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[0.90] Stanford Torus 0.6


michaelhester07

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Curse link :http://kerbal.curseforge.com/ksp-mods/221761-stanford-torus-0-6

0.6.1 release

Space dock named modules are now Extraplanetary Launchpads if you installed that mod.

0.6 release

0.6 marks my final release for this project and the update to make it work in .90.

.90 changed the way the VAB and SPH editors are instantiated and thus the hangar extender no longer worked. I solved that problem by "going the other way". That is to reduce the size of the torus by 50x for editing.

To use the editing mode on the torus in an empty VAB add a torus hull. There is a new hull to choose from in addition to my original hull.

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Next right click the hull and choose the "editing mode" option. This option shrinks the Hull by 50x. While this mode is active any part you pull off the menu will also be shrunken by 50x.

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Strutting works with the torus now... and you may wish to make use of it to keep your torus from randomly flying apart.

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The torus must be returned to the original size before saving it. Right click the hull and click the editing mode button again. Finally save the ship.

Sadly no.. the struts will not appear "station sized" when you finally build it on orbit or (lol) launch it.

Full Size Stanford Torus release 0.5

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0.5 release:

- Stanford torus hull model has been optimized. It should load faster and physics should work better with it. Internal parts of the model (near the central hub) have almost all been converted to convex hulls. It is still not possible to roll the torus like a gigantic wheel but it should be able to contact the ground without going through it.

- The Station habitat model has been converted to a convex hull. This means you can't put things inside the "courtyard" anymore but it should not bug a torus build if you build one with Extraplanetary Launchpads.

- New 3 meter solid rocket booster (shown above)

- The large fuel storage container now has a collider (so you can click it).

- New small station fuel cell in the same model as the small station cargo bay. Has 3x the fuel capacity of the Kerbodyne 14400.

0.4 release

Version 0.4 is some bug fixes

-Stanford Torus Hull is now 8000 tons. I feel this keeps the challenge without making it too tedious.

-Stanford Torus Hull now has a structural integrity field. All ships within 2km of it are forced off rails (including kerbals) to prevent rail collisions from destroying the station. Additionally attached components gain amplified collision and torque resistance.

-New Small station cargo bay which holds 72000 metal and 500 rocket parts to facilitate building the station (requires Extraplanetary Launchpads)

-Particle accelerator experiment now properly rewards the experiment at 1500 data.

Version 0.3 release: added new parts.

This update focused on the logistics of the base that you'll use to gather resources for the Stanford Torus. Switching from Kethane to Karbonite makes building the torus easier. I also focused on adding properly sized solar panels for the torus and the ground base.

Solar panels: New large sized panels. They come in moderately large and colossal. These panels were created to produce the same power output as a similarly sized unfolding panel but to remove the polygon and collision mesh count associated with those. With these you can power your base without slowing time down. These panels are heavier than normal panels though. The colossal size is 42 tons. That won't matter much on a stanford torus though.

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Laser smelters: There's one for ore and one for Karbonite. The laser smelters I created purely out of the desire for a processor to look cool while doing something mundane. They may also make processes for getting ore converted to metal slightly easier. The Karbonite smelter has the same package but different color of laser output.

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Mass accelerator: The mass accelerator continues the exploration of a stanford torus build. In real life it would probably be difficult to find a fuel source on the moon that could be readily converted to rocket fuel. An alternative would be a magnetic accelerator gun. It would be possible to launch a payload with an iron outer shell through such a device and catch it in orbit for processing. The mass accelerator replicates just such a device. There are 2 pieces: the master accelerator and the network accelerator (named as "network" ingame). The master accelerator can arm all of the network accelerators when it picks up its payload. The network is formed into a chain of accelerators which can extend the thrust on the payload. The accelerator included has a 3 meter aperture so trying to launch anything bigger than 3 meters will likely destroy the accelerator.

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Version 0.2 of this mod is available now! Changes:

Progressive science: Launch long term science experiments!

4 new experiments await your endless time on orbit!

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- Goo experiment: long term study on the goo we got from Jeb's dumpster

- Biology experiment: study the effects of space on the grass pulled from the topiary outside the space center.

- Psychology experiment: Find out what kerbals do when they're sealed in a drab can for 3 weeks (hint... insanity)

- Supercollider experiment: Launch a particle accelerator into space to find a Jeb Boson!

