[0.25] Engine Ignitor (Workaround for some bugs V3.4.1: Aug.31)

[KerTrotsky]

That's strange, I've designed many rockets that ignite the next stage before decoupling (e.g. a rocket that imitates Proton-M which ignites the 2nd stage before 1/2 sep) with EI and have no such problem. Anyway I will do a test to check this again.

EDIT: I cannot reproduce on my side... perhaps because the 1st stage's final TWR is not extremely high...

Typically my designs are in the 1.4 to 1.8 TWR range.

I don't think this is an issue at this point. After extensive play and testing, the mod appears to simulate the effect of G forces on the fuel. In the staging issue I talked about above, what was happening was that the 2nd stage TWR was much lower than the 1st stage, and hence when sepping there was a large G force differential (going from, say 1.9 TWR to 1.1) which amounts to negative g's on the fuel for a moment or two. When I reduce these terminal TWRs to match the initial TWR of the next stage, there are few if any ignite failures. Thanks for looking into it. Sorry for my ignorance.

This is an excellent mod btw, I really enjoy the challenge it provides, and am experiencing KSP in a whole new way. Thanks again.

[Sirplentifus]

I have a rocket that sort of imitates a Sputnik, so it has 1 central engine and 4 surrounding it (KWR's RD-108 and RD-107). When I try to ignite them all at once, at least one of them fails to ignite, not consuming TAEB, but decreasing the ignition count.

I considered it might be that the central engines uses TAEB from an outter engine, and the outter engines become unavailable to reach it (the TAEB ended up being in the central engine, which always ignites). So I tried igniting all the 4 outer engines, and only after that, the central one. And what happens is that the central engine is left with all 1.00 TAEB, 0/1 ignitions, and doesn't ignite.

Why is this happening?

By the way, removing the fuel ducts connecting the booster to the central stage seemed to prevent this.

Edited October 4, 2014 by Sirplentifus

[Lilienthal]

Feature suggestion: A frequent use case is to set the throttle to the minimum possible setting without the engine getting out. To get this right ist quite difficult, and sometimes results in loosing an ignition. I wonder whether there could be a key bound to "minimal throttle for this engine"?

Maybe the code from http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/81957-ANY-23-0-FINAL-FloorIt-redux-press-Z-for-100-throttle (FloorIt, also on curse) could be used.

Thanks for considering.

[HoneyFox]

I have a rocket that sort of imitates a Sputnik, so it has 1 central engine and 4 surrounding it (KWR's RD-108 and RD-107). When I try to ignite them all at once, at least one of them fails to ignite, not consuming TAEB, but decreasing the ignition count.

I considered it might be that the central engines uses TAEB from an outter engine, and the outter engines become unavailable to reach it (the TAEB ended up being in the central engine, which always ignites). So I tried igniting all the 4 outer engines, and only after that, the central one. And what happens is that the central engine is left with all 1.00 TAEB, 0/1 ignitions, and doesn't ignite.

Why is this happening?

By the way, removing the fuel ducts connecting the booster to the central stage seemed to prevent this.

Do you mean TEATEB ignitor resource?

You can try changing it's flow mode from STACK_PRIORITY_SEARCH to NO_FLOW, so that one engine can only use TEATEB stored inside itself.

To change it, check RealFuels\Resources\ResourcesFuel.cfg and search TEATEB in it.

[HoneyFox]

Feature suggestion: A frequent use case is to set the throttle to the minimum possible setting without the engine getting out. To get this right ist quite difficult, and sometimes results in loosing an ignition. I wonder whether there could be a key bound to "minimal throttle for this engine"?

Maybe the code from http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/81957-ANY-23-0-FINAL-FloorIt-redux-press-Z-for-100-throttle (FloorIt, also on curse) could be used.

Thanks for considering.

This topic has been discussed before in this thread.

Still I can provide some additional informtaion that should be useful to you: in KSP, if an engine has a non-zero minThrust, this minThrust is achieved when you set the throttle as close to 0 as possible (but not zero throttle because that will cut it off).

I took a glance at the FloorIt enterprise version, and seems like it allows you to setup custom throttle values. So setup a hotkey for 0.01 throttle won't be too hard.

[Tyrador]

Hello everyone! Does this mod work with 0.25? Thanks!

[RedAV8R]

Hello everyone! Does this mod work with 0.25? Thanks!

While you may be the first to ask. Would have it hurt to have tried it yourself before asking?

[HoneyFox]

Hello everyone! Does this mod work with 0.25? Thanks!

Have been testing it in 0.25 and till now I've encountered no issue. So let me change the OP title.

Anyway like RedAV8R said, you can always try it yourself. Though I understand it's quite painful if some issues occur and you have to find out what's wrong among a lot of mods. Even if we install and test many mods one by one to avoid that situation, it still takes a lot of time.

[pjf]

Hey HoneyFox,

Just popping over here with my question from github. I'm wondering if it's possible for us to simplify the distro of EngineIgnitor, and particularly the embedded zip files (Ignitor Configs and Pressurized FTs). In particular, I'm hoping to just sanity check that if we were to add the appropriate ModuleManager directives (:NEEDS, :CONFLICTS, etc). If so, that means that installation would become much easier, and (most importantly for me) I can add it to the CKAN.

I'm happy for myself or one of my minions to do the conversion and send you a pull request; mainly I want to check that I'm not about to embark on something that's already been tried before and failed.

Many thanks!

~ Paul

[HoneyFox]

Hey HoneyFox,

Just popping over here with my question from github. I'm wondering if it's possible for us to simplify the distro of EngineIgnitor, and particularly the embedded zip files (Ignitor Configs and Pressurized FTs). In particular, I'm hoping to just sanity check that if we were to add the appropriate ModuleManager directives (:NEEDS, :CONFLICTS, etc). If so, that means that installation would become much easier, and (most importantly for me) I can add it to the CKAN.

I'm happy for myself or one of my minions to do the conversion and send you a pull request; mainly I want to check that I'm not about to embark on something that's already been tried before and failed.

Many thanks!

~ Paul

Ah yes, it might be possible to use those new directives to simplify the installation, though I'm not familiar with them yet. Guess I need to read the MM's thread thoroughly again.

I assume that this not done by anyone else yet so if you want to do the conversion, that will be great and thanks a lot in advance.

[Tyrador]

Thanks for updating this mod! Is it possible to make EngineIgnitor compatable with Near Future engines? Or these types of engines don't/will not need the same ignition mechanism? Thanks!

[TeeGee]

For some reason when I install this mod in my ksp 0.25 version, it says "unsupported mod, please revert to 0.24.2. Any tips?

[mdosogne]

For some reason when I install this mod in my ksp 0.25 version, it says "unsupported mod, please revert to 0.24.2. Any tips?

Same here. For now I've changed the EngineIgnitor.version file manually to avoid the warning...

[HoneyFox]

For some reason when I install this mod in my ksp 0.25 version, it says "unsupported mod, please revert to 0.24.2. Any tips?

The plugin does work normally in 0.25 so no need to worry about that.

It's something that I cannot elegantly solved on my side. it's some special situation that KSPAVC cannot handle well (the situation is that KSP version is updated and plugin is still compatible).

You can ignore the warning or edit the .version file in the folder and change the "KSP version" manually.

Or, if you just don't want version checking, delete the MiniAVC.dll and the .version file, that's all. If there's new version coming out, you won't get notification. But... uh... normally the version won't be updated too frequently (only when some new feature implemented/major bugs fixed/new version of KSP making it incompatible) so that might be OK because you can always go to the forum to check the thread or you can follow this plugin on KerbalStuff so that it will notify you too.

Edited October 15, 2014 by HoneyFox

[HoneyFox]

Thanks for updating this mod! Is it possible to make EngineIgnitor compatable with Near Future engines? Or these types of engines don't/will not need the same ignition mechanism? Thanks!

Engines provided by NearFuture are mainly non-chemical engines. (correct me if I was wrong ) I don't actually know very well about how these engines are "ignited" (perhaps there's no actual ignition at all), so i don't know what is the limitation/requirement of successfully "igniting" these engines.

[RedAV8R]

The plugin does work normally in 0.25 so no need to worry about that.

It's something that I cannot elegantly solved on my side. it's some special situation that KSPAVC cannot handle well (the situation is that KSP version is updated and plugin is still compatible).

You can ignore the warning or edit the .version file in the folder and change the "KSP version" manually.

Or, if you just don't want version checking, delete the MiniAVC.dll and the .version file, that's all. If there's new version coming out, you won't get notification. But... uh... normally the version won't be updated too frequently (only when some new feature implemented/major bugs fixed/new version of KSP making it incompatible) so that might be OK because you can always go to the forum to check the thread or you can follow this plugin on KerbalStuff so that it will notify you too.

What do you mean you can't solve it elegantly? Ok updating one file and change 2 numbers isn't elegant maybe, but it's darn right easy. Just issue a new 'official' v3.4.2 release geared to KSP 0.25 that simply updates .version file.

[NathanKell]

Yes, setting a precedent of ignoring compatibility warnings is very bad....

[HoneyFox]

What do you mean you can't solve it elegantly? Ok updating one file and change 2 numbers isn't elegant maybe, but it's darn right easy. Just issue a new 'official' v3.4.2 release geared to KSP 0.25 that simply updates .version file.

I just don't like that version number got increased with no actual plugin changes inside...(though I've already done that when adding AVC for v3.4.1).

[RedAV8R]

I just don't like that version number got increased with no actual plugin changes inside...(though I've already done that when adding AVC for v3.4.1).

FWIW, you don't have to increase your version number, just fix the AVC .version file and reupload as the same number.

[HoneyFox]

FWIW, you don't have to increase your version number, just fix the AVC .version file and reupload as the same number.

Anyway I just uploaded it as 3.4.1.1. that last number should indicate that it's more like a small fix than some big changes.

EDIT: And the KSPAVC site seems to support inputting Min/Max KSP versions now, which is great!

Edited October 16, 2014 by HoneyFox

[Starman4308]

I'm not sure which thread to stick it in, but whenever I combine Engine Ignitor, Real Fuels, and the RF Stockalike config, I am getting tremendous slowdown in flight. I haven't checked if it's raw part count or just number of engines, but any large rocket chugs the computer so badly KSP is essentially unplayable. It's easy enough to reproduce it: I stick a Stayputnik on top of an FL-T800, an LV-909, a decoupler, and below that, a barrel of 19 LV-T45 engines each fed by 4-5 FL-T800 tanks. If it helps, out of sheer habit, I set the tech level to 3 (it's where my career save was when the lag monster hit).

OS: Linux x64

Minimum tested mod set: Engine Ignitor, Real Fuels, Real Fuels Stockalike config (all latest versions, 3.4.1.1, 8.1, and 1.0.3 respectively). Engine Ignitor won't lag by itself, and RF/RF Stockalike won't lag by themselves, but the combination causes hideous chugging (CPU is running at 100%, and it is very very slow).

Log file

Last comment: I'm not sure how significant this might be, this occurs regardless of whether I extract the pressurized fuel tank config, the engine ignitor configs, or both.

[HoneyFox]

I'm not sure which thread to stick it in, but whenever I combine Engine Ignitor, Real Fuels, and the RF Stockalike config, I am getting tremendous slowdown in flight. I haven't checked if it's raw part count or just number of engines, but any large rocket chugs the computer so badly KSP is essentially unplayable. It's easy enough to reproduce it: I stick a Stayputnik on top of an FL-T800, an LV-909, a decoupler, and below that, a barrel of 19 LV-T45 engines each fed by 4-5 FL-T800 tanks. If it helps, out of sheer habit, I set the tech level to 3 (it's where my career save was when the lag monster hit).

OS: Linux x64

Minimum tested mod set: Engine Ignitor, Real Fuels, Real Fuels Stockalike config (all latest versions, 3.4.1.1, 8.1, and 1.0.3 respectively). Engine Ignitor won't lag by itself, and RF/RF Stockalike won't lag by themselves, but the combination causes hideous chugging (CPU is running at 100%, and it is very very slow).

Log file

Last comment: I'm not sure how significant this might be, this occurs regardless of whether I extract the pressurized fuel tank config, the engine ignitor configs, or both.

Perhaps it's because EI uses .NET Reflection too frequently to acquire some data from RF about tank types.

I still don't understand why that will cause 100% CPU usage, shouldn't be that expensive...

Anyway I will see if I can do any optimization on my side but I cannot guarantee anything.

[Starman4308]

Perhaps it's because EI uses .NET Reflection too frequently to acquire some data from RF about tank types.

I still don't understand why that will cause 100% CPU usage, shouldn't be that expensive...

Anyway I will see if I can do any optimization on my side but I cannot guarantee anything.

Thanks for the effort. I can always pretend I'm using Engine Ignitor and forbid myself lower-stage restarts in the meantime.

Whatever it is, it had a massive effect: rockets which should never have come close to straining my system were slowing it down to 1-2 frames per second.

[HoneyFox]

Thanks for the effort. I can always pretend I'm using Engine Ignitor and forbid myself lower-stage restarts in the meantime.

Whatever it is, it had a massive effect: rockets which should never have come close to straining my system were slowing it down to 1-2 frames per second.

How many engines and fuel tanks does the rocket in your case have? That might give some clue.

[Starman4308]

How many engines and fuel tanks does the rocket in your case have? That might give some clue.

Originally diagnosed on 23 engines and ~140 fuel tanks (6.4x Kerbin, career mode, only 1.25m parts, etc, etc), amply replicated with the above barrel of 77 tanks and 20 engines (LV-909 with an FL-T800 above 19 LV-T30s fed by 4-5 FL-T800s).

It seems to scale on both fuel tanks and engines*, though you do need a respectable number of fuel tanks: it also disappears entirely if your engines cease to exist (say, you forgot to turn indestructible buildings off, and your test rocket decided to collapse the launchpad).

*Tested quadrupling the fuel tanks on 19 LV-T30s + 19 FL-T800s: it slowed down. Tested adding 30 radial engines to 28 fuel tanks + 7 LV-T30s: it slowed down.