[kOS] The Automated Mission Challenge

[adammada]

So, thrfoot, with your new scoring, do you mean a cumulative total of achieving all those things on different missions or achieving them in one single mission? Because this one for example:

10 points - Enter the SOI of all bodies in the Kerbol system

I'm not even sure is possible to do on a single *manual* mission, given the massive fuel requirements.

Probably this is score for multi-kOS like.

Personally, i liked previous score more. I would create two separate leaderboards for one kOS module and more kOS modules, and one kOS leaderboard could have old scoring.

[Dunbaratu]

© Getting to a planet that's at a different inclination or has an eliptical eccentricity presents more of a challenge. Should the score reflect this? Right now, Duna is worth the same amount of points as Moho, for example, but Moho is a LOT harder because of the need to deal with inclination.

[Sma]

Maybe I missed it somewhere, but is there a deadline for this challenge, or is it on-going?

[Sacred Aardvark]

Edit: Done with the scoring modifications. How does everyone like it?

Wow, biiig change Same question as Steven

(A) So, thrfoot, with your new scoring, do you mean a cumulative total of achieving all those things on different missions or achieving them in one single mission? Because this one for example:

10 points - Enter the SOI of all bodies in the Kerbol system

I'm not even sure is possible to do on a single *manual* mission, given the massive fuel requirements

©

The bug also surfaces if the KOS module had ever had *in the past* any code running on it that used a variable who's value was large enough or small enough to get represented in scientific notation when KOS tries to write it out to the persistence store.

So rounding out numbers when possible before storing them in a variable is recommended? I'm off to check the rounding syntax then.

[Dunbaratu]

So rounding out numbers when possible before storing them in a variable is recommended? I'm off to check the rounding syntax then.

I don't think big fractional parts is the only instance where it will use scientific notation.

imagine something like the mass of a planet

kerbinMass = 52915793000000000000000 . // Warning, this is kg, when your ship's mass is in metric tons.

It really doesn't matter if you round that off, even all the way to:

kerbinMass = 50000000000000000000000.

It would still get stored as 5.0E10 because it's big.

[Sacred Aardvark]

I don't think big fractional parts is the only instance where it will use scientific notation.

imagine something like the mass of a planet

kerbinMass = 52915793000000000000000 . // Warning, this is kg, when your ship's mass is in metric tons.

It really doesn't matter if you round that off, even all the way to:

kerbinMass = 50000000000000000000000.

It would still get stored as 5.0E10 because it's big.

Point. I'll have to try and keep that in mind as well

[TelluriumCrystal]

(A) So, thrfoot, with your new scoring, do you mean a cumulative total of achieving all those things on different missions or achieving them in one single mission? Because this one for example:

10 points - Enter the SOI of all bodies in the Kerbol system

I'm not even sure is possible to do on a single *manual* mission, given the massive fuel requirements, and that since it's worth more than doing it for "only" 10 bodies, you must be including the moons as well. You can't enter the SOI of all moons of Jool, for example, unless you get captured by Jool. So when you have to do that for all moons, you're not just talking flybys but captures( which then gets rid of any slingshot fuel savings). That just sounds utterly impossible even without doing it in software.

See my comment at the bottom.

( New bodies get added by KSP updates sometimes, and there's more bodies planned for the future. So be careful with phrasings like "all the bodies in the Kerbol system", as their meaning changes when updates come out. It's probably best to use explicit numbers so the challenge doesn't become harder or easier as Squad changes the number of bodies..

If and when Squad adds more planets/bodies I will update the point values to be compatible. Because I don't see this happening any time in the foreseeable future, I think it's safe to leave it as is for now.

© Getting to a planet that's at a different inclination or has an eliptical eccentricity presents more of a challenge. Should the score reflect this? Right now, Duna is worth the same amount of points as Moho, for example, but Moho is a LOT harder because of the need to deal with inclination.

Good point, but keep in mind in order to get the extremely high point planet achievements you would have to visit more planets, of which Moho inevitably becomes one.

Maybe I missed it somewhere, but is there a deadline for this challenge, or is it on-going?

There is no deadline. I intend to keep this challenge running as long as there is interest.

The current point values were set up to encourage people to visit more bodies at once, as this will lead to greater returns points-wise. Also, as several people have pointed out, most of these challenges are somewhat unreasonable for completion in one launch. In light of this I will be allowing multiple launches for each mission.

From here on out I will try to refrain from modifying scoring, so assume that these are the final values.

[sarkun]

Thrfoot,

how adamant are you on the "no mods allowed" rule? I've got a rocket able to land on the Mün and go back to Kerbin, and the only mod it uses is Procedural Fairings - after those got introduced I just can't fly anything without them

Seeing that posting the craft file is listed as optional - is it ok? If not I'll take em out.

Will post the required screenshots and code after I get home from work tonight.

And another thing - how reliable must the mission be to count? My lander code does not take slope information into account - so sometimes it will land on the Mün, topple and break apart But other times it is fine.

Edited November 19, 2013 by sarkun

[TelluriumCrystal]

Thrfoot,

how adamant are you on the "no mods allowed" rule? I've got a rocket able to land on the Mün and go back to Kerbin, and the only mod it uses is Procedural Fairings - after those got introduced I just can't fly anything without them

Seeing that posting the craft file is listed as optional - is it ok? If not I'll take em out.

Will post the required screenshots and code after I get home from work tonight.

And another thing - how reliable must the mission be to count? My lander code does not take slope information into account - so sometimes it will land on the Mün, topple and break apart But other times it is fine.

1. Unless you have a health condition that would put you in physical distress if you launched without fairings, I'd prefer it if you omitted them from the competition launch (feel free to use them during testing though). Posting a craft file is optional unless the validity of your design is challenged, in which case it becomes mandatory.

Your craft can be as unreliable as you want – it just has to work successfully when you attempt the challenge.

[Dunbaratu]

And another thing - how reliable must the mission be to count? My lander code does not take slope information into account - so sometimes it will land on the Mün, topple and break apart But other times it is fine.

I imagine that would be really hard to enforce properly anyway. It would mean having to see many slightly different runs of the same thing, which would get tedious.

[sarkun]

Ok, here is my entry:

A probe, that:

1) Enters stable Kerbin orbit.

2) Enters Mun SOI.

3) Enters stable Mun orbit.

4) Lands of the Mun.

5) Enters stable Mun orbit again!

6) Goes back to Kerbin.

7) Lands on Kerbin (via parachutes).

Gallery:

Javascript is disabled. View full album

Craft and scripts:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/zsivo6xtlg9e9vx/kos%20challenge.zip

Edited November 21, 2013 by sarkun
bring the scripts to the same post as the entry

[TelluriumCrystal]

Ok, here is my entry:

A probe, that:

1) Enters stable Kerbin orbit.

2) Enters Mun SOI.

3) Enters stable Mun orbit.

4) Lands of the Mun.

5) Enters stable Mun orbit again!

6) Goes back to Kerbin.

7) Lands on Kerbin (via parachutes).

http://imgur.com/a/VJ8h3#0

Nice work! I'll add you to the leaderboards.

[sarkun]

And here is the craft file and all of the scripts. They're of poor qualisty, they're literally the first scripts I wrote in kOS ever, but maybe the'll prove useful to someone.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/zsivo6xtlg9e9vx/kos%20challenge.zip

[Dunbaratu]

It occurs to me that a major hurdle to getting the multi-planet missions is the inability to undock a docking port. That makes it impossible to perform an apollo-style landing where a small craft goes down to land, then comes back up and re-docks with the command module. That, in turn, makes it impossible to save fuel by keeping most of it up out of the gravity well. So if you want to land on two different bodies, for example, you need to take all your fuel you planned to use for the second body's intercept and landing down with you to the ground on the first landing and then lift it all back up again.

[TelluriumCrystal]

It occurs to me that a major hurdle to getting the multi-planet missions is the inability to undock a docking port. That makes it impossible to perform an apollo-style landing where a small craft goes down to land, then comes back up and re-docks with the command module. That, in turn, makes it impossible to save fuel by keeping most of it up out of the gravity well. So if you want to land on two different bodies, for example, you need to take all your fuel you planned to use for the second body's intercept and landing down with you to the ground on the first landing and then lift it all back up again.

See the below quote from the main post.

4. Decoupling small probes and/or undocking/docking follow the same rules as the above. All control inputs must come from a kOS unit. Note that due to the inability of kOS to use docking ports, you may manually undock craft (rule 3 limitations apply).

[Sma]

See the below quote from the main post.

Maybe I've missed something but don't action groups work for docking ports? You could use one to set undock, or decouple I forget which. I thought docking back again was the problem as you couldn't target a specific docking port. Then again I haven't been keeping up with things as much the past week or so... :/

[Fail-o-matic]

My entry. (Note: Youtube is still processing the video so the following link might not work right away. If it doesn't work, try back again in a few hours.)

Code and craft file posted here:

https://drive.google.com/?authuser=0#folders/0Bxkeai7oN35fUFNtZW15Tm12WGM

Attempted to check this out but program terminates with errors

'error in 'delaycmd' on line 0: file not found 'ascend'

error on line 6: file not found 'simradiodelay'.

program ended.

They are in the archive, so not sure whats goin on.

[Dunbaratu]

Attempted to check this out but program terminates with errors

'error in 'delaycmd' on line 0: file not found 'ascend'

error on line 6: file not found 'simradiodelay'.

program ended.

They are in the archive, so not sure whats goin on.

I've often wondered if behavior of KOS differs between Windows and UNIX operating systems due to the difference in case-sensitive filenames. On Windows if you look for a file called 'simradiodelay.txt" but it's really called "simRadioDelay.txt" it works. On Linux (and Mac which is also UNIX) it doesn't because the case matters.

[Fail-o-matic]

I've often wondered if behavior of KOS differs between Windows and UNIX operating systems due to the difference in case-sensitive filenames. On Windows if you look for a file called 'simradiodelay.txt" but it's really called "simRadioDelay.txt" it works. On Linux (and Mac which is also UNIX) it doesn't because the case matters.

Just to confirm, this was created using the latest version of kOS?

The program runs, just like your youtube vid shows, the signal delay of loading the programs and crashes when it gets to those.

Edited November 21, 2013 by Fail-o-matic
more info

[Dunbaratu]

Just to confirm, this was created using the latest version of kOS?

yes. 0.92

The program runs, just like your youtube vid shows, the signal delay of loading the programs and crashes when it gets to those.

Check the exact spelling on the filenames. Did the act of downloading them or uploading them perhaps change the names of the .txt files in the archive?

[Dunbaratu]

Just to confirm, this was created using the latest version of kOS?

The program runs, just like your youtube vid shows, the signal delay of loading the programs and crashes when it gets to those.

It just occurred to me: you might get that behavior if you didn't run it from the right location first. Did you "switch to archive" first?

Also it's vital to run the stripped version. If you downloaded the unstripped versions they might be too big to load and then not be there when he program tries running them.

Edited November 21, 2013 by Steven Mading

[Fail-o-matic]

It just occurred to me: you might get that behavior if you didn't run it from the right location first. Did you "switch to archive" first?

Also it's vital to run the stripped version. If you downloaded the unstripped versions they might be too big to load and then not be there when he program tries running them.

I have the stripped and unstripped downloaded but looking at the actual files side by side...they look identical. Anybody else try this and have probs or is it just my fail?

[Dunbaratu]

I have the stripped and unstripped downloaded but looking at the actual files side by side...they look identical. Anybody else try this and have probs or is it just my fail?

I apologise. You are correct. Somehow I got my signals crossed and uploaded the same thing (the full unstripped files) to both directories.

I have re-run the programs in the unstripped directory through the stripper and re-created the stripped directory.

I hope it works. I don't have the chance to test it as the versions of those programs I'm using now have been edited a bit since then as I'm trying to work out the problem of a Duna transfer. and they're currently in a sort of halfway broken flux. So I didn't want to just upload what I have now, and I didn't want to swap them out for the version on the google drive. So I didn't test if the stripped version still works. In principle it should be the same thing as what I used before, so it should work.

[Bizz Keryear]

You only can hope that either Scott Manley has no programming skills or does not want to participate. Otherwise we all know who the winner is.

[ttnarg]

looking at this docking and undocking looks doable (but hard) but I dont think you can transfure fuel to the lander which is limiting.