(pictured: said supercollider experiment)

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New Extraplanetary Garage

Facilitate the use of Extraplanetary Launchpads to build rovers at your base. The garage makes it easy to build a rover. Design it in the spaceplane hangar. Be sure not to move your first piece of the rover and build behind it (away from the doors). Then build it at the garage on site. The part of the garage with the electrical hazard marker is "up". Make sure you have enough ground clearance. Neon rings not included.

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I also rebalanced much of the mod

- the torus hull is 3k tons lighter.

- Torus parts are now in Meta Materials technology

- The science module is now in advanced exploration.

Also: The license I think is one of the creative commons ones now. I want people to feel free to make changes to my mod to suit their purpose. Materials related to it that I release will go to the curse site linked above.

This part pack comes out of my desire to explore a near future of realistic space technology. In this pack you will find the parts to build a Stanford Torus in Kerbal Space Program. Parts include

  • Stanford Torus Hull: a large 1200 meter hull to serve as the center of your space city
  • Habitat module: A large crew capacity living space with beds and a messhall. Ground deployable for your bases.
  • Science station: For all intents and purposes an office building that your kerbals will work in on the station. This station allows 100% transmission of most experiments that you would otherwise have to take back home. Why wouldn't a torus city have the same science capabilities as the lab back home? Ground deployable for your bases.
  • cargo and fuel bays: The inner ring of the torus has space to mount cargo and fuel bays.
  • Surface mount Clamp o tron sr port: allows for easy expansion for parts you didn't foresee a need for
  • Holographic assisted Extra planetary launchpad: Launch larger ships without destroying your base during the launch (pretty much required to launch 1000 tons of rocket parts without destroying everything)
  • Spacedock modules: Two versions of spacedock module. One has sci-fi inspired docking bays that you can stick mooring clamps in, the other is intended as a construction point for cruisers.
  • Forest and farm biodomes: Currently decorative place holders for when I eventually integrate to TAC life support.

Extra features:

Inline Goo module: The inline goo module allows you to build a surface landing science probe without having to balance extra goo tanks on it. So many of my probes had to leave goo behind because the balanced tanks ended up taking up too much weight. The shell on it opens up to reveal the goo sealed in an old motorcycle innertube.

Mod dependencies

  • Extraplanetary Launchpads
  • Karbonite (as an alternative to kethane)
  • Kethane (any kethane pack will do)
  • Hangar Extender (link is in the curse description)
  • Active Texture management (required if you have lots of mods installed)

I recommend Bahamuto drills and containers to increase the dramatic effect when you mine the resources.

Plans for future release (in the next few weeks)

  • Integration to TAC life support
  • More science and habitat modules
  • Council module (command module)
  • Kethane refinery (will look like a large oil refinery)
  • Factories for EPL materials
  • nerfing the fuel capacity on the launchpad (I think it's off by a factor of 10 compared to similar sized parts)

Future Science experiment plans

With the introduction of a stanford torus comes experiments that would otherwise not be doable without keeping people in orbit for years. To support these I want to design a science system where the experiments accrue a "data" resource over time which when full gets used to process an experiment on the science module. These time delayed experiments would be worth more than the average experiment as they provide valuable insight into the workings of the universe. Some plans include:

The Orbital Particle Accelerator

Kerman Physicists already know what happens when you smash particles together at great speed on the ground of Kerbin. What happens if you smash em together in space? Also if you find a Kiggs Boson you don't risk all of kerbin on it, just the 1000 unlucky souls on the station.

The Bio-observation habitat

We managed to keep PETA off our backs long enough to finish construction on this module. Bob wanted to know what would happen if we store birds, cats, spiders, trees, and other animals in orbit for years at various places.

Screenshots:

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Picture of the Launchpad (the part with the blue wires in the center of it)

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The science module deployed to the surface

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Habitat module on the launchpad

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Early zoomed out shot of the torus hull

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Edited by michaelhester07
version 6 release
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Launching it from the pad into space is technically possible. It just takes a LOT of thrust. (like 96 of that kerbodyne 4bell thruster). If you're into FAR then it's not possible, the station will drag WAY too much. With parts populated in it then it will not be launchable as you'll need to balance the parts.

There's a quote somewhere: "Anything will fly if you put enough thrust under it."

Edited by michaelhester07
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Nice, very nice, I have a miner with 1400 ton metal on Minmus ready to launch.

Question, can I use the standard space construction pad? I plan to build this in orbit. It has the benefit that I can put it at the end of the station, the holographic pad will require a bend.

Know that the shipyard increase mass as you construct.

Will use landers who mine ore and convert to metal to get that part done in one operation and then fly to the orbital shipyard and dump it.

Lander can also mine kethane so I can convert to fuel and fly to ore deposit.

I can not find any purpose of the spacedock except storage. I guess its like the forest and farm and will get functionality later.

The docking module is an hangar part where you add docing ports where you want like inside the hangars :)

You need the research center to build, yes you can use other pods or the workshop but the research center is over 50 times faster.

My plan is to first build the research center and add this to the shipyard on the "small" torus who now just become an base for the research center :)

The research center don't convert metal to rocket parts so I need a stack of 3d printers for this.

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The standard space pad is useable for this (I recommend it actually). I did not create a new space construction pad for it. The holographic pad is for you to use on the ground if you want to launch a bigger ship off the Mun or Ike or wherever and the stock pads in EPL keep getting destroyed when you launch or build. If you build a torus with the hologrpahic pad you'll probably just end up destroying your construction station.

The spacedock part lets you put the space launch pad inside of it and has extra storage for parts (which you might not use). The other docking module I intended as a place to stick a bunch of docking ports in to park ships.

I think i added the productivity to the habitat module as well. You might get more productivity out of that. Personally I upped the productivity from the stock EPL cfg 100x so I can use other modules for construction and so I wouldn't have to park my station at the 10000x range to build something. Try to build something around Gilly and you see why I did that..

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The standard space pad is useable for this (I recommend it actually). I did not create a new space construction pad for it. The holographic pad is for you to use on the ground if you want to launch a bigger ship off the Mun or Ike or wherever and the stock pads in EPL keep getting destroyed when you launch or build. If you build a torus with the hologrpahic pad you'll probably just end up destroying your construction station.

The spacedock part lets you put the space launch pad inside of it and has extra storage for parts (which you might not use). The other docking module I intended as a place to stick a bunch of docking ports in to park ships.

I think i added the productivity to the habitat module as well. You might get more productivity out of that. Personally I upped the productivity from the stock EPL cfg 100x so I can use other modules for construction and so I wouldn't have to park my station at the 10000x range to build something. Try to build something around Gilly and you see why I did that..

Thanks then I continue using the orbital one, was a bit scared it would break, then I build the small torus the shipyard would disintegrate if I warped with the miner docked however I suspect the mobile shipyard is bugged.

And yes it make sense that large facilities has far higher productivity than small, think factory versus workshop. The small workshops is nice to build probes and stuff, the large to build huge structures.

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ok my question is how does it fit in the VAB....

Use the hangar extender now you can lift it out of the VAB, still not easy to work with so I think I just place hundred docking ports on it :)

Will add the hangar, shipyard and the storage modules before I build.

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Fast issue about the tanks. The fuel tank can not be clicked so you can not move it after placement and you can not transfer to it, it also look like it don't stick well to the torus neither on the inner mounting ring or the sides of the main ring.

The rest works well but are a bit hard to place.

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http://files.riffsy.com/images/31e7df8b1c901055ce350404057d87eb/raw

That is Massive, and awesome. This will be interesting getting into orbit without hyperedit. I can't wait to try lol :D

People want to launch this into orbit :)

We will be talking about an weight on pad around 100.000 ton. Only benefit is that its plenty of room to mount engines.

---

I have one model during development, but have to wait for an fix for the fuel tanks before building.

Think about scaling up the novapunch 5 meter reaction wheels to give this some controllability but they can be docked. Lots of docking ports as in hundreds.

The fuel tanks however has to be added before I start building.

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I love the parts, but my computer hates me when I use the Torus wheel lol. Threw tweak scale on the parts so I could shrink them to the point where my computer is no longer screaming for mercy lol. The whole Stanford Torus fully built looks pretty cool when docked with StarVisions USS Voyager (which is also very large)

Also the cargo and fuel trusses, where do I place them. I tried on the support ring between the center and outside habitat ring, but the don't quite fit right.

Edited by Spork of Doom
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When 0.24 rolls around I might make this my new End Goal in KSP. Build one of these around Jool or something, with Extraplanetary Launchpads and Interstellar. After building a Colony in the atmosphere of Jool I've run out of things to do that interest me in this game.

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