be activated when selected and don not work outside the VAB. Using the experimental version.

Also can I switch tec trees mid game? Dont want to restart my game and destroy my save game effort. Does it work ok with the new tec tree?

Edited August 6, 2014 by crazyewok

[Exosphere]

When using the experimental update, my game keeps crashing. There doesn't seem to be any similar event that prompts the crashes -- I've had them happen about a dozen times now while doing everything from clicking a tech node in the R&D building, to building a rocket in the VAB, to setting up a maneuver node in orbit, etc. I'll update this post with a crash file the next time it happens. Again, there doesn't seem to be any single thing (i.e. part, action taken, etc) in common between the crashes.

I'm using the 64-bit version -- any idea if using the 32-bit game would fix this problem? Is the experimental update more stable with the 32-bit version?

Also, all of the other mods I'm using have been officially updated to .24.2, and my game runs perfectly fine without the experimental update installed -- I don't get any crashes (at least not any more often than I normally do).

EDIT: And right on cue, my game just crashed about a minute later. I was putting together a rocket in the VAB this time around, although I must stress again that I haven't been able to find any commonality between crashes, so that may or may not be a determining factor.

Here's the crash file: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7qbiTeKMai6ZmtmX0czZm9aQkU/edit?usp=sharing

As an aside, is anyone else experiencing really frequent crashes with the experimental update downloaded (as in once per ten minutes or so)? I understand that all games crash, especially games that are under development that are running mods, but my game seems to be crashing way more often than normal, even with a load of mods installed. I guess it's some sort of bug in the Interstellar mod.

EDIT #2: And here's the error log: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7qbiTeKMai6RDZOVmpjdnd1eVE/edit?usp=sharing

And the output log: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7qbiTeKMai6QXpweXc5d2tjRGM/edit?usp=sharing

While looking at the error log, it appears that the problem was a memory access violation. Also, I've tried Interstellar in the 32-bit game as well, and it's just as buggy. I managed to crash the game twice before finally being able to put together and launch a rocket, and the game crashed a third time when I attempted to recover the rocket after launching it.

Either I'm doing something wrong and experiencing way more crashes than the other people posting here, or the experimental update is pretty darn buggy.

Edited August 6, 2014 by Exosphere

[Haifi]

32bit is way more stable, if youre running just really few mods better use 32 bit. The 64bit unity was so unstable that Squad would not hand out a 64bit version of KSP for windows before .24, and still i have loads of crashes on 64bit windows version. Linux 64bit instead is pretty stable with 50+ mods. So for now its kind of experimental on windows.

Regards

Edit: If you have memory problems, try reducing the texture quality to half or quarter res, this SHOULD help. The Experimental is stable as far as i can tell.

Edited August 6, 2014 by Haifi

[Exosphere]

Well, after digging through the previous pages in the thread, I found out that the experimental mod is only stable if any other version of OpenResourceSystem is uninstalled. Since I also have the Modular Kolonization System mod installed, I had those files merged with the Interstellar files in the ORS. After replacing my Franken-ORS with an Interstellar-only ORS, the mod does run stably, as far as I can tell, even in the 64-bit game.

So, basically, just ignore my last post -- I neglected to read through the installation instructions before commenting

On a side note -- I guess that means the MKS mod and the experimental Interstellar mod are incompatible as of now? I'd rather play with both of them, but I guess if I don't have a choice, I'd rather use Interstellar.

[undercoveryankee]

On a side note -- I guess that means the MKS mod and the experimental Interstellar mod are incompatible as of now? I'd rather play with both of them, but I guess if I don't have a choice, I'd rather use Interstellar.

MKS and Karbonite run fine with the ORS from WaveFunctionP's build of Interstellar, as far as I've ever heard